Cherbim and Succubus

During the early years of my life, I was a sheltered child. Super sheltered. Like, “I didn’t even know what a swear word was until middle school” sheltered. It had its pros and its cons, that is for sure. One of the major drawbacks to being sheltered is that you end up having to find out about everything “bad” through secondhand sources. Books introduced me to swears. Magazines taught me about death and loss. The Internet explained the whole concept of sex to me. None of these were told to me directly. I had to search for the information myself.

One could argue that that is fine. Doesn’t matter how the information gets to you, as long as you learn it. I can agree with that, although I would like to point to the other major drawback of being shelter, lack of experience with actually dealing with these events, It’s one thing to say “I will never take heroin” and a complete different thing to turn down a friend offering you some.

To help explain this line of thinking, let me tell you a story about a situation I found myself it completely by accident.

For my freshmen year of college, I traveled down less than an hour’s distance away for my new school. It resembled where I grew up, with tall, majestic trees lining the streets, old houses with rustic architecture right on the main streets, with the occasional shop poking in between. One could walk outside anytime of the day and feel generally at peace.

My game design emphasis, however, required me to also take classes at a tech college in the major city nearby. I remember my trip down there my first time. I had visited the city a few times, although I had never really been there by myself. And, most of those times, my family would drive down to one building, go inside said building, and then leave. I never bothered to look at the concert jungle that it was, with intersections and small parking lots dotting each of the corners. When you walk the streets, you experience a different sensation from what you experience being towed around in a car.

After making my way to the tech college, I nervously made my way to my classroom for my first day of class. You never outgrow that feeling of nervousness when you are forced into a new classroom setting where you know absolutely no-one and nothing about what will happen. Maybe it was because of this nervousness that I remember basically nothing of my first two weeks of my classes there. Or maybe it was because nothing interesting happened. Who knows.

What mattered about those first two weeks was this. I had two classes. Both of them required splitting into two teams. Some people were in both classes. One of them was another person from my suburban college. He offered to give me rides. I accepted. Another one was a man in his fourtees. Another one was a girl my age with short hair. They were both in my team for both classes, while the fellow suburban colleague was in neither.

For the third week of class, my team finished what was needed to be done before the other team. As I waited for my ride to finish his work, the girl I mentioned previously (I shall call her “Katie”) noticed that I was just sitting there instead of packing up like the rest of them.

“You not leaving?” she asked me, placing her laptop into her leather trimmed backpack.

I gestured over to my ride. “I carpool with him,” I explained. “I can’t really leave until he is ready as well.”

“Where do you live?” she continued questioning. The last of my other team members had now left the room.

I explained to her my situation about going to two colleges and her eyes lit up.

“I don’t live too far from there,” she explained, a little excitement in her voice. “I can take you back to your dorm easily.”

I hesitated. I barely knew this girl. I’ve talked to her for a max 3 hours while in class. I knew her name, her generally personality, but nothing really else. Could she really be trusted?

“Umm...I’m not sure if I can,” my hesitation dripped into my voice. “I probably should double check with my ride to make sure it is okay with him.”

“It would be way quicker than just waiting here though,” she pushed. “No clue how much longer they will take.”

The situation was defused when my ride came by and tapped me on the shoulder. “Should we get going?” he asked me, making no eye contact with Katie.

“Yeah sure, let me get ready,” I began to scoop my things up, with my ride and Katie both hovering nearby.

Before I trotted out the door with my ride, I told Katie plainly, “Thanks for the offer, though it looks like my ride is ready now.”

When we got into the car, my ride questioned me about why Katie was hovering by me. I explained the situation to him and he commented in response, “Strange. Where she mentioned living is nowhere close to our college. It’s like an extra 15 minute drive both ways.”

That response rattled around in my head for a bit until I got a text. It was from Katie. Every member of our team had access to each other’s phone numbers, just in case we had any questions or concerns.

It stated, “Text me when u’re back.”

I didn’t mention it to my ride during the trip back. When I got back, I unpacked, relaxed a bit, and then decided to text her back.

| Katie |
So...what’s up?
I really wanted to ask you something.
Okay...then do it.
I wanted to do it in person. I guess I could just wait until the next time we have class but I really want to know your answer.
You know what? I’m going to ask you anyways.
Do you like me? Like, have a crush on me?

To say I was caught off guard was like saying Babe Ruth hit a few home runs. I was blind sided. Where had this come from? What signals were I sending? I didn’t remember being flirtatious at all. All I remember doing was being nervous about the whole school situation.

I paused to think about if I liked her. The answer was no. There was a girl back at my high school that I still had feelings for. I was even planning to take her to our homecoming. And I barely knew Katie. The answer was again no.

What if I made a move here though? How would it turn out? Did I want to burn this chance of having a relationship with her already? She was cute, I had to give her that. It was way sooner than I would like to when making a decision like this. Spontaneous is not in my dictionary.

No. I do not have a crush on you.
Oh good.
For a second there, I thought I was going to have to choose between you and my fiance Jim.

I wasn’t sure exactly how to take that, but what spilled out of it was that she was a girl who wasn’t afraid to tell you everything. She went on to tell me that she was bi, had a thing with an asian girl one time when I mentioned I was currently crushing on a foreign exchange student, how she had met her fiance, and multitudes of other stories related to the subject of relationships. These stories weren’t just told here, they were also told during any free time we had with class.

I enjoyed her bluntness. I was, and am, bad at picking up signs. I appreciated someone placing everything on the table, especially when it came to situations like these.

Over the coming weeks, we became close friends, chatting often. She invited me over to her and her fiance’s house one weekend. I accepted and came over after I had went downtown to meet up with some of my team members for an emergency team meeting (which she didn’t go to because she had to get groceries).

I walked in, ate some snacks, and played some videogames with her and her fiance. We played Super Smash Bros. Melee. I won a lot, for I had played too much of that game when I was a kid. We also played Mario Party. Unfortunately, it was Mario Party 9. They had to ruin the best game mechanic of that game by moving everyone to the same place, instead of individuals being able to go to different place. Katie won. I blame bad game design.

The next week, I decided to come home for Homecoming. I took my foreign exchange student crush out to dinner at the most fancy restaurant in the---actually it was Noodle.inc. We had both gone there before, so I knew she liked it. We chatted, danced, and chatted some more. I made some moves on her, but nothing too serious. Part of me didn’t want things to get too serious and have her move all the way back to Thailand. I didn’t want to deal with a long distance relationship like that.

Two weeks later, Katie and I were walking down the hallways during one of the breaks we had. It was a way for us to relax and to catch up on things. I’m going to be honest here. I don’t remember how events panned out. I was going to make up a possible set of occurrences that lead to the result, but I don’t want to lie to you like that.

What happened then? We told each other that we liked each other. I know she told me first. I think she had hinted at it many times before, which for her was basically getting up to the point of telling me and then stopping. I think I finally picked up on it and decided to go with it. Here’s a girl who was cute, fun to talk to, and who stated openly that she liked me. No need to go around trying to guess her feelings.

Problem was, she was engaged. Another problem was that she was stuck being engaged. Even if she wanted to leave him, she need his financial support, which encapsulated transportation, housing, and schooling. I had seen how she had handled her money. I could see why.

She invited me over to her house once again after we told each other out feelings. The idea that she liked me now made the whole situation different from what it had been before. There was a different feeling in the air when I arrived. I’m not sure if her fiance knew at all, for he ended up leaving us alone when he went outside to smoke. Just me and her. On a couch. Alone.

We scooted closer together. She made a few remarks about how she was glad that we were alone. I agreed. We scooted closer, touching now. She gazed up at me, with her large brown eyes. She smiled at me. Did she want me to make a move? I wasn’t sure. I leaned in and touch our noses together. She returned the gesture. She wanted me to make a move.

We made-out. I, personally, had never experienced anything before quite like it. Truth be told, I’m a nerdy guy (big surprise since I was going to a school to learn how to make videogames) who was raised in a religious household who went to religious schools my whole life before college. You can see why I hadn’t really experienced anything like this before. The previous experience I had to anything sexual was a previous relationship whose most intimate form were kisses that resembled your mother’s bedtime good night kisses.

Once again, you can see why I hadn’t really experienced anything like this before. It oozed passion and desire. We took a break to look at each other. I booped her nose. We started again.

Eventually, we stopped and Katie began to panic a bit. She made sure to rinse her mouth and lips off so that my taste wouldn’t stick around (I didn’t know I had a taste). She got a videogame set it up so that it would look like we were doing something when her fiance came back. And he did. He was only gone for 15 minutes but the fuse had already been lit.

The three of us ended up watching movies for the rest of the afternoon. Discovered that 21 Jump Street (the new one) is a great movie! It’s a great parody of cop movies and even satires that normal stereotypes of high school dramas! I really enjoyed it. Pitch Perfect 2? Decent, cannot say that I didn’t laugh at all.

Later that evening, when I was back in my room, I got a text from Katie. She had told her fiance (she never could keep anything a secret, hence her bluntness) and it looked like they were breaking up. My heart jumped for joy. Could I get to chance to actually date her?

I think I have to explain myself now on why I was alright with doing these things, even though this clearly went against what I believed in, being religious. Whenever someone goes against their beliefs, they must buy into another principle. In this situation, I was buying into “freeing her” from her bad engagement. She complained about it so often and, from what I gathered, wanted to be with me instead, but she couldn’t because of this engagement.

I wanted to save the damsel in distress. Save the princess from the evil monster keeping her captive. That is what I bought into to blind myself of my morals.

As the week went on, they repaired their relationship and the damsel stayed tied down within the castle. She would talk to me and message me about she wished to get together again, although the chances of it would be slim. Her fiance didn’t want her to leave the house outside of class or want me over. Can’t say I blame him.

She ended up finding a way over to my dorm the next weekend. I don’t know how she did that or how her fiance let her. Maybe she convinced him that she was faithful by not doing anything? I think it was, due to her having to almost constantly check-in through text messages.
It didn’t help though because we still made-out.

Beforehand, I realized there would be no place to sit next to each other, like it was at her place. My roommate and I bunked to create the most living space possible in our small room. Sure, we had places to sit, tons of chairs in fact, but nothing that we could sit next to each other in. My solution? Take my mattress and put in on the floor so we could sit on it. Must of look pretty sketchy to my roommate when he walked in to see us sitting there. He didn’t stay long.

I laid in bed that night pondering about the previous day. Katie had told me that she felt more safe, more comfortable, this second time around. I was feeling the opposite. The fantasy that I was saving her from a terrible relationship was being stripped away from the reality that I was getting into a terrible relationship. One with no long term benefit for me, one that betray what I believed in, one that was corrupting my way of thinking. I came to a conclusion. I couldn’t do this anymore.

That morning, I texted her telling her so. She was not pleased. She begged me to change my mind, that things could work between the two of us. Her persistence bent me, but I did not break on my decision to end it. She was upset and our next class together proved to be awkward. After a week though, a friendship was repaired and we talked again here and there. The frequency of our talking ended up speeding back up to the rate that it once was before.

It had been roughly a month since our rendezvouses. Katie needed some help with a programming assignment. She was one of the people who focused on design, although she needed to take a basic programming course to sort of understand what was going on behind the scenes. She had no clue what she was doing. She wanted me to help out in person.

Wanting to be helpful, I offered her to come to my college and we could go to one of the many public studying places. She accepted. Went she arrived, we headed down to one of the most popular places. She complained about the noise (although it was pretty quiet) and told me that it would be way easier to focus in my room. I denied her request. I knew what would happen if we were alone in my bedroom. I didn’t want to deal with that.

She ended up getting very little work down and offered to come back next week to try again. I agreed, stupidly thinking that she was magically going to get work done. As the week went on, she began to spin her coming over, not only as a time to do homework, but also a time to watch Christmas movies, since it was now December. Her persistence had me agreeing by the end.

Our final class together for the semester was the only thing I had going on that day before our plans for the evening. Katie surprised me by giving me (and only me) a Christmas gift. It was a pair of sweatpants. High end sweatpants. The type where it starts to trade away function for fashion, which I don’t understand, since they’re sweatpants. There was a gift receipt inside, just in case they were the wrong size. I never wore them.

Exhausted after the final for that class, I waited in my dorm room for Katie to arrive. As soon as she did, I noticed that she really had no plans for doing homework. She set up her laptop for Christmas movies ASAP and never brought out any of the school work that she had. I made sure that there was no real way for us to sit next to each other, only chairs for us. And I think it would have went perfectly fine if it wasn’t for the fact that my roommate was there. Let’s just say he didn’t share my beliefs about respecting the engagement.

My roommate basically spent the whole time hyping up the fact that we were alone and could continue where we doing before. I was not excited about this idea, although Katie jumped on board immediately. She talked about how her fiance might be cheating on her and about how her heart had never truly got over me. The 2 vs. 1 situation was also starting to cause me to ponder this idea again. I could feel that I still had feelings for her.

Immediately after my roommate had left us two alone, Katie turned to me and asked, “Do you want to Netflix and Chill?”

“...yes.”

I’m still not sure why I said yes. Part of me thinks it was because of how high my roommate had hyped up us doing something tonight that I thought she was kidding. Part of me thinks that my brain had failed me in that moment, allowing my dick to butt in and say how it felt. Either way, I said yes.

She went ahead and got into my bed. The gravity of the situation hit me. Now what? I delayed a bit, taking a while to decide what should be playing from Netflix. She told me it didn’t matter, to choose something random. It ended up being Disney’s Tarzan. Fitting?

I seductively took off her glasses, rolled on top of her, and made-out with her. The actions were like what we had done a month ago. Things were different now though. The fantasy had been ripped away long ago, leaving me to only face the reality of the situation. I was never going to be hers. I was only going to be a side thing. She was perfectly content with having two guys in her life, one support her financially and the other emotionally. And I was allowing this to happen.

These thoughts were temporarily blocked by Katie kissing me again and whispering, “I don’t want to rush you, but I’m willing to go as far as you want.”

That broke me. Broke me completely out whatever thought that had brought me into this situation; me being on top of her. I rolled off her and ended up snuggling next to her. I could sense her annoyance as she tried to be patient with me, hoping I was going to do something. When she asked if we were going to do anything more, I replied with “I’m not really feeling it.”

This did it for her. Enraged, she got out of the bed, called her fiance for a ride home and left (but not before an awkward half an hour waiting for him to arrive).

School had Christmas break, where neither of us spoke to the other. Her impact on me still remained though, for I could tell that one of my run-ins with one of my high school friends was impacted strongly by the thoughts and feelings I had had for Katie. And not for the better.

Katie had corrupted me. The rest of the break was spent trying to return myself back to the state I was before. Sadly, ignorance is bliss, and one can’t unlearn experiences in their life. However, I was given an example of seeing what had happen if I wasn’t aware that I had changed. I now knew I needed to have better self-control, or otherwise this might happen again.

Christmas break ended and I returned back to my two colleges. And I wasn’t going to be able to escape Katie, for we were together again for another set of classes. This time, however, whenever she brought up the thought of feelings between us, I stopped things from going any further. It wasn’t that my heart had moved on from her, my heart rarely let’s feelings go. Instead, I was adamant about how anything between us was going to end badly for both parties.

A new angle she pitched was for me and her finance to openly share herself between the two of us. She stated that she “had a big heart” and that she could have equal feelings for us both. I stayed firm, stating that I couldn’t love an engaged women. She would plead and I would deny.

This, on repeat, would summarize the first half of that class. Change occurred when Katie offered to take me to and from school one day. I was hesitant, but I never really enjoyed the alternative option of riding the bus, so I accepted. The ride down there was a little awkward, with the drive back being quite similar. It was nice though, a little chatting here and there. Normal friendly conversation.

When we were getting close to my dorm, however, she mentioned that her fiance needed the car after she dropped me off. I thought nothing of it, but then she called up her fiance. She explained that she was worried that she might make a mistake driving if she felt rushed to return the car. She then asked him to take the bus instead, so she wouldn’t have to rush back. He reluctantly agreed.

We got to my dorm and I got ready to get out of the car. She looked over at me and told me goodbye. The way she positioned herself, they way she spoke, the way she acted, made me feel like she wanted me to kiss her goodbye. I brushed it off. I was just being paranoid, giving her absolutely no credit. The ride to and from school had been pleasant.

I walked up the three flights of stairs to my room and looked down. She was still in the parking lot. I heard my phone ringing. It was Katie. I picked up the phone. She asked, since we still had free time, if she could hang out for a bit in my room. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Here we go again.

No. No, we weren’t going through this again. Not another time. It wouldn’t work, it couldn’t work. She had a loving fiance that gave her a million second changes. Why couldn’t she see that?

I told her no. I told her that I had some homework to do (a lie that I’m pretty sure she saw straight through). She was disappointed. I saw her car leave the parking lot. I had disarmed the relationship bomb that could have gone off.

I got another call from her. It sounded like she was on the brink of tears. She told me that she “had a fantasized version of [me] in [her] head” and “whenever [you] don’t end up meeting those expectations, it hurts [me]”. And it was this “caring, kind guy who was always willing to help her in her time of need” that she was falling in love with.

Love. She never used that work to actually describe her feelings for me. She once told me after I told her I was worried that she was falling in love with me to “not flatter yourself like that”. She felt that she was in love with me, without me returning any of the feelings she had. I was just trying to be friends. That plan clearly wasn’t working. I couldn’t be close to her.

Our friendship slowly diminished after that. I talked to her a few times as the class went on, but nothing like what it was before. She eventually left the video game program to pursue stuff related to her fiance. She didn’t even complete the class. She would give me updates about her life now and then though. She didn’t need to be in person to do that.

She told me that she had moved on finally. She told me that, while she believed that she still had a big enough heart for both me and her fiance, that she didn’t want me to be a part of it (although she mentioned a different guy). She told me that she was thankful that I didn’t end up pushing our “relationship” farther than I did. She told me that my decisions were correct.

I ended up hanging out with her one more time during the summer, to catch up on things. We chatted a bit. I was hoping that we could find a line of conversation that didn’t involve our past together. We could not. She mentioned that she had done some soul searching and felt like she was a succubus. I jokingly agreed, calling her a temptress.

Later, she yelled at me for calling a temptress. It was here that I knew that our friendship had no future. If we couldn’t joke about our past mistakes, how could we build any other sort of future? I ended up removing her from my phone and from any other sort of media. I didn’t need the temptation.

I learned a lot about myself from this whole experience. You don’t truly know what temptation looks like until you face it face to face. You can be told about its issues, taught about why you shouldn’t choose it, informed about where it comes from. Unless you see it yourself, experience it yourself, there’s no way for you to be completely prepared for what the future brings.

Mistakes are priceless. Failure is priceless. The only way to truly fail is to not learn from failure. This story will hopefully allow me, and maybe you, to learn the same lesson of failure.