Before I start to embarrass myself for your amusement, I must preface this with saying that I’m a painfully shy person when it comes to pursuing boys. I’m so terrified of being rejected by someone that I rarely make the first move. In fact, I’ll only do it if a dude is seriously touching my penis while simultaneously screaming, “Yes, I want you to sleep with me. Please begin doing so now.” I blame my timid behavior on a traumatizing incident that occurred the summer after my freshman year of college. I was living in my hometown of Ventura, California at the time, which meant that I was definitely not getting laid. Ventura had about four gay dudes who were out of the closet and I had already slept with three of them during my senior year of high school. I’m pretty sure the fourth guy liked to wear eyeliner and lipstick and call himself Cynthia, which wasn’t exactly my jam so I had resigned myself to a summer of celibacy until I met a guy, Josh, at a party. Since my hometown was so small, I had known about this dude before I even met him. He had dated a friend of mine a year ago and was, like most people who hailed from Ventura, completely insane and a pathological liar. He was also a total babe though and rumored to be bi so I decided to invite him to a party I was throwing the following week. Bored and horny, I was determined to make this potential psycho be mine.
When I had told my friends of my plan to seduce Josh, they teased me mercilessly, informing me that he had lied about having cancer before and that there was a high possibility he wasn’t even into guys. The fact that he had lied about suffering from cancer freaked me out but I pushed it to back of the mind to make room for sexy thoughts. I figured that I could have sex with someone who lied about having cancer if they were hot enough, which Josh was in my sex-starved eyes.
The night of the party came and I wore the ensemble in the above picture, making sure to show some summer skin (and apparently wear novelty glasses that gave me all the sex appeal of Richard Simmons but whatever, I was 19 and probably on 1 and a half lines of coke). Josh showed up looking like a sexy skater boy and we proceeded to get drunk together in the corner of my living room, talking about things I no longer remember because I probably repressed them. I like to pride myself on being a good judge of character and as much as it pained me to admit, Josh was clearly out of his damn mind. The rumors were true; he was a pathological liar. Whenever he would share an anecdote that was clearly a fabrication , I would just imagine him naked and not talking except to be like, “You’re so hot, Ryan. Oh my god!” But wait, what if he was lying about that too?!
As the night was nearing its end, he asked the question I hoped he would ask: “Do you mind if I sleep over?” No, I don’t mind. I just spent four hours drowning in your delusional stories. You better be sleeping over after making me compete in the conversation Olympics!
So we went upstairs and got undressed to our underwear. His body was beautiful as expected and we immediately got into bed together. At this point, I thought for sure he would be down to hook up. I mean, we had been flirting all night and then he asks to sleep over. He must be into it. You don’t just get in bed with a gay dude drunk in your underwear and have things not turn homosexual.
In bed, we began talking about the kinds of things you talk about when the lights are off and it’s late at night. He talked about being into dudes (boner) and his struggle with cancer (deleted boner). I wanted to scream at him, “Everyone knows you didn’t have that! You don’t have to lie to me. You’re in a safe space…” but I figured that would freak him out and decrease our chances of hooking up.
Eventually I got tired of talking about how we both liked boys and went in slowly for a kiss.
That’s when things got weird.
Seeing my face come towards his, he immediately started writhing in pain. I asked him what was wrong and he gave me the weirdest response I’ve ever heard during a potential hook up: “Um, I have Lyme disease and it causes me to have severe body aches.”
Wait, what? The only person I knew who had Lyme disease was that chick from Real World: Seattle. Plus, didn’t it mostly occur on the East Coast in states like Connecticut? We lived in a tiny Southern California beach town, which didn’t exactly seem like a hotbed of activity for Lyme disease.
He was lying clearly. It was actually hysterical watching him pretend to have intense body aches that appeared out of nowhere. And by hysterical, I mean, WHAT THE HELL? I HATE YOU. WE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE MAKING OUT RIGHT NOW. Did you really have to lie about having Lyme disease to avoid making out with me? In that moment, I wasn’t sure who to hate more—Josh or myself.
I spent the rest of the night giving Josh ice packs for his fake Lyme disease-induced aches and pains and counting down the moments until I could leave my heterosexual hometown and get laid back at college. I never talked to Josh again but I’m sure he has suffered from a variety of health problems since we last spoke. To this day, that night remains to be one of my biggest shame spirals. I’ve lived in perpetual fear of getting rejected by a guy since then. My first question on a date should always be, “So do you have Lyme disease or have a tendency to lie about having Lyme disease? Also, how do you feel about having sex with me later?” It would just make things a lot easier, don’t you think?
This article by Ryan O'Connell appeared on Thought Catalog. You should follow Thought Catalog on Twitter here.
