friend-rape

today has officially been deemed "the weirdest day of the summer." every year, every summer, there's one day that just blindsides everyone with inexplicable weirdness. today was that day.

first, the king of pop, miko jackson, died. i'm not going to say it was unexpected--i mean, when is death ever expected (maybe in the case of a murder or a suicide)?--but it definitely wasn't anticipated--not by me or most of america anyway.

i woke up and found that i had a text message from amy saying that "mj" was dead. my first thought was magic johnson. i mean, the guy's had AIDS longer than the virus has been around. the fact that he's still alive continues to baffle me--not that i want him to die or anything. it just doesn't make good sense given the life expectancy of someone with AIDS. at the rate he's going, he might outlive his legacy or, at least, become what doctors and medical science define as "immortal."

i texted amy back, asking her if she meant magic or michael, the latter, of course, matching up with her chosen pseudonym, at least when considering that "mj" is the pseudonym most of those in the know--most of us b-ballers--associate with the minor minor-leaguer. she texted me back, saying she meant "michael." i was stunned. immediately, i thought that maybe he'd succumbed to some horrible air crash catastrophe, some wicked jumbo jet disaster, in which he'd fallen asleep with one of his cuban cigars in his mouth, subsequently igniting the interior and vital components of the aircraft--surely to become a cautionary tale used to dissuade kids and warn them of the dangers of smoking.

i got on the internet and did some extensive research. first, i typed michael jordan's name into google, wanting to know (why?) the events surrounding his untimely (again, how often is death ever "timely"?) death. alas, i found no mention of the hoopster's demise.

i did, however, stumble upon an article lamenting the passing of michael jackson, the astronaut (?) and governer (wtf???). realizing that the king of pop's initials incidentally match up with those of mr. jordan, i investigate further and found out that, not only had jackson passed away but farrah fawcett and jeff goldblum, too.

the latter turned out to be a hoax. thankfully, too, because (and i never would have thought i'd have reacted this way)i was pretty shaken up by it. what a terrible day, indeed, when jeff goldblum, the fly, himself, goes.

regardless, the michael jackson/fawcett thing kind of shook me up. if i were a tabloid writer i think i'd refer to the incident as the "fackson tragedy." because, that's what you do when you're a tabloid writer. you blend celeb names together and make up slutty pg-13 gossip-fantasies for the general public. and then you go home and look in the mirror and then look at your wife and kids and then look back at yourself in the mirror and hate yourself.

yay!

so, anyway. after all this shite, i get a text (unexpectedly) from nikki and she wants to hang out. so we go to steak n shake and she has tea while i consume one of my limited number of routine victuals--a big disgusting cookie dough bits n pieces milkshake--and we talk and blah blah blah. everything is good. well, then i get the idea to go over to the local elementary school and swing, which is what i like to do--i don't know why, i just like it. i ask her if she'd like to join me and she agrees and we go and we swing and we talk some more. everything is going fine, it feels great to be in the company of an old friend, someone i genuinely enjoy talking to, but then i mention something about going on an "adventure" to this spot just beyond the trees, which, as innocuous as it seems to me at the time, sounds like this to her feminist ears:

"hey, nikki, see them trees over there? that's where i'm gonna rape you! yeah, that's right. i'm gonna rape you. right in the butt."or, at least, this is what i get from her reaction.

immediately, she gets up from the swing and tells me, "no. i don't think i'll be joining you. i've got to get up early tomorrow morning. so, i'm going to go home." she then, more or less, rushes off to her car, all the while, deliberately (again, this is the way it seems) keeping a safe distance. this catches me completely off guard and i realize suddenly that i've given her the wrong idea. my definition of "adventure" and hers are apparently not the same. i think she thought i was going to put a move on her or something or that i took her to this secluded elementary school playground at two o'clock in the morning, in near-black darkness, just so her and i would be alone or whatever crazy kind of thing you could think of--either way, i was baffled and, i'm not going to lie, i was a little hurt. i didn't know how to address the situation because if i addressed it directly i'd sound defensive and i didn't want her to think i was lying or that i really had some ulterior motive in bringing her there. but i also didn't want to have to play the fool and not say anything--let her continue to believe she had just narrowly escaped some weird sort of friend-rape.

ultimately, though, i left it alone. i mean, i feel really stupid about it, but i know i shouldn't. obviously, she's the one who assumed something that was untrue--and it does kind of bug me that she thinks i have some kind of weird crush on her or that i want to assault her in some way--but, now that i think about it, she was also just being cautious. and you can't argue with that. especially when most guys are the way most guys are.

still...i feel a little betrayed, in some weird way. i mean, it's so incredibly belittling, to have someone just assume they know you and then "deal with you" like some shallow, sex-crazed pervert, when you're anything but. i mean, most people who know me (and this is what really confuses me about nikki--i mean, up until tonight, i really thought we understood each other pretty well) will tell you that i'm a pretty genuinely sensitive (translation: might be gay) and caring guy--i'm the opposite of a frat-boy. but the way she left, it was almost as if she had told me directly, "i'm so above this--you're not even a human being, so you don't deserve an explanation for my sudden shift in temperament--only my excuses." it was almost as if she'd said, "not only do i think you're a rapist but you're also too dumb to understand the way i think and why i'm behaving the way that i am."

basically, what it all boils down to is this: i can't control how she interprets my actions anymore than she's able to read my mind. i can swear up and down that i'm not a rapist but i'm always going to sound like one. because that's what people accused of rape do, whether or not their guilty: they swear up and down that they're not guilty. so, really, it's a fight i can't win. nikki will always remember today as being weird for two reasons:

1. it's the day michael jackson died
2. it's the day she almost got raped by her stupid friend

and the sad thing is...there's not a single thing i can do about it. there is not one single, solitary thing i can do to convince her otherwise. she's been in some pretty messy situations before. unfortunately, with some of her past guy friends, so she knows what to look for and, whatever it is, my suggestion to go on an "adventure" must have triggered some developed fight-or-flight response caused by those former indecencies. then again what if she made all those other incidents up? then what? well, then we're all imaginary rapists.

oh well. it can't get much weirder from here.