This is getting freakish

Just received another email from Hillary and it sets my mind to work trying to remember why my relationship with Hillary is beginning to feel so familiar.  And then it all comes back...

The summer between my sophomore and junior year.  I'm going to summer school, as usual because who really wants to spend the summer at home in Arkansas.  I've got a good part-time tutoring gig with the athletic department, a stool at the local bar and a cue behind the counter at the pool hall.  I'm taking some graduate level English classes and living off campus in a wonderful derelict house across the street from the food co-op.  Life is good.

I spot someone in one of my classes and she's very quiet and very cute and I like that type.  One thing leads to another and we go out to see Heaven's Gate and then have a cocktail and it becomes very clear very quickly that she's as crazy as a loon -- and this is a permanent condition and not just a bad reaction to Michael Cimino's movie masterpiece.  A year earlier, insanity wouldn't have dissuaded me or dampened my affections.  There were periods of my life when I thought madness was kind of charming, but by this stage in my life I've come to grips with the fact that it is Very Unproductive so at the end of our evening together I've decided it's been an ok evening (I liked the movie) and our lives would continue headed in different directions.

Except they didn't. 

Of course she was in one of my classes so I couldn't exactly avoid her especially when she decided to sit next to me.  Then there were the casual invitations to head over to Bradey Commons after class to enjoy the air conditioning and study together and that seemed rather innocent, but I could tell that, through her madness, she didn't see it that way and I could feel myself being inexorably pulled ever deeper into her vortex.  --But we never went out on another date, I swear. 

She started popping by the house after shopping at the co-op.  Then, she started appearing there empty-handed of an excuse altogether.  I did the right thing and told her that we really weren't "seeing" each other and she seemed surprised by that.  She didn't take it well.  Neither did her room mate, who called me up to let me know this.  Neither did her mother back in Maryland.

So, now I'm still getting these emails from Hillary and from Maggie Williams and from Chelsea and I want to tell them, "Look:  we're just friends, ok?  I need some space to breathe."

Sometimes, late at night, I wake up convinced I've heard someone in the driveway and I picture her, after the bar's closed with a stomach full of bitterness.  She's standing in my front yard staring up at my window, thinking about how I'm probably going to vote for Obama and feeling fury rising in her throat. 

I never should have shown any interest, but it's too late now.