She just wants to be my friend

On the way to Johnson City for our baseball games, we saw the movie Just Friends. For those of you unfamiliar with the movie, let me break it down for you. Its about a heavyset, really nice guy, played by Ryan Reynolds, who was best friends with a really cute girl back in high school in New Jersey, played by Amy Smart. They were very close but she would date the biggest losers. Before they graduated high school, he wanted to be her boyfriend. He ends up trying to make a move on her but she tells him that she loves him, as a friend. The situation is very embarrassing and there’s public humiliation, so the guy decides to move to Hollywood, loses a ton of weight and becomes a jerk and treats women like crap to avoid the “friend zone.” He ends up back in New Jersey and has to confront his past and even runs into his former best friend. He tries to hook up with his friend with his new personality but ends up embarrassing himself. In the end, he acts like himself which includes his dorkiness and they end up together in the end.

This reminds me of my friendship with Sarah M. Everybody has that someone that they were friends with and wanted more. Mine was with Sarah.

I met Sarah freshman year of college through our mutual friend, Phil. I thought she was cute and very friendly, but I actually thought that she and Phil were dating each other, so like a good buddy, I fell back and didn’t pursue her in anyway. Her and Phil weren’t dating at all and even had a falling out so I just ended up becoming good friends with her, best friends.

It was a weird friendship because she was a very liberal, environmentalist, petite, blond white girl vegetarian from West Chester, Pa. (Philly represent, not really) who read a lot of books and I was just the independent, heavyset black guy from Brooklyn who enjoys a good burger and watching SportsCenter several times a day. I loved sports and she couldn’t tell a touchdown from a home run. We just clicked for some reason. Everyone thought we were dating, but we weren’t.

We would hang out all the time, talk about our dating lives and even talked about personal issues like each of our problems with depression. She ended up leaving school for a semester and going back home but we still talked. Sarah eventually returned to school and graduated, which made me more happy than anything, maybe even more than my own graduation.

We were also physical with each other. Get your mind out of the gutter. We would cuddle and watch movies together and sleep on the same bed, stuff like that, but nothing more went down.

The culmination of our friendship was during junior year when Sarah was about to head out to Ireland for the spring semester. I’ll never forget it. I invited her over to my dorm room and we were talking as usual and she was talking about how excited she was to go to Ireland. I told her how much I would miss her and that I loved her. It wasn’t love in the way that I just wanted to have sex with her, even though I woudn’t have said no, I just loved being with her. She told me that she loved me too.

I wish I could tell you that we kissed and dated and it was awesome, but that’s not what happened. We actually stared at each other and I should have made a move, but didn’t. I actually asked her then why we never dated because I felt such a connection with her. She said that she valued our friendship and that I never asked her out. Ouch! That hurt your boy a little. But she was always dating some losers in college, just like Amy Smart did in the movie and didn’t want to get in the way of that. In fact, her boyfriends were the complete opposite of me, which says something I guess.

Actually, if she wanted to get down right there in my dorm room that night, I probably wouldn’t have been able to do it. I think if I made a move, she would have been cool with it, but I never did, just like Ryan Reynolds’ character has a chance to sleep with Amy Smart but can’t do it.

Deep down I valued the friendship, but it developed a fear of getting into the friend zone in the future.

Its funny now, but every girl I hang out with ends up in the friend zone and nothing more happens. I’ve been friends with girls just so that I can hang in there and try to hook up with them in the future, no lie. I can tell immediately if I’m entering that zone within a first meeting with a girl.

Would I like to get some more play in the dating game, of course. But I miss hanging out with Sarah to this day and having a female companion in my life.

There are several girls I’m interested in now and if anyone of them is reading this post, what’s up, but I really want to be friends with them first before anything goes down. What Sarah and I had was special and I hope that I can have that with someone else in my life.

I joke with a friend in Georgia that “its more then just about the sex.” She tells me that I’m a guy and that I’m lying, but its really true.

So Marcel, where is Sarah now? She’s a lawyer in Washington, D.C. and happily dating someone and growing her life there. But if they ever broke up, I will find a sports job in our nation’s capital and make that move. Hopefully she can tell the difference between a home run and a touchdown by now.