Bad Girl House

A choir rehearsal never went by without a guy named Dan shamelessly attempting to get the attention of every girl in the room. He acted just the little boys on the play ground pulling the pigtails of the girls he liked before running away. I suppose that he had never outgrown that childish manner of flirting. I wouldn’t have described what he was doing as charming, but he deserved an A for effort. Most of the other girls avoided him, or at least ignored him the best that they could. Some of them already knew what he was like, because he was also in the marching band with them. The band had started practicing over the summer because of the football season, so they had a slight advantage on the singers that hadn’t met him yet. I was one of the girls that he hadn’t seen, so he must have seen it as an opportunity to see how I would react. He would often tap me on the shoulder, and wave at me with a goofy grin on his face when I turned around. On a day that he was being particularly annoying, he wouldn’t stop tapping me on the shoulder during a rehearsal. We were standing on risers, practicing for an upcoming concert, so there already wasn’t a lot of personal space to speak of. Dan had been placed behind me. Every time the director stopped the choir, I felt his finger tapping at me. The first few times I turned around to see him looking around at the ceiling. I just smiled. After a few more taps, I had to start ignoring him. I was taking our rehearsal seriously, and I had had enough. His tapping got a little bit harder, but I still didn’t turn around. He must have gotten the message, because he gave up for the day.

During the month of November there was a banquet being hosted by the members of the University of Akron band. I had never really shown any interest in him, but Dan asked me if I would go with him. I had never been asked to an event like this, and I didn’t want to make him feel bad by saying no, so I agreed. The most vivid memory that I have of that night is of Dan periodically feeding me a grape. I felt absolutely ridiculous, and it is completely obnoxious to think about now. If I didn’t know better, I could have sworn that everyone was watching us every time he did it. But just like the taps on the shoulder, I smiled with each grape, hoping it was the last. We were sitting at a table with a few students that I knew from choir. I could only imagine what they must have been thinking. I should have told him that I was uncomfortable, but I didn’t.

I went out with Dan one more time for a walk in the park. We stopped along the path a few times to kiss, but I felt uncomfortable when he didn’t stop as someone was passing by. Before we got in the car to leave the same thing happened, but I worried more about how Dan would feel if I stopped him instead of my own comfort level. He came in the house with me when he took me home. He said a quick hello to my mom, and then we sat on the couch. He again leaned in to kiss me, not minding at all that my mom was walking around. That made me even more much uncomfortable than being seen by complete strangers at the park. This time I had to push Dan back and put the breaks on. He must have seen that as he cue to leave, or he was upset that I had stopped him, so he walked to the front door, and we said goodbye.

Heading back the school the next week, I kept an eye out for Dan. I didn’t want him to think that I had romantic feelings for him, but I didn’t know how to say it. At least choir rehearsal was the only time that he had to be in the same room together. I tried to arrive right on time, so that there was no time to be confronted by him before rehearsal started. That worked great for a few days. One afternoon while walking to my car, I heard him call my name from across the parking lot. As he started talking, he made it sound like it had been him avoiding me because he didn’t want to see me anymore. That let me off of the hook, and made it easy to just say that it was alright. He could have just left it there, and not said anything else, but he didn’t.

“You can go to your car and cry now.” I had to bite my tongue to keep myself from asking him why in the world I would do that.