I Only Wear Plain T's

by blank at 02:15 AM on July 18, 2005

While in college, I used to wear your basic jeans and t-shirt thing. Usually, the t-shirt had printing of whatever I was into at the time. At that time, I was standing in line at the cafeteria waiting to scoop up some 3 hour old pasta while wearing a shirt that had an image of Keneda on his motorbike from the movie Akira. At that moment someone from behind me asked, "Y-you like ah-ne-mae?"

I turned around and saw an awkward looking guy about my age, glasses, buck teeth and a big hearing aid behind each ear. I could see the tubes from them snake into his head. I responded with a little, "Yeah, sometimes," thinking he might just be doing some small talk while we scoop our slop. He made me a little uneasy and it didn't help that he followed me to a table and wanted to sit with me. I said "sure" even though I wanted to say "no." I just didn't want to be mean. We talked about the anime he liked and I told him what I liked. The whole time I felt uncomfortable and there was something weird about this guy.

I'm not that great in social situations. I have to psych myself up when meeting new people, just until I get used to them. Then I'm fine. I come out of my shell. This guy, though, he made me look like a social butterfly. He wasn't stuck in his shell — it was more like he was out of it and I wanted him back in it. I don't know what it was. The only way I could describe it was that he had no social grace. It was like talking to someone with downs syndrome, only they weren't dumb. Like he was stumbling through the conversation.

When we were done eating, I made up some excuse to leave and was on my way thinking it was over. It wasn't. Since I was a Resident Assistant (RA) in the dorms next to the cafeteria, I was easy to find and he found me a few days later. He wanted to loan me some anime and maybe borrow some of mine. I had some stuff and we traded just to get him to go away.

I commented on this situation to one of my other RA friends and found out the guy was one of his residents. He informed me that I have to be stern and tell the guy to take a hike or he'll attach to me and never leave me alone. Well, I was too nice and he followed me around for a few semesters until I moved off campus.

It was awful. There was really no reason for me to tell him to piss off. I couldn't do it. He didn't deserve that. It must have taken him a lot of guts to come up and talk to me that day and I'm not going to just reject him.

He seemed like he had no friends and his room mates were complete assholes to him. They would even rag on him when I was around. It wasn't the playful flack friends would say to each other for fun. It was hateful shit. I wanted to beat the fuck out of them. His family just seemed to put up with him and didn't do much else.

I tried to get him to join the campus anime club thinking it would distract him from me. It didn't really work out. You have to be either a jock or really freaky for them to reject you. It just seemed like I was the only one around who didn't completely ignore him. I just tried to avoid him as much as possible and it got easy as soon as I moved off campus. I felt like an asshole, but at least I wasn't being mean. He probably thinks we just moved on like people do at the end of college. In the five years after graduation I just forgot about him.

Until today. While I was at the mall with my girlfriend, I saw him. He was eating alone in the food court looking exactly the same, except with a mustache. I instantly knew it was him. The hair on my neck stood up. He didn't see me and I signaled for my girlfriend to walk the other way. She couldn't move fast enough.

I feel like such an asshole again.