I call this the Curse of the Best Friend’s Girlfriend.

It’s seems we’re at war, and we lose good men every day.

The reason I decided to write on this subject was something that happened this past New Year’s Eve (yes, I’m a few months behind on writing this). Before I go any further, I want to say that I’m not mad at my best friend for this. We’re still best friends.

Since there didn’t seem to be any good New Year’s Eve parties going on back home, I decided to invite a few friends up for a night of debauchery and fun back in Auburn, Ala., the town I go to school and live in. Of course, like any good friend would do, I invited my best friend. At first, as I recall, he planned on coming.

That was until the Curse of the Best Friend’s Girlfriend set in. They decided that they would take a trip up to Birmingham, Ala., for a romantic dinner — not fun with friends. For the most part, I didn’t care that much. I had given up on friends with girlfriends long ago. Of course, I still gave him hell about it, calling him daily, reminding him that he was no friend at all.

I did promise Jonathan and Lindsay that I would write The Guidebook for Dating My Best Friend at some point. I guess this will have to do. Since this will serve as a guidebook, then I’ll have to make a few key guidelines or rules.

Article I: Holidays and Weekends

This article is the deciding factor in the sharing of the best friend, who gets him what weekends and holidays, etc.

• Spring Break:
  The best friend must have, at the very least, an entire weekend in which to get his friend really drunk, and make passes at other girls. There is no discussion in this matter. It is one of the most important holidays for guys. The best friend will take all responsibility for his friend’s acts. He will not let him do things that would break up his relationship with his girlfriend, unless said girlfriend is a b—. The friend is merely there as a wingman and for moral support, someone to laugh with about all the girls who slapped him after a his crappy pickup lines.
• New Year’s Eve:
  I believe this holiday can be split between both the best friend and the girlfriend. However, the best friend is entitled to come into the New Year in a drunken stupor, making ridiculous claims about how he will turn his life around this year. The girlfriend is actually only allowed there because she deserves her New Year’s kiss. She may not hold her boyfriend back from drinking too much, nor can she hover over him all night.
• Thanksgiving:
  This belongs to the girlfriend. Do what you wish with him. Let him meet your family. Whatever.
• Christmas:
  This is a shaky holiday. I ask for only one weekend during the month of December to get the friend drunk off Eggnog and rum.
• Birthdays:
  The friend must attend every birthday party of his best friend. The girlfriend has no say in this. The friend can decide whether to allow the girlfriend to come or not. Strippers are allowed at this party, and no complaints will be accepted on this subject. All other birthdays are to be agreed upon be all parties, except for the 21st birthday party of the friend. The best friend retains all rights to throw his friend a kick-ass party.
• Labor Day Weekend:
  This one is iffy. I’ll leave it up for discussion.
• Other Holidays:
  These days are to be agreed upon by all parties. If the girlfriend takes up a larger percentage of these, then the best friend gains the rights to Labor Day Weekend.
• Weekends In General:
  Ideally, the weekends need to be split between the best friend and the girlfriend. There are several ways to do this. A split between Friday and Saturday nights. Two weekends each for the girlfriend and best friend every month. If you’re situation is like mine, and your friend lives an hour-and-a-half away, then the best friend must at least get one weekend a month.

Article II: Ground Rules

This article describes the rules of conduct at any time the best friend or girlfriend is with the friend.

• The best friend will not allow the friend to have sex with any other member of the female, or male, species while he is watching over him. Of course, if the best friend has a secret desire to break them up, then by all means, get him drunk and encourage him to make out with the next girl he sees. If that doesn’t work, then get him a hooker.
• The best friend is allowed to get his friend as drunk as he feels necessary — necessary has no limits.
• The girlfriend is not allowed to make comments about the best friend’s standard of living, evil ways, or any other comments that might be taken as negative toward the best friend. She is to look at him as if he’s a perfect angel. Or, at least acknowledge that whatever he does with her boyfriend is the best thing for him.
• The girlfriend must remember her place in all this — she is simply there to keep the friend from jumping off a cliff because of loneliness.
• The best friend must remember his place — he is there to keep the friend from jumping off a cliff over his girlfriend’s nagging.
• If the girlfriend ever attempts to sabotage a best friend and her boyfriend’s relationship, all other friends of the two guys must make a pact to pull a Saving Silverman. It must be done.
• The girlfriend must never make the friend wear pink, those weird sandal/clog things with holes in them, or matching outfits.

Article III: Girlfriend Cool Points

Described in this article is a point system for the girlfriend. The higher she scores, the more likely the best friend and all other friends will accept her into their group. There is at least a possibility of scoring 115 points on this scale. Scores above 90 means that you are the coolest girlfriend ever. And, it’s hard to score above 90. For any girlfriend who does, I’ll personally buy a round of drinks in honor of.

• 5 Points:
  Earned by following every rule in Article I.
• 5 Points:
  Earned by following every rule in Article II.
• 10 Points:
  Show that you can party with the rest of the guys, then you get major cool points.
• -5 Points:
  If you party with the guys and drink wine coolers or any other variation of a fruit-flavored drink, unless you allow the best friend to mix it for you with something from his liquor cabinet.
• -10 Points:
  For showing up to a party in which you were NOT invited.
• 15 Points:
  Do a keg stand at one of the parties with the guys and you’ll be in our hearts forever.
• 15 Points:
  Go 5 rounds of Tequila shots, and you will also hold a special place in our hearts.
• 5 Points:
  If you do a round more than we do or drink us under the table.
• 20 Points:
  If you come to one of our parties and bring one your hot girl friends with you. Add an additional point for each hot friend.
• -20 Points:
  If you come to one of our parties and bring one of your ugly girl friends with you. Subtract an additional 2 points for each ugly friend.
• 25 Points:
  If one of your hot friends sleeps with one of the guys.
• 25 Points:
  For any of your hot friends that gets naked.
• 0 Points:
  For getting naked yourself. I would subtract for this, but we all secretly want to see it. However, I don’t want to add additional points for fear of offending my friend.

This concludes the Three Articles of The Guidebook for Dating My Best Friend. The best friend of the friend with a girlfriend is allowed to add new articles or make amendments to this guidebook. The girlfriend may make suggestions, but the decisions are ultimately left to the best friend.

A note to my best friend: I know you’ll find this a little amusing. However, I will not be joking when I ask for your girlfriend’s signature on a printed copy of this.

To all others: Feel free to leave a comment here, suggesting new rules and regulations that need to be added to this guidebook.

Download The Guidebook To Dating My Best Friend ([Download not found]) to have a copy for your best friend’s girlfriend to sign.

This is a story about love. A love that is so strong, so intense, that it transcends life and death. It goes beyond what any of us mere mortals can even think to call love. Catherine and Heathcliff’s love is epic in a way that is arguably more epic than that of even Romeo and Juliet. And, I don’t say this lightly.

Brontë created a world so vastly different from her own, mingling Romanticism and Realism for a fight to the death. The first volume describes our two lovers’ heated passion in a way that many could relate to. It is not until the second volume that we see why Heathcliff is the Heathcliff we met earlier in the novel.

Most of the story is told from the eyes of Nelly Dean, a servant for the Earnshaw, Linton, and Heathcliff families (all at various points in her life). A young man named Lockwood has rented Thruscross Grange because he has ran away from his own love. Nelly is his housekeeper, and she tells him the story of Catherine and Heathcliff.

However, Catherine and Heathcliff only share part of the story. Eventually, Catherine, Catherine’s daughter, and Linton, Heathcliff’s son, share their own love story.

Heathcliff is seeking revenge in the second volume. I’ve heard many voice that they didn’t like his character much after this point, but it was some of the best-written work that I’ve read in a while. Heathcliff’s search for vengeance only fuels the idea of love conquering all. If he hadn’t tortured Hareton or Catherine (younger), the reader wouldn’t believe that his love for Catherine went beyond all other loves.

Heathcliff is a compelling Romantic character in a world that isn’t meant for him. He is driven to cruelty from the start, but Catherine sends him over the edge. He becomes obsessive, and his love for her makes him evil to all others. This is not a story about happily-ever-after-love. It’s a story about hearts driven to madness. Unobtainable love. Passion so unsettling that you cringe at every act of vengeance Heathcliff puts to his victims.

It’s all for love. We see this as Heathcliff wills himself to finally settle with Catherine.

I was a bit disappointed with the Realist ending of young Catherine and Hareton, but this is a Realist novel.

It’s one of those novels that you either love or hate. If you like reading stories where everything ends with the big, happy wedding, this isn’t your story. If you want to read about passsion, madness, vengeance, and a love that transcends all things, this is the novel you should read. I still recommend reading it at least once though, no matter what type of story you prefer.

My faith is now restored in Realism. I only wish that Brontë had lived long enough to give us more, and to see Wuthering Heights become a success.

I seen the unnamed girl on Saturday. No, there’s no build-up to this point or anything. I figured I’d just put it right out there. I seen her. And she was not at all as I had recently dreamed. She looked a little different, just older, a little more filled out, shorter hair. But, as beautiful as ever.

I had just finished a dinner with my family with the oddly-named It Don’t Matter Family Restaurant when the event took place. I was walking out with my dad as she started up the stairs to the restaurant. She looked up at me and revealed that smile that had grabbed me so many years ago. We almost said, “Hey,” in unison.

She spoke next. “How are you?”

“Good.”

And that was it, as her “guy friend” or boyfriend or whoever he was followed her up the steps.

I’m not sure what to make of those few fleeting seconds, but I know it was a moment. What kind of moment it was is beyond me. That may be the last time I ever see her in my life, and all I could get out was two words. The real importance is that she is still beautiful. She is still one of the very few girls that I can honestly say is one of the ones that got away.

After seeing her, all of those old feelings starting pushing their way back to the surface. Feelings of high school love came back. It is the truest kind of love isn’t it? The real? It is something beyond the masks that cover teenage faces, the trivial conversations at college parties, and the settling down of grown-ups. It is one of the only things that I have ever felt that has meaning. It’s the same with everyone. It’s something pure, untainted by the world. Is it love? That doesn’t really matter. What matters is that it in itself matters. It is something that no one else can touch, the world cannot grip is unclean hands around and devour.

I may be starting to venture into the deep end here. But, it is something that I miss. It is something that I long for. Something that may have passed me a million times over long ago. Love. Companionship. Friendship. The Good Ol’ Days. It is something that makes us hurt, that inflames us with desire, that tortures us with sleepless nights long after it is over. But, it is something that makes us feel.

I honestly don’t know where I’m going with this post. I just had to get some words typed on this subject before the moment once again passed me over. Just remember, sometimes words don’t have to have coherence just as our feelings never have it. Therefore, rants that take off down numerous roads may still have some meaning.

What happens when you meet someone you were long ago in love with, and you never thought you wouldn’t be in love with? What if they are now ugly? Or what if you could never see it all along because through your love you thought they were beautiful? Does this mean that you no longer love them? Has it just faded away into oblivion?
The embarrassment of love.

Yes, I was still half asleep when I wrote this. Well, a little more than half.

This dream I had was of a girl, who will remain unnamed, I used to be head over heels in love, or something like it, with. In this dream she was ugly, though she was never an ugly girl in real life. I haven’t seen her in a few years, so I don’t know what she looks like now. But, I was dreaming about her for some reason. I don’t particularly know what the dream was about anymore, although that isn’t important. What I do remember is the thing behind the dream, which I jotted down as notes. (I just thought of a quote from Memento: “And the present is trivia, which I jot down as fucking notes.”)

Back to my dream. This got me to thinking. What if we are all blinded by love? Can it be that a person is ugly, yet we can’t see because we have certain feelings toward them? And what happens when you notice that the person is ugly? Does that mean that the veil has been stripped away? That love has been stripped away?

This dream confuses me. Is it telling me that I need to let go of the past? If you know me well enough, you know that I tend to hold on to that part of my life.

My roommate told me recently that the mind, when sleeping, is like a computer being defragmented. All of these files/memories are being reorganized into a better file system. I guess my hard drive just happened to open the “unnamed girl” file that night and take a peek, and then it just mixed in a few other files that didn’t belong. Computers are always messing up.

I have no idea what “The embarrassment of love” means at the end of my notes. Like I said, I was half asleep.