Facebook secrets

You know how on the Facebook homepage it suggests people you might know and might want to become Facebook Friends with? Someone from my past just showed up there - someone I had a crush on in college and pretty much made a fool of myself over. He was in Honors English with me, and was very charming, and had cool friends, and so I starting making invitations. There was a group that year who called themselves The Steering Committee and would hold formal parties that were for all of us Independents, who weren't associated with a fraternity. The frats had semi-formals all the time, so it was great that we had a chance to as well, with all the cool Honors people who we liked to hang out with.

So I invited this boy to one of the dances, and he accepted which amazed me. I wrote home and had my sister mail me a fancy black cocktail dress, I think it was actually hers and she loaned it to me for the evening. The boy came by my room to pick me up, and we went to the VI for a drink first. Then we went to the dance and all the girls who were sort of more in his inner circle were being a bit proprietary, fixing his tie and that kind of thing. I was nervous, and I think it was champagne we were drinking, and you know, I was only like 20, 21, and so I didn't really have a fine virtuosic handle on how much I could drink. I overdid. And back then when I overdid I would usually cry, hysterically and for prolonged periods. Many a poor boy had to deal with the weeping mess of me at the ends of nights like this, and this night I really didn't want that to happen. Drunk and reeling a bit, starting to lose my visual focus, I detached myself from my charming date and his closer friends, went to the periphery and found what I thought was someone safe. Another philosophy major, in my Wittgenstein seminar, a year behind me, and I knew for a fact he intended to become a Catholic priest after graduation. Nice boy. I kind of leaned on him, and averted a messy scene in front of my date, but what happened was I ended up leaving with the safe, kindly Catholic one, and went back to my room, where lo, the kindly Catholic future priest philosophy major professed his own deep lust for me. So, you know, I think I sort of kissed him or whatever, but dear me, the next day I realized what I had done.

Took a while to get rid of the Catholic one and convince him I just wanted to be friends, but I never did get a second chance with the poor jilted charming boy who was my date. I invited him to lunch, I invited him to dinner, I asked him to movies that were showing on campus. I did embarassing, humiliating things like slip notes under his dorm room door saying, "This coupon: GOOD FOR ONE dinner with Ellen!" Oh, my god, I cringe to think of it now. He was very polite. "No thank you," was always the answer. But that incident left me with my first big Regret, and I will carry it to my grave. They say you should live your life without regrets, but I deeply regret ditching J. at the dance and going home with Catholic boy (whose name I have repressed).

But, in the way of Facebook, guess who showed up as someone I might know, just tonight? Charming J. So, do I friend him? Or should I take the hint, from way back 20-some years ago, and just leave him alone?

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p.s. I actually wrote to another crush who's also a FB friend (and who I know is reading this) and asked his advice, and that made me wonder just how many ghosts from my past are actually on there. (friend might want to stop reading at this point). Among my 114 friends are 12 boys I had crushes on, the one girl ever had a crush on, my First Kiss, my Second Kiss, my Prom Date (who is also my First Kiss), but only one guy I ever actually slept with. Facebook is very strange the way these people come back into your life, but I can't say I mind it, exactly. And I wonder if any among them are boys that ever had a crush on me?