Let's start this story in the most cheesy way possible. I met the most wonderful person, call her M, close to two years ago and we fell in love. She was beautiful and affectionate and caring and made me happy in more ways than I really care to think about right now. And her tendency to get drunk and start making out with her pseudo-lesbian friend wasn't a big issue. If I was willing to be moderately tolerant, she knew what the bounds of decency were, and everything worked out well.

So she made me happy for a year and a half, and then decided whe wanted to go to Europe and be an exchange student for a term. She would we at home for the summer before she left, which meant we wouldn't see each other for six months. OK, what happens to us while you're in Europe? Well, she says, I'm going to be surrounded by cute European boys, and you know the rest. I suppose six months is a long time to be without someone. I guess it's justifiable. Don't wait for me, she said. Okay, I guess I'm supposed to strike out on my own again. How exciting.

Never mind the fact that, rather than being a cute accented foriegner looking for a short-term fling, I'm here stuck at ______ Institute of Fucking Technology with a social anxiety complex and a gender ratio badly skewed away from my favor. It certainly doesn't seem fair, even if I tell myself that that particular concept of "fair"-ness is a childish conceit that can only do me harm in the long run. Fine. whatever. I love you, have fun getting laid overseas. (Well, as long as we're keeping score on childish notions of fairness, reports are that M is striking out in that department as well.)

Also, to be perfectly fair, (there's that word again,) M knew that I had trouble meeting people, and tried to encourage me in the right direction, asking indirect questions trying to find out who I was attracted to, (interestingly enough, the question "Who are you attracted to?" was not one of the ones she tried,) and then dropping gigantic hints like "I wonder who J is going to sleep with when R's gone away.?"

This introduces two characters, J and R. J struck me as a very attractive, very friendly, approachable person, and M was right in her guess that I had some feelings for her. J was going out with R, who was an okay guy, and I felt pretty happy for the two of them. I have nothing against R as he's a fairly decent guy. But he always reminded me of the episode of the Simpsons where Lisa reads the latest issue of "Non-Threatening Boys" magazine. R is the archetypical Non-Threatening Boy, and as such, he tends to be clung to by a bunch of women who in various ways all have the emotional sophistication of fourth-graders.

That should have been warning enough, eh? R was going to go travel around the world for a year, and then go to graduate school on the other side fo the country. And if M was not the type to stick to a long-distance relationship, J was certainly not -- that much should have been obvious to anyone with a pair of eyes and ears.

So I started making a few cautious advances. Over the course of a week or so, We exchanged backrubs, she let me play with her hair, she played with my hair, invited me to sit down next to her and watch a movie while she held my hand, tickled me, invited me into her room where she flirted with me until I couldn't stand it any more and kissed her, and then we made out for a while, until we fell asleep. The point being that I was not merely tolerated but actively encouraged at every fucking step along the way. I asked her about R and she told me what I wanted to hear -- she didn't intend to merely sit around while he was off traveling the world.

And then she stopped acknowledging my presence. For the following week she didn't say hello to me and didn't even look in my direction unless I tried to initiate a conversation.

"Umm, are you busy? Because I think we need to talk."

I fucking hate that sentence. It's even worse being the one who has to say it.

So what did I learn from our little talk?

J claimed to still be in love with R, and doesn't want to address the "issues" that would be brought up if she initiated a relationship with anyone else. For those of you keeping score at home, that's not what she said last week, after she had, well, initiated a relationship. And I'm a big sap, so rather than doing what I wanted to do, which was to grab her by the shoulders and demand to know just what fucking kind of passive-aggressive bullshit was going on here, I quietly explained in very neutral and politically correct terms how I felt that she had encouraged all my advances and how I was beginning to feel that I was being led on, and quietly asked just what did she expect from me?

And then she started crying on me. Fuck.

Here's the point in the story when I shold start asking myself, are there any life lessons to be learned from this?

Lesson number one is that there is a worse thing than dealing with passive-aggressives, and that is when they try to apologize for it. Did I say it was okay to go blubbery on my shoulder just now? Do you think that makes me feel better?

Lesson number two is not to ignore the blindingly obvious. In this case the blindingly obvious was that J is one of those women who don't know any way to interact with men other than by hitting on them. Combine that with a passive-aggressive disposition and you have a deadly combination.

Now like I said before, I'm a big ol' sap, so I said I would like to try and be friends (despite what a hurtful bitch she had been). Which is true; I'd rather have a friend with painful associations than no friend. But I'm going to be pretty pissed for the next couple of days now, and I don't know if I really want her coming to my door twice a day to ask if I'm all right.

In related news, I've just this week gone from 1 pack/week to 1/2 pack/day. And I had nearly quit when I was at home this summer. This seems like a good enough time to cause myself some pain, maybe I'll try going cold turkey for a while.