July 31, 2002 - 8:42 am

it's always hard to deal with getting a crush on someone. take my friend roger, for example. he has been going nuts over this dude, jeff. now, for the past few weeks every other word out of roger's mouth has been "jeff" and i'm okay with that. i know what it's like to have a crush on someone and i never harp on my friends when they're going through that. if they're happy being all fucking goo-goo-gaa-gaa over someone, then that's great and i'm happy for them.

so, although i haven't gotten to meet this jeff yet, i pretty much know his life story. on this basis, whenever roger asks me for advice, i try to take into account how i think jeff might react.

lately roger has been driving himself nuts.

roger: "annie, i need to tell him. i have to tell him how i feel, it's driving me crazy".

me: "i agree. but you have to be careful. you guys are really good friends and you have to be delicate with this sort of thing, especially if you still want to be his friend."

so last week i get an email from roger which goes a little something like this:

"Nothing happened last night!!! We had a great time at dinner, then went for drinks until he had to leave for work. All I got was a hug (again). Annie - I can't be more confused about how he feels for me. I thought that things really clicked.

Maybe I look into things too much because I like him so much. Maybe he just wants to be friends. I'm going to see him again on Monday and I might have to just let it ALL out. What SHOULD i do, Annie? I need your excellent advice. AHHH!

Mr. Confused"

i know, i know, he's a little dramatic. but don't you say one mean thing about him because he's one of the best friends i've ever had. he has ALWAYS been there for me and i owe him my life for that. i love him to tiny pieces.

anyhow, back to my story. so my reply to his email was:

"i know you're shy roger, which is why i'm telling you NOT to blurt it out. if you feel you absolutely need to do that, then by all means do it! but if you're not sure you can do it, or what the consequences will be, then you need to hold out a little bit. find out what happens when you decide to give him some space. i mean, if you want you can even open up a conversation with him about that. you could say something along the lines of 'look, i don't want things to be weird between us, but i really like you. i'm not sure how you feel about me and i feel like i've been getting mixed signals. i've thought about it a lot, and i think what i've realized is that you might not know where you want this friendship to go either. so i've decided i should probably back off and let you figure things out. i know how i feel about you and i would be willing to try taking this to another level, but at the same time, i don't want you to feel pressured. so i'm just going to give you some space and wait until you're ready to address whatever it is that's going on between us. i hope it will be soon because i do like you and i like spending time with you, but that's up to you'.

voila! i'm a genius!

that's just my 2 cents roger, you can take it or leave it. but i do think it's at least time to bring it up, he should know how you feel and you deserve to know how he feels.

hope this helps"

now, i don't know about you, but i think that was pretty fucking brilliant. i mean maybe there was a little bit of rambling in my script but jeff would have been way too busy being flattered to notice the rambling.

too bad my good advice went to shit.

see, my dear sweet roger decided he would handle this on his own.

note: this is where we notice that men, even gay men, are really dumb.

roger's way of handling it?

well, to sum it up, my phone rings at work yesterday.

annie: "this is annie."

roger: (panicking) "okay, do you think telling him i love him is going too far?"

annie: "WHAT????"

roger: "i just remembered that i told him i loved him last night."

annie: "what do you mean you 'just remembered'? how does that wor-ohhhhhhhh, roger, no..."

roger: "i was really really drunk annie."

don't you just love roger? i mean, soberly of course...

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