#34 THAT TIME I SLEPT WITH MY GORGEOUS MODEL-ESQUE HOUSEMATE’S EX-BOYFRIEND (AND WAS A SHITTY FRIEND) – AND THEN I FLIRTED WITH HIS HOUSEMATE, TOO

Did I do it for an ego boost? The better question is why did he?

Here’s another post that will be about two people. Let’s call the guy I slept with Johnny, who was the ex-boyfriend (on-again-off-again boyfriend?) of my gorgeous housemate, Margaret. I mentioned Johnny and Margaret and the incident briefly in my posts about the handsome Air Traffic Controller (ATC) and that time I ghosted my firefighter neighbour.

How I met Edward

Johnny had a housemate who we will call Edward. I had known Edward since I was a freshman in university, long before I ever met Johnny. He was a friend of my friend Ferron (mentioned in relation to Adam and Ferron who I gushed about as amazing and maybe undeserved – on my part – friends in this post about losing my virginity to my high school sweetheart). Ferron introduced me to a lot of people but Edward stood out.

He was tall, blonde, handsome, all-American. He had “the whole nine yards.” The white smile, the charming demeanour, the dress sense – and he’d been a model, which somehow seemed exotic. He also looked like he’d been a model not the slightly unique, unusual models you sometimes see on the runway who are all angles and androgyny. The kind that looked like the early oughties Abercrombie and Fitch models, all smiles and charm. Some people just have those shiny good looks. We’d chat whenever we’d run into each other, which was sometimes as I was walking from my house to campus and he was walking back from campus to his house. He lived a block away around the corner from me, but I didn’t know that at the time.

I had a crush on him. If he’d had a crush on me then, he never did say but years later we did watch a film together in my bed, make out, he started to finger me and his finger was covered in blood, which he got all over my bed in a tiny trail across the pillows. He freaked out. I was not, however, on my period. He’d cut his finger and hadn’t realised. It was awkward. And he never tried again. Not sure if we’d ever have made it to sex or if he was just put off. 

For someone so ridiculously good-looking (Zoolander impression), he was sweetly nervous back then. By the time I saw him again, though, he’d had a full-on confidence transformation. 

That time I saw Edward in New York City

When I was dating Captain Thor, we’d gone to New York City to attend the wedding of his friend (and his future German wife) as they’d been stationed together in Germany. Attending a wedding in New York (actually New Jersey but we were staying in NEW YORK) felt very grown up and cool and sophisticated and Gossip-girly at the time. I think Captain Thor had moved to Texas by this point or was just about to move which would signal the end of our relationship anyway because he had not invited me along. 

Edward was now some rich hot-shot business guy in New York and Captain Thor was at a bachelor party getting smashed with a bunch of trust fund babies/the-type-of-people-who-go-to-the-Hamptons and some fellow Army officers, and I’d said I was meeting up with my friend Edward. They met briefly as Edward picked me up from the hotel and we all went on our merry way. (And no this isn’t a cheating story. I was still with Captain Thor at the time – although I did break up with him that weekend and wished I’d spent time making out with Edward in one of our cab rides. But unfortunately/sadly, I’d just spent a year dating Captain Thor and was still rather smitten/heartbroken/confused.) 

Anyway, Edward was dressed up in a suit and was looking particularly suave that night. He took me to some amazing rooftop restaurant which later featured in The Wolf of Wall Street film (2013 with Leo DiCaprio and gorgeous Margot Robbie before her popularity exploded). Luckily, Edward offered to pay because I’m sure I couldn’t have afforded it (at the time I was working at a law office and at two universities to semi-make ends meet). 

We went to Grand Central Station (Gossip Girl vibes galore) where in Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal’s whispering gallery, he led me to one corner of the domed intersection and told me to wait as he ran to the other corner to show off the acoustics. He took me to a speakeasy, Times Square, for fancy cocktails – to so many places I lost track in my mind. I had the full tourist New York vista of Manhattan with a man who had now lived there for years and was making the kind of money I could only dream of (and still can only dream of lols). I do remember laughing and talking until my sides hurt. We had such a wonderful, memorable night.

Photo by Stephen H on Unsplash – Remember when Serena graced that balcony?

After a relationship (which I was still in) that had been emotionally fraught (more later), it was just the medicine I needed. I didn’t see then how I could spend one night with a man from my past who made me laugh yet still yearn for the wrong relationship (that I was in but knew I shouldn’t be).

Later, Edward got engaged to a beautiful, equally successful woman and they renovated an apartment together in New York (money, I tell ya) and then later they broke it off and he moved back to Georgia in the Atlanta area and does some equally successful business-y thing and has a new girlfriend who seems to make him immensely happy, so I’m truly glad for him.

I regret not saying “fuck it” and kissing him that night but life has worked out exactly as it ought. And maybe that would’ve changed the course of events as we know it. (And I wouldn’t want that because Michael is my human.)

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Photo by Tiraya Adam on Unsplash – I’m sure they could have recreated this photo!

Margaret and Johnny, the golden couple

Anyway, back in uni days Edward and Johnny lived together. I’m not sure how they knew each other, how I found out they were housemates, or any of the details. Maybe they were in a frat together?

I’m not sure if I ever flirted directly with Johnny but he was often over when Margaret was home (of course). Margaret had moved into cute Indian housemate Padma’s room and Padma had moved out. Somehow Margaret and Padma must have known each other already because she and Margaret went to a Diwali event where they wore saris and they both came with me once to one of the Healthers’ parties. They were both a little younger than me as was Johnny, maybe by a couple of years. I was a grad student and they were all undergrads at the time.

Margaret and Johnny were a golden couple. Margaret was incredibly in love with Johnny but he didn’t want to settle. So, I think she broke it off. He lashed out and decided he’d try and hurt her any way he could. As any red-blooded young college American man, he seemed determined to try all the flavours of the week, starting with her friends.

Johnny was tall, lean, muscular, and into sports. He loved cycling, running, and lifting – and he and Margaret did all sorts of sports activities together. She had one of those super-hot bodies that belonged to Victoria’s Secret runways and I was uber jealous. But I also asked her how she was so hot and she basically pulled a Megan Fox and said she didn’t eat or rarely ate (although MF claims she just eats uber-healthy). Too bad I wasn’t that dedicated. 

She was thin, tanned, had lightly toned arms, decent sized/perfect boobs that constantly looked pushed up as if they were fake (but they weren’t). She had the Colgate smile too. Long, brown hair, beautiful brown eyes, high cheekbones, long fingers. She was also one of those people who is just so sweet. She was a legit nice person which made what I did to her doubly shitty.

I wanted to be the sort of girl who was like her, the sort of girl who looked perfect. I knew no matter how thin I got (which was never that thin), I could never be a Margaret. 

That’s the thing about unattainable beauty standards and Victoria’s Secret models: very few people look like that, which is actually okay as looks are often the least interesting thing about people, but it doesn’t feel like that when you’re confronted with the real-life versions. It’s easy to imagine that perfect-looking people lead perfect lives – or that life would somehow be shinier if I was thinner and more gorgeous. However, I was also not willing to put in the work and effort to look that gorgeous (and I still am not) but also I don’t have the one-percent genes so it’d be a losing battle.

But she was the type of woman I was always jealous of long before I learned about the beauty and richness of living a life in which you support other women and lift them up instead of low-key tearing them down. I wasn’t such a horrible type of person that I ever said nasty things about people I was jealous of but in seeking some of her sparkle and maybe validating myself by sleeping with her boyfriend, I was, perhaps worse. 

Attractiveness is not an adjacent quality (like, I’m not going to be attractive adjacent for having sex with an attractive person) and there’s always that sort of adage that men never cheat (or rebound) with people more attractive than what they had before…

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