WEIRD YEAR
Jan. 2nd, 2026 04:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fwcuHi guys. So like, ten million years ago I made a post about making out with a girl at a party. We called her N, and she is an arab baddie who is a great time at parties and still does want to drunk makeout with me. Occluded in that post, was that when ex-oomr, who will we call S, tapped on my back and N's back to get us to makeout, we were sitting across from H and having a normal/funny 3way conversation. H, similar to N, is an arab baddie and they both have Eyebrows™️ and big buggy eyes that are made smaller by the lens of her glasses, and they're both quite fair. Anyway, so guess who won.
11:53-ISH, NEW YEAR'S EVE
It is really really close to midnight, and I am sure I can get a New Year's Kiss, I just don't know who it is I should kiss, and there are no dearth of options, but only one of them requires a talk with my lawyer and litigation. She will kiss me, this I know, this, I think everybody at the party knows. There's no doubt, she'd kiss me if it was serious, she'd kiss me if it was a joke for me, she'd kiss me just because I asked and no other reason with no sense of self-preservation or fidelity. My friend G[race] is here, and she deserves a New Year's Kiss and we'd joked, over a month ago, about this - and there's N, who cannot ask for a kiss because she brought along the man she was seeing, but also would. The problem herein lies, that now I really really have to explain this situation and the stakes and relay other vitally information about this to H right now. I ask H if we can step out onto the balcony, where it is winter and freezing and definitely below 0, but would help calm down my very very hot face, and also would be easier to have this conversation on because it is quieter and more private. She agrees, because of course she does, and then I drag her out, and we're both in socks in the freezing balcony and are stepping over the frosted railing edge because my hands are clutched around her shoulders and I am not very balanced or inclined to it, and I keep pulling her back and back. I am trying to tell her a story about the MollyTea bag in which I bought my two bottles of soju, and how I am a very greedy and otherwise terrible person, except I have to stop every time I look at her face because I get distracted by something, which was painful to think about at the moment, and was hard to say to her face, and is hard to even write out; so I can only tell this story in parts as I look out to Allan Gardens and surrounding area. H knows exactly what this is and what's happening and knows what will happen, about, seven minutes from now. It is fucking freezing on the balcony. I don't remember exactly if this is the balcony episode where Sergio [Daniel's (vaguely homoerotic) white(?) half] and Daniel [Dominican camera guy, he is the +1 and Sergio is the actual invitee but not to me, not in my world] come out and join us on, or if that happens earlier or later, but hey! We have to go back inside, because the countdown!!!
In fact, about ten minutes ago, I had very cautiously made my way over to her, near the 11:40-something mark, knowing it was close to midnight, for this express purpose.
EARLIER THAT NIGHT
The first time I say, "I'm gonna go to the bathroom" this is because I need to step inside and then scream a little bit. I end up on the floor next to S's shower, where she has a mat and am facing a massive psychic attack not understanding the state of affairs that has led to whatever full-body reaction I am having right now. There are some messages time-stamped at 10:26 PM to the tw3 discord server that say:
So
AWFUL NEWS EVERYONE.
IM GONNA KILL MYRAELFFF
There is a can of some kind of alcohol on the counter, and I think about bringing it out to throw it out properly, but I don't do that. On the wall, there's a prompt that says, "What's an evil thing you've done in 2025?" and a few pale yellow post-it answers, though some have fallen onto the floor. I think, 'Not picking up these post-it notes.'
The second time I excuse myself from the conversation, I once again go to S's bathroom, and this time there are even more post-its on the floor, and quite a few are wet, and then I reapply my lip-gloss - which is, weirdly enough, something I rarely do at parties, which is why this particular tube of Patrick Ta Full Syringe, has lasted as long as it has, but for some reason this party is different. In trying to enter the bathroom, I open the door to a frail white woman who is also reapplying her lipstick and I feel terrible about it and apologise profusely and drunkenly when she exits, while my friend Grace uses the bathroom. She is the 3rd or 4th person of the night I accost about the grand, very important and pertinent question of: How do you Know. How do you know!!! She has been in a relationship for 12 years and is doing long-distance from Morocco where the visa situation is not working out. She has very little advice for me. I keep surreptitiously checking in on H from the distance, where I see her speaking to various white women, and the occasion that worried me, really for no reason, because of course I Know, a brown baddie in a great green dress. Her name is Sermon, her tits look great, she's very beautiful, she's really excitable and of course, H is a good conversationalist, maybe great, it depends on the day and who you ask and whether or not I am in vicinity [or at least, I think so]. Really interesting thing about H that I have been pretending not to notice this whole year, is that I make her nervous. It's not fun to be on her side of the equation.
EARLIER THAT NIGHT
N comes up to us? We come up to N? I see N and H, chatting. And the only reason this is an actual episode is because N is leaning in really close to H while lecturing her about how Lebanese people are fucking whores!, and their faces are very very close together and it's a great visual For Me. Recently, my favourite party trick [I have only done this at one other party], is making beautiful beautiful women kiss. #Himejoshi'ing out. Slightly more than I want to kiss either of them, I am really really struck by the thought of how much I want them to kiss each other. Later, after midnight, upon request. They do do this. [Later, when it's Daytime, H tells me that was definitely purely for my benefit on both sides.] After which, N tells me I am a freak and a menace and too attractive for my own good and using these powers for evil. Some of this is true, some of this is not, it's just that N is really into me and she is truly one of the most beautiful girls in the world so I want to see her kiss other beautiful girls, and I tell her that she's the most beautiful girl at this party. Really interesting thing to say when I'm next to H, but at that point, it's known to them both, that she's won the game. Having two beautiful Arab baddies next to me like this, I am really really thinking >Damn I wish polyamory wasn't so fucking cringe but I understand why people invented it. How am I going to create a repeat of this situation PLEASEEE PLEASEEEE.
AROUND 10:-- ISH PM
For no particular reason, the entire day, I kept putting 'party 4 u' onto my queue in Spotify, until finally giving in and playing it on repeat. At some point, my phone was dying and I couldn't concentrate on Notes from the Blockade, and had written in my narrow blue-with-stupid-tigers notebook, thinking of a similar line in Anna K: "If I see her, I'll know. And because I don't want to know, I don't want to see her. Because I'll know. But if by chance - then.... then..."
This particular sentiment was why, when two days ago S had said that she hadn't invited H because she didn't know what the situation was, and I told her that I also did not know what the situation was and could not speak on it until I met with my lawyer, which was on the 1st, and told her not to invite H. I then texted her the day after, that: "You can invite [H] if you want. But don't tell me." This was also why, when H asked if I was going to S's party [The party she's only invited to because S is my friend? Stupid fucking question.], I didn't respond. However, H, in one of those terrible lovely chess manuevers, somehow finds out that Klimt, a painter I recently mentioned liking, had painted Ludwig Wittgenstein's sister, and then that Wittgenstein had read and been affected by Tolstoy's religious tracts, and texted me about that and, having been so well and so masterfully baited, I did bite.
Anyway. This party starts at 8. Of course no one shows up to a party at 8, and H loves to show up to things forever running late, and I also don't actually know that she will show up, because her showing up is dependent on me being there, which I neither confirmed nor denied for the precisely for this exact unknowable quality of chance. She shows up a little after 10, which was very fashionable and cool of her, while I am speaking to Kirk [S's girlfriend], Sergio and Daniel and She's-a-baddie-she-knows-shes-a-10 Wendy and this-fucker-I-hate Shine, and encircled by these people, I see her and then I know. For about one second I think: Oh it's not so!, and then I don't think that at all, and I crouch onto the floor because this is precisely why I didn't want to know.
FOUR DAYS BEFORE THAT
My lawyer and historically-materialistically best friend, A, has made a tradition out of a post-Christmas potluck. Over the years more and more people have attended, and it has gotten less and less enjoyable. For some reason, it has been vitally important to me - after the shitshow and trainwreck of last year - that H attend with me this year. Because H is actually good at parties and way better at talking to people we both find boring, possibly because she actually doesn't find them boring, and is not so terrible and derisive and judgemental like I am or something. I have sort of been fixated on this, because it will be Nice and Enjoyable if H attends, and also I need to introduce H to these people also anyway, because I am the sort-of freak and person that wants all my friends to meet and be friends with one another. H, because her family actually celebrates Christmas and the like, in the Arabic Lebanese Coptic way, [SO LIKE NOT WHITE AMERICANLY or EUROPEANLY...though her mom did create a nativity scene which was pretty funny], so she had been extremely evasive despite my reminders and follow-ups. Anyway, she shows up an hour late, which means we are now an hour late to this potluck, and I drive her over, and we have to stop at the McDonald's just by the house because she didn't remember that I told her it was also a White Elephant and got a last-minute $25 giftcard, rather than the $20 max, because they offered her a free coupon. Which ended up in my pocket somehow, and I still have.
Anyway, she brought cannolis and I brought milk cakes, and I introduce her to the important guy in question, and they both are made fun of by me and in turn make fun of me, and, get along. After two days of Choosing Not To Examine It Further, I come to the conclusion that: Yeah, I probably wouldn't mind it if she kisses me in the Kipling GO parking lot.
When we make our exit, being the last #lingerers, I tell H to hold my bags, because I don't want to hold them right now and she usually fusses about holding them so it's a win-win, and she takes them from my hand, and then immediately puts them onto the floor, because she hasn't pulled on her shoes yet, and I watch that motion with the paralysed agony that I watch her do all her extremely generous and kind actions with, a total despairing doom about her total lack of self-preservation. No sense of it at all. I decided some months earlier, that as an adult, she has free will and is allowed to and can make the choice to, a la Dostoevsky, to burn and burn out and be healed and come back again however she wishes, which seemed to me, over the year, by pursuing a terrible and manipulative girl who will take advantage of all of her efforts without reciprocating. The Potluck seemed to me, to be the last hurdle to this question of reciprocality and what I should actually do about it! Since, despite my hedonistic instincts, I do believe in leading a moral and ethically meaningful life.
There was a certain feeling, when we were walking out together, her holding all the bags and the door closing on us, of that final image of us; the impression we would've left. That was what I wanted from her, I thought. This thought made it so that I drove very badly and very nervously to Kipling GO station. I looked at her, with what I was hoping was a pleading and big-eyed innocent, inquiring expression, and what could have instead come off as deranged and crazy-eyed, but all that served to do was make her more nervous and freak out and leave.
How fleeting or unfleeting this thought is, or what it actually means, or what it entails, and if it's actually serious or not, or what it is I am actually feeling and if this is all a side-effect of being on my period, and is this a schizophrenic episode, is this a repeat of my other multiple failed attempts at having Normative Human Romantic Emotion, is this an actable upon emotion, should I even act on this, etc etc etc, are all questions that really be plaguing me for the next four days. In order to find some kind of answer, I have to speak to my lawyer, a person who has seen the trenches of my most homoerotic friendship, due to being friends with the two of us for nearly the entirety of that run-time; because this might be a similar situation. I don't know and I personally don't think so, but everything is information I don't have and cannot access!!!
TWO DAYS BEFORE THAT
Her mother got me presents. Which meant that her mother knew from beforehand that I was going to come and that she prepared for me to be there and bought and then wrapped those gifts, and they were not very personalised or serious by any means, but it was baffling and absurd and shocking, and this was the thing, more than H's actual gifts to me [also very thoughtful and serious in certain ways], that had me deeply and irrevocably fucked up and why I had decided Not To Think About It. Lately, this month seemed to be about: [Sit Back] [Wait]/[Observe] Not Everything Needs A Reaction. This was why I had decided not to examine going over to her house for Christmas all that seriously, because even though, everyone else I knew that attended Christmases were doing so with their significant others. I had decided to think about it in a more metropolitan, multicultural way, wherein I didn't have family that was going to celebrate and thus was available to attend, as the lonely baleful orphan archetype or whatever, since my family was also out of the country.
However, it was also very painfully obvious to me that H's family were celebrating as a family, and this was a family event [were none of her siblings non-Christian friends available to hang out? Did they not have any? [Non-Christian friends] Was I really the only friend, of all three siblings, that came over with a certain regularity?], so around noon, I mentioned that I should head out, because I didn't want to impose further. This gave H RSD. We took her cousin, who last night had asked if I was H's girlfriend - and, being horrible and terrible, I didn't answer because I was too busy laughing because the absurd fact of the situation was that I wasn't, but H, very straight-faced and serious and long-standingly annoyedly, in a way that was sexy and semeful and topply, that filled with me with a sense of respect and admiration, said, No, I was not. First to a nearby lakeside park, where I took a picture of the horizon that somehow caught the edge of H's coat sleeve, and later, when I wanted to post a final year-end picspam on Instagram, I kept getting stuck on and had to resort to exiting the app, because obviously that candid shot was the one I wanted to post, but I couldn't. Obviously I couldn't. Then to an Egyptian cafe, where her cousin ordered a matcha and found it deep green and delicious, and H ordered an espresso instead of a real drink, as is her habit, and I ordered a cappuccino and her sister a latte. The cups everything came in were beautiful muted colours. Her sister then ordered us this Egyptian pudding desert that I brought forks [because they were the only utensils available in the cafe] to eat with, but we all resorted to drinking. It was good but also only in small, small sips. The entire time, in the car and at the restaurant, I talked mostly at H, but sometimes with her sister, and often forgot to address the cousin at all. The entire time, H was so grouchy and terrible and in a bad mood but not in a bad way, and I knew it was my fault and was trying my best to dress the wound or fix it belatedly. In the car, on the way to, I had asked if she was going through RSD, and she asked what that was, and I explained what it was, and her sister laughed and said, 'Wow, that's exactly what she's like,' and H, surely not lying, said, 'No, I don't have that.'
Ridgeway Plaza is this famous [to me], highly memed upon [by me] place in the West GTA, that H insists on. I suggest we go there, and we do, and her sister gets chicken bites, because she wants popcorn chicken and this is the only place open that has a similar option available. They do have good chicken, we all agreed when it finally came out, but it was a very long wait and H was still in a terrible mood, and at one point, having very little to say without H's usual endless dialogue options, I bring out my blue-with-stupid-tigers notebook, and begin to doodle some approximation of her sister because I like the way her scarf is falling around her neck. Her cousin sees this, and asks if I can draw her, which I do upon request and after the necessary warnings of 'I'm not actually good at this.' And then, because H is there, and still not participating, I draw her as well, even after telling her I have technically done it before so I don't have to, because ten million years ago we were at a [Chinese people] Chinese restaurant and they had little note slips and pencils at every table and I had drawn her a little doodle of her face and she kept in her phone case for a long time after. I think she pretended not to remember this because I pointed out that it lived in her phonecase, or really hadn't remembered it at all. But I doodled her again, except this time with a certain care that I chose not to examine, though it was particularly important to me that her likeness be actually rendered. All three of them had a serious eyelash situation to go along with their serious eyebrow situation, but on my drawing it just made H look kind-of too feminine. Afterwards, on the walk back to the car, we split off into pairs, and I tagged a little behind her, holding her elbow, and knew how it looked and again, really could not Think About That Right Now. In real and true me fashion, mostly I was just enjoying that she was being sullen and I was given the role of lavishing her with attention and pets.
In true nail-in-coffin fashion, after I left, and had been home for a few hours, and had texted her to remind her of the card she'd forgotten to give me, I received a text back saying there was a card and a tray of food waiting for me on my doorstep. The card, thankfully, was very normal and sweet but also said something that was very damning and awful for me personally, in that she liked hearing me talk. Because, earlier that day, when we were driving back to her place, I caught myself telling her a nothing-story about myself or my mom and sure her sister and her cousin were in the car, but I wasn't really talking to them or for them, or even really for her, I was telling this story because I wanted her to hear it, and knew she would listen and it was a nothing-story, it really didn't matter at all, but I'd been saying it anyway.
She got me a notebook with grid paper and a blue cover, a pink highlighter, a fancy German pen with fancier packaging that writes very smooth, a lead pencil, a blue kitty tail pen, a Baggu foldable bag with MyMelody holding strawberries on it because it was blue, and a pack of card stock note paper; the card came in an envelope that closed with a sticker of a bird; and the thing that she was most worried about to the point of having prepared a second option, was a 100-pack of postcards of Penguin Classics. Which was obviously the thing I liked most. Anyway, it was drawing on me that this situation was Serious and Dire and needed Intervention, but I couldn't think about that right now, I needed her to attend a potluck.
A WEEK BEFORE THAT
Weirdly, the thing that H and I do the most, is that we watch movies together, and the habit of H's that I find the most terrible and am the most forgiving of, in that I never mention it, is that she loves to check her phone during a movie. Anyway, I wanted to Resurrection and I needed someone to watch the movie with me so badly because I needed to be incited and dragged out of the house, because it was winter and cold and the precondition of staying in and not going out was so so nice. I didn't immediately ask H, because H does not actually like movies that are avant-garde and of the art film genre, but so did no one else. So I did ask H anyway, and then when I told her she was the last person I asked, she started bitching about it and had a fit and a conniption about not even being my last resort, because I was just going to alone, and I was watching her thinking: Right, so that's my bit and she's stealing it and honestly, it's kind of an annoying bit but it is really so funny... but in very predictable and true H fashion, she did have her phone out for the entire movie, just to read the plot summary on Wikipedia as the movie was playing. Terrible, terrible form... and she didn't really care for the movie. As I thought... but she did correctly read the Buddhism metaphors in it... so who could say whether she's bad at movies or not.
We went to a place called Coffee Oysters Champagne, right near the TIFF theatre, and kept being told to ask for the Champagne tour, because there was a speakeasy behind the bar front, but that... we weren't.... that wasn't relevant to my life right then... Relevant to my life was that I had never had an espresso martini before, and they were doing $5 martinis, and I am a lightweight, and a terrible person and really, really susceptible to flirting when I'm drunk, so obviously I made her compare hand sizes with me. Which is a really classic one, and mostly I wanted to hold hands but clearly that wasn't... not a casual gesture in whatever was happening. Not even a day ago, I had texted my high school friends that:
might as well introduce [H] since i think she is going to be a situation in my life for the time being
in the most normal way possible
What did I mean by this? I really wouldn't know. She told me she had an appointment for a top surgery consult, which I had never known was on the table or even a consideration, and it occurred to me that I really knew how to pick them. Like I think other people think they're chasers, and or think they know what a chaser is. Not like me. They haven't met me. They don't know about me. This has no bearing or reflection on whatever happens next or before, or at least I think, conceptually really funny if the true turning point of H being viable/non-viable candidate really was the reveal of being trans masc was on the fucking table. S has this joke where she loves to tell people that I don't want anyone without top surgery because one time she asked what I thought about Naomi from Muna, and I was like 'I really don't think about them' and then she told me Naomi from Muna got top surgery and I was like 'Hang on, let me go investigate and have a thought...'
Really, nothing of note happened this day, but I do think I behaved badly. Maybe I made this up, but I think I was looking at her and wondering if or why I really didn't feel anything other than strong affectionate friendship.
FIVE DAYS BEFORE THAT
H texts, asks if I want to go to Upper Canada Mall. I do not. H says, wait, it's near MollyTea, shall I come over with some. I agree, if it's not going to be too much trouble [though to tw3 I text: but I doooo want princess treatment, oh no, sorry, I didn't even say that I said: 'ok well in the end i do want gf treatment …' which, really, I'm sorry, My Bad]. H, many, many hours later than the agreed upon time, shows up with two drinks, unveiling my requested Matcha Jasmine Cheese and then explaining, apologetically, that they tried to get it without the matcha foam [something I only request when the shop is not busy], and I text tw3:
[speed gif] ohhhhhh
she asked the guys to do no matcha foam for my drink even tho i didnt tell her to and ultimately it failed BRUH I SHOULD BE TAKING MYSELF OUT BACK LIKE A HORSE….
[noura] yeah let's kill you
How do we feel about me and [H] hot priest fleabag costume. Id be the hot priest
This was obviously a joke. That could be serious. We were watching Wake Up Dead Man on her laptop, which was fine and normal and Josh O'Connor was so sexy in it. This was pretty normal and fine to me. The part that felt so on the nose, was when we decided to watch a second movie and put on The Handmaiden. Really good movie that I'd never seen before. I just, I was a bisexual girl sitting next to a lesbian who hadn't even gone to Upper Canada Mall, like her parents went, then came back and she had custody of the car, then drove forty minutes out of the way to go to Molly Tea, where she asked for a substitution that I'd mentioned not liking to her but had also said was no big deal, and then drove to my place. Thankfully, she had to go before we could make a normal amount of headway into it, because she had to charge her car, and then I was like I can wait out the charging part with you, and so she found a fast charger, and I found a Popeyes that was near it, and she was, slightly put-off and vaguely suspicious asked me why I had so much energy, and I was like, 'Is this the first time you've seen me not depressed?' because it's highly likely that I have bipolar disorder [type 2?], but also that I do not want to ever confirm that, and it was one of the weeks of the year where I had been very excitable and high-energy and into living. I hadn't even noticed the change myself.
While we were waiting in her car afterwards, I reminded her about the potluck and the potluck situation, and wondered if we should be getting each other Christmas gifts, and she left that unanswered.
I also don't remember if this was today, or if it happened later, on Christmas, but in her search bar when she typed in certain letters, fwcu.dreamwidth.org would show up as a recommended result. Likely chance that she reads this or could read this or gets sent this, so I don't know if it's going to be access-locked or not.
A WEEK AND SOME BEFORE THAT...
H loves to do this thing where she has seen a movie before, and then comes to the movies with me anyway to watch a movie for the 3rd or 2nd time, and just Not tell me until after the fact. So anyway, I watched JJK Execution, in real nerd fashion, a day or so before, at the small shitty theatre near campus, and then agreed to watch the movie again with her on the auspicious as fuck occasion of Gojo Satoru's birthday. Well, to be clear, we already had a plan from ten million years ago to watch this movie together, except I realised that I could watch it a day early by myself, and then did go and watch it a day early, and in doing so realised how much of a difference there was in theatre and projection quality between the big chain brand and the local guy. We watched it at the Eglinton Cineplex, and this is when I learnt that it was the second time ever that H had been to this movie theatre, a common theatre that I have frequented for many years of my life, both times because it was a theatre close to where I live. For afterwards, she also brought over cupcakes that she'd made in honour of Gojo's birthday, and decorated and then had plastic wrapped them, and the icing [the kind that didn't set] was all fucked up, and we had to redecorate them. I took three or four really bad photos of her with the cupcakes and then ended up posting only the cupcakes on my instagram story and forgot to even tag her. Weirdly enough, no one ever holds that I am a bad careless person against me. They should but they don't!
A LITTLE WHILE BEFORE THAT
I think what happened was that I was complaining, and then H was like 'do you want to hang out?' and I was like 'if it wouldn't be too much trouble' and this was yet another day, where H, after work or something, drives all the fucking over to my place and then drives us to Highway 7 Molly Tea, and we talk incessantly about Heated Rivalry and then have to wait for her car to charge really slowly, because it would've been fine to go from her to mine and then back, but then we took it to get Molly Tea, at my request [INSTEAD OF MY CAR. WORKING. WITH A BEAUTIFUL BEAUTIFUL GIRL WHO HAS A DRIVING LICENSE AND CAN ACTIVELY DRIVE AND INSURANCE HER DAD PAYS FOR]. Then get really mid noodles afterwards. She tells me about how Lebanon used to have the best gay scene in all of the Middle East and Beirut used to have the greatest club scene, and it was really frustrating and awful to visit and just see the remains of everything that Israel had bombed out. That it was a 'don't-ask-don't-tell' situation with her family, whereas everyone in my family is like woke in a specific guided-misguided way, and I am far more positive about how well they'd take to a gay_reveal, and how like, it's even obvious. And I'm literally bisexual and want to marry a man...
SOME DAYS BEFORE THAT
We have lunch-supper at a place near campus that I always want to try out for their cold dishes/dipping udon but I don't want their udon and it's too cold for cold noodles and also H doesn't actually really care for ramen, but we go in anyway, and I order what I really hope is gyudon but is actually fried rice with beef... which is really close. Neither of us are enjoying our meals. Having watched Waltz with Bashir the day before in class, I ask her, because she's Lebanese-Christian on her mom's side, if her family were Bashir supporters. She, looking very guilty, admits that while it's extremely complicated actually [which, obviously!] but yes, basically, in essence. I tell her that, Actually this is great to know, because my Professor, Nima Naghibi, was questioning the sanctity of showing an Israeli film in the class, and had not I seen it, I would have not known to ask H about it.
At some point, on a lighter conversation topic, she mentions that she told her coworkers about me, and I say, 'You talk to other bitches?' because that's a normal and normatively baitful and Bad thing to say to someone you are pretending not to know is in love with you; and she's like 'No, they're my coworkers,' which yeah, obviously, as it becomes increasingly clear, as the year continues to it's end, that her coworkers know so much about me which is fine, except whatever they know is so incriminating that when later, I ask if I can come to her Indigo on Boxing Day with her cousin, she looks like she wants to kill herself and says, "You can't." I think we're hanging out, by the way, because I said I was free and on campus, and she was like 'Do you want to watch Zootopia 2' and came to meet me with a half-assed plan to watch Zootopia 2, and I do distinctly remember thinking she looked very handsome when she came in but nothing otherwise. We didn't end up watching Zootopia 2...
When we part, I text tw3:
I think [H] thinks we’re playing the game
which we might be but that’s lowkey none of my business
And then, the day after, I text Lady Parts But Gay:
also I think [H] thinks we're playing 'The Game' but that's lowkey none of my business like I think I have sent all the warning signs and do not enters etc etc etc
but like litr it is well understood that i would be playing the straight friend to her hopelessly in [limbo] lesbian pining one ... so it really is on her choice and autonomy to get herself into this situation
[S] Uhm
though interestingly she has been looking slightly more handsome to be of late .
which im not going to ascribe any real meaning to bc i always think my friends are super beautiful so i assume its the usual effect of having good feelings in one's hear towards the guy you feel affectionately towards
[Olivia] This is crazy but ykw have fun
[S] I dont know if i can support this
A WEEK AND SOME BEFORE THAT
I text H and let her know I'm free after 1, and then she comes and meets me at the library, where she accosts me with one of those terrible fucking bookmarks made for RomantasyTok, it says: "I don't watch porn I read it like a fucking lady" and has a ruler on the back, and I refuse to take it, and realise way later that she slipped it into my bag unbeknownst to me, and she gets a text two weeks later, when I start reading Anna K because using this crass of a bookmark on my Serious Classic Lit, was a really funny visual to me. Anyway, on the day of, we walk twenty minutes down to get MollyTea, because I want MollyTea [my serious and crippling addiction as has surely become apparent] and on the way, there's this Thai Marketplace where I spot two packs of Lays Chips in Thailand specialty flavours and buy then to make H try them with me, and H does not like either, as do I, because one is really fishy and otherwise tastes of lemon dish soap, and the other is like, a weird sweetness. Neither are good. I make her sit out in the cold with me, at Breadalbane Park[ette] as we drink our Molly Tea, and I complain at length about a certain classmate of mine and something they said months ago, and there's a weird point of connection because the park has like indigenous art installation thing going on, and thing I was mad about was because she had a stupid response to some Tribe Chief saying something about eyeliner, and H is listening to me go on and on about this really stupid thing, and we are out in the mild cold.
Then we head back to the library, because we still have time to kill before we watch CSM: Reze which is the plan of the day, and I lead her back to my favourite shelf on the 5th floor, which is where all the Wittgenstein shelf is, right across from the Baidou, and right next to the Kierkegaard. Then I forcibly enact silent reading time, and make her tandem-read Diary of a Seducer with me, which neither of us understand or really get much out of, but after the fact I was soooo touched by the event and the occasion and felt soooo much fondness about her going along with it, and do still really treasure this moment. Then? Before? She reads some of Kierkegaard's diary, while I did fuckwhatever, and sys that she doesn't fuck with him being a Calvinist and then has to explain what a Calvinist is to me. We decide to get dinner, and do the usual back and forth about who picks what we get, because I do sometimes have a conscience and don't always love to be the one who decides what we eat... and we end up getting bbimbap at a place she likes, and over dinner she reveals to me that she took an edible before she got here, and that was a bad idea, and then, "I really don't know how to ask this in a way that doesn't come off as too serious, but: Are you going to marry a man?" because this was happening during the DoctorMan episode, which is not relevant to this post, but at the time I had been texting with a about-to-graduate med school student, and told her: Yeah, I want to be able to let my mom do The Big Wedding thing.
So, earlier this year, over the summer, my brother got married and my mom had a terrible time because she hated every minute and every second and on top of that, her son's in-laws treated us like shit!!!, and treated him like shiiiit!!!! And the most fucked up thing she said all summer long, was at the very end, after it was all over, because when asked why she bothered to put in all this effort for a son who treated her like shiiiiiiiiit!!!!, she said: "So he can't say I didn't do this for him, when [Nizhni] gets married." Months after the fact, I relay this to H, and then at some point, a while later, I think about and similarly relay that actually, my parents, and some of my extended family, would probably be cool with me getting married to a woman.
Anyway, after this we discuss one of my classes, and I explain my final project concept to her, and she looks at me in a serious and meaningful way and tells me very plainly and seriously that I'm really smart, and for some reason this is one of those times where it feels like a genuinely meant thing and not lip service and I am, just a little, struck by her very true and apparent admiration of me.
here are the texts I send this day:
bruh every interaction with [H] is like im psychologically torturing her bc today she had a headache and I was like >I think your headache made it so you were less conscious of me
and ahe was like >you know I’m very conscious of you?
and I was like >yeah its pretty obvious
and she was like >yeah I dont hide it
and then just as we were leaving she was like >are you texting me this often/offering to hang out just bc you’re going to block me on everything soon and I was like ???????? >So… we’re friends?
anyway she was trying to tell me where she got such a strange notion for but then I cut in with the ‘is this because you don’t have many friends’ and then she was like [:Smodge:] [:peaceandlove:] and wouldnt answer past that[:weiboCryLaugh:] [:weiboCryLaugh:] [:weiboCryLaugh:] [:weiboCryLaugh:] [:weiboCryLaugh:] we’re both failing the socialisation tests in different ways
SOME TIME BEFORE THAT
H finds me on the 5th floor of the library, in my favourite shelf section and proceeds to show me her most recent terrible procurement, which is pen with Kaveh Genshin Impact on it. I tell her I am Not Using That. She's like, Please, Can you pleaseeee show up to your Middle Eastern Film and Literature class and in front of Nima Naghibi, use the Kaveh pen. The context for this is that Kaveh Genshin Impact is my enemy and Kaveh Genshin Impact is her meow meow and I would fucking never. At one point she needs to use the bathroom, but instead of telling me to move or jumping over me, she goes all the way around the stack to not interrupt me? Not that I was doing anything important... I had been making her read some random book about Japanese philosophy [because the Kyoto school stuff was nearby to the Kierkegaard section] and had gotten distract myself by a Norton Edition of something. We head out, presumably to get ramen I think, because it was cold and wet, and I neg her into ordering/sharing an entree with me, and then make her finish it because I don't like it, and then we venture out in the wet-coldness to both the claw-machine places on Yonge, because if I won't accept the Kaveh pen, we have to find the Alhaitham equivalent. We do, it's a lead pencil, and then I obviously don't want to buy it, and she just paid for dinner so I can't make her pay for it, but watch partly agonised but not really saying anything, as she buys it for me anyway. This was the pencil I used to annotate most of Anna K.
LIKE LEGIT AN HOUR BEFORE TEEKS_D2_CANADA_TOUR
Over the summer, H's brother had invested his hard-earned part-time money into purchasing boxes Labubus, because he really really wanted to resell them. Turns out they were fakes. One thing Teeks loves more than a Labubu is a Lafufu, and one thing about me, is that I wanted to make 'Come with me to get my grandma a labubu' a real thing. However, instead of going over to H's place at some point or requesting her to meet-up or anything at any point before the trip to pick this thing up, because H had told me about this incident a while ago, I just text H >How short of a notice can I get a labubu at?, and then make her meet me at noon, at Wellesley station to legit just drop off a Labubu. And I buy her conciliatory Molly Tea, because I had just been introduced to Molly Tea and wanted an excuse to get it again but also, a fruit of labour thing. Anyway, it turns out she was really worried that I thought the Labubus were real and wanted a real one [I did not care, knowing that Teeks would not care] and hadn't responded to her gigantic text block in the morning about it, and she had freaked the fuck out on the way to drop it off. I had to meet Teeks soon, but we were killing time sitting in the McDonald's, I think she ordered a peppermint steeped tea, and I asked 'Hey... so what are your plans now?' and it turns out that she, in her freak out, had forgotten to pack her laptop so she couldn't even hang out on campus to do work [like she told me she was going to, when I was like, Not me making you come 90 minutes out of your way for a stupid drop-off errand], and actually she was just going to go home. So. That was an episode. I acutely felt that I was a terrible person, but I couldn't even careeeee because I was going to hang out with Teeks!
SOME TIME BEFORE THIS
H is like, Do you want to see a play, I don't wanna third-wheel my sister and her friend, and I'm like Uhhh sure! because they had free tickets to this play. Turns out it was based on Gilgamesh, and so, like a really serious person, I went ahead and checked Gilgamesh out from the library [wherein, it turns out some guy had published a version of it that was like his re-interpretation of all the known translated versions into verse, like he couldn't actually read the cuneiform... so that was... something], and read most of it the day of the play, on my journey to the Distillery district. It's windy as fuck, and I'm cold, and I tell H this when she shows up, and she's like 'Do you want my jacket? Have my jacket?' and I realise my severe misstep and Know Seriously, in a very real way, I cannot take her jacket. It's too much of a gesture and I really don't want it to come off in any way, and even if it meant nothing and wasn't serious, the [presumed] romantic feelings gap in our friendship would problematise it anyway. So I stayed cold the entire night, and H insisted we go to the fancy chocolate place where they sell like Real, French Style Hot Chocolate, which I took a sip of and didn't like, and I ordered an Earl Grey with milk, and the woman behind the counter went, "A London Fog then," and then, upon leaving [H paid], I complained to her at length about how that is not what a London Fog is!!!
The play was good because the music was good, and then I felt totally alienated by the conversation the three of them were having by the end of it, because it seemed like they all thought it was uncritically good, but I was really really mad about the inherent sexism and how, a play with no women in it and solely about the relationship between two men, could somehow be so sexist!! So then I ranted about that to them, and then we all got dinner at a nearby bar that really was way too big, and I ordered a cobb salad and H ordered a poutine, which is what she usually orders everywhere. Her sister had a burger, and her sister's friend had the dumpling entrees. There was really nothing notable about this, other than the fact that all of three of them were in, some ways, somewhat Serious People, and I was the unserious intellectual factor, and H and her sister both take music really seriously. Which is something I really respect, and so I think it's really funny that H genuinely truly believes that I don't care about music and tells people this. Like I think she's allowed to do that, but her sister has been shocked every single time when I mention any level of cut, which I did, while in the Uber to Union station [that someone, not me, paid for]. H had been under impression, unhappily, that I would get along better with her sister than her, and I didn't think that was true or untrue, but did like hanging out with the two of them.
A WHILE BEFORE THAT
H's favourite Guadagnino film is Queer, mine is Bones and All, and we argue about this sometimes, but she is insistent that I don't know real ball, and I don't know real cinema, and I don't know anything at all because I've never seen Queer, and I have to and she will show me, and at one point, I agree and this is a Real Plan, because the other option is The Old Guard, and I really can't handle that. I don't wanna... Queer is also a reasonable watch because Omar Apollo is in it, and he's really sexy, and also my friend Kit, who I think should meet H because they both have the same kind of wackadaisal approach to queer interpretation, really likes the S. Burroughs novel that Queer is in adaptation of, and has brought it up many times in our conversations. Anyway, she offers to give me a ride, and I sort of blink at it because I would be a bad person if I accepted, but like, I don't want to drive to Oakville, because my car's right sideview is kind of busted and therefore somewhat troubling to drive on the highway with [this problem is not fixed even by December], and I also don't want to take the TTC to Kipling station either, and I don't want to figure out what's happening with the GO Train, which is showing scary things to me on Google Maps. So, at one point, in the car, I say: "I'm going to tell your mom we are Not having sex tonight" and we both start cracking up [one of us way more hysterically than the other] because this really is such netflix and chill kind of situation, it is so late by the time I get there because she drove home from work, then showered, then came to pick me up at my house so that we could drive back to her house?
Thankfully, she does something else less embarrassing for the both of us that I could later solicit opinions and gossip about, which is handing me a copy of Hisham Matar's The Return. I had assumed that H had taken Nima Naghibi's Middle East Film and Literature course, being Alexandrian-Lebanese-Coptic-Egyptian-Sudanese, and asked if she had two books, and said if not I was going to check the library. She bought The Return, handed it over to me, and I was like: Oh. Right, okay. Right.
A WHILE BEFORE THIS PROBABLY
When I land, I text H:
DADDY BIG JUST LANDED IN YYZ BABY
wow icb i forgot the most crucial part of that sentence
Weirdly enough, somewhat unsurprisingly, this is the second time this summer that she suggests hanging out at a Known Date Spot, AKA the Toronto Islands. Which, was, and I tell her this at some point but not in a very serious way, the location of my first date ever. I think I suggest doing a picnic, because there's no food spots there at all, and we pick up stuff from T&T on campus, and then the H-Mart, and she randomly picks up a mooncake, which is Durian-flavoured solely in honour of Beth crababy, my goat, and therefore neither of us liked it. Originally she wanted to go canoe'ing except she got it wrong or bad, and they had just closed for the season, so we just ended up hiking along the trail there and it was long not-romantic walk down the beach, and at one point there was a general store, and she brought me one of those healthy popsicles that she assured me was good [and it was] and bought herself a frozen pickle juice freezie, and didn't like that. I took some really awful photos of her, and our respective comestibles, of which I really wanted to post as a butch-femme/two genders joke somewhere, likely my instagram, but genuinely the thought of S seeing and commenting made me not.
She told me this amazing incredible story about her coworker with a gay dad who had gotten a Russian-mail-order boyfriend his daughter's age, who was reading translated damnei to learn English. Then, we talked about Weapons, and we both had separately-but-together come to the conclusion that it was a bad knock-off of Monster. And it really occurred to me, this was precisely why I was hanging out with her in such ambiguous circumstances, like sure, this girl is probably in love with me and wants me so bad and none of this is helping, but sometimes you really appreciate having a good fun time with someone who actually makes themselves free and available to hang out with you. There's some kind of episode where she wants me to take the picnic leftovers and I'm like, What? Okay... and then when we go on separate trains, she forgets to actually give them to me. And then changes trains to come back to Kennedy station to hand me the thing, in her own like picnic bag, and I'm like, How about you accompany me home so I can drop you off to your place with my car, and she refused. And I was like, alright man, shoot your own self in the foot. Literally every single time we hung out after, I forgot to give that picnic bag back until like, a potluck in December. When she was In My Car, and was like 'Is that my bag?' and I was like 'OH MY GOD IT FUCKING IS.'
SUMMER
H tells me, months and months later that it was really cool that I went Bangladesh and didn't text her for an entire two months or whatever. And I was like, Oh yeah, that did happen. Though I remember the one occasion we did text quite fondly, because just before I left I told it was so fucked up that there was going to be a Genshin pop-up in Toronto literally the day after I was flying out!!! And my favourite, Lebanese loser twitch streamer [H being the Lebanese loser we have at home?] was going to be there and it was literally so fucked up that I was missing it. Somewhere around like, 6am for me, at a time where I am awake because I have jetlag, she texts me updates from her visiting the pop-up, and I'm like omg pleaseee call let me see, and then she barters and messages: "Send 1 pic of u at the wedding or im not calling u" and I oblige, with four even! One of me [not very good], one of my cousin's white-ass baby, my bracelet stack [which tw3 also got] and the really ugly gold bracelet my parents got me [also previously a tw3 exclusive], and then gets on call to show me the goods [very bad, mid as fuck] and I tell her, Wow this actually sucks, and she's like Yeah, fine, whatever. She did get me a pin of Ei after, though I haven't done anything with it. Also I read this conversation back, and she had actually left the store, and then went back when I texted, just to show me. So like, yeah. Look, I was in Bangladesh, all the way across the world, in a different fucking hemisphere both latitudinally and longitudinally, that could not have been on me.
A COUPLE OF DAYS BEFORE MY FLIGH WHICH IS A COUPLE DAYS BEFORE MY BIRTHDAY
H, and we're hanging out because I won't be in Toronto or Canada at all for the next two months, is like, I want Italian food, and asks to meet me by Yonge station. I wait and find her approaching with espresso in hand. There is only one Italian place around this area, and it's the famous date spot. Premonitvely, S, who I'd been talking to earlier, had make a joke, 'Are you sure this isn't a date?' and I was like, No it's really not, and then she was like, Does H know that it's not a date? Since the plan had been to... lunch then go to a book store? Which was the kind of extremely mundane and nerdy thing I'd enjoy. Now that I'm really thinking about it, actually so few people have ever been like, Nizhni do you want to go to a bookstore because you like books. Like Aris and Kaia when I visited them in MTL. Mostly, I have been taken to bookstore because the other person wants to go to a bookstore and I am reasonable company for the outing. But then again, I rarely ever independently have the thought of wanting to go to a bookstore, but I do love going in and being in one, that's really fucking true.
Anyway, I see that we are approaching Eataly and I'm like, Uh, actually I'm really not in the mood for Italian food. We were inside for a bit, because she said that she liked that it was a grocery store and bought something for her mom and then randomly grabbed a stupid snack, which was mid and bad and not even the thing she meant to get and I very politely don't say or think anything of this. Anyway, so we find a noodle place like twenty minutes away, which was definitely the worser of the two meals. But we go back for an affogato, and it's great, it's maybe one of the most delicious things I have ever had in my life and I can mostly forgive the whole eataly not-date debacle. Um, I do fuck up doing navigation so bad that we really end up going nowhere and doing nothing except walk around, and that's fine by me. We might have gone to the Indigo by Bay, I really don't know. I have been to that Indigo on Bay with everyone on Earth. Do not ask me to name names.
I think we meet with S at the station, who gives us a moment of privacy, so H can give me The Queer Arab Glossary as an early birthday present, except with no card! and I think this is when S makes a joke about whether H knew it wasn't a date or not. Or she doesn't, she was a little moody and distant this day, because her parents being in the country were making things strange and rough, and as always she had stuff going on with the lab. I think I had dinner with them this day as well, because if I remember correctly, her dad picked us up at the station.
LIKE, A MONTH BEFORE THIS
H gets invited, along with so many other lesbians we know, to go clubbing. This is on Pride Eve. She spends the entire night buying G&Ts, because my favourite drink is a Gin and Tonic. This is a fact that stays relevant until December, where I make us exactly one G&T each on the 24th because she had gone out of her way to ensure there was Gin and Tonic in the house. And a really sad lime because a lime garnish is delicious on a G&T. At the end of the night, she like goes off with Julia and Isabelle, who she's getting along with really really well because they're both damnei heads. This leads to her being introduced to Julia's UofT PhD friend [in what I am assuming is their comparative literature program], who she does an interview for, and then complains to me at length, afterwards, about the conclusion that that guy is planning to write.
TIME IS SOUP IMMEMORIAL AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED ANYWHERE IN MARCH-APRIL-MAY AND I'M WORKING REALLY REALLY HARD TRYING TO RECONSTRUCT THIS FROM THE VERY FRAUGHT EVIDENCE I HAVE OF MY OWN EPHERMEA AND SHODDY NOTE-TAKING
There was one day where we went to a chinese restaurant [frequented by Chinese people] on Spadina that H wanted to try and I had been to previously with S, and then we got Thai tea bingsu at the Village by the Grange after, which was H's first ever bingsu experience, but we had it in front of the Philippino desert food stall, which... Anyway! This was after she'd read my entire 40k haikavetham fic [one of like, 8 people to do so even] so we talked about that. She kept trying to invite me over for Lebanese barbecue, but I couldn't accept for whatever reason, I really don't remember. This definitely happened after the party, because not only did I do my entire write-up about how making out is kinda gross, but then I debriefed with H about it as well, if I really do recall correctly. I think it was also this day? Maybe? Where H told me about her graduation saga fuck-up, I think we were at the Yonge subway station, so it could've also been ... a whole different time...
There was another time where we hung out at the library then got T&T food, because the T&T had just opened and that was when I told H about the whole thing with E, and this was near the tail-end of the professor saga, and H told me, less candidly about the Nothing homoerotic friendship between her and her friend, I just don't remember if it happened after Ides of March or S's birthday party... I don't think we hung out much in May at all because I was probably extremely depressive then. Hard to say. I think we kept trying to make plans for a hike/cafe thing and I kept cancelling because I didn't want to leave the house.
THE DAY AFTER LITTLE MAN'S BIRTHDAY PARTY
Well I made a whole post about this. But, H brought along their friend again, who S invited, I held bisexual symposium with N, Ely Offman, and that friend, and all three of them said the same thing, which was: Would only date the opposite sex, except for their sole same-sex true love exception. Oh BROTHER!!! And people ask why I'm biphobic. I don't even know or remember what H was doing, but at one point, it is me, N and H, taking beside the couch because H is sitting by the wall next to the couch, and she does also egg us into making out when it gets brought up. The day after this, H finds out that N has blocked her on instagram, though she tells us way later.
LIKE TWO WEEKS BEFORE THAT
This is the day where both Annas, Olivia, N and I are invited to have dinner at S's house, at her mother's behest. So I meet them at the UofT Grad Pub, and H walks with me all the way over, and then when we split off, S, H and I head to Spadina station, and split off again? This was also the day of the English Department showcase, which meant this was the day where I almost cry out of frustration while explaining to H that I want this specific professor to like me so so bad except I am so so stupid it's lowkey unreal. And I had a weird dream about him. Remember how this post is called A WEIRD YEAR? and it's specifically curated to only talk about the occasions on which I hung out with H, yeah, could not tell you the amount of stuff happening accessory to everything here. So this is a really incomplete picture actually, and is still a rough and decent outline of the whole year!
Basically, I met with H and then we met with one of the girls she RAs with, and had lunch at the campus cafe where we had the worst service of our life, because our waitress had beef with the other RA, because they had one class together at one point. And then they both tipped this woman anyway.
ONE DAY BEFORE THAT
Weirdest coincidence in the world happens wherein, H, being the kind of person to always be roped into a side-quest, meets S's ex-girlfriend's evil fucking mom, because she is an open-hearted and extroverted person who is curious and inquisitive and has no shame in asking about why there is an event happening in a university gymnasium, and is asked in turn, Do you play Minecraft? and guess what, she actually plays Minecraft so much that, months and months later, she can hold a conversation with my HS friends, who all play and I have always been alienated from regarding this front. Anyway. Gets asked to speak at this event, gets a free t-shirt as a reward. Takes me to the Media Commons Common Room, which is decked out exactly how one would expect, while telling me about her professor who conducts class via Twitch stream.
I think, though I could not say for sure, we went to the Imperial pub this day, and I think this is true because the Media Commons room was so dark and when we went outside, I was like whoa it's so bright and still daytime? And then we went to the Imperial Pub, and I was like Ohhh, it's dark again... She got poutine and I got, something, or maybe we shared the poutine, I don't remember. It was poutine and sweet potato fries I think. I looked at every single book shelf, which I think she knew I was going to do, and got disappointed by how pathetic the material was overall. What I do remember, is H saying that she's not really easily impressed by people and often feels superior to everyone. Which I said, Yeah, Me too, I Know. Then she said, Well, it's like different with you. By which she meant, that she wanted me to be impressed by her, and I remember this being the very clear interpretation that I really did not know what do with and couldn't say, Yeah, Same to this this time, and instead just went: Well, I really don't think that matters, I just have fun hanging out with you.
I think this was the day we also really briefly perused the Muji, or it was the day after. It was definitely this day, because I have two pictures of us in the muji mirror and I am greasy haired and makeupless and I look, Really Not Good, which was why I was taking so much offense at how she kept saying I was beautiful, in what I'm sure was actually intended to be a casual manner, but.... So you don't call someone, who is notably normal-to-nice-looking beautiful. And I tried to explain this to her, but she really wasn't getting it. Also at the Imperial Pub, she took out her laptop to schedule her grad photos. That was also an entire separate anecdote that I remember being distinctly amused by.
AND BEFORE THAT
At some point, I get invited over to have falafel, a food that's a normal amount of good and was particularly good on this occasion because it was homemade and all. I meet both siblings and the parents, and talk too fast for her mom to understand, though I was really doing my best to try and converse. I think I brought cheesecake desert, which might've made me a little late because I had to go to Metro, but I was going to a brown household for the first time ever and having dinner made for me, so it seemed like a necessary gesture. H shows me her room, at which I'm genuinely shocked and appalled by the amount of Stuff she has, and genuinely the HQ!! fixation is so bad, but then I'm really humiliated and humbled because past that, her bookshelf was really impressive actually. This is the day where I learn one of her favourite books is East of Eden, that she went to California to do a creative writing program at some point; instead of borrowing anything substantial, I get handed a copy of Euripedes, which is of course the play where the really famous Tumblr line: "I'll take care of you." / "It's rotten work." / "Not to me. Not if it's you." which was the entire reason she had it. Anyway, way later I actually read it, and it was really really good and for the first time in my life, having actually read it, I understand why Cassandra is such a haunting figure for so many classists.
Sort of more notable and important, is that we then pick up H's friend from her workplace, Petsmart, and there's such a fucked up vibe shift. It's actually really painfully obvious that her friend, when not speaking to me directly, which she does and we do converse normally, is like only talking about shared experiences between H and her. But! We get knafeh, and it's so fucking good! And then we watch Kpop music videos on the TV, because it's like, 2012 I guess, and you're at a family friend's house... I go home. I have a normal time.
BEFORE THAT
At Ides of March, H brings along a friend, and S immediately clocks their dynamic as homoerotically charged. I'm sort of tasteblind at that kind of thing, as it happens, being so scarred from the trenches myself. Actually, while writing this, I went out of my way to text someone I haven't texted in months because well, I have someone to introduce, formally even, to my HS friend group and probably would like it if they showed up. Not exactly for bragging rights or anything even, but possibly even to offer my guy the full experience/context/etc. Anyway, I do actually hang out with H and her friend at this party because no one else that interesting is there, and am so shocked and surprised by how well she keeps up a conversation with Guy-I-Fucking-Hate Shine. Genuinely so respectable and surmountable of a task to me. There's like this moment where the 3-4 of us are sitting on the floor by the couch and asking personal and invasive questions, and I think one of those really ambiguous strange moments happens, but I cannot recall exactly what. But I do remember the couch-corner seating arrangement as a little relevant and notable. If I really had to guess, knowing myself, it was something like, S asking H's friend why it wasn't working out, and her friend, 'Man I wish! I'm trying!' and obviously, because I am an Evil and Bad Person, I immediately look at H, considering, because I mean, I can win. Famous last words maybe. AND IT HAPPENED AT THE IDES OF MARCH... Wow... How premonitive...
AND BEFORE THAT
We watched Mickey17 and she was on her phone for like the first few minutes and I was so annoyed but I really didn't say anything. And then she was like, You should come play sudoku in my car, which has a huge iPad as it's middle console. I don't do that. I go back to my own car and drive home. S is still healing from her break-up, so I had invited her to come watch it with us, but she opted out. Surely this happened in March, because I distinctly do remember S being lowkey fucked up still, and watching Abbott Elementary when I got back? See, this is how you know H was lowkey nothing to me, the thing that I actually remember about this occasion are the weather [cold, frosty], where I parked [very close to the Cineplex] and where H parked [in the middle of fucking nowhere, for No Reason presumably, because there were genuinely so many free parking spots so much closer] because I walked her to her car, and how distinctly miserable S had been. Maybe she was recovering from a cold. I don't remember very well. This does get mentioned in my thin blue-stupid-tiger notebook in passing as happening between Feb12 and April 27, 28th: "went 2 movies only once I think to watch Mickey17 w/ [H] (her name is misspelled) <- new friend btw"
[ADDENUM: So, this happened March 11, and I know this because H just sent me an photo of her journal entry, unprompted of the occasion and it reads: "went to a movie w/ niz yesterday, mickey17, I keep thinking I'm developing a c-word but I need to remember that most of her is the delusions ive created in my head (probably). ilikeher a lot tho."]
AND BEFORE THAT: MY SECOND TIME EVER AT TIFF
I go to watch Universal Language for the second time, assuming it H's first time watching the movie. This is a movie that Nima Naghibi had told us about, last month. She informs me afterwards that it is her third time watching, and I really can't do anything more with that information than be suspicious and add it to 'Information that I Know' category in my brain which is used for nefarious evil purposes, and it gets worse when she tells me she didn't even care for this movie that much. This is genuinely where I begin to do my Good Deed of the Year. This is what I will write down on a post-it as my Good Deed of the Year at S's New Year's Party, for the bathroom activity in Elena's bathroom, and then be too embarrassed to actually post onto the mirror and instead will fold into my pocket, because it's too mean and obvious and what if she recognises my handwriting, and then later tell H about anyway, when we are in that bathroom doing the activities last-minute, at the very end of the party and I don't notice her stealing the post-it to keep for herself, because I am too busy thinking about how it was kind of sexy to be pushed against the wall both the first and second time, and is also kind of mildly even sexier this time because her arm is like parallel against my chest, and maybe she should be touching my boobs for real? [For her own answers, all four times, she writes: I WON THE GAME. / KEEP PLAYING THE GAME in terrible chicken scratch real fucking fast because she's trying to get back to kissing me.] Anyway, so I decide the best course of action is to pretend not to know that she's in love with me.
Not that she was in love at this point, but we were sitting across from each other at the TIFF cafe, and splitting two Craig's Cookies, and I was looking out the window quite a lot because I was wondering how to navigate this situation and conversation so it was ambiguous and neutral /pos but neutral /friendly as possible. As in, would love to hang out and be friends; but I don't want to encourage feelings of romantic expectation or affection, and also I was really debating even the friends thing because she kept providing me with information and opinions that I really could not be taking seriously and was getting mad about. I was like Wow, this is a really weird and intimate sort-of set-up and it's going to look so so bad when I tell S about it!
[Feb 19th according to H's journal entry: "it went okay. (niz movie)"]
TEN DAYS BEFORE THAT
She shows up a little late, and with a box of spiked lemonade that stays at my place for a long, long time afterwards because I never get around to drinking it. She informs me that I text like a Hinge man, and I think, Wow that's a really interesting and specific comparison to make with very obvious undertones. I'm going to ignore that. She spends a lot of this party chatting with our temporary roommate, who is big on YA/NA Fantasy BookTok and otherwise was not going to talk to anyone at this party, as it turns out H, as a guy who works at Indigo and #knows, was really perfectly suited as a conversational match.
One of S's Hinge dates, upon being asked if she was black, had a really weird answer about it, and S had relayed this to me, Anna, and Olivia, mixed, black mom, took a lot of offence. Upon seeing H, she asked the same thing. H, did the same, Uh... and Olivia immediately walked about. Like a year later, when I inform S that H is like, really really mixed in a way that white people don't consider mixed, S is like, Oh yeah, no wonder she couldn't answer that. Anyway, H does well enough at this party and is dykely enough, as I suspected, to ensure herself an invite to Olivia's Ides of March party.
SOMETIME, REALLY EARLY FEBRUARY I THINK I DON'T WANT TO BOTHER CHECKING THE EMAILS
In attempt to speak to Nima Naghibi, who is speaking to another student at this little mingling of the event, I compliment this student on their scarf. Which, I learn way way later, is wool from Nepal. That specific day, and for most of both halves of winter, I am wearing a cashmere silver-blue scarf, that my mom got when she was at the Himalayas. About eight months later, I have forgotten that somewhere, surely findable, and still into the next year, I keep forgetting to look for it. Anyway, like months and months later, that scarf is visible on an instagram post that could technically construed as a soft launch.
We are two of three students at this event that is otherwise, Oops! All Professors! and then it turns out, that H and Aria, are only here because the professor that they RA for is moderating the thing! So, actually I'm the only fucking person here that's here out of commitment to being a nerd. H, being extremely dykely, and kind of one of the only bearable nonwhite person I have met in the English department [turns out, not even an English student], and really importantly, being extroverted enough [otherwise Aria, who really seemed uninterested] gets an invite to S's Superbowl party, since otherwise I will be drowning in a sea of chemistry graduate students.
-
Anyway, during the countdown, I ask H if it's okay if I just give her a kiss on the cheek right now, cause I have to talk to my lawyer, and she laughs and kisses me on the mouth when the clock strikes. After, I keep telling her that it's really fucked up that she won the game.
11:53-ISH, NEW YEAR'S EVE
It is really really close to midnight, and I am sure I can get a New Year's Kiss, I just don't know who it is I should kiss, and there are no dearth of options, but only one of them requires a talk with my lawyer and litigation. She will kiss me, this I know, this, I think everybody at the party knows. There's no doubt, she'd kiss me if it was serious, she'd kiss me if it was a joke for me, she'd kiss me just because I asked and no other reason with no sense of self-preservation or fidelity. My friend G[race] is here, and she deserves a New Year's Kiss and we'd joked, over a month ago, about this - and there's N, who cannot ask for a kiss because she brought along the man she was seeing, but also would. The problem herein lies, that now I really really have to explain this situation and the stakes and relay other vitally information about this to H right now. I ask H if we can step out onto the balcony, where it is winter and freezing and definitely below 0, but would help calm down my very very hot face, and also would be easier to have this conversation on because it is quieter and more private. She agrees, because of course she does, and then I drag her out, and we're both in socks in the freezing balcony and are stepping over the frosted railing edge because my hands are clutched around her shoulders and I am not very balanced or inclined to it, and I keep pulling her back and back. I am trying to tell her a story about the MollyTea bag in which I bought my two bottles of soju, and how I am a very greedy and otherwise terrible person, except I have to stop every time I look at her face because I get distracted by something, which was painful to think about at the moment, and was hard to say to her face, and is hard to even write out; so I can only tell this story in parts as I look out to Allan Gardens and surrounding area. H knows exactly what this is and what's happening and knows what will happen, about, seven minutes from now. It is fucking freezing on the balcony. I don't remember exactly if this is the balcony episode where Sergio [Daniel's (vaguely homoerotic) white(?) half] and Daniel [Dominican camera guy, he is the +1 and Sergio is the actual invitee but not to me, not in my world] come out and join us on, or if that happens earlier or later, but hey! We have to go back inside, because the countdown!!!
In fact, about ten minutes ago, I had very cautiously made my way over to her, near the 11:40-something mark, knowing it was close to midnight, for this express purpose.
EARLIER THAT NIGHT
The first time I say, "I'm gonna go to the bathroom" this is because I need to step inside and then scream a little bit. I end up on the floor next to S's shower, where she has a mat and am facing a massive psychic attack not understanding the state of affairs that has led to whatever full-body reaction I am having right now. There are some messages time-stamped at 10:26 PM to the tw3 discord server that say:
So
AWFUL NEWS EVERYONE.
IM GONNA KILL MYRAELFFF
There is a can of some kind of alcohol on the counter, and I think about bringing it out to throw it out properly, but I don't do that. On the wall, there's a prompt that says, "What's an evil thing you've done in 2025?" and a few pale yellow post-it answers, though some have fallen onto the floor. I think, 'Not picking up these post-it notes.'
The second time I excuse myself from the conversation, I once again go to S's bathroom, and this time there are even more post-its on the floor, and quite a few are wet, and then I reapply my lip-gloss - which is, weirdly enough, something I rarely do at parties, which is why this particular tube of Patrick Ta Full Syringe, has lasted as long as it has, but for some reason this party is different. In trying to enter the bathroom, I open the door to a frail white woman who is also reapplying her lipstick and I feel terrible about it and apologise profusely and drunkenly when she exits, while my friend Grace uses the bathroom. She is the 3rd or 4th person of the night I accost about the grand, very important and pertinent question of: How do you Know. How do you know!!! She has been in a relationship for 12 years and is doing long-distance from Morocco where the visa situation is not working out. She has very little advice for me. I keep surreptitiously checking in on H from the distance, where I see her speaking to various white women, and the occasion that worried me, really for no reason, because of course I Know, a brown baddie in a great green dress. Her name is Sermon, her tits look great, she's very beautiful, she's really excitable and of course, H is a good conversationalist, maybe great, it depends on the day and who you ask and whether or not I am in vicinity [or at least, I think so]. Really interesting thing about H that I have been pretending not to notice this whole year, is that I make her nervous. It's not fun to be on her side of the equation.
EARLIER THAT NIGHT
N comes up to us? We come up to N? I see N and H, chatting. And the only reason this is an actual episode is because N is leaning in really close to H while lecturing her about how Lebanese people are fucking whores!, and their faces are very very close together and it's a great visual For Me. Recently, my favourite party trick [I have only done this at one other party], is making beautiful beautiful women kiss. #Himejoshi'ing out. Slightly more than I want to kiss either of them, I am really really struck by the thought of how much I want them to kiss each other. Later, after midnight, upon request. They do do this. [Later, when it's Daytime, H tells me that was definitely purely for my benefit on both sides.] After which, N tells me I am a freak and a menace and too attractive for my own good and using these powers for evil. Some of this is true, some of this is not, it's just that N is really into me and she is truly one of the most beautiful girls in the world so I want to see her kiss other beautiful girls, and I tell her that she's the most beautiful girl at this party. Really interesting thing to say when I'm next to H, but at that point, it's known to them both, that she's won the game. Having two beautiful Arab baddies next to me like this, I am really really thinking >Damn I wish polyamory wasn't so fucking cringe but I understand why people invented it. How am I going to create a repeat of this situation PLEASEEE PLEASEEEE.
AROUND 10:-- ISH PM
For no particular reason, the entire day, I kept putting 'party 4 u' onto my queue in Spotify, until finally giving in and playing it on repeat. At some point, my phone was dying and I couldn't concentrate on Notes from the Blockade, and had written in my narrow blue-with-stupid-tigers notebook, thinking of a similar line in Anna K: "If I see her, I'll know. And because I don't want to know, I don't want to see her. Because I'll know. But if by chance - then.... then..."
This particular sentiment was why, when two days ago S had said that she hadn't invited H because she didn't know what the situation was, and I told her that I also did not know what the situation was and could not speak on it until I met with my lawyer, which was on the 1st, and told her not to invite H. I then texted her the day after, that: "You can invite [H] if you want. But don't tell me." This was also why, when H asked if I was going to S's party [The party she's only invited to because S is my friend? Stupid fucking question.], I didn't respond. However, H, in one of those terrible lovely chess manuevers, somehow finds out that Klimt, a painter I recently mentioned liking, had painted Ludwig Wittgenstein's sister, and then that Wittgenstein had read and been affected by Tolstoy's religious tracts, and texted me about that and, having been so well and so masterfully baited, I did bite.
Anyway. This party starts at 8. Of course no one shows up to a party at 8, and H loves to show up to things forever running late, and I also don't actually know that she will show up, because her showing up is dependent on me being there, which I neither confirmed nor denied for the precisely for this exact unknowable quality of chance. She shows up a little after 10, which was very fashionable and cool of her, while I am speaking to Kirk [S's girlfriend], Sergio and Daniel and She's-a-baddie-she-knows-shes-a-10 Wendy and this-fucker-I-hate Shine, and encircled by these people, I see her and then I know. For about one second I think: Oh it's not so!, and then I don't think that at all, and I crouch onto the floor because this is precisely why I didn't want to know.
FOUR DAYS BEFORE THAT
My lawyer and historically-materialistically best friend, A, has made a tradition out of a post-Christmas potluck. Over the years more and more people have attended, and it has gotten less and less enjoyable. For some reason, it has been vitally important to me - after the shitshow and trainwreck of last year - that H attend with me this year. Because H is actually good at parties and way better at talking to people we both find boring, possibly because she actually doesn't find them boring, and is not so terrible and derisive and judgemental like I am or something. I have sort of been fixated on this, because it will be Nice and Enjoyable if H attends, and also I need to introduce H to these people also anyway, because I am the sort-of freak and person that wants all my friends to meet and be friends with one another. H, because her family actually celebrates Christmas and the like, in the Arabic Lebanese Coptic way, [SO LIKE NOT WHITE AMERICANLY or EUROPEANLY...though her mom did create a nativity scene which was pretty funny], so she had been extremely evasive despite my reminders and follow-ups. Anyway, she shows up an hour late, which means we are now an hour late to this potluck, and I drive her over, and we have to stop at the McDonald's just by the house because she didn't remember that I told her it was also a White Elephant and got a last-minute $25 giftcard, rather than the $20 max, because they offered her a free coupon. Which ended up in my pocket somehow, and I still have.
Anyway, she brought cannolis and I brought milk cakes, and I introduce her to the important guy in question, and they both are made fun of by me and in turn make fun of me, and, get along. After two days of Choosing Not To Examine It Further, I come to the conclusion that: Yeah, I probably wouldn't mind it if she kisses me in the Kipling GO parking lot.
When we make our exit, being the last #lingerers, I tell H to hold my bags, because I don't want to hold them right now and she usually fusses about holding them so it's a win-win, and she takes them from my hand, and then immediately puts them onto the floor, because she hasn't pulled on her shoes yet, and I watch that motion with the paralysed agony that I watch her do all her extremely generous and kind actions with, a total despairing doom about her total lack of self-preservation. No sense of it at all. I decided some months earlier, that as an adult, she has free will and is allowed to and can make the choice to, a la Dostoevsky, to burn and burn out and be healed and come back again however she wishes, which seemed to me, over the year, by pursuing a terrible and manipulative girl who will take advantage of all of her efforts without reciprocating. The Potluck seemed to me, to be the last hurdle to this question of reciprocality and what I should actually do about it! Since, despite my hedonistic instincts, I do believe in leading a moral and ethically meaningful life.
There was a certain feeling, when we were walking out together, her holding all the bags and the door closing on us, of that final image of us; the impression we would've left. That was what I wanted from her, I thought. This thought made it so that I drove very badly and very nervously to Kipling GO station. I looked at her, with what I was hoping was a pleading and big-eyed innocent, inquiring expression, and what could have instead come off as deranged and crazy-eyed, but all that served to do was make her more nervous and freak out and leave.
How fleeting or unfleeting this thought is, or what it actually means, or what it entails, and if it's actually serious or not, or what it is I am actually feeling and if this is all a side-effect of being on my period, and is this a schizophrenic episode, is this a repeat of my other multiple failed attempts at having Normative Human Romantic Emotion, is this an actable upon emotion, should I even act on this, etc etc etc, are all questions that really be plaguing me for the next four days. In order to find some kind of answer, I have to speak to my lawyer, a person who has seen the trenches of my most homoerotic friendship, due to being friends with the two of us for nearly the entirety of that run-time; because this might be a similar situation. I don't know and I personally don't think so, but everything is information I don't have and cannot access!!!
TWO DAYS BEFORE THAT
Her mother got me presents. Which meant that her mother knew from beforehand that I was going to come and that she prepared for me to be there and bought and then wrapped those gifts, and they were not very personalised or serious by any means, but it was baffling and absurd and shocking, and this was the thing, more than H's actual gifts to me [also very thoughtful and serious in certain ways], that had me deeply and irrevocably fucked up and why I had decided Not To Think About It. Lately, this month seemed to be about: [Sit Back] [Wait]/[Observe] Not Everything Needs A Reaction. This was why I had decided not to examine going over to her house for Christmas all that seriously, because even though, everyone else I knew that attended Christmases were doing so with their significant others. I had decided to think about it in a more metropolitan, multicultural way, wherein I didn't have family that was going to celebrate and thus was available to attend, as the lonely baleful orphan archetype or whatever, since my family was also out of the country.
However, it was also very painfully obvious to me that H's family were celebrating as a family, and this was a family event [were none of her siblings non-Christian friends available to hang out? Did they not have any? [Non-Christian friends] Was I really the only friend, of all three siblings, that came over with a certain regularity?], so around noon, I mentioned that I should head out, because I didn't want to impose further. This gave H RSD. We took her cousin, who last night had asked if I was H's girlfriend - and, being horrible and terrible, I didn't answer because I was too busy laughing because the absurd fact of the situation was that I wasn't, but H, very straight-faced and serious and long-standingly annoyedly, in a way that was sexy and semeful and topply, that filled with me with a sense of respect and admiration, said, No, I was not. First to a nearby lakeside park, where I took a picture of the horizon that somehow caught the edge of H's coat sleeve, and later, when I wanted to post a final year-end picspam on Instagram, I kept getting stuck on and had to resort to exiting the app, because obviously that candid shot was the one I wanted to post, but I couldn't. Obviously I couldn't. Then to an Egyptian cafe, where her cousin ordered a matcha and found it deep green and delicious, and H ordered an espresso instead of a real drink, as is her habit, and I ordered a cappuccino and her sister a latte. The cups everything came in were beautiful muted colours. Her sister then ordered us this Egyptian pudding desert that I brought forks [because they were the only utensils available in the cafe] to eat with, but we all resorted to drinking. It was good but also only in small, small sips. The entire time, in the car and at the restaurant, I talked mostly at H, but sometimes with her sister, and often forgot to address the cousin at all. The entire time, H was so grouchy and terrible and in a bad mood but not in a bad way, and I knew it was my fault and was trying my best to dress the wound or fix it belatedly. In the car, on the way to, I had asked if she was going through RSD, and she asked what that was, and I explained what it was, and her sister laughed and said, 'Wow, that's exactly what she's like,' and H, surely not lying, said, 'No, I don't have that.'
Ridgeway Plaza is this famous [to me], highly memed upon [by me] place in the West GTA, that H insists on. I suggest we go there, and we do, and her sister gets chicken bites, because she wants popcorn chicken and this is the only place open that has a similar option available. They do have good chicken, we all agreed when it finally came out, but it was a very long wait and H was still in a terrible mood, and at one point, having very little to say without H's usual endless dialogue options, I bring out my blue-with-stupid-tigers notebook, and begin to doodle some approximation of her sister because I like the way her scarf is falling around her neck. Her cousin sees this, and asks if I can draw her, which I do upon request and after the necessary warnings of 'I'm not actually good at this.' And then, because H is there, and still not participating, I draw her as well, even after telling her I have technically done it before so I don't have to, because ten million years ago we were at a [Chinese people] Chinese restaurant and they had little note slips and pencils at every table and I had drawn her a little doodle of her face and she kept in her phone case for a long time after. I think she pretended not to remember this because I pointed out that it lived in her phonecase, or really hadn't remembered it at all. But I doodled her again, except this time with a certain care that I chose not to examine, though it was particularly important to me that her likeness be actually rendered. All three of them had a serious eyelash situation to go along with their serious eyebrow situation, but on my drawing it just made H look kind-of too feminine. Afterwards, on the walk back to the car, we split off into pairs, and I tagged a little behind her, holding her elbow, and knew how it looked and again, really could not Think About That Right Now. In real and true me fashion, mostly I was just enjoying that she was being sullen and I was given the role of lavishing her with attention and pets.
In true nail-in-coffin fashion, after I left, and had been home for a few hours, and had texted her to remind her of the card she'd forgotten to give me, I received a text back saying there was a card and a tray of food waiting for me on my doorstep. The card, thankfully, was very normal and sweet but also said something that was very damning and awful for me personally, in that she liked hearing me talk. Because, earlier that day, when we were driving back to her place, I caught myself telling her a nothing-story about myself or my mom and sure her sister and her cousin were in the car, but I wasn't really talking to them or for them, or even really for her, I was telling this story because I wanted her to hear it, and knew she would listen and it was a nothing-story, it really didn't matter at all, but I'd been saying it anyway.
She got me a notebook with grid paper and a blue cover, a pink highlighter, a fancy German pen with fancier packaging that writes very smooth, a lead pencil, a blue kitty tail pen, a Baggu foldable bag with MyMelody holding strawberries on it because it was blue, and a pack of card stock note paper; the card came in an envelope that closed with a sticker of a bird; and the thing that she was most worried about to the point of having prepared a second option, was a 100-pack of postcards of Penguin Classics. Which was obviously the thing I liked most. Anyway, it was drawing on me that this situation was Serious and Dire and needed Intervention, but I couldn't think about that right now, I needed her to attend a potluck.
A WEEK BEFORE THAT
Weirdly, the thing that H and I do the most, is that we watch movies together, and the habit of H's that I find the most terrible and am the most forgiving of, in that I never mention it, is that she loves to check her phone during a movie. Anyway, I wanted to Resurrection and I needed someone to watch the movie with me so badly because I needed to be incited and dragged out of the house, because it was winter and cold and the precondition of staying in and not going out was so so nice. I didn't immediately ask H, because H does not actually like movies that are avant-garde and of the art film genre, but so did no one else. So I did ask H anyway, and then when I told her she was the last person I asked, she started bitching about it and had a fit and a conniption about not even being my last resort, because I was just going to alone, and I was watching her thinking: Right, so that's my bit and she's stealing it and honestly, it's kind of an annoying bit but it is really so funny... but in very predictable and true H fashion, she did have her phone out for the entire movie, just to read the plot summary on Wikipedia as the movie was playing. Terrible, terrible form... and she didn't really care for the movie. As I thought... but she did correctly read the Buddhism metaphors in it... so who could say whether she's bad at movies or not.
We went to a place called Coffee Oysters Champagne, right near the TIFF theatre, and kept being told to ask for the Champagne tour, because there was a speakeasy behind the bar front, but that... we weren't.... that wasn't relevant to my life right then... Relevant to my life was that I had never had an espresso martini before, and they were doing $5 martinis, and I am a lightweight, and a terrible person and really, really susceptible to flirting when I'm drunk, so obviously I made her compare hand sizes with me. Which is a really classic one, and mostly I wanted to hold hands but clearly that wasn't... not a casual gesture in whatever was happening. Not even a day ago, I had texted my high school friends that:
might as well introduce [H] since i think she is going to be a situation in my life for the time being
in the most normal way possible
What did I mean by this? I really wouldn't know. She told me she had an appointment for a top surgery consult, which I had never known was on the table or even a consideration, and it occurred to me that I really knew how to pick them. Like I think other people think they're chasers, and or think they know what a chaser is. Not like me. They haven't met me. They don't know about me. This has no bearing or reflection on whatever happens next or before, or at least I think, conceptually really funny if the true turning point of H being viable/non-viable candidate really was the reveal of being trans masc was on the fucking table. S has this joke where she loves to tell people that I don't want anyone without top surgery because one time she asked what I thought about Naomi from Muna, and I was like 'I really don't think about them' and then she told me Naomi from Muna got top surgery and I was like 'Hang on, let me go investigate and have a thought...'
Really, nothing of note happened this day, but I do think I behaved badly. Maybe I made this up, but I think I was looking at her and wondering if or why I really didn't feel anything other than strong affectionate friendship.
FIVE DAYS BEFORE THAT
H texts, asks if I want to go to Upper Canada Mall. I do not. H says, wait, it's near MollyTea, shall I come over with some. I agree, if it's not going to be too much trouble [though to tw3 I text: but I doooo want princess treatment, oh no, sorry, I didn't even say that I said: 'ok well in the end i do want gf treatment …' which, really, I'm sorry, My Bad]. H, many, many hours later than the agreed upon time, shows up with two drinks, unveiling my requested Matcha Jasmine Cheese and then explaining, apologetically, that they tried to get it without the matcha foam [something I only request when the shop is not busy], and I text tw3:
[speed gif] ohhhhhh
she asked the guys to do no matcha foam for my drink even tho i didnt tell her to and ultimately it failed BRUH I SHOULD BE TAKING MYSELF OUT BACK LIKE A HORSE….
[noura] yeah let's kill you
How do we feel about me and [H] hot priest fleabag costume. Id be the hot priest
This was obviously a joke. That could be serious. We were watching Wake Up Dead Man on her laptop, which was fine and normal and Josh O'Connor was so sexy in it. This was pretty normal and fine to me. The part that felt so on the nose, was when we decided to watch a second movie and put on The Handmaiden. Really good movie that I'd never seen before. I just, I was a bisexual girl sitting next to a lesbian who hadn't even gone to Upper Canada Mall, like her parents went, then came back and she had custody of the car, then drove forty minutes out of the way to go to Molly Tea, where she asked for a substitution that I'd mentioned not liking to her but had also said was no big deal, and then drove to my place. Thankfully, she had to go before we could make a normal amount of headway into it, because she had to charge her car, and then I was like I can wait out the charging part with you, and so she found a fast charger, and I found a Popeyes that was near it, and she was, slightly put-off and vaguely suspicious asked me why I had so much energy, and I was like, 'Is this the first time you've seen me not depressed?' because it's highly likely that I have bipolar disorder [type 2?], but also that I do not want to ever confirm that, and it was one of the weeks of the year where I had been very excitable and high-energy and into living. I hadn't even noticed the change myself.
While we were waiting in her car afterwards, I reminded her about the potluck and the potluck situation, and wondered if we should be getting each other Christmas gifts, and she left that unanswered.
I also don't remember if this was today, or if it happened later, on Christmas, but in her search bar when she typed in certain letters, fwcu.dreamwidth.org would show up as a recommended result. Likely chance that she reads this or could read this or gets sent this, so I don't know if it's going to be access-locked or not.
A WEEK AND SOME BEFORE THAT...
H loves to do this thing where she has seen a movie before, and then comes to the movies with me anyway to watch a movie for the 3rd or 2nd time, and just Not tell me until after the fact. So anyway, I watched JJK Execution, in real nerd fashion, a day or so before, at the small shitty theatre near campus, and then agreed to watch the movie again with her on the auspicious as fuck occasion of Gojo Satoru's birthday. Well, to be clear, we already had a plan from ten million years ago to watch this movie together, except I realised that I could watch it a day early by myself, and then did go and watch it a day early, and in doing so realised how much of a difference there was in theatre and projection quality between the big chain brand and the local guy. We watched it at the Eglinton Cineplex, and this is when I learnt that it was the second time ever that H had been to this movie theatre, a common theatre that I have frequented for many years of my life, both times because it was a theatre close to where I live. For afterwards, she also brought over cupcakes that she'd made in honour of Gojo's birthday, and decorated and then had plastic wrapped them, and the icing [the kind that didn't set] was all fucked up, and we had to redecorate them. I took three or four really bad photos of her with the cupcakes and then ended up posting only the cupcakes on my instagram story and forgot to even tag her. Weirdly enough, no one ever holds that I am a bad careless person against me. They should but they don't!
A LITTLE WHILE BEFORE THAT
I think what happened was that I was complaining, and then H was like 'do you want to hang out?' and I was like 'if it wouldn't be too much trouble' and this was yet another day, where H, after work or something, drives all the fucking over to my place and then drives us to Highway 7 Molly Tea, and we talk incessantly about Heated Rivalry and then have to wait for her car to charge really slowly, because it would've been fine to go from her to mine and then back, but then we took it to get Molly Tea, at my request [INSTEAD OF MY CAR. WORKING. WITH A BEAUTIFUL BEAUTIFUL GIRL WHO HAS A DRIVING LICENSE AND CAN ACTIVELY DRIVE AND INSURANCE HER DAD PAYS FOR]. Then get really mid noodles afterwards. She tells me about how Lebanon used to have the best gay scene in all of the Middle East and Beirut used to have the greatest club scene, and it was really frustrating and awful to visit and just see the remains of everything that Israel had bombed out. That it was a 'don't-ask-don't-tell' situation with her family, whereas everyone in my family is like woke in a specific guided-misguided way, and I am far more positive about how well they'd take to a gay_reveal, and how like, it's even obvious. And I'm literally bisexual and want to marry a man...
SOME DAYS BEFORE THAT
We have lunch-supper at a place near campus that I always want to try out for their cold dishes/dipping udon but I don't want their udon and it's too cold for cold noodles and also H doesn't actually really care for ramen, but we go in anyway, and I order what I really hope is gyudon but is actually fried rice with beef... which is really close. Neither of us are enjoying our meals. Having watched Waltz with Bashir the day before in class, I ask her, because she's Lebanese-Christian on her mom's side, if her family were Bashir supporters. She, looking very guilty, admits that while it's extremely complicated actually [which, obviously!] but yes, basically, in essence. I tell her that, Actually this is great to know, because my Professor, Nima Naghibi, was questioning the sanctity of showing an Israeli film in the class, and had not I seen it, I would have not known to ask H about it.
At some point, on a lighter conversation topic, she mentions that she told her coworkers about me, and I say, 'You talk to other bitches?' because that's a normal and normatively baitful and Bad thing to say to someone you are pretending not to know is in love with you; and she's like 'No, they're my coworkers,' which yeah, obviously, as it becomes increasingly clear, as the year continues to it's end, that her coworkers know so much about me which is fine, except whatever they know is so incriminating that when later, I ask if I can come to her Indigo on Boxing Day with her cousin, she looks like she wants to kill herself and says, "You can't." I think we're hanging out, by the way, because I said I was free and on campus, and she was like 'Do you want to watch Zootopia 2' and came to meet me with a half-assed plan to watch Zootopia 2, and I do distinctly remember thinking she looked very handsome when she came in but nothing otherwise. We didn't end up watching Zootopia 2...
When we part, I text tw3:
I think [H] thinks we’re playing the game
which we might be but that’s lowkey none of my business
And then, the day after, I text Lady Parts But Gay:
also I think [H] thinks we're playing 'The Game' but that's lowkey none of my business like I think I have sent all the warning signs and do not enters etc etc etc
but like litr it is well understood that i would be playing the straight friend to her hopelessly in [limbo] lesbian pining one ... so it really is on her choice and autonomy to get herself into this situation
[S] Uhm
though interestingly she has been looking slightly more handsome to be of late .
which im not going to ascribe any real meaning to bc i always think my friends are super beautiful so i assume its the usual effect of having good feelings in one's hear towards the guy you feel affectionately towards
[Olivia] This is crazy but ykw have fun
[S] I dont know if i can support this
A WEEK AND SOME BEFORE THAT
I text H and let her know I'm free after 1, and then she comes and meets me at the library, where she accosts me with one of those terrible fucking bookmarks made for RomantasyTok, it says: "I don't watch porn I read it like a fucking lady" and has a ruler on the back, and I refuse to take it, and realise way later that she slipped it into my bag unbeknownst to me, and she gets a text two weeks later, when I start reading Anna K because using this crass of a bookmark on my Serious Classic Lit, was a really funny visual to me. Anyway, on the day of, we walk twenty minutes down to get MollyTea, because I want MollyTea [my serious and crippling addiction as has surely become apparent] and on the way, there's this Thai Marketplace where I spot two packs of Lays Chips in Thailand specialty flavours and buy then to make H try them with me, and H does not like either, as do I, because one is really fishy and otherwise tastes of lemon dish soap, and the other is like, a weird sweetness. Neither are good. I make her sit out in the cold with me, at Breadalbane Park[ette] as we drink our Molly Tea, and I complain at length about a certain classmate of mine and something they said months ago, and there's a weird point of connection because the park has like indigenous art installation thing going on, and thing I was mad about was because she had a stupid response to some Tribe Chief saying something about eyeliner, and H is listening to me go on and on about this really stupid thing, and we are out in the mild cold.
Then we head back to the library, because we still have time to kill before we watch CSM: Reze which is the plan of the day, and I lead her back to my favourite shelf on the 5th floor, which is where all the Wittgenstein shelf is, right across from the Baidou, and right next to the Kierkegaard. Then I forcibly enact silent reading time, and make her tandem-read Diary of a Seducer with me, which neither of us understand or really get much out of, but after the fact I was soooo touched by the event and the occasion and felt soooo much fondness about her going along with it, and do still really treasure this moment. Then? Before? She reads some of Kierkegaard's diary, while I did fuckwhatever, and sys that she doesn't fuck with him being a Calvinist and then has to explain what a Calvinist is to me. We decide to get dinner, and do the usual back and forth about who picks what we get, because I do sometimes have a conscience and don't always love to be the one who decides what we eat... and we end up getting bbimbap at a place she likes, and over dinner she reveals to me that she took an edible before she got here, and that was a bad idea, and then, "I really don't know how to ask this in a way that doesn't come off as too serious, but: Are you going to marry a man?" because this was happening during the DoctorMan episode, which is not relevant to this post, but at the time I had been texting with a about-to-graduate med school student, and told her: Yeah, I want to be able to let my mom do The Big Wedding thing.
So, earlier this year, over the summer, my brother got married and my mom had a terrible time because she hated every minute and every second and on top of that, her son's in-laws treated us like shit!!!, and treated him like shiiiit!!!! And the most fucked up thing she said all summer long, was at the very end, after it was all over, because when asked why she bothered to put in all this effort for a son who treated her like shiiiiiiiiit!!!!, she said: "So he can't say I didn't do this for him, when [Nizhni] gets married." Months after the fact, I relay this to H, and then at some point, a while later, I think about and similarly relay that actually, my parents, and some of my extended family, would probably be cool with me getting married to a woman.
Anyway, after this we discuss one of my classes, and I explain my final project concept to her, and she looks at me in a serious and meaningful way and tells me very plainly and seriously that I'm really smart, and for some reason this is one of those times where it feels like a genuinely meant thing and not lip service and I am, just a little, struck by her very true and apparent admiration of me.
here are the texts I send this day:
bruh every interaction with [H] is like im psychologically torturing her bc today she had a headache and I was like >I think your headache made it so you were less conscious of me
and ahe was like >you know I’m very conscious of you?
and I was like >yeah its pretty obvious
and she was like >yeah I dont hide it
and then just as we were leaving she was like >are you texting me this often/offering to hang out just bc you’re going to block me on everything soon and I was like ???????? >So… we’re friends?
anyway she was trying to tell me where she got such a strange notion for but then I cut in with the ‘is this because you don’t have many friends’ and then she was like [:Smodge:] [:peaceandlove:] and wouldnt answer past that[:weiboCryLaugh:] [:weiboCryLaugh:] [:weiboCryLaugh:] [:weiboCryLaugh:] [:weiboCryLaugh:] we’re both failing the socialisation tests in different ways
SOME TIME BEFORE THAT
H finds me on the 5th floor of the library, in my favourite shelf section and proceeds to show me her most recent terrible procurement, which is pen with Kaveh Genshin Impact on it. I tell her I am Not Using That. She's like, Please, Can you pleaseeee show up to your Middle Eastern Film and Literature class and in front of Nima Naghibi, use the Kaveh pen. The context for this is that Kaveh Genshin Impact is my enemy and Kaveh Genshin Impact is her meow meow and I would fucking never. At one point she needs to use the bathroom, but instead of telling me to move or jumping over me, she goes all the way around the stack to not interrupt me? Not that I was doing anything important... I had been making her read some random book about Japanese philosophy [because the Kyoto school stuff was nearby to the Kierkegaard section] and had gotten distract myself by a Norton Edition of something. We head out, presumably to get ramen I think, because it was cold and wet, and I neg her into ordering/sharing an entree with me, and then make her finish it because I don't like it, and then we venture out in the wet-coldness to both the claw-machine places on Yonge, because if I won't accept the Kaveh pen, we have to find the Alhaitham equivalent. We do, it's a lead pencil, and then I obviously don't want to buy it, and she just paid for dinner so I can't make her pay for it, but watch partly agonised but not really saying anything, as she buys it for me anyway. This was the pencil I used to annotate most of Anna K.
LIKE LEGIT AN HOUR BEFORE TEEKS_D2_CANADA_TOUR
Over the summer, H's brother had invested his hard-earned part-time money into purchasing boxes Labubus, because he really really wanted to resell them. Turns out they were fakes. One thing Teeks loves more than a Labubu is a Lafufu, and one thing about me, is that I wanted to make 'Come with me to get my grandma a labubu' a real thing. However, instead of going over to H's place at some point or requesting her to meet-up or anything at any point before the trip to pick this thing up, because H had told me about this incident a while ago, I just text H >How short of a notice can I get a labubu at?, and then make her meet me at noon, at Wellesley station to legit just drop off a Labubu. And I buy her conciliatory Molly Tea, because I had just been introduced to Molly Tea and wanted an excuse to get it again but also, a fruit of labour thing. Anyway, it turns out she was really worried that I thought the Labubus were real and wanted a real one [I did not care, knowing that Teeks would not care] and hadn't responded to her gigantic text block in the morning about it, and she had freaked the fuck out on the way to drop it off. I had to meet Teeks soon, but we were killing time sitting in the McDonald's, I think she ordered a peppermint steeped tea, and I asked 'Hey... so what are your plans now?' and it turns out that she, in her freak out, had forgotten to pack her laptop so she couldn't even hang out on campus to do work [like she told me she was going to, when I was like, Not me making you come 90 minutes out of your way for a stupid drop-off errand], and actually she was just going to go home. So. That was an episode. I acutely felt that I was a terrible person, but I couldn't even careeeee because I was going to hang out with Teeks!
SOME TIME BEFORE THIS
H is like, Do you want to see a play, I don't wanna third-wheel my sister and her friend, and I'm like Uhhh sure! because they had free tickets to this play. Turns out it was based on Gilgamesh, and so, like a really serious person, I went ahead and checked Gilgamesh out from the library [wherein, it turns out some guy had published a version of it that was like his re-interpretation of all the known translated versions into verse, like he couldn't actually read the cuneiform... so that was... something], and read most of it the day of the play, on my journey to the Distillery district. It's windy as fuck, and I'm cold, and I tell H this when she shows up, and she's like 'Do you want my jacket? Have my jacket?' and I realise my severe misstep and Know Seriously, in a very real way, I cannot take her jacket. It's too much of a gesture and I really don't want it to come off in any way, and even if it meant nothing and wasn't serious, the [presumed] romantic feelings gap in our friendship would problematise it anyway. So I stayed cold the entire night, and H insisted we go to the fancy chocolate place where they sell like Real, French Style Hot Chocolate, which I took a sip of and didn't like, and I ordered an Earl Grey with milk, and the woman behind the counter went, "A London Fog then," and then, upon leaving [H paid], I complained to her at length about how that is not what a London Fog is!!!
The play was good because the music was good, and then I felt totally alienated by the conversation the three of them were having by the end of it, because it seemed like they all thought it was uncritically good, but I was really really mad about the inherent sexism and how, a play with no women in it and solely about the relationship between two men, could somehow be so sexist!! So then I ranted about that to them, and then we all got dinner at a nearby bar that really was way too big, and I ordered a cobb salad and H ordered a poutine, which is what she usually orders everywhere. Her sister had a burger, and her sister's friend had the dumpling entrees. There was really nothing notable about this, other than the fact that all of three of them were in, some ways, somewhat Serious People, and I was the unserious intellectual factor, and H and her sister both take music really seriously. Which is something I really respect, and so I think it's really funny that H genuinely truly believes that I don't care about music and tells people this. Like I think she's allowed to do that, but her sister has been shocked every single time when I mention any level of cut, which I did, while in the Uber to Union station [that someone, not me, paid for]. H had been under impression, unhappily, that I would get along better with her sister than her, and I didn't think that was true or untrue, but did like hanging out with the two of them.
A WHILE BEFORE THAT
H's favourite Guadagnino film is Queer, mine is Bones and All, and we argue about this sometimes, but she is insistent that I don't know real ball, and I don't know real cinema, and I don't know anything at all because I've never seen Queer, and I have to and she will show me, and at one point, I agree and this is a Real Plan, because the other option is The Old Guard, and I really can't handle that. I don't wanna... Queer is also a reasonable watch because Omar Apollo is in it, and he's really sexy, and also my friend Kit, who I think should meet H because they both have the same kind of wackadaisal approach to queer interpretation, really likes the S. Burroughs novel that Queer is in adaptation of, and has brought it up many times in our conversations. Anyway, she offers to give me a ride, and I sort of blink at it because I would be a bad person if I accepted, but like, I don't want to drive to Oakville, because my car's right sideview is kind of busted and therefore somewhat troubling to drive on the highway with [this problem is not fixed even by December], and I also don't want to take the TTC to Kipling station either, and I don't want to figure out what's happening with the GO Train, which is showing scary things to me on Google Maps. So, at one point, in the car, I say: "I'm going to tell your mom we are Not having sex tonight" and we both start cracking up [one of us way more hysterically than the other] because this really is such netflix and chill kind of situation, it is so late by the time I get there because she drove home from work, then showered, then came to pick me up at my house so that we could drive back to her house?
Thankfully, she does something else less embarrassing for the both of us that I could later solicit opinions and gossip about, which is handing me a copy of Hisham Matar's The Return. I had assumed that H had taken Nima Naghibi's Middle East Film and Literature course, being Alexandrian-Lebanese-Coptic-Egyptian-Sudanese, and asked if she had two books, and said if not I was going to check the library. She bought The Return, handed it over to me, and I was like: Oh. Right, okay. Right.
I stayed the night in what I, then, had thought was the guest bedroom in the basement. I think it's like H's full-time room, even though there's a room upstairs that she supposedly shares with her sister, and upon reflection I wonder if it was lowkey fucked up and terrorising as an experience to have me nonchalantly sleep over like that, in her actual bedroom. If any of our [mine and S's] assumptions about her feelings were correct.
In the morning, there's a whole different car episode wherein H is like I'll drop you off, and once again I don't want to take the GO train, but I wouldn't mind it, but if H drops me off there is some kind-of time constraint wherein she really has to speed the fuck back to get her brother somewhere. Like, it's sort of clear to me, over a really delicious breakfast of pita slathered with zatar and fresh tomato, like genuinely one of the most delicious things I've ever eaten in my life and in my top breakfast experiences of all time, like food-wise despite the social situation that I am the cause and nexus of, that H really should not be dropping me off all the way to my house, and her mother is really disapproving of this plan, but that's what she does anyway. At this point, it is really occurring to me that I'm a bad person and really will take advantage of people's good will and sensitive fragile feelings when it would be so much courteous and respectable to act with honour and ingenue, but, well. And I really did feel this way as she was driving me back, the bright early afternoon highway like so many childhood sleepaway trips back from Milton, that H was fun to hang out with.
A WHILE BEFORE THIS PROBABLY
When I land, I text H:
DADDY BIG JUST LANDED IN YYZ BABY
wow icb i forgot the most crucial part of that sentence
Weirdly enough, somewhat unsurprisingly, this is the second time this summer that she suggests hanging out at a Known Date Spot, AKA the Toronto Islands. Which, was, and I tell her this at some point but not in a very serious way, the location of my first date ever. I think I suggest doing a picnic, because there's no food spots there at all, and we pick up stuff from T&T on campus, and then the H-Mart, and she randomly picks up a mooncake, which is Durian-flavoured solely in honour of Beth crababy, my goat, and therefore neither of us liked it. Originally she wanted to go canoe'ing except she got it wrong or bad, and they had just closed for the season, so we just ended up hiking along the trail there and it was long not-romantic walk down the beach, and at one point there was a general store, and she brought me one of those healthy popsicles that she assured me was good [and it was] and bought herself a frozen pickle juice freezie, and didn't like that. I took some really awful photos of her, and our respective comestibles, of which I really wanted to post as a butch-femme/two genders joke somewhere, likely my instagram, but genuinely the thought of S seeing and commenting made me not.
She told me this amazing incredible story about her coworker with a gay dad who had gotten a Russian-mail-order boyfriend his daughter's age, who was reading translated damnei to learn English. Then, we talked about Weapons, and we both had separately-but-together come to the conclusion that it was a bad knock-off of Monster. And it really occurred to me, this was precisely why I was hanging out with her in such ambiguous circumstances, like sure, this girl is probably in love with me and wants me so bad and none of this is helping, but sometimes you really appreciate having a good fun time with someone who actually makes themselves free and available to hang out with you. There's some kind of episode where she wants me to take the picnic leftovers and I'm like, What? Okay... and then when we go on separate trains, she forgets to actually give them to me. And then changes trains to come back to Kennedy station to hand me the thing, in her own like picnic bag, and I'm like, How about you accompany me home so I can drop you off to your place with my car, and she refused. And I was like, alright man, shoot your own self in the foot. Literally every single time we hung out after, I forgot to give that picnic bag back until like, a potluck in December. When she was In My Car, and was like 'Is that my bag?' and I was like 'OH MY GOD IT FUCKING IS.'
SUMMER
H tells me, months and months later that it was really cool that I went Bangladesh and didn't text her for an entire two months or whatever. And I was like, Oh yeah, that did happen. Though I remember the one occasion we did text quite fondly, because just before I left I told it was so fucked up that there was going to be a Genshin pop-up in Toronto literally the day after I was flying out!!! And my favourite, Lebanese loser twitch streamer [H being the Lebanese loser we have at home?] was going to be there and it was literally so fucked up that I was missing it. Somewhere around like, 6am for me, at a time where I am awake because I have jetlag, she texts me updates from her visiting the pop-up, and I'm like omg pleaseee call let me see, and then she barters and messages: "Send 1 pic of u at the wedding or im not calling u" and I oblige, with four even! One of me [not very good], one of my cousin's white-ass baby, my bracelet stack [which tw3 also got] and the really ugly gold bracelet my parents got me [also previously a tw3 exclusive], and then gets on call to show me the goods [very bad, mid as fuck] and I tell her, Wow this actually sucks, and she's like Yeah, fine, whatever. She did get me a pin of Ei after, though I haven't done anything with it. Also I read this conversation back, and she had actually left the store, and then went back when I texted, just to show me. So like, yeah. Look, I was in Bangladesh, all the way across the world, in a different fucking hemisphere both latitudinally and longitudinally, that could not have been on me.
A COUPLE OF DAYS BEFORE MY FLIGH WHICH IS A COUPLE DAYS BEFORE MY BIRTHDAY
H, and we're hanging out because I won't be in Toronto or Canada at all for the next two months, is like, I want Italian food, and asks to meet me by Yonge station. I wait and find her approaching with espresso in hand. There is only one Italian place around this area, and it's the famous date spot. Premonitvely, S, who I'd been talking to earlier, had make a joke, 'Are you sure this isn't a date?' and I was like, No it's really not, and then she was like, Does H know that it's not a date? Since the plan had been to... lunch then go to a book store? Which was the kind of extremely mundane and nerdy thing I'd enjoy. Now that I'm really thinking about it, actually so few people have ever been like, Nizhni do you want to go to a bookstore because you like books. Like Aris and Kaia when I visited them in MTL. Mostly, I have been taken to bookstore because the other person wants to go to a bookstore and I am reasonable company for the outing. But then again, I rarely ever independently have the thought of wanting to go to a bookstore, but I do love going in and being in one, that's really fucking true.
Anyway, I see that we are approaching Eataly and I'm like, Uh, actually I'm really not in the mood for Italian food. We were inside for a bit, because she said that she liked that it was a grocery store and bought something for her mom and then randomly grabbed a stupid snack, which was mid and bad and not even the thing she meant to get and I very politely don't say or think anything of this. Anyway, so we find a noodle place like twenty minutes away, which was definitely the worser of the two meals. But we go back for an affogato, and it's great, it's maybe one of the most delicious things I have ever had in my life and I can mostly forgive the whole eataly not-date debacle. Um, I do fuck up doing navigation so bad that we really end up going nowhere and doing nothing except walk around, and that's fine by me. We might have gone to the Indigo by Bay, I really don't know. I have been to that Indigo on Bay with everyone on Earth. Do not ask me to name names.
I think we meet with S at the station, who gives us a moment of privacy, so H can give me The Queer Arab Glossary as an early birthday present, except with no card! and I think this is when S makes a joke about whether H knew it wasn't a date or not. Or she doesn't, she was a little moody and distant this day, because her parents being in the country were making things strange and rough, and as always she had stuff going on with the lab. I think I had dinner with them this day as well, because if I remember correctly, her dad picked us up at the station.
LIKE, A MONTH BEFORE THIS
H gets invited, along with so many other lesbians we know, to go clubbing. This is on Pride Eve. She spends the entire night buying G&Ts, because my favourite drink is a Gin and Tonic. This is a fact that stays relevant until December, where I make us exactly one G&T each on the 24th because she had gone out of her way to ensure there was Gin and Tonic in the house. And a really sad lime because a lime garnish is delicious on a G&T. At the end of the night, she like goes off with Julia and Isabelle, who she's getting along with really really well because they're both damnei heads. This leads to her being introduced to Julia's UofT PhD friend [in what I am assuming is their comparative literature program], who she does an interview for, and then complains to me at length, afterwards, about the conclusion that that guy is planning to write.
TIME IS SOUP IMMEMORIAL AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED ANYWHERE IN MARCH-APRIL-MAY AND I'M WORKING REALLY REALLY HARD TRYING TO RECONSTRUCT THIS FROM THE VERY FRAUGHT EVIDENCE I HAVE OF MY OWN EPHERMEA AND SHODDY NOTE-TAKING
There was one day where we went to a chinese restaurant [frequented by Chinese people] on Spadina that H wanted to try and I had been to previously with S, and then we got Thai tea bingsu at the Village by the Grange after, which was H's first ever bingsu experience, but we had it in front of the Philippino desert food stall, which... Anyway! This was after she'd read my entire 40k haikavetham fic [one of like, 8 people to do so even] so we talked about that. She kept trying to invite me over for Lebanese barbecue, but I couldn't accept for whatever reason, I really don't remember. This definitely happened after the party, because not only did I do my entire write-up about how making out is kinda gross, but then I debriefed with H about it as well, if I really do recall correctly. I think it was also this day? Maybe? Where H told me about her graduation saga fuck-up, I think we were at the Yonge subway station, so it could've also been ... a whole different time...
There was another time where we hung out at the library then got T&T food, because the T&T had just opened and that was when I told H about the whole thing with E, and this was near the tail-end of the professor saga, and H told me, less candidly about the Nothing homoerotic friendship between her and her friend, I just don't remember if it happened after Ides of March or S's birthday party... I don't think we hung out much in May at all because I was probably extremely depressive then. Hard to say. I think we kept trying to make plans for a hike/cafe thing and I kept cancelling because I didn't want to leave the house.
THE DAY AFTER LITTLE MAN'S BIRTHDAY PARTY
Well I made a whole post about this. But, H brought along their friend again, who S invited, I held bisexual symposium with N, Ely Offman, and that friend, and all three of them said the same thing, which was: Would only date the opposite sex, except for their sole same-sex true love exception. Oh BROTHER!!! And people ask why I'm biphobic. I don't even know or remember what H was doing, but at one point, it is me, N and H, taking beside the couch because H is sitting by the wall next to the couch, and she does also egg us into making out when it gets brought up. The day after this, H finds out that N has blocked her on instagram, though she tells us way later.
LIKE TWO WEEKS BEFORE THAT
This is the day where both Annas, Olivia, N and I are invited to have dinner at S's house, at her mother's behest. So I meet them at the UofT Grad Pub, and H walks with me all the way over, and then when we split off, S, H and I head to Spadina station, and split off again? This was also the day of the English Department showcase, which meant this was the day where I almost cry out of frustration while explaining to H that I want this specific professor to like me so so bad except I am so so stupid it's lowkey unreal. And I had a weird dream about him. Remember how this post is called A WEIRD YEAR? and it's specifically curated to only talk about the occasions on which I hung out with H, yeah, could not tell you the amount of stuff happening accessory to everything here. So this is a really incomplete picture actually, and is still a rough and decent outline of the whole year!
Basically, I met with H and then we met with one of the girls she RAs with, and had lunch at the campus cafe where we had the worst service of our life, because our waitress had beef with the other RA, because they had one class together at one point. And then they both tipped this woman anyway.
ONE DAY BEFORE THAT
Weirdest coincidence in the world happens wherein, H, being the kind of person to always be roped into a side-quest, meets S's ex-girlfriend's evil fucking mom, because she is an open-hearted and extroverted person who is curious and inquisitive and has no shame in asking about why there is an event happening in a university gymnasium, and is asked in turn, Do you play Minecraft? and guess what, she actually plays Minecraft so much that, months and months later, she can hold a conversation with my HS friends, who all play and I have always been alienated from regarding this front. Anyway. Gets asked to speak at this event, gets a free t-shirt as a reward. Takes me to the Media Commons Common Room, which is decked out exactly how one would expect, while telling me about her professor who conducts class via Twitch stream.
I think, though I could not say for sure, we went to the Imperial pub this day, and I think this is true because the Media Commons room was so dark and when we went outside, I was like whoa it's so bright and still daytime? And then we went to the Imperial Pub, and I was like Ohhh, it's dark again... She got poutine and I got, something, or maybe we shared the poutine, I don't remember. It was poutine and sweet potato fries I think. I looked at every single book shelf, which I think she knew I was going to do, and got disappointed by how pathetic the material was overall. What I do remember, is H saying that she's not really easily impressed by people and often feels superior to everyone. Which I said, Yeah, Me too, I Know. Then she said, Well, it's like different with you. By which she meant, that she wanted me to be impressed by her, and I remember this being the very clear interpretation that I really did not know what do with and couldn't say, Yeah, Same to this this time, and instead just went: Well, I really don't think that matters, I just have fun hanging out with you.
I think this was the day we also really briefly perused the Muji, or it was the day after. It was definitely this day, because I have two pictures of us in the muji mirror and I am greasy haired and makeupless and I look, Really Not Good, which was why I was taking so much offense at how she kept saying I was beautiful, in what I'm sure was actually intended to be a casual manner, but.... So you don't call someone, who is notably normal-to-nice-looking beautiful. And I tried to explain this to her, but she really wasn't getting it. Also at the Imperial Pub, she took out her laptop to schedule her grad photos. That was also an entire separate anecdote that I remember being distinctly amused by.
AND BEFORE THAT
At some point, I get invited over to have falafel, a food that's a normal amount of good and was particularly good on this occasion because it was homemade and all. I meet both siblings and the parents, and talk too fast for her mom to understand, though I was really doing my best to try and converse. I think I brought cheesecake desert, which might've made me a little late because I had to go to Metro, but I was going to a brown household for the first time ever and having dinner made for me, so it seemed like a necessary gesture. H shows me her room, at which I'm genuinely shocked and appalled by the amount of Stuff she has, and genuinely the HQ!! fixation is so bad, but then I'm really humiliated and humbled because past that, her bookshelf was really impressive actually. This is the day where I learn one of her favourite books is East of Eden, that she went to California to do a creative writing program at some point; instead of borrowing anything substantial, I get handed a copy of Euripedes, which is of course the play where the really famous Tumblr line: "I'll take care of you." / "It's rotten work." / "Not to me. Not if it's you." which was the entire reason she had it. Anyway, way later I actually read it, and it was really really good and for the first time in my life, having actually read it, I understand why Cassandra is such a haunting figure for so many classists.
Sort of more notable and important, is that we then pick up H's friend from her workplace, Petsmart, and there's such a fucked up vibe shift. It's actually really painfully obvious that her friend, when not speaking to me directly, which she does and we do converse normally, is like only talking about shared experiences between H and her. But! We get knafeh, and it's so fucking good! And then we watch Kpop music videos on the TV, because it's like, 2012 I guess, and you're at a family friend's house... I go home. I have a normal time.
BEFORE THAT
At Ides of March, H brings along a friend, and S immediately clocks their dynamic as homoerotically charged. I'm sort of tasteblind at that kind of thing, as it happens, being so scarred from the trenches myself. Actually, while writing this, I went out of my way to text someone I haven't texted in months because well, I have someone to introduce, formally even, to my HS friend group and probably would like it if they showed up. Not exactly for bragging rights or anything even, but possibly even to offer my guy the full experience/context/etc. Anyway, I do actually hang out with H and her friend at this party because no one else that interesting is there, and am so shocked and surprised by how well she keeps up a conversation with Guy-I-Fucking-Hate Shine. Genuinely so respectable and surmountable of a task to me. There's like this moment where the 3-4 of us are sitting on the floor by the couch and asking personal and invasive questions, and I think one of those really ambiguous strange moments happens, but I cannot recall exactly what. But I do remember the couch-corner seating arrangement as a little relevant and notable. If I really had to guess, knowing myself, it was something like, S asking H's friend why it wasn't working out, and her friend, 'Man I wish! I'm trying!' and obviously, because I am an Evil and Bad Person, I immediately look at H, considering, because I mean, I can win. Famous last words maybe. AND IT HAPPENED AT THE IDES OF MARCH... Wow... How premonitive...
AND BEFORE THAT
We watched Mickey17 and she was on her phone for like the first few minutes and I was so annoyed but I really didn't say anything. And then she was like, You should come play sudoku in my car, which has a huge iPad as it's middle console. I don't do that. I go back to my own car and drive home. S is still healing from her break-up, so I had invited her to come watch it with us, but she opted out. Surely this happened in March, because I distinctly do remember S being lowkey fucked up still, and watching Abbott Elementary when I got back? See, this is how you know H was lowkey nothing to me, the thing that I actually remember about this occasion are the weather [cold, frosty], where I parked [very close to the Cineplex] and where H parked [in the middle of fucking nowhere, for No Reason presumably, because there were genuinely so many free parking spots so much closer] because I walked her to her car, and how distinctly miserable S had been. Maybe she was recovering from a cold. I don't remember very well. This does get mentioned in my thin blue-stupid-tiger notebook in passing as happening between Feb12 and April 27, 28th: "went 2 movies only once I think to watch Mickey17 w/ [H] (her name is misspelled) <- new friend btw"
[ADDENUM: So, this happened March 11, and I know this because H just sent me an photo of her journal entry, unprompted of the occasion and it reads: "went to a movie w/ niz yesterday, mickey17, I keep thinking I'm developing a c-word but I need to remember that most of her is the delusions ive created in my head (probably). ilikeher a lot tho."]
AND BEFORE THAT: MY SECOND TIME EVER AT TIFF
I go to watch Universal Language for the second time, assuming it H's first time watching the movie. This is a movie that Nima Naghibi had told us about, last month. She informs me afterwards that it is her third time watching, and I really can't do anything more with that information than be suspicious and add it to 'Information that I Know' category in my brain which is used for nefarious evil purposes, and it gets worse when she tells me she didn't even care for this movie that much. This is genuinely where I begin to do my Good Deed of the Year. This is what I will write down on a post-it as my Good Deed of the Year at S's New Year's Party, for the bathroom activity in Elena's bathroom, and then be too embarrassed to actually post onto the mirror and instead will fold into my pocket, because it's too mean and obvious and what if she recognises my handwriting, and then later tell H about anyway, when we are in that bathroom doing the activities last-minute, at the very end of the party and I don't notice her stealing the post-it to keep for herself, because I am too busy thinking about how it was kind of sexy to be pushed against the wall both the first and second time, and is also kind of mildly even sexier this time because her arm is like parallel against my chest, and maybe she should be touching my boobs for real? [For her own answers, all four times, she writes: I WON THE GAME. / KEEP PLAYING THE GAME in terrible chicken scratch real fucking fast because she's trying to get back to kissing me.] Anyway, so I decide the best course of action is to pretend not to know that she's in love with me.
Not that she was in love at this point, but we were sitting across from each other at the TIFF cafe, and splitting two Craig's Cookies, and I was looking out the window quite a lot because I was wondering how to navigate this situation and conversation so it was ambiguous and neutral /pos but neutral /friendly as possible. As in, would love to hang out and be friends; but I don't want to encourage feelings of romantic expectation or affection, and also I was really debating even the friends thing because she kept providing me with information and opinions that I really could not be taking seriously and was getting mad about. I was like Wow, this is a really weird and intimate sort-of set-up and it's going to look so so bad when I tell S about it!
[Feb 19th according to H's journal entry: "it went okay. (niz movie)"]
TEN DAYS BEFORE THAT
She shows up a little late, and with a box of spiked lemonade that stays at my place for a long, long time afterwards because I never get around to drinking it. She informs me that I text like a Hinge man, and I think, Wow that's a really interesting and specific comparison to make with very obvious undertones. I'm going to ignore that. She spends a lot of this party chatting with our temporary roommate, who is big on YA/NA Fantasy BookTok and otherwise was not going to talk to anyone at this party, as it turns out H, as a guy who works at Indigo and #knows, was really perfectly suited as a conversational match.
One of S's Hinge dates, upon being asked if she was black, had a really weird answer about it, and S had relayed this to me, Anna, and Olivia, mixed, black mom, took a lot of offence. Upon seeing H, she asked the same thing. H, did the same, Uh... and Olivia immediately walked about. Like a year later, when I inform S that H is like, really really mixed in a way that white people don't consider mixed, S is like, Oh yeah, no wonder she couldn't answer that. Anyway, H does well enough at this party and is dykely enough, as I suspected, to ensure herself an invite to Olivia's Ides of March party.
SOMETIME, REALLY EARLY FEBRUARY I THINK I DON'T WANT TO BOTHER CHECKING THE EMAILS
In attempt to speak to Nima Naghibi, who is speaking to another student at this little mingling of the event, I compliment this student on their scarf. Which, I learn way way later, is wool from Nepal. That specific day, and for most of both halves of winter, I am wearing a cashmere silver-blue scarf, that my mom got when she was at the Himalayas. About eight months later, I have forgotten that somewhere, surely findable, and still into the next year, I keep forgetting to look for it. Anyway, like months and months later, that scarf is visible on an instagram post that could technically construed as a soft launch.
We are two of three students at this event that is otherwise, Oops! All Professors! and then it turns out, that H and Aria, are only here because the professor that they RA for is moderating the thing! So, actually I'm the only fucking person here that's here out of commitment to being a nerd. H, being extremely dykely, and kind of one of the only bearable nonwhite person I have met in the English department [turns out, not even an English student], and really importantly, being extroverted enough [otherwise Aria, who really seemed uninterested] gets an invite to S's Superbowl party, since otherwise I will be drowning in a sea of chemistry graduate students.
This happened February 4th, because I was still attempting to do daily entries in my narrow blue-stupid-tiger notebook, and I wrote: "went to class, talked mad shit, attended... the sex in literature talk? met new friend [H] (her name is misspelled)"
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Anyway, during the countdown, I ask H if it's okay if I just give her a kiss on the cheek right now, cause I have to talk to my lawyer, and she laughs and kisses me on the mouth when the clock strikes. After, I keep telling her that it's really fucked up that she won the game.
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Date: 2026-01-03 10:06 am (UTC)2) as the nosiest persion in the world, thank you for context re your incredibly vague tweets
3) girl you are so crazy.
4) feeling dykely kinship with H as someone who made loving east of eden my whole personality at 13
5) good for you *serene smile nodding emoji* good for you
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Date: 2026-01-04 02:24 am (UTC)>yes this post was so I would never have to actually speak on it or explain and all of my beautiful nosy oomfs could read and understand in their own time…
>I AM SO NORMAL? this is literally so normal? the lack of hinge in this story… the way there was no genre-typical lesbian accelerationism… like uhhh no matter how I look at it, it’s giving #regular
>its actually really good news for me that you read east of eden bc i need u to explain it to me bc i need to understand everyone’s hearts about it…
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Date: 2026-01-04 02:19 am (UTC)>the lgbt migration conference ? that we both attended (and nima naghibi was litr there too…) and that was at eaton centre, and i don’t really remember if we hung out there all fucking day afterwards, but I think we did get arabica% and then, we went to queen station because we were sitting at the corner market place? and this was when h told me she’d love to research the gay anime fan scene in egypt, and I internalized that she was real egyptian diaspora and then like, months and months later she reveals that her father had never been to egypt… Never ask mixed kid about anything. I think this was also maybe the day I told her about minelle mahtani, the premier foremost canadian mixed kid scholar who is litr iranian/indian and pointed out that no one sees that as mixed
+sinners steak frites day where we went to the scotia bank theatre down by … its in an annoying as fuck location and i was late by a lot because i spent twenty minute walking through the financial district trying to find it/make it to the screening on time and after we stepped into a nearby bar for bar food where we got the tightest seats ever but i distinctly remember our waiter being quite nice and having an interesting shirt? … this was the day I got hs h lore… also her sister gets her the sinners soundtrack on vinyl and the only reason she wanted it was bc hanif abdurraqib wrote a short essay for it🙂↕️