The Suspect has Escaped on Foot

What exactly does someone do with a rejection? Subsequent attempts to get in her good book are propelled by the added urgent need to save face after misfiring the first time round. One feels compelled to correct the grievous wrong, and quite soon, success or failure becomes a matter of pride. There are even some who “aim higher” in a vain attempt to turn the tables, trying to make her regret spurning their advances. The rejection in itself might otherwise have been a non-event, but thanks to pride, its implications resonate in ways that make the whole thing bigger than itself. I trust you hear me correctly.

Because your middle name is schadenfreude, dear reader, you are thinking “Get on with it already; spill! Tell us who rejected you and how you cried boohoo!” But this ain’t “truth or dare”. I’ll find a way to beat about the bush without revealing that I actually drew her a picture before I ever talked to her! Oops! I bet you’ll never find out that I spotted her just once and started drawing that picture immediately. What can I say? I liked her smile.

No, I’m not mad, nor tuned in to space alien wavelengths. But I was definitely younger way back then.

There was a time when pictures of the Ex were arrayed in my room. They constituted a small art gallery. I gave a few of them to her, and she liked them very much. Someone say “get out of jail free card.”But those were happier times, and The Ex was probably more art-loving than her intended replacement.

But the intended replacement didn’t share my expressed belief that she was the intended replacement. (In a future post, I will recount other instances of how people think I’m always joking or pulling pranks.) I can acutely remember standing solitary at the window after the rejection. Staring after her receding figure, somehow, the one phrase that came to my wine-unbalanced tongue was “The suspect has escaped on foot… The zasbect…”

I’ll save you a ton of reading and just say, here and now, that subsequent efforts to apprehend the suspect yielded no returns. But we became awkward friends.