Neighbour diaries: I have no girl friends!

Interestingly, most of my friends don’t mind me staying at my mum’s. It’s the girls that seem to find it an issue. For the sake of clarity, I don’t count girls among my friends, so when I say “my friends” I am referring to only the guys. Like someone so aptly put it, “friendship is not possible between a man and a woman. There is enmity, passion, love, but not friendship”. So when am counting my friends, forgive me ladies, but you are not included. I wasn’t always like this. At some point I actually had more female friends than guy friends, until I realized that what I was confusing for “friendship” was actually something else, something that my still un-sophisticated mind couldn’t differentiate from friendship. But I learnt my lesson, and although I was still relatively young, it was a lesson that impacted my future relationships with girls. There was a girl called Jackie. Of all my friends, I liked Jackie the most. And this had nothing to do with her looks. She was a pretty little angel, and the very first time I saw her, I knew we had to be friends. We were in the same school, same class and after a while, we even sat together in class. Basically we became inseparable. I trusted her completely and told her everything about me. I imagined me and her had a connection, a loyalty to each other. So, I was totally disappointed to learn that it wasn’t like that with her. For my dedication to the friendship, I didn’t understand how she could date some other guy. When I learnt about it I was surprised. She told me she had a boyfriend. And the jealousy, that mix of disappointment and “friendship” rushing through my blood made me realize that all along, Jackie hadn’t been just my friend! I was in love with the girl, and I had confused this love, in my innocence of youth, with friendship. Disappointed, hurt, sad, I tried to just let it go. But again, her behavior changed. She spent more time with the other guy, and forgot about me. She had just met the guy; I had known her for over a year. Friends don’t do that; you don’t forget a friend just because you met someone new. So, from that time, I realized that I couldn’t really be friends with a girl. And it’s not a sexist or chauvinistic thing, that’s just the way it has been all my life. Back to my mum; yeah, my friends understand why I need this time to recoup. The girls I know, confirming the fact that they aren’t really my friends, tell me that I am being a baby. That a grown man shouldn’t be staying at his mum’s! This one particular girl, Tracy, who found it so offensive that she even walked away from me in a restaurant, had her own issues! All along, she had had plans for me. Simply put, she wanted me and her to date. I learnt this from a friend of hers who had told her about her secret crush on me. See, I told you it’s hard for even girls to be friends with girls! I mean, this girl just betrayed her friend’s secret to me! What kind of friend does that? Later that very same day, Tracy called me and told me she had got a house that I could move to. I told her I had no furniture, not even a mattress. And she said, “It’s ok, we shall be using my stuff. We are moving in together!” Ends