Nobody puts baillee in the corner

Friends, I don’t know how to tell all of you this, but I’ve lived a common plotline of teen movies and books everywhere. 

That’s right….

True Life: I Talked to a Boy While Pretending to Be My More Conventionally Attractive Best Friend. 

Yes, I’m serious. 

Heavy sigh. 

From the fifth grade, all the way through my early 20s, I had one of the same best friends. 

Let’s call her Luanne.

And yes, this is the same Luanne from the Noah entry. 

You see, Luanne was popular and conventionally attractive, so she had a line of male suitors at all times, making the stunt she pulled with me even more deplorable. 

I digress. 

I don’t ever remember there being a time where Luanne and I liked the same guy, but there were definitely times she flirted with guys I liked to upset me. 

TL;DR – If you’re a fan of Jennifer’s Body, she was Jennifer and I was Needy, sans the underlying queer themes (to be fair, I was closeted, and she was straight, but I never felt that way about her). 

However, there was one time where I liked someone who clearly liked her, and I catfished him in  a way. 

Oliver, Luanne, and I were in band together, and Oliver would text several of us girls at a time, but it was clear that he liked Luanne. 

But, Luanne liked someone else. 

One day, I was at Luanne’s when Oliver texted her. 

She handed me her phone and asked if I would message him because she was going to get on MySpace to talk to the guy she liked… 

…and that’s where it all started. 

For the next several weeks, I would not only talk to Oliver as myself…

…but I would also talk to Oliver as Luanne. 

Oliver and I would talk on the phone and text, but when he thought I was Luanne, things were totally different. 

He would flirt with Luanne and tell her how he wished he could find a girl like her. 

Blah blah blah. 

Mind you, I’m talking to this boy as myself, in essentially the same way, and he never said any of these things to me. 

Did it hurt my feelings? Absolutely. 

Did I also feel bad by purposely deceiving him? You bet. 

But, as we have covered more times than I can count at this point, I was deeply insecure in high school, so it felt good to have a boy like me, even if it was under false pretenses. 

Eventually, things came to a head when Luanne got a boyfriend, and Oliver wanted to enlist her help in finding a girlfriend since she was dating someone. 

I decided that this was my big chance, so, as Luanne, I threw out my own name. 

Oliver made it very clear that he didn’t feel that way about me and was looking for someone more like Luanne. 

That’s when I knew I had to stop because he sincerely only liked Luanne because of the way she looked; he was never going to like me because of how I looked. 

Now, as an adult, I know that there has to be a level of physical attraction to like someone. 

That’s not to say that you might find someone physically attractive that someone else doesn’t, and I’m not here to say that I’m upset because Oliver wasn’t physically attracted to me. 

What I’m saying is that I talked to him the exact same way in both conversation threads, and the only difference was that when I “spoke” as Luanne, the connection was somehow different. 

I told Luanne I didn’t want to text him anymore, and Oliver and I remained friendly for the remainder of high school, but our friendship didn’t continue beyond that. 

I wouldn’t even say we were super tight friends in high school. 

We had some friend overlap with band, but he wasn’t in my main group or anything. 

I also never told Oliver that I was the girl he was actually talking to and fell for. 

Judging by his reaction when I threw my name in the ring of girls to ask out, I don’t think it would’ve gone well. 

Plus, who knows what Luanne would’ve said or done if Oliver had said he liked me. 

In retrospect, I’m really glad that nothing came of it. 

I didn’t deserve to be someone’s second string, nor do I deserve a best friend who basically threw a guy at me to talk to out of pity. 

Long story short, Nev would’ve been all over my ass had Catfish: The TV Show existed back then. 

I think Oliver is actually a band director now, and I’m happy for him because he was always really passionate about band. 

Oliver, I hope you’re doing well, and I hope you still rock out to System of a Down every now and then. 

Until next time, dear readers.