The Not so Tragic Love Life of Kate Awkward: Part 2

[This post was previously published in mid-March, but was deleted. However, because the author is a violent hypocrite, she decided to repost it.]


This is a continuum of Part 1. If you haven't read the first installment, I would suggest you do so now.

If you've already witness the unappealing horror of that portion, then fear not. This one won't be quite as painful.

Though, by proxy, it will also be less funny. My apologies for not being able to drown everything in my insatiable wit.

All of the following is still basically true. The names of those unfortunate souls involved are still changed for the sake of their dignity, save for Kate's. She can still reap the failure she has sown.

Now.

As you might recall, Emo-Girl had just destroyed Goldfish's heart, but more importantly his lungs, since clearly she was the only thing stopping him from his consumptive smoking addiction.

With these heavy thoughts weighing on her soul, her feelings could only be described by this:

 [Photo copyrighted to Mr. Mark]

Unsure how to cope, she sought consolation in the psychopath, which, at the time, seemed better than melting despairingly into the purple shag carpet in her dorm room.

That same day, to aid her distressed caretaker, psychopath devised a brilliant plan:

Go find boys.

Fail el Numero Dos: Octopus

Since neither psychopath nor Emo-Girl were capable of sustaining real friendships with guys without either jumping down their throats about relationships or frightening them, they decided throw their unsightly presence on Corgill, the current love interest to psychopath, and his best friend, Octopus.

At first the plan seemed like one of worth, but rebound was a foreign concept to Emo-Girl.

In terms of taste, Corgill was more to her liking since he was cynical, theatrical, and an asshole but he was psychopath's turf.

Emo-Girl knew never to tread on psychopaths turf. Otherwise:

Which usually resulted in:

So, rather than have her spleen melted by sheer feminine rage, she turned her flighty attention to Octopus.

Due to her dramatic expulsion earlier, Emo-Girl's emotional endurance had withered considerably, so she allowed the Fates to take her where they pleased.

They took her into a Nerf-Gun battle.

Armed and dangerous [mostly to herself], Emo-Slinger fought valiantly against her adversary.

Octopus, despite his squishy, somewhat harmless name, was a fortress of a person.

He could be likened to a sentient oak tree on steroids.

He was agile, resourceful, calculating.

And he cheated.

Rather than stay in the fray like a real man, he used the safety of Corgill's room as a hideout.

All Emo-Girl had was a stool.

She did her very best to keep from having to surrender, but lack of ammunition and fear of entering enemy territory to retrieve some caused her to issue a ceasefire.

He stopped his barrage, but he was wary of her guile, since she had proved to be crafty when she feigned injury in order to get a cheap shot.

Psychopath, being ignored by Corgill, decided that she wanted to enlist in the warfare.

At last, Emo-Girl had an ally. She and her stool wouldn't have to fly solo any longer against Octopus Cheatermobile.

Ammunition was redistributed and the onslaught began again.

It seemed to be going well until

she was betrayed by psychopath. 

Confused and distressed by this, Emo-Girl stood up and faced her confederate. 

While she gawked, Octopus took his chance and resumed the skirmish.

Being shot at on both sides, Lieutenant Emo knew that her abilities as a Nerf gun-wielding soldier would not suffice. The best she could do was hide in the bathroom and hope they got bored waiting for her to come out.

As a last show of courage, she surrendered. 

<Due to the poor memory of the author, the rest of the night has been omitted for fear of falsifying details and because she can't honesty remember a dillydamned thing after this point.>

Emo-Girl laid in her bed, listening to quiet, angsty music and ruminating on her encounter with Octopus.

He had provided her with the first night of true, unhindered fun since she befriended the psychopath.

It was nice. It made her soul feel less black, like someone had sprinkled glitter into her murky, churning soup of melancholy. 

It was as if her soul had transformed from this:

Into this:

[Image copyright to Dragon Faerie]

However, Emo-Girl was more tentative to declare her feelings for Octopus as deathless love, since her feelings for Goldfish weren't as unconditional as she had pretended they were. 

Though, Octopus appeared to be a better candidate for her spastic, unstable affections than Goldfish. He was going to college (albeit community college) and had a job.

The Hunt was on again. 

She began by stalking finding him and talking over Facebook Chat because clearly Emo-Girl didn't learn from her first mistake. 

Facebook moved to Instant Messenger, which moved to text messaging, and finally to phone calls. [If you're not having violent de ja vu, your brain capacity is equal to that of a ground squirrel. Offense should be taken and hate mail should be sent.]

Though, unlike last time, the more they talked the more she liked him. She didn't have to force her feelings like she was eating unrefrigerated week old trout.

Another exquisite difference: they were able to have conversations about more than three subjects, which secured that Octopus had more than 4 firing neurons. She even was bold enough to believe that he had at least 30 that were continually working.

However, the magical, intelligent goodness that they shared was in grave danger.

Psychopath had turned her fickle attentions to Octopus, since Corgill had made it very apparent that there was nothing between them.

Now, due to unspoken [crazy] women laws, she expected Emo-Girl to bow out.

Emo-Girl knew this, but apparently she had a death wish.

Since, when psychopath liked a creature of the male species, no other female could even daydream about him without disastrously infringing on her rights.

But, Emo-Face continued to talk to Octopus secretly at her own peril.

Of course, because Emo-Girl couldn't lie to save her life and her sneaking skills were somewhat like walking on tile in a pair of lead flippers, she was found out fairly quickly.

You can guess what happened next:

Emo-Girl however did not, however, implode into panicked, fearful spasms of remorse and servitude.

She continued on her merry way, ignoring the fire-breathing psychopath that was intent on singeing her eyebrows off.

Eventually, after it was again made clear that she would have no luck, psychopath stopped drinking liquid flames and turned her attentions elsewhere. However,

 resentment festered.

[If you're not notably unsettled by this, you do not understand the monstrosity that is psychopath's wrath.]

<Fast Forward through the boring parts, which consist mostly of drama inducing IM conversations. To avoid boring you further, I will skip directly to the most exciting part, which by nature will quickly turn to the most horrific. You're welcome.>

It was a lovely autumn day. The weather was the kind of weather that was perfect for going on outdoor adventures, having magical experiences with the glories of nature. 

Emo-Girl, on the other hand, was:

-sitting in her room

-by herself

-trolling on the 1nt3rn3tz

-with all the lights off

...because that's how she rolled.

She was obviously a creature of the night.

However, despite her penchant to be vampirically antisocial, she knew something was wrong. 

She had not see icon nor screen name of Octopus all day. 

She was beginning to think that something entirely horribly had happened to him, like a herd of venomous deer with lightning for horns had caught him on his way to work and convinced him to join a nudist colony. 

Or worse. 

A Jehovah's Witness might have shown up at his door and given him pamphlet's about "Global Warming" which were really just thin disguises for their religious sect.

With these tantalizing prospects hanging over her head, she felt her fears had been realized when she was startled by psychopath's unmistakable panicked knocking on her door.

But when she answered, nothing was wrong. 

In fact, psychopath seemed to be eager for something.

Emo-Girl was bewildered. 

She went back to what she was doing, trying not to let psychopath's antics derail her from her very important fretting.

Then her phone rang, which startled her into more terror induced phantasms. 

At least until she saw who it was.

It was Octopus!

Her fears allayed, she answered the phone. 

They had some nice small talk, but then the conversation took a strange turn.

Kate: So, what's up?

Octopus: I... I don't think we can hang out over break.

What could this horrible omen mean for their wonderful future involving comic drawing children?

Stunned, Emo-Girl felt herself spiraling into anguish. 

Kate: Wh-what? Whyyy?

Octopus: 'Cause I'd much rather just go on a date with you.

Emo-Girl could not compute. 

Her brain had crashed and was now issuing the blue screen of death. 

Kate: Wah-... buh- Uuuaaaaaaaaht?! 

Octopus: Yeah, would you be up for it?

Kate: Wha- cuh- ffff, yes! I mean- shyeah, I'd really like that!

Octopus: Great!

Since Time is run by an ornery five year old with a temper problem, the night of the date arrived slower than Emo-Girl would've liked.

But it arrived. 

After much hassle with Emo-Girl's crippling indecision, the two had decided to go out to dinner and then to a movie.

The date started off well.

But then, they pulled into the restaurant.

<insert DOOM>

Emo-Girl had this notion that she was self-sufficient.

But when she went to exercise it by opening her door to get out of the car, Octopus nearly had a conniption and insisted that he get it for her.

She felt that she was perfectly capable of pulling on a handle and then pushing a door open.

Octopus was argued that it was the principle of the matter.

Emo-Girl was not convinced, but she ceded, not because he was right, but because he locked the passenger side door and would not unlock it unless she agreed to let him open it for her.

Opening doors from the inside was another skill that eluded Emo-Girl.

The date resumed normalcy until it came time to pay. 

As you can guess, Emo-Girl wanted to pay for herself. 

Octopus acted as if she had stabbed him and dumped salt in his open wound after which she lit on fire and laughed maliciously to organ music. 

Emo-Girl did not [and still does not] understand the courtesy of accepting people's generosity. She felt it was the same as indirectly enslaving someone to do her bidding. 

It also undermined her inner masculinity and frustrated her minute testosterone levels.

[Feast your eyes on her manliness. That poor creature next to Emo-Girl is her kid sister, Sqwaunkie.]

So, she insisted that she pay for herself.

However, when the waiter came around, he agreed with Octopus to have the tabs combined.

He didn't even consider Emo-Girl's unreasonable dilemma before he went then back to his business.

The silly girl-child was put out. 

So, in watered down feminist revenge, she paid for her own movie ticket and hid twenty dollars in his car while he wasn't looking.

She was so pleased by her rebellion that she didn't make a fuss for the rest of the evening.

She even let Octopus hold her hand during the movie. 

When they got out of their deeply romantic film [Bolt], it was still early in the night and Emo-Girl wasn't ready to part with her Mildly Chauvinistic Cashier.

Kate: So, whatcha wanna do now?

Octopus: Well, I don't have to have you home until 12:30, so what do you want to do?

Emo-Girl had another bout of immobilizing indecision to which she asked:

Kate: Why? Why do you do this to me?

Octopus: Because it's easy. 

Kate: ...

Octopus: Seriously, what do you want to do?

[Scott Pilgrim copyright to Bryan Lee O'Malley]

Kate: Well, we could go talk somewhere... Like a parking lot or something, since nothing will be open. 

Emo-Girl was not an avid watcher of horror films so she didn't realize her suggestion was somewhat abominable. 

But, despite her inability to sense a murder scene, they went and sat in the parking lot near her place of employment. [The only reason Emo-Girl had a job was because her father owned a business. Not because she had skill. Don't be preposterous.]

So, the talking commenced as they sat in his car. 

Suddenly, Octopus leaned across the seat and laid his head on her arm, which was laying unobtrusively on the armrest of the passenger seat. 

Emo-Girl was perplexed.

Men were still a foreign species to her and her lesson with Goldfish did not increase her knowledge in any respect other than what to avoid in the future.

She wondered if this was the beginning of the male mating ritual, since there was clearly no other reason to lean almost a foot and a half over in a car onto a female's left arm. 

With this in her mind, she had to decide what to do.

The three four choices from before surfaced in her mind, since she had no other point of reference and her teen fiction romance novels had failed her in every instance in the past.

But she quickly cast them aside because they didn't really apply in this situation (save for "Make Babies," but she felt that 'doing it' in a car was entirely undignified). 

She devised a new list of ways to react: 

1.) Ask what the hell he's doing.

2.) Spontaneously grow a third arm out of her sternum and poke his exposed ear.

3.) Pat his head.

Even though she preferred the second, she picked the last and gently tapped his head with her fingers, noting that his hair felt like what she imagined a goat would feel like. 

Though, upon actually feeling a goat at Zona Rosa, she was aghast at the horrible coarseness and realized that boy hair was nothing like it. 

Goats aside, Emo-Girl, unsure how to react further past the head pat, suggested that they go sit in the back seat, so they could talk better.

Unsurprisingly, this didn't occur to her as strange either, nor did it spark her inner "horror" detector. 

Octopus was not adverse to this suggestion, but he made sure to ask if she was comfortable with that.

The moderately dim poser didn't understand [or denied] what he could mean, so she responded with affirmations between bouts of nervous laughter.

They sat in the back of the car exchanging their past love stories, to which Emo-Girl grossly exaggerated her own, pretending that Goldfish was more like a telephone post than a hoers.

The conversation lulled after a while, since neither of the two of them had much of a romantic past. 

Suddenly, as if a storm cloud had taken up residence in the car with them, tension spiked to an electric level. 

Emo-Girl's fountain of hormones began to rush as if someone had stabbed her in the uterus, releasing a wave of womanly passions.

Octopus seemed to feel it too.  

Octopus: May I ask you something?

Kate: Yeahsurewhatsup?

Octopus: I know this is kinda soon for this sort of thing...

Kate: What? I'msureit'sfine. Shoot.

Octopus: Can- Can I kiss you?

Emo-Girl, despite her overwhelming joy, was cooly indifferent in her response.

Kate: Sure. That's fine. 

The process of kissing was less awkward than the first time, though trying to kiss a mule would be less awkward also.

They hesitated momentarily before touching lips, but when they finally did, it... 

It was not nearly what she had expected.

She had imagined it causing her heart to do something like this:

But alack. Nothing even remotely similar happened.

This was probably because she had her expectations up too high. 

Though, it would be quite a feat if a single kiss in the back of a car in a parking lot in the middle of the night caused a young girl's heart to explode out of her chest in a fiery, passionate blast.

It would also call into question your role as a possible serial killer. 

Though, because Emo-Girl had never been truly kissed, she decided that was what they were supposed to feel like and forcibly made herself like it.

The date ended with another short kiss, but it felt the same as the first.

<Fast forward> </Fast forward>

Returning to the veritable hell hole that housed her psychopath, she had an interval of drama, vomiting, and bitter, unmitigated weeping. 

Then Octopus came to visit for the weekend and she was free of her 160 pound ball and chain for the day, since she wouldn't deign to hang out with them. 

Albeit the day started well, but the visit went horribly awry by the end of the night.

It progressed as any hang out day would:

-Watch Octopus play Halo with Corgill and his other more intellectually advanced friend, Wallaby

-Wander campus in search of Enlightenment and the wild pudding bush

-Watch episodes of Invader Zim.

-Then send him home before it got too late.

Though, as they were carrying out the last step, Emo-Girl and Octopus had trouble letting each other go.

So, rather than do the mature thing and part without making things awkward, they decided to sit in the back of his car and talk for a time. 

Though, that quick declined into a three hour make-out session. 

Some new couples would call this a step forward, but for Emo-Girl this was a declaration of marriage. 

After he departed, Emo-Girl quickly fell into doubt. So she went to the only advisee she knew of:

Psychopath. 

Of course, if you recall from earlier: 

The resentment still festered.

[The terror this photo evokes should be similar to waking up to an axe murderer standing over your bed with a bloody hatchet and a glass of Tang to pour down your throat as you die to make your last moments full of sour watered down orange drink.]

So, going to the psychopath, her mind was warped and twisted into believing that Octopus was quite possibly going to kidnap her away to Yunnan to live with the Buddhists the next time they met.

His wonderful image in her mind had transformed from this:

To This:

[Art and Image Copyright to ChongoZilla]

So she resolved to break up with him the very next day. 

When the time came, because she was still a wuss, she called him on the phone and, unlike last time, ended the relationship in a tired, but dignified way, since it was nearly midnight.

<The author of this post would like to extend a not-so-apologetic apology for not including the break up call on the post. But she's still friends with Octopus (or at least she was) and she does not want to encroach on his dignity anymore than she already has. She also extends a thank you to her friend for letting her post this.> 

Thus, concludes the chronicles of The Not So Tragic Love Life of Kate Awkward: Part 2. 

If you haven't decided to hate me because I can't relay my life in a coherently amusing way, keep your eyes peeled for more awkwardness. 

If you have, well, screw you. 

I don't need your approval. 

Peace off.