Baz was the most unusual Friend Zone situation in my life. This is because we were actual friends, but I wound up being indecisive as to whether or not I wanted to pursue a relationship. This is that rare situation in which I probably put myself in the Friend Zone.
I met Baz during the first week I had moved to San Diego in November of 1991. She was the Chief of Staff for the Park Theatre and also worked as an assistant to City Manager Ved. These hours allowed her to have a full-time job. This was something we didn't have in Denver. We had a woman who came in a few hours a week to help out in the City and District offices, but all she really did was organize materials. Baz was actually making phone calls and setting up appointments like a secretary.
In addition, she worked for us the first few days we had opened the Hillcrest Cinemas. Anz actually asked me who we should consider making our Chief of Staff. I recommended her because she already knew how to manage and had gotten first-hand experience with working a multi-plex. Anz did not ask her to be our Chief of Staff.
Baz was 36 years old at the time I met her. She had long dark hair and wore glasses most of the time. She had a very positive outlook in her approach to life. She was also overweight, but it appeared to be age-related as she was a vegetarian and had a healthy diet. I found her energy to be rather contagious and was attracted to her because of it.
But I was rather wishy-washy about whether I wanted to start something up. A thought I had to myself involving her was that if she weighed 50 pounds less, the age difference wouldn't bother me and if she was about ten years younger, the weight issue wouldn't bother me. There was seriously nothing she could do about either. She had made some offhand remarks that indicated that she liked me. Because I never asked her to repeat what she just said, I was rather in the dark about whether she had any feelings for me.
We went out and did a lot of stuff as friends, mostly going to the movies. I kept wondering if she was going to do something to give me a stronger indication of what she expected from me, but she never did. We still enjoyed each other's company and would talk on the phone from time to time. I remember she called me in the middle of the night once. I was probably talking to her like normal. Then, in the middle of the conversation, I actually woke up and found myself talking on the phone. I had been talking to her in my sleep for about a minute. I think I asked her who she was. After she told me, I said, "Baz, I just woke up right now, so you're going to have to repeat everything you just told me." I don't even remember what the conversation was about. I just went right back to sleep after that.
Something very unusual happened that involved her and freaked me out for a brief period of time. About a year and a half after I'd been fired, she was roommates with another male employee of the Park Theatre. We made plans to go to the movies and she had me come to her apartment to pick her up. It was in Hillcrest and was close to a hillside. She lived in apartment #11. When I went to the building, the door to her apartment was at the end of a short hallway and there was another apartment right across the hall from hers, like this:
It was a very unusual set up for an apartment, especially considering that #12 was the highest apartment number and #11 was the last one on the left side. This meant that the next two apartments to the right were numbered 9 and 10.
About a week later, I was working at News Monitoring Services and was watching a newscast. There was a story about a murder in Hillcrest. They showed the outside of the apartment where it took place. THEY SHOWED THIS APARTMENT BUILDING AND UNITS 11 AND 12! I screamed when I saw this! I was afraid Baz had been killed! It was very frustrating because they didn't reveal more information in a proper manner. They said that the victim was found by a male roommate. I was trembling because Baz had a male roommate. They finally got around to saying that the victim was a "he." I was able to breathe again, but I knew that Baz would still be negatively affected by this. It turned out that the man who was murdered had picked some homeless man off the street to come to his house to have bondage sex with. Things got out of hand and the homeless left the apartment, but was eventually captured by police. Baz said she knew the victim, but also wasn't too surprised that something like this had happened to him.
At one point, Baz got a job at the Daily Transcript, a legal news publication in San Diego. She happened to work right around the corner from where I worked. I went to briefly visit her on her first day on the job. Fortunately, she did not get fired.
It was around this time that she found her soulmate. He was someone around her age. I'd met him a few times and he seemed really nice and a good fit for her. At this point, I had to stop wondering if something was going to happen, because it was apparent it wasn't. I don't have any regrets about nothing happening. It just wasn't meant to.
She sent me a friend request on Facebook last year and I accepted. According to her profile, she is now retired and I'm not certain what she's doing now, expect posting old pinups.
As for Buz, I met her the first week I was in San Diego. I was managing a shift at the Park Theatre when she came by to pick up her paycheck. She had long, red hair, wore glasses and looked kind of nerdy. I did her attractive the first time I saw her and figured we had a lot in common.
I really got to know her when we would both show up at the Ken Cinema when they were showing repertory films. We often went to the same films and would sit next to each other. During double features, we would walk over to the library during intermission and play on the playground. She would smoke a joint and I would watch her. She said she liked my deep voice and enjoyed hearing it when she was stoned.
Again, I was wishy-washy about asking her out on a date. I mean, this was already kind of dating, but I couldn't tell if she really liked me enough for me to be her boyfriend. The main obstacle would have been the fact that I didn't smoke weed. It seems like most women I would meet later on enjoyed smoking with their boyfriends and if I wasn't going to be a part of that, they would lose any romantic interest in me. But I still thought she liked me regardless.
I guess I waited too long because she got a letter in the mail from a guy she went to high school with. He had written it in his own blood and this made her fall in love with him. I was kind of glad I didn't try to start something, because this was going to happen regardless and she would have left me for him.
When I saw her a few years later, I was at a gathering that Baz and her boyfriend attended. She told me Buz was going to be there. At this point, I had shaved my head and told Baz not to tell her who I was. Buz showed up with the same guy who wrote the blood letter. She didn't recognize me at first. It was rather amusing when I told her who I was and she got this shocked look upon her face.
She's still friends with Baz on Facebook, but she doesn't post a lot of stuff on there. I don't know what's really going on with her. (I would have to ask Baz to find out, but I'm not going to do that. I try to do as much research as possible on my own. I know that in 2014, she was working as a library clerk and made almost $45,000 in pay and benefits. She also takes part in a lot of activism. I can't tell if she's still with that guy, but I don't think she ever had any kids.
In time, we just wouldn't have been right for each other. It would have been the same with Baz. I don't feel like I really missed anything by not taking initiative with either one of them, and I probably would have wound up getting hurt in the long run. It's actually better that I didn't get mixed up with co-workers. I've seen too many other people make that mistake.
But I was still open to that possibility with someone else. I'll write about two of them tomorrow.
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