Friend Zone #10: Thoz, Part 2

A few days after meeting Thoz, I called her up. She sounded excited to hear from me. She invited me to come with her to the Del Mar Fair that Saturday. She had an extra ticket. The plan was that I would meet her at her house and we would drive up together. But that didn't exactly happen. When I got there, there was a guy. His name was Dard and he was a friend of hers from high school. (They both attended the High School of Performing and Creative Arts.) She assured me that he was just a friend. I couldn't get mad because she had already set up the expectation that she and I would be friends. However, she told me that he was getting the extra ticket and I would have to pay my way in. There wasn't anything I could do about that, either.

Dard was a musician and was in a band. They had self-produced a CD release. I got jealous about that because I'd only been able to do a cassette release of my music. Even though their cover art was literally generic, it still put mine to shame. Dard was also rather muscular and very good looking. (If you've ever seen that Bod commercial with the rock band that played without their shirts on, that's pretty much what Dard's band was like. And I can't find it on YouTube!)

The two of them drove to the fair in her convertible. I followed in my car (which meant that I would also have to pay for parking). We took a "shortcut," which required us to drive over a series of speed bumps. We finally got to Del Mar and parked our cars. We went to the main gate. This was when I got to meet Thoz' father. He had his girlfriend with him. He seemed pleased to meet me.

I bought a ticket and hung out with Thoz and Dard. We went on several rides together. We all got on this one ride that slung everyone to the left side with intense centrifugal force. In hindsight, they shouldn't have let three adults get in one car together. This is what happened: Thoz was on the right side, I was on the left side and Dard was in the middle. This means that their entire weight was being forced against my body. At one point in the ride, I felt something snap in my ribcage. I wasn't in completely unbearable pain, but I was extremely uncomfortable. It was bad enough that I considered getting the operator to stop the ride, but I let it finish. Afterward, I told Thoz and Dard that I thought I broke a rib and I would have to call it a day. They were concerned, but there wasn't anything they could do.

I could feel the pain for the next three weeks. I couldn't sleep on my side, and if I accidentally rolled over in the middle of the night, I would immediately wake up. I didn't have health insurance at the time, so there really wasn't anything I could do but wait for it to feel better. A doctor told me that would have been the advisable thing to do if I had sought medical attention. Years later, I would get an x-ray that indicated that my rib was never broken. It was likely shifted out of place.

Thoz and I continued to date every once in awhile. We would go out and do different things, like bowling, pool, checking out live music and seeing movies. I didn't try to make any moves. She told me that one of the other guys she was dating tried to kiss her and she didn't appreciate it because she wasn't attracted to him that way. I sort of took this as a hint that I'd better not try anything like that. However, there was one time that I dropped her off at her house. I started walking back to my car. I turned around to see her staring at me with this strange look on her face, like she was saying, "Is that it?" I never found out what was going through her mind.

She eventually got involved in serious relationships, but I continued to be her friend. She even started something with Dard. I had driven her to the club where his band was playing. I had to get up early in the morning, so the plan all along was that I would drive her to the club and he would drive her home, but that ended up being the night they got together.

We remained friends. I helped her move a few times. In 1998, when Abed had moved to Los Angeles, she was my best friend, even though she had actual boyfriends during this period. Later that year, she told me that she had likely met the guy she was going to marry. It was the first time she'd met someone that she felt like she could give up smoking marijuana for. This pained me a little, because she never saw me as the type of person that she would do that for.

I stopped talking to her after that, but it was actually because of several other factors. The first was that I didn't have a working car. I couldn't drive anywhere on a whim. If we hung out, she was going to have to come see me, and I knew that wouldn't sit well with her boyfriend. In addition, Abed had moved back to San Diego, so I didn't need her to fill that best friend void anymore.

A few months later in 1999, I bought a new car and called her so I could show it to her. She invited me to come see her. I also had to show her that I had cut my hair short, so she was very shocked to see me that time. She was still with the same guy, so that ended up being the last time I would see her.

She did marry that guy and had two children with him. When I first got on Facebook in 2010, she was one of the first people I sent a friend invitation to. She almost didn't recognize me because I didn't use my real name, but when she saw that one of my "likes" was a singer-songwriter we frequently went to see, she knew right away who it was and accepted.

She told me that her husband is a big "Star Wars" fan. I wonder if she ever told him that there was some other guy out there she had seen the original trilogy with before he came along, including seeing "Return of the Jedi" for the first time. And I also wonder how he feels about that. But he's gotten me beat with the prequel and sequel trilogies!

Also, I'm Facebook friends with Dard. I sent an invitation to him because my friends list was lopsided with female friends and I didn't want Ms. Ogolon to get mad about that. He has children. He still looks great. In fact, he won a bodybuilding contest for vegetarians some time ago.

Thoz will be making frequent appearances in the blog within the next few months. She's not going anywhere.