Before I start my next descent into worthlessness, I thought I'd try to break up the cycle a little bit with the tales of two women, one on whom I had a crush and the other one, who had a crush on me. This all took place while I was still working at the Hillcrest Cinemas.
Let's start with Danz. She was the one of the few women in my life that I was 100% certain had a crush on me. She was an employee of the theatre and was hired in December of 1992. I started to get to know her at the Landmark Christmas party. She had come with her boyfriend.
About a month later, on a Saturday night, she saw me when she had started her shift. "Hi, Fayd!" She said it very excitedly. I didn't pay much attention to it at the time. A couple of hours later, I was taking a deposit to the bank. She was smoking outside with the other nicotine addicts. She suddenly jumped up and volunteered to go with me to make the deposit. (We were required to have someone witness us putting the deposit in the bank's drop box across the street.) I told her that was okay, I already had someone else going with me. This seemed unusual, because no one ever volunteers to walk to the bank.
A little later on, she was standing next to an employee who was talking to me about the schedule. Danz chimed in, "Oh, I like the way you do the schedule!" This was the point in which I figured out what was going on. But I couldn't do anything about it, because I had just started living with Chez. Danz also still had her boyfriend. I found out later that they would get into frequent arguments. She knew my story and what was going on with Chez and I guess she thought I'd be a better match for her.
Just to make sure a message got sent to her, I had scheduled her for a closing shift. During the time we were waiting for the last movie to let out, I called Chez at home and talked to her for a little bit. I ended the call by telling her I loved her, knowing that Danz could very well hear my end of the conversation. But that may have been a moot point, because by that time, Danz no longer greeted me with the same amount of enthusiasm as before nor did she volunteer to walk with me to drop off a deposit.
But of course, even if I wasn't involved with Chez at the time, it still wouldn't have been a good idea to start something with her because she still had her boyfriend. (Otherwise, I totally would have.) A couple of months later, someone called and left a message on the theatre answering machine. It was a friend of hers and he said that she had injured her jaw and wouldn't be coming in to work. I completely misheard the message and actually thought she had broken her jaw. That would have been pretty serious. But after tell Anz this, I listened to the message again and heard the caller clearly state she had injured her jaw. She was okay and came back to work the next day, but I never did get the full story about how she got the injury.
Not long after that, she stopped coming to work. She didn't officially quit and we never knew what happened to her. You'd think I'd be able to find her on the Internet because she has a very unusual last name, but I guess she either never got a Facebook account or got married and doesn't list her maiden name. I did find her name in obituary notices as having died in 2003 at the age of 33. This would have been the correct age for her as she was in her early 20s in 1993, but one of the pronouns stated that the gender of this person was male. I couldn't find any other references to the death of this person, so I have no idea if she's dead or alive.
As for the woman I had a crush on, her name was Shaz. She was the girlfriend of one of our female employees. I had talked to her on the phone a couple of times when she called to talk to the employee. The employee frequently talked about the drama between her and the girlfriend.
I actually got to meet Shaz at the same Christmas party where I met Danz' boyfriend. I was rather taken aback by how attractive she was. I was expecting someone way more butch, but she was very feminine. The employee introduced us and she recognized my voice. She said she liked the sound of my voice on the phone. We talked for a little bit and it seemed like we were actually flirting with each other.
I saw Shaz again at least one other time at the theatre. We just talked a little bit then, but we didn't flirt so much. I still liked her a lot.
After Chez and Joad left San Diego, I thought I might try to give Shaz a shot just to see if there was a chance. I wrote a song about her. Even though I had gotten fired from the theatre, I decided to actually record this in a studio. I found a place that only charged about $20 an hour. This wasn't going to be anything fancy. I had programmed the track into my keyboard sequencer, plugged it into the board and rolled tape. I then double-tracked my vocals. It sounded really good. I was approached the employee to see if she would give her a tape of the song, along with my phone number.
The employee agreed to meet me at a bar near the theatre one night. We sat and talked for a while with her friends. The employee told me that when she first met me, she thought I was gay. I guess she figured it out after Chez moved in with me. We talked about what happened between me and Chez, and what happened between her and Shaz. While she said that Shaz would mention me from time to time, she didn't think I really had a shot with her. She was just doing this as a favor because she felt bad that I had gotten fired.
One day at the apartment, the phone rang and someone was leaving a message for my roommate. I could hear the message as the caller was leaving it. During the message, I heard the tone for call waiting. Someone else was trying to call, but I couldn't pick up the phone. I never knew who it was. Some time later, I asked the employee if Shaz ever said anything about the song. She said Shaz liked it, and tried to call me, but no one picked up the phone. I wondered if that was her trying to call. In the long run it didn't make a difference, because she was probably calling to tell me to buzz off.
I never did see Shaz again. And her name is pretty common, so I can't find her on-line, either.
And that's just the way some crushes go.
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