Being Human is Awkward Sometimes

You know that feeling you get sometimes. A member of the opposite sex gets within a certain proximity, and that little part of your brain that never really evolved past the lemur stage goes "Helloooooooo, nurse!"* and dumps a vat of hormones into your bloodstream.

Now, this is a perfectly natural human reaction, hardwired into us to remind us that, yes, that philosophy book may be really interesting, but the world must be peopled.** But when your emotions are kind of screwed up, it can have awkward results.

It would be safe to say that my emotions are fairly screwed up right now. I've spent the last few years unrequitedly in love with my best friend (Jacob's aforementioned roommate), Miles, and I'm trying to break out of it for good. There are a lot of reasons for this, some of which I might go into later, but the most relevant one is that he just isn't interested in me, never has been, and clearly never will be. So, in order to break myself of this unhealthy fixation, I've been trying to avoid him as much as possible, both the actually spending time with him and the thinking about him. This is harder than you might think, as he also lives next door and goes to my school, but I've had a reasonable amount of success.

However, avoiding him has also had some unforeseen side-effects. Living in my little commune, I don't see a whole lot of guys who aren't also part of the group. As long as I was in love with Miles, all of my hormones got dumped every time I saw him (which was pretty often), and he would do things like hug me or compliment me or talk about our lives, all of which fulfilled all kinds of emotional needs I didn't even know I had. I didn't even know those things had much effect on me, until they were gone and I found myself going through emotional/hormonal withdrawal. And now, that little lemur part of my brain is looking for a new outlet wherever it can find one.

This is significantly awkward, because most of my friends are guys. Not only that, they are guys who I have known long enough to know that I have no romantic interest in them. One and all, they are significantly uninteresting as partner material. Unfortunately, I also spend most of my time with them, and a few are what I would call Objectively Hot. Now, Objectively Hot is not a problem when it applies to a guy you see riding his bike down the street with his shirt off. The lemur brain goes "Helloooooo, Nurse!" the hormones are dumped, and it doesn't matter, because he's halfway down the block before you have time to do anything about it. You go about your day. But it's almost winter now, and shirtless bikers are in pretty short supply, so I'm stuck with the people I see every day.

It was bad enough when I caught myself checking out Jacob. I mean, it's a pretty well-established fact that he's Objectively Hot, but I'm also familiar enough with his habits around girls that it's as easy to turn off as it is to turn on. Or that guy at work - I only see him once or twice a week. Where it's gotten awkward lately is with Benjamin.

Now, Ben is a good two years younger than me, and we have sort of a big-sister-little-brother kind of relationship. He's also one of the few guys I know who has ever acted really responsibly in his relationships with women. He's not a romantic by any stretch, but he also doesn't lead girls along or obsess over them, and he's gone through two breakups without giving or getting any more emotional scars than necessary. I would totally let him date my little sister (if I had one), but he's not really interesting to me on any level.

Except the lemur brain, which has decided that it would be cool to dump hormones every time he gets closer than two feet away. Because it has no one else to go after, and the next best candidate is Jacob the Heartbreaker. This wouldn't have been a problem a year or two ago, because Ben used to be afraid to let any girl not directly related to him within ten feet of his person. But he's loosened up a lot since then, so it occasionally happens that we're in kind of close proximity. For example, the first time this happened, a was watching a movie with another friend, and he plops down next to me on the couch.

Lemur Brain: *dumps hormones*
Normal Brain: "WTF?"
(I instinctively recoil and scrunch into a little ball at the far end of the couch)
Ben: "Did I forget to wear deodorant or something?"
Me: "No...uh...it's a scary part of the movie." (Which fortunately it was.)

Unfortunately, this kind of situation has happened more than once now, and I'm afraid Ben will start to have doubts about his hygiene or (worse) ask me if something's wrong. On the other hand, it is just a physical reaction, so hopefully the ol' lemur brain will eventually give up when I don't let it get anywhere. It sure makes life awkward, though.

*Yes, I did just reference Animaniacs. They played a significant role in my formative years.

**Shakespeare also played a significant part. I had a weird childhood.