Hoes Before Bros

There were only a handful of times that I had come close to throwing a punch in high school, but miraculously I never did – probably from fear more than anything else. There is only 1 time that I really wished I had though – and still to this day, I often think that in this rare instance, kicking the absolute crap out of this girl would have been entirely and fantastically therapeutic.

I’m sure every school has at least one – the tramp, skank, village bicycle or whatever choice description you might want to insert. Now I know I wasn’t a virginal kitten, but there was one huge difference and that was I never intentionally set out to hurt anyone, and to this day there was only 1 time that I accidentally hurt someone and I deeply regret it. Perhaps that is why I detested Jessie so much – it was that she would repeatedly sleep with other people’s boyfriends and not seem to show any remorse, nor did she ever reap any consequences. It wasn't like there were shallow pickings - there were MANY other guys she could have had instead. If she wanted to have random romps with countless unattached guys, then I would have said ‘Welcome to the Club’ but that wasn’t her style. She preferred guys that had been test driven already, or rather ones that were currently being driven by someone else.

She never ‘stole’ any boyfriend of mine, but there was a long list of relationship carnage that she created that involved most of my friends. Not only did she seem to have zero accountability for her hurtful actions, but most of my friends continued to be her friend! Did I miss something? How did that work? From my perspective, it was quite simple: You hurt me and I can’t trust you; therefore, we are not friends anymore. It's not even about the guy when it comes down to it - we all know they come and go - it's the TRUST that gets broken. Seemed simple enough to me – but there she was, everyday hanging out with us, like that nasty zit that keeps reappearing on your chin.

While recalling one of her many horizontal mishaps, I took a body count one day and she had had sex (or close enough to it) with SEVEN guys that had been with one of my friends – and I didn’t have a big circle of friends, so that covered almost every one of them (one girl she did 2 of her guys, once while she was passed out downstairs and the sound of Jessie screwing her boyfriend upstairs woke her up, classy!) But, they are still friends to this day – the world is going mad.

She finally had gone too far with unlucky number 6, in which after doing lord-knows-what with him, she accused him of sexual assault the next day. It was awful! This guy was gentle, dopey and harmless and his only fault was falling victim to the siren’s spell. His girlfriend was a tough chick, and frankly even I wouldn’t have wanted to cross her, but once again, she did nothing to Jessie, physically, verbally or anything of the sort. She just kicked the shit out of a garbage can instead. There was a whole dramatic scene in the parking lot (Jessie doing most of the flared-nose dramatics, as usual) and she came up to ME and challenged ME to a fight.

“Com’on Andrea! Hit me! I know you want to!”

She was damn right about that – and this triggered one of my ‘Ally McBeal’ moments to which the imaginary me grabbed her by her overly-coiffed Farah Fawcett hair and repetitively punch her in the face. Every fibre of my body was itching to take this girl on, but I coolly remained leaning on my friend’s truck. I gave out a huge forced grin and replied, “I would love to – but you’re not worth the effort.” She just stormed off like a deranged two year old having a tantrum. I guess I should be proud that I handled it that way, but the primal part of me would have loved to throw in one punch for every one of my friends’ hearts she broke.

The part that utterly bemuses me is that even after that horribly messy situation (there was a court case and everything, which of course got thrown out on character witnesses alone, but it was still unpleasant) she still managed to remain a part of our group. Ahhh! What did this girl have to do before people besides me would see her for who she really is? Apparently nothing. She even succeeded in hurting one more friend after that, my best friend... with her ex-boyfriend. She confronted Jessie and told her she was not cool with it and that she would have to choose between their friendship (of 8+ years) and the guy; Jessie looked her straight in the eye and said without hesitation, “Him”... It lasted 2 weeks. Awesome - I hope it was worth it.

Now that some time has passed and I have moved away, I really only have to see the people that I choose to see, but she still comes up in conversation and appears at some social events; the aggravating zit prevails! The ironic part is that out of all the people we went to high school with, she hates ME the most and I find that downright amusing. It must be because she knows I was the one person that always saw right through her and never bought in to her dramatic bullshit. I once told her with true sincerity that she needed to seek professional psychiatric help. Yes, it’s true that I was tripping on mushrooms at the time, but nevertheless I tried to be as sincere as much as possible. Regardless, I still wish I had hit her that day, just once.