A Bad Idea I'm About to Do by Chris Gethard Page A

place? (I still have no idea.) And what about what to wear? Not that his suggestions would necessarily have helped.
The most fashion conscious my brother ever got was when our neighbor gave him a huge bag of clothes from the early ’70s that had been stored away in his garage.
    â€œHoly shit,” Gregg said as he rifled through it and took out one particularly hideous item. “This orange jumpsuit is made of corduroy. Perfect!”
    He wore that orange corduroy jumpsuit all through his senior year of high school, which was the same year I was a freshman. While dressing like a member of Devo might have spoken to Gregg’s free spirit, the female reactions to it that I saw firsthand made it absolutely clear he would not and should not be my mentor in the ways of love.
    By the time my own senior year of high school rolled around, when my brother’s performance-art style of dress had mercifully faded to just a distant memory, I had established a pattern of how I dealt with women. It was a simple three-step process.
    1. Fall in love with a girl and absolutely never ever tell her.
    2. Slowly become her “best friend” over the course of a few months.
    3. Wait until she told me a guy had asked her out and she said yes. (At which point I would break down and tell her I loved her. To which she would reply she thought we were just good friends. To which I would explain that I’d always felt this way, and here she would accurately point out that I had been deceptive and manipulative by not revealing my true intentions. Afterward, we wouldn’t talk much anymore. Then back to step 1 and repeat.)
    It fit me like a glove. I was good at that routine. From Kristy Enginger to Melissa Goldfarb and back again, I was an old pro.

    Then I met Veronica and she fucked it all up by actually liking me back.
    Veronica was a redheaded, freckle-faced Irish Catholic girl. She was amazingly kind and cute. She’d also spent her whole childhood doing Irish step dancing, so her body was tighter than any seventeen-year-old’s has a right to be.
    The first actual conversation I’d had with Veronica was the one that occurred as I sadly left her best friend Samantha’s house after Samantha dumped me for delivering one of the most awkward first kisses in human history.
    During our junior year of high school, Veronica and I hit it off. She found me funny. I found her leggy and redheaded. I put my usual plan into action. It didn’t take too many months before we were talking on the phone every night. I liked her so much that when I heard things like the following—
    â€œI don’t care if I play cymbals and Kevin Connolly plays quads. I work harder than him and I should be the sole drum captain. It’s bullshit. We’re the only section in the whole marching band with two captains.”
    â€”I was able to pretend I actually gave a fuck. That’s love.
    Toward the end of the year I found myself on the phone with a guy named Will. He was an all right guy, but he was a little stiff and didn’t have much of a sense of humor. He also played the trumpet and was Unitarian. To this day I literally know nothing about the Unitarian religion, but I can safely say that the phrase “Unitarian trumpeter” doesn’t sound like the sort of label you’d attach to someone who’s fun to date.
    â€œHey, you’re friends with Veronica,” he said.
    â€œYeah, good friends. Best friends,” I answered.
    â€œI asked her out the other day and she said yes. Any tips on what she likes?”

    Up until then, I had kept my crush on Veronica secret from everyone. But Will must have instantly realized it existed. It wasn’t hard to deduce, being that my response was a long pause followed by muffled sobs.
    â€œAre you crying?” he asked, clearly annoyed.
    â€œYes,” I replied, figuring there was no reason to lie about it at this point.
    â€œYou like her, don’t