2003-04-15 - 6:00 p.m.

Well everyone else is doing it...

I put Ophelia's cast list in my favourite entries months ago because I thought it was a cool way to get to know someone- and it seems to be the thing to do at the moment amongst my inner circle :)

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Jane

"If this isn't love it's very close"

Jane and I have been officially together for a little over 3 months, but have kinda been involved since last October. Actually the first time anything happened between us was a year before that, at a party at her place that I went to with Annie. At the time I had *very* strong feelings for Annie, and Jane had similar feelings for her friend Mark. So when the two of them ended up horizontal on Jane and Sally's lounge room floor, we decided we could go one better than that.

Over the next year, I knew Jane as an amazing friend of Annie's- to the point where it was almost intimidating, because I often felt helpless when Annie needed a friend the most. Annie has always known how I felt about her, and pretty much the only reason nothing was happening between us was that she was scared, and unwilling to risk our friendship. Well, there came a point where I just had to deal with that and move on- and by October last year I certainly wasn't letting other opportunites pass me by. For at least a month both Jane and I could say without hesitation that it was purely a physical thing- both of us had strong feelings for other people, but somewhere along the line things changed.

I was the first to ask the question "what exactly are we now?" or more to the point, I made it clear that I was at a point where I wanted to take this thing further. It took Jane about another month to be sure that was what she wanted, but since then we have never looked back.

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Annie

"Where do I draw the line between wanting you and wasting precious time?"

Annie and I met properly on my 23rd birthday, at the merch. desk after a gig at the Newtown RSL. At the time I was going to a lot of gigs and seeing a lot of familiar faces, so I introduced myself and said I was pretty sure I'd met her but I'd forgotten her name. She didn't think so, but recognised my name off an internet mailing list- I am a nerd.

About 3 weeks later I got together with Ellie, and Annie was just another face in the crowd. 5 months later Ellie was living with me and Annie was part of our little group that used to travel the Greater Sydney area (and sometimes further) watching the same band over and over and over again. That's not me anymore but they were really good times. Before long things got messy, as I realised my feelings for Annie were stronger than they should have been.

Linked to this, in that it brought us even closer, I became Annie's confidante, and she revealed some things to me that she had never told anyone. Two years down the track a handful of people know these things but to this day I have never told a soul.

After I broke up with Ellie, I was in danger of becoming totally wrapped up with Annie until Cindy happened quite unexpectedly. Nonetheless, my feelings remained very strong, and we just kept getting closer until November 2001 when she became so involved with a charismatic older man and his drug lifestyle that I virtually lost contact with her for 3 months.

That period of isolation from Annie had a lot to do with her not wanting me to see her the way she was, and as she began to pull herself together we became as close as we've ever been. The problem has always been that Annie has some serious mental problems, some of them closely linked to her drug use. I could never be sure which side of Annie I was going to see. Even when things were good between us, she would sometimes treat me with contempt.

Late last year saw a number of things happen at about the same time. Jane and I started getting involved, Annie started seeing an old flame who has never treated her well and wasn't about to start, and she started taking drugs again, including heroin.

Things have never been the same between Annie, Jane and I- and while there have been glimmers of hope on the horizon, Annie no longer believes either Jane or I are her friends, and I simply don't know how we can work with that.

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Ellie

"Here's me, here's you- draw a line between the two"

I hate to say that the same band is responsible for 3 of the most important relationships in my life, and indirectly responsible for a fourth, but I guess you get that. Ellie and I met outside the Metro Theatre in Sydney in August 2000- 6 weeks before I met Annie at a gig by the same band that ironically both Cindy and Jane were at.

We hit it off straight away, and by the end of the gig were reasonably affectionate. In the weeks and months that followed there was a fair amount of email flirting (did I mention I am a nerd), and it would be fair to say that I was working on getting something happening between Ellie and I.

Well, it did, and it was the first time either of us had been in a relationship of any kind. I think to some extent that contibuted to both of us rushing into things- be they things said or done. I've said it before that none of that takes away from what Ellie and I had. There are two... periods of time that to me really capture what meant the most to me about Ellie and I as a couple as opposed to as friends. One was the week-and-a-half I spent in Melbourne in February 2001 (did I mention that Ellie is from Melbourne?)culminating in Valentine's Day. The other is the first month that we lived together in Sydney- when our place was one of the hubs of activity for our group of friends, and before my mind resembled something out of "Being John Malkovitch".

So we broke up in August 2001, went through a couple of months of hell, went through a good half a year or more after that where you couldn't exactly say that we had completely broken up, and now are stronger than ever. Ellie and I are in a similar position as Jane is with her best friend Mark- as Jane puts it they are more use to each other now than they've ever been.

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Cindy

"I don't know if I lied when I said we're not together"

Cindy was one of the crowd that used to travel around Sydney to see bands (okay, okay- *band* but I'm trying to make it sound less tragic). I met her on New Year's Eve 2000/2001 in Newcastle, but she's known me a good 3 months before that. She knew who I was on the night in Newtown when I met Annie, and insists I brushed up against her in a provocative way (she also remembers me complaining about my nonexistent sex life to a mutual friend). Her best friend had a major crush on me in the months leading up to when we met. It's all very strange.

The night Cindy became more than just one of the crowd was at my favourite drinking hole in Newtown in July 2001. I think it was actually Annie's birthday. Ellie was in Melbourne for the week, and at least in my mind things were not 100% okay. For starters I had these feelings for Annie that were messing me up pretty badly, but I didn't tell Cindy about them for a while after that. I knew Ellie confided in Cindy, and I said something to Cindy along the lines of I didn't expect her to tell me anything but I wanted to know if everything was okay with Ellie.

Before we knew it we were writing huge emails to each other about our problems- mine with Ellie and hers with her best friend at the time. She helped me through the breakup- and in the month that followed we were very close but there were no other feelings from my point of view. Turns out not only were there some, however vague, on her side but that our friends all thought that something was going on.

One drunken night at a pub in Brisbane (yes folks my story extends across the entire East Coast :) we ended up in a very compromising position, and for the next 4 months I was far from honest about the whole thing. I couldn't promise Cindy anything as I was in love with Annie, and I couldn't justify in my head telling Ellie something that would hurt her when I'd just said it wasn't anything.

If it had stopped there it might not have been such a problem...

Anyway, Cindy and I have had our ups and downs, but we're still there for each other, and I'd like to think that I'm finally able to repay her for all the advice and sympathy she showed me 18 months ago.

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They are the major players, but I have a great supporting cast. You know who you are :) I have friends with whom I've become so much closer to through diaryland, and others whom I've given links to so that we remain as close as we have been. Believe me, if you're reading this you know me a lot better than most.

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