What the CW taught me about love

Growing up, I watched a lot of teen dramas. I’m not going to lie – it’s had its effect on me. These shows have influenced my way of thinking. More specifically, how I consider relationships. Love. Lust. Sex.

I recently read an article about a girl who shaped her own life to mimic that of Blair Waldorf’s in Gossip Girl. She wore the headbands, the preppy coats, and sat on the Met steps for lunch. I do none of this. Thankfully, I also do not adopt the bitchy rivalries or seek petty drama like the admittedly shallow characters of the fictional Upper East Side. Instead, I pine for the romances.

Chuck and Blair had always been my “OTP”– a fandom-made acronym for “one true pairing”. Their struggles only made viewers “ship” them harder and the drama made us love them more. I’d always considered myself to be a strong-willed, free-thinking individual. Too intelligent, even as a 13 year old (god, has it been that long?) to let Chuck and Blair distort my understanding of how relationships should be.

But now, in my wise adult years, I realize how mistaken I was. Don’t get me wrong– I don’t purposefully seek out destructive relationships. But I don’t turn away from them, even when I know better. I see a bomb timer tick down to zero, and instead of running, I think, “eh, can’t be that bad” and bare my face to the oncoming blaze. Chuck and Blair survived. Maybe my relationships will too.

I haven’t had much experience with dating. My adolescent years had left me spotty-skinned and awkward. I went to an all-girls school and had minimal exposure to boys – let alone the Nate Archibalds of the world. The ones I did meet I never pursued. It wasn’t a big issue – it was just the way it was.

And then I came to college. Oh, how things changed. By the second night in orientation week, I’d had my first kiss. It was drunken, sloppy, and caught me off guard. For the five seconds it lasted for, my inner monologue ran along the lines of  “so… this is happening. You should probably do something.” This prompted me to similarly stick my tongue into his strangely wet mouth in a slobbery dance of facial extremities. (Humans are weird…)

I’m glad my first kiss was shit. I wouldn’t have it any other way. We’re actually good friends now, him and I. He announced once in ‘Never have I ever’ that he “always” gets told he’s a good kisser. I nearly spat out my drink from laughter.

But I digress. The point is, once I got to university, it’s like I started trying to make up for lost time. Look, I don’t want to be full of myself or anything – I’m the most surprised out of everyone that “pulling” was a thing that I could do.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not easy… Okay, I’m a little easy, but only with the boys I had already previously assessed and admired from afar. The thing is, I’m as much of a predator as they are. I just make them do all the work. If they weren’t already on my “to do” list before I got drunk, it ain’t gonna happen. And unlike Serena van der Woodsen and co., when I “hook up” with someone it’s a make out only. Very rarely further – and not very much further, at that. So chill.

As names on the to-do list steadily became crossed off, one by one, there became one that stuck out. Let’s call him Sean.

Sean is what you’d call one of the “cool kids”. He has his lads, his banter, and the knowledge that he can probably get any girl he wanted if he tried. Sean is quite obviously bad news, and that fact alone made me treat him differently to everyone else on my list.

We went away to a booze-drenched camp together. On the first night, when he tried to make a move, I didn’t even need to think about my response. It happened naturally – a knee-jerk reaction to his playboy attitude. Coyly leaning in on the dance floor, lips millimeters away from his mouth, then his cheek, then his ear, I asked: “Do you really think I’m that easy?”

I’d like you to now imagine me flipping my hair and strutting away with explosions going off in the background and adoring fans cheering me on. In reality, I just smirked and went to join a different dance circle. Unsurprisingly, I did not see him for the rest of the night.

Remember what I said earlier about being easy? I really wasn’t lying. I am. There are just too many cute boys and too few opportunities for me to sink my predatory claws in. But with Sean I wanted to play hard to get.

That next night, he slithered to my side again, slipping an arm around my waist. Now this was some CW, Gossip Girl, sneaky, conniving shit on my part. The years of teen dramas had prepared me for boys like him, and dammit I was going to do Blair Waldorf some justice. I was going to be the tease.

Look, I suck at coordinated sports – netball, basketball, soccer, you name it. But hot diggity damn, who knew I had so much game? It was a sly dance: my lips, once again, so close to his but… Just. Not. Touching. Yet. Leaning in as if I had finally given in to him, but pulling away, mercilessly, at the very last moment.

He kept asking, “What do I need to do?” Well, fuck, I had no idea. I was just biding my time to see if he would last. “Figure it out.” I’d reply, slinking away to another group to dance. And he’d follow.

I wanted to make him work for it. Until he craved it, eventually feeling like he’d won by having me give in. In reality, it would be me with that gold medal, on that #1 platform, comfortably in the dominant position of power. But don’t get me wrong – this wasn’t a planned attack. I didn’t orchestrate it beforehand with blueprints, mind-maps, an evil laugh, and all. I just knew I didn’t want him to tick me off his “to-do” list like I had been doing with all my other suitors. I wanted to be remembered.

I “gave in” eventually. I thought that’d be the end of that. Tick, done, move on. But I didn’t realize the game would be so fun to play and now I wanted a round two.

The opportunity presented itself a few days ago. He and his crew had arrived at this party late, and when I saw him, he embraced me in a big hug and kept his arm constantly around my waist. If I stood a few steps away, he’d lightly pull me in. He was very drunk at this point. I knew this because: one, he gave his credit card to someone with his PIN (which he later realized was his phone passcode, resulting in his card being swallowed by the ATM); and two, we generally acted very cool with one another. In the weeks between the first hook-up and then, we barely said hi. Barely made eye contact. Barely acknowledged each other. We were both so cool it was almost cold. Brr.

At one point after a conversation with someone, he turned to me and innocently asked, “What?” Confused, I replied, “I didn’t say anything.”

“Oh,” He smirked, “I thought you said you wanted to kiss me.”

What a motherfucker.

Gradually, I got distracted by other friends throughout the night, and he left my mind for a few hours.

Enter Tate.

Tate’s name isn’t really Tate (obviously), but it’s close enough to Nate, as in Nate Archibald. Picture a tall, handsome, soccer-playing boy-next-door with a cheeky grin and baby blue eyes. He even went to one of the most prestigious, elite private schools in the country. In fact, that was something he used as a talking point: ­ joking about how “poor” boys from that school like him were. He brought up his high school time and time again, to the extent where it became obvious it wasn’t just a talking point… it was his selling point as well. A close friend once deemed this tendency that boys do to be “humble bragging”. Tate certainly put a new spin on the “humble” part of the term.

Tate even one-ups Nate Archibald. Nate was a pretty boy with an otherwise bland personality and lackluster set of skills. But Tate? Tate sings and composes gloriously harmonized acapella tracks in his free time. Tate pulls funny faces in photos and doesn’t take himself too seriously. Tate has stubble (and you know how much I love me some facial hair on my men!) Basically, Tate is weirdly perfect. What the actual fuck, right?

Tate and I had talked briefly once, a long, long time ago before the semester had even started. But this night, after a mutual friend bought us all jagerbombs (fuck yeah!), Tate and I got to chatting again.

Tate’s great, he really is. We get along very well. All the social cues were there – faces mere centimeters away from each other, flirting, the whole shebang. But I wasn’t going to kiss him because I had one goal on my mind that night: Sean.

That is, until I turned around and saw Sean making out with Chelsea.

Chelsea is actually a good friend. Funnily enough, she’s very close friends with Tate and in the same group as him. I had no reason to be jealous, no reason to be a disappointed, but a very good reason to turn back to Tate, close that distance, and start making out. Take that, Sean.

I know. I’m gross. It gets worse.

After a decent hook-up with Tate, he (and Chelsea) both had to leave. They were sharing a ride and that ride was there. This left Sean and me both partner-less.

I’d like to say there was a good 20 minutes between Tate leaving and me going up to Sean again, but my judgment of time by that point had gone out the window. I may have made a 5 minute circuit around the room and chatted to a few friends. It may have been a good half-hour. But eventually, I ended up interrupting Sean’s conversation, saying hi to the person he was talking to instead of saying hi to him first, of course.

Next thing I know, we’re holding hands and he’s staring into my fucking eyes like I’m the only girl in the world. Obviously, I’m not ­– he probably pulled the same move with Chelsea 30 minutes before. But here’s where shit changed. Here’s where Sean resembled Chuck Bass more than I ever expected.

Him: “You really played hard-to-get at camp.”

Me: “Should I be playing hard to get now?” slowly pulling away

Him: “No no no… Unless you don’t want to kiss me?”

Me: “… who said I didn’t want to kiss you?” (YES OMG I KNOW OK SORRY I WAS RLY DRUNK) “why should I though? I barely even know anything about you.”

Him: “Okay, tell me about yourself. Do you have any deep, dark secrets?”

Me: “Haha, none. I’m an open book!”

Him: “Well… I do.”

I still don’t know why he told me what he did. If he told me just so I would hook up with him, that’d be really fucked up. I don’t know if it’s something he tells lots of people when he’s drunk. But by the amount of times he told me to promise I wouldn’t tell anyone, I doubt it. It’s what confuses me ­– why would he trust me, someone he barely even says hi to in the corridors? Maybe, just maybe… he likes me more than he lets on. More than he realizes. More than he’s willing to admit to himself.

Or maybe I’m just delusional and seeking a Chuck Bass to chase and fix.

Something changed after that. Obviously, he just shared something very intimate, and that intimacy translated directly into our kiss. It was actually weirdly intimate. Intimate and passionate. That shit fucked me up. Ruined me. Hands down, best kiss of my life. Despite being ratchet as fuck making out with a second guy in one night, it was well worth it.

I bet you’re wondering, “but what about Tate?” Yeah, me too. My kiss with Tate paled in comparison with Sean’s. But Sean isn’t boyfriend material. Sean is someone with baggage; someone who will cheat, someone who won’t admit to love, and who’ll make your heart hurt so, so unnecessarily.

Tate messaged me later the next morning apologizing for being “rude” and leaving so abruptly. We’ve been talking every day ever since. We’ve stayed up to 4am chatting ­– a normal bedtime for me, but certainly not for him. We have inside jokes and I am comfortable enough to be my extremely weird self with him. He starts conversations, telling me about his night out the very next day without me even having to ask.

And yet, when Sean started messaging me, I stopped replying to Tate for that one hour Sean sought my attention. At first he wanted to know how much I remembered from our drunken rendezvous. I told him I remembered everything he told me. It was an awkward conversation that eased into one joking about dicks and TV shows.

He learnt that I’m fucking hilarious and a GB who can banter and play along with penis jokes. And I learnt that Sean was secretly the hugest geek ever. A nerd who watches nearly all the superhero shows playing on TV; whose ‘currently-watching’ TV list is ten times longer than mine and includes ‘Dragons ­– Riders of Berk’; who can read Harry Potter and Eragon in a week; and who replied to my joke on Pretty Little Liars with “Oh, I’ve heard that’s a good show!”

Truthfully, I wish I liked Tate more. I really do. But all the potential I have with him is overshadowed by the feelings I have for Sean ­– whatever they may be. Probably lust... Hopefully only lust. That would make things very simple to solve. I know that Sean would be a bad boyfriend and Tate would be a good one. But I would be a good girlfriend to Sean and a bad one to Tate.

For once I don’t want to channel my inner Blair Waldorf. I want the simpler option and avoid any pain or drama. Sean is Chuck ­– with all his complications and baggage and shit that would make good TV. But as much as I love watching all that, I don’t want to live it.

Or do I? Have years of CW shows, angsty fanfiction, and Nicholas Sparks movies doomed me to pursuing a twisted, masochistic version of romance?

Who knows. That’s all for now though. As always, you know you love me. XOXO, Gossip girl.