A Foolish, Love-Sick Girl in Boston

Love sickness, according to Wikipedia, is defined as “a non-medical term used to describe mental and physical symptoms associated with falling in love.” Falling in love is also defined on there too but I was too scared to click on the link. Love sickness is apparently also an anxiety disorder. Well, I gotta buy a vowel because that explains why I am perpetually a mess whenever some boy comes along. I am suffering from an anxiety disorder!

Last week, I went to a conference in Boston with about 20 other kids from The Business School. The conference sucked. So we skipped most of it to explore Boston instead. DEB was on the trip, and we spent a lot of time together. I really didn’t mean to, since I had already gotten over his dreamy eyes and given up on him. On the bus there, I ended up sitting beside him, but nothing happened of course. We didn’t talk much, but we didn’t sleep much either. Later, I would realize this was because he was as excited about me sitting beside him as I was.

Twelve hours is a long time to spend on a bus, especially when you’re brushing shoulders with a guy who has the power to make your knees go weak. As soon as we arrived, the Girls (BI, GHG, and me) realized we had adjoining rooms with the Guys (DEB, FMB, and two others). You know what this means — late-night sneaking into each others’ rooms was not going to be a problem.

After registering for the conference (which was a nightmare because the guy “in charge” of our delegation did not have the first idea what he was doing and had the maturity of an 8-year-old), BI and I went to Chinatown in search of cheap and fast food. We found an ancient-looking banquet hall that was bizarrely decorated, with faded walls, dingy carpets, a musty smell. In true Cantonese dim-sum style, carts soon started to roll by our table, offering unidentifiable dishes made almost entirely with MSG.

When we returned to the hotel, I did not feel like going to the afternoon workshops, so when I ran into a group of girls headed to Newbury St. for some shopping, I invited myself along. Newbury St. is famous in Boston for its high-end boutique stores, and I was excited to see for myself how it compared to The City.

One of the first stores we went into was Victoria Secret, which we don’t have in The City, so it was hard to contain my inner shopaholic. However, I was somberly reminded that I had only brought so much cash for the trip and I didn’t want to spend it all on the first day. I decided that I would come back on the last day if I still had cash left over.
The next store we went to was Anthropologie. It was adorable: exposed brick walls, cute patterned dresses, funky accessories, and even colourful kitchenware! As soon as I picked up anything and looked at its price tag though, I realized that this store, too, was out of my reach. So I found a couch, picked up a book of Spanish love poems, and started reading – just to avoid browsing around the store and getting the temptation to buy everything. Even from my safety zone of the couch, I could see the accessories stand, and there was a particular pair of earrings that caught my attention. It was a pair of dangling bronze pearls, unassumingly elegant and large enough to catch your attention. I dismissed it, assuming it would be very pricey. But as the girls and I were just about to leave the store, I couldn’t go without giving it a closer look. Nervously, I reached toward the rack and picked it up, knowing that the longer I held it, the more in love with it I was. I hesitated. Did I want to know how much it was? I really, really wanted it, but if it was too expensive, was I going to be able to walk away from it? Slowly, I turned it over.
$9.99 it read, in a red pen that had crossed out its original retail price of $40. This was destiny!
I let out an audible yelp. The people around me gave me a strange look before returning to their shopping. The Shopping God must have wanted me to have these earrings. I must have pleased him in some way in the past and this was my reward!
I literally dashed to the checkout counter and forked over the money. The shopaholic in me was appeased.

After shopping, the girls wanted to get food, but I was still full from the dim sum, so I wandered around on my own. I had done a bit of research before my trip, and I knew that I was on part of the Freedom Trail. There were a few things I wanted to see before I went back to the hotel, such as some churches and the Boston Public Library. I am a sucker for architecture. I love taking pictures of buildings and cityscapes, which I find just as breathtaking as natural landscapes.

By the time I got back to the hotel, the rest of my delegation was back our rooms debating how to spend our first night in Boston.

Since most of us were 20, we couldn’t go out drinking, so the few of us that were legal drinking age ended up buying alcohol and bringing it back to the hotel room, where we got quite drunk quite fast. We were hanging out in the Guys’ room, which sort of became party central. Until then, I had been determined that nothing was going to happen on this trip and that the DEB crush was not to be rekindled. But as we became more and more drunk, he was more and more flirty and encouraging me to drink, and somehow I ended up lying on his lap.
To sober up, we went for a walk outside in the brisk night air. As soon as we were outside, GHG linked her arm through DEB‘s, and told him to hold her. Another guy in our group commented on her flirty behaviour by turning to me and saying, “I didn’t know she was like that.” I shrugged. We were drunk, it was forgiveable. But it also gave me the courage to be more forward with DEB, and soon enough, I was the one linking arms with him. If I was sober, I probably would’ve known better, but seeing him link arms with GHG helped me justify that it wasn’t a big deal. We were walking ahead of the group, and I don’t remember exactly what we talked about, but I do remember him getting very serious at one point and asking me whether I thought he was a good guy, or something to that affect. I called him soulless because he was selling himself out to be a ruthless, money-grubbing trader on Wall St..
“Seriously, you don’t think I’m soulless do you?” He asked, casting me a sideways glance.
“Sure I do,” I replied nonchalantly.
He stopped walking and turned to look at me. “Really? You actually think that way of me?”
I tugged on his arm and kept walking, “No, of course not. I think you’re a swell guy.” I was purposefully being sarcastic to avoid telling him that I thought he was so sweet that it made me want to die.
He laughed. “Be serious!” he said, giving my arm a squeeze.
“I don’t want to be serious!” I whined in a tipsy stupor.
“But then I can never tell when you’re being serious or not!” He referred to the time we had to work on a presentation together, when he actually started to believe that I disliked him.
I laughed, pleased that I could make him so frustrated. “Of course I don’t think you’re soulless, nor do I find you annoying,” I said reassuringly. “Well, maybe sometimes.”

We walked on, arm in arm, enjoying the night breeze of Boston. After a while, the rest of the group caught up to us, and we headed back to the hotel. On the elevator ride up, he stood behind me and wrapped his arms around me, leaning his head on mine. I lost myself in that moment and melted into his warmth.

Back in our rooms, GHG and I debriefed the drunken night. She kept saying how much she enjoyed it, and confessed to me that she thought DEB was “the sweetest guy ever.”
“I love how we flirt with each other and all that without it being awkward, even though he has a girlfriend. I just feel really comfortable around him. He’s a great guy.” I agreed halfheartedly, soberly realizing that I wasn’t the only one who had a little crush on DEB.

The next morning, I had planned a Boston/Harvard tour for our delegation, so we got on our coach bus and headed toward Harvard campus. The bus dropped us off in Harvard Square, which is a lovely commercial centre in the middle of campus with unique shops and famous little bookstores.

We did our own tour around Harvard Yard, since we didn’t have time to go with the tour guide.

The Widener Library was closed, but we later found out that there is a very interesting story behind this library. An excerpt from Wikipedia explains:

Widener Library commemorates Harry Elkins Widener a 1907 Harvard graduate, who was a book collector and victim of the Titanic disaster. His mother, Eleanor Elkins, made a $3.5 million donation to Harvard University to build a library named after him.
According to a campus legend, under the terms of the Widener family donation, the exterior of the library is never to be altered, or else ownership of the building reverts to the city of Cambridge. Because of this, according to the legend, Harvard has been always been limited and creative in its renovation options, including the building of a causeway to neighboring Houghton Library through what was a large window.
There is a legend at Harvard that in order to prevent what befell Widener from happening to another student, all students of Harvard College are required to prove that they can swim before they are allowed to graduate. While Harvard did implement a swimming test in the 1920s, it had nothing to do with Widener, and the swim test is no longer required of students.

Before we left, I made sure everyone rubbed the lucky left foot of John Harvard. I am not sure where this legend came about, but it’s something that all Asian tour groups believe fervently in, and seeing as it was Friday the 13th that day, I felt like we all needed some good luck.

Interesting fact about the John Harvard statue (Wikipedia):

The statue, known by Harvard tour guides as the statue of three lies, claims that it depicts John Harvard, Founder, 1638, but in reality Harvard was a contributor, not the founder; the institution was founded in 1636; and the statue is actually a likeness of someone else. The sculptor used a student as a model because he had no image of John Harvard to work from.

We then raided the Harvard Business School (HBS), which was only appropriate given that the founder of our business school was a graduate of HBS and our education system is based off theirs. I left a thank-you message in one of their classrooms before we left.

Next, our coach took us to Faneuil Hall Market Place, which is a beautiful part of downtown Boston just bursting with character. There were so many eateries to choose from in the Quincy Market Colonnade that I had to walk up and down the hall three times before I could decide.

DEB and I got separated from the others after lunch, and we wandered around on our own. Once again, we were arm-in-arm, laughing and talking like a couple. He catered to my whims, let me lead him around to stores that I wanted to see, and waited patiently as I fell in love with Boston and tried to take pictures of everything.

When I got back from committee in the afternoon, DEB seemed to have missed me. After all, we had been quite a couple in the morning and had such a good time together. As I was cleaning up in the Girls’ room, he came up and gave me a hug from behind.
“How was committee?” He asked, like a husband asking his wife how her day was.
“Terrible, as usual. Complete waste of time.”
“Are you okay?” He turned me around to face him.
“Of course I’m okay.”
We stood there gazing at each other, inches apart. Just then, my roommates came home.

BI and I wanted to skip the evening committee session and go to the symphony. The rest of the group thought it was a good idea, so we all decided to skip committee. As we got dolled up (even the boys!), the sun was setting on the city outside.

For dinner, we went to Legal Sea Foods, a restaurant near our hotel that turned out to be a great decision¹. As the resident wine expert, I ordered a bottle of 2006 German Riesling that everyone complemented. Our waiter was amazingly accommodating, and best of all, did not ID us. After placing our orders, we were reading our place mats and noticed that Legal was known for their clam chowder, which none of us had ordered. So we called our waiter back and he brought us a bowl and eight spoons to share. In a matter of seconds, the bowl was empty and we were fighting over who got to lick the bowl.

With warm stomachs, we headed over to the Boston Symphony Orchestra to listen to some Mozart. The orchestra hall was beautiful, as it was the original building, and had very European moldings and statues on the inside.


The music director, James Levine, is an extremely well-known American music director, and is also the music director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. What fascinated me was his crazy hair and the way he swiveled around in the conductor’s chair.

At the symphony, PCG² held onto DEB as if he was a lifesaver. Her arms were tightly around his and it didn’t look like she would ever let go. I noticed her attachment to DEB that morning when we toured Harvard as well. The worst part was that DEB didn’t seem sensitive to the fact that he had been flirting with me all through dinner. It didn’t help that when we got back to our hotel, BI said she’d seen PCG emerge from her room with DEB, her hair all messy, and then immediately pull GHG aside for some girl talk.
“Just judging by that, there has to be something going on between PCG and DEB,” BI said as she straightened her hair. We were getting ready to go to the conference’s cocktail party.
“But doesn’t DEB have a girlfriend?” I asked, feigning ignorance.
“Yep. And it seems like they’re really serious too. I was talking to him earlier and he said that she might just be the girl he ends up marrying.”
“Then how could he be like this around other girls? How would his girlfriend feel if she knew?”
“I don’t know, but I know I wouldn’t want to marry him,” BI said decisively, alluding to the fact that DEB might cheat.
“He said he might marry her?” I asked, perplexed. It didn’t make sense to me. DEB had said that he’d met his girlfriend after hitting on her one time at a party in Grade 11. They’ve been together ever since, although he tried to break up with her twice. After that, he decided to just stick with it. “I feel like he’s just settling, maybe that’s why he acts like such a player.”
“Oh believe me, I know. He is a complete womanizer.” Then BI told me a story about how he had flirted with her when they first met.
“He’s so smooth that you don’t realize it, but he does come on pretty strong huh?” I remarked, more casually than I felt.
So DEB is a flirt. He doesn’t like me, he likes women. Although this realization should have strengthened my resolve to forget about him, instead it made me wonder if I could toy around with him too. Since it was just some harmless flirting that didn’t mean anything to him, why should it mean anything to me?

Nonetheless, I ignored DEB at the cocktail party and ended up chatting in Mandarin with three girls from Beijing University, who were very nice and very curious about American culture. Being in a group of Asian girls also meant we were hit on more than once, but I advised them not to react to it as most of the boys were nerds who couldn’t get any at home and were trying to take advantage of desperate nerd-girls.

The next day was Valentine’s Day, and I actually went to all my committees and got my money’s worth for the conference. They were sending out rose-a-grams in the conference, and sadly I did not get one, but I found out later that someone had actually sent me one but it got sent to the wrong committee. I managed to avoid DEB since I had lunch with people from my committee. I was still mulling over what BI had said.
For dinner, I went out with AHB, a high school friend that also happens to be MFL‘s best friend. We talked easily, and at the end of the night he gave me two tickets to the Museum of Fine Arts, which he got for free somehow.
When I got back to the hotel, everyone was curious to know where I had been all day and who I had had lunch and dinner with. I didn’t want to tell them I had dinner with AHB because they would interrogate me about him and I didn’t want to explain to them that AHB was actually my ex’s best friend.

That night was the conference dance, and I had brought a cute little pink dress for just the occasion. I had bought it a long time ago on sale, but I’d never worn it because it was very low cut, I didn’t think I had enough cleavage to pull it off. However, I had found a bra that could give me a bit of a lift in that area, so I finally decided to wear the dress. When I went into the Guys’ room (where everyone was hanging out) after I changed, everyone started whooping and cheering. Uncharacteristically (maybe it was the gin and tonic I had), I did a little twirl and pose, basking in the compliments. When DEB saw me, his eyes just about jumped out of their sockets.
I exited with a curtsy and DEB followed me back to the Girls’ room. He stood in the doorway, the threshold between the Girls’ room and the Guys’ room, as if afraid to be alone with me. His eyes never left me. Making up his mind, he walked towards me, closing the distance between us so quickly that before I knew it, we were abreast and his arms were around my waist. I rested my arms on his shoulder.
“You look amazing,” he said, captivated.
“Thank you. You do too.” And he did. He was wearing a very sharp suit with a sleek belt that made him look tall and irresistible.
I looked in the mirror beside us. You had to admit, we looked good together. Just then, my roommate entered the room and we broke our embrace. Too quickly, it seemed, for both of us.
As we left the room, he stayed close to me the whole time, walking me arm in arm to the elevator. As we were waiting, I commented that his cologne smelled nice. Then he asked me what I was wearing. “Guess,” I said, and he bent down and took a whiff of my neck. The air was palpable with sexual tension.
“Ohh,” he moaned, as he straightened up. “I don’t know what it is, but you smell so good.”
“Guess,” I said again, with a twinkle in my eye. Again, he bent down to smell my neck.
“Something tropical. Mango? No. Coconut?”
“Yes. It’s coconut lime.”
As we piled into the elevator, DEB stood behind me, his hands on my hips, pulling me towards him. I was giddy with the knowledge that I could make him want me so badly.

However, when we got to the dance, we lost each other, and when I found him later, he insisted we find the rest of the group. As a group, we danced together for a while, then all of a sudden, he started grinding some random chick. I was miffed. I didn’t understand it. He had acted like he couldn’t get enough of me, and yet, here he was grinding a random when he could’ve been dancing with me.
It left a sour note in my mouth for the rest of the night, and when we got back to the hotel room, FMB noticed how down I was and tried to cheer me up. Except, he was flirting and coming on very strong. I didn’t understand that either, I mean this guy had been super nice to me the whole trip, but had never exhibited that kind of interest. All of a sudden, we were playing a game where the stakes were that if I lost, I had to kiss him. He cheated, I lost, he asked me to kiss him. I looked around. There were three other people in the same room! I couldn’t, so I refused him by not taking his request seriously. In all honesty, I would have kissed him. It was Valentine’s Day, I was without a boy, and DEB was with some random chick, having a ball. But my sense of propriety kept me from making out with FMB in front of other people. I wasn’t nearly drunk enough.

When DEB came back to the hotel room, he didn’t even acknowledge me. Instead, GHG was lying on his bed with him and asked him (I was so shocked by how forward she was) to spoon her.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I had been as reserved as I could around DEB despite how attracted I was to him because I knew he had a girlfriend and I felt awful as it was. But now I saw him for who he really was. DEB was not a cute, sweet, nice boy. He was an insensitive womanizer, and a terrible boyfriend. Depressed, I changed out of the dress that seemed to make boys go crazy, and called it a night.

The next day was our last day there, and instead of going to committee, BI and I went to the Museum of Fine Arts. We grabbed a quick breakfast at au bon pain, a breakfast chain that I’d seen everywhere in Boston but hadn’t had a chance to try. Although the layout and selection was impressive, the actual food was not. Then we somehow navigated our way to the museum by taking the subway, which the locals insisted calling “train.”

The Boston Museum of Fine Arts held a surprisingly varied and impressive collection from Japanese prints all the way to impressionist paintings.







The two of us bought an audio tour and took our time going through the exhibits. As it turned out, BI and I have very similar “tourist” habits — enjoying good food, exploring ethnic areas like Chinatown and Little Italy, spending all day at a museum, etc. and neither of us minded being on our own. We spent over three hours browsing the exhibits until we realized we had to go. We made it back to the hotel just in time to stuff everything in our luggage and get on the bus.

DEB sat with me again for the ride back. This time, I had the courage to lean on his shoulder, and I slept while he watched movies. Aside from reminiscing about what a good time we had had and how Boston surprised us in its character and old school charm, we did not talk much. I was still wrestling with the disappointment I felt the night before at DEB‘s behaviour. What was worse was that I actually felt sad that the trip was coming to an end because DEB had been like my “Boston boyfriend” – albeit a very loose definition of boyfriend. He must have sensed it too, because when we stopped for food, DEB kept his arm around me and leaned his head on my shoulder. Knowing that DEB was no good and that I would never want him to be my boyfriend even if he was single made me want to hold onto him (the sweet side of him, that is) even more.

Oddly enough, halfway through the ride back, he moved to a different seat because he said his legs were feeling cramped. I couldn’t help but feel disappointed. ACB came and sat down beside me and we ended up talking about his love life (nonexistent). He told me that he had actually sent a rose-a-gram to me, but I never got it because it went to the wrong committee. We ended up opening a bottle of red wine I had bought at the border and drank it out of soft drink cups. If I thought that was a weird way to end the trip, what happened next was even more inexplicable.
Minutes prior to us arriving at The Business School, DEB came back to sit with me. He put his arm around me and hugged me tightly, telling me he was really glad I came on this trip and that he was going to miss me.
As we unloaded the bus, he never left my side, helping me carry my luggage and call a cab. We said goodbye with a long and tight hug, twice. It was as if he was trying to tell me, in a bizarre sort of way, that despite his undiscriminating flirtatiousness to all women, I was his “Boston girlfriend.” He had picked me, for whatever reason. And without wanting to, I forgave him for his promiscuity and insensitivity, playing with all these girls at once. Without wanting to, I was smitten.
In the cab on the way home, I thought about the way he had treated me on the trip compared to the other girls. The other girls were much more forward about their flirting, and although he never turned them away, he also never initiated it (minus the random girl he grinded with). But with me, he had been the one to put his arms around me, to pull me towards him, to hold me. And the other girls saw the way he was around me, especially PCG, who shot me more than one dirty look during this trip. Maybe it was because I wasn’t as forward as the other girls, because I played hard to get and therefore seemed like a challenge to him that he treated me differently. All this is quite possible. But it’s hard to rationalize against what I want to believe: that I was special to him.

And now, days later, I still can’t get him out of my mind, even though I know that if I keep pining over the details of the trip, I will only be hurt, because when I see him in class again on Monday, he will act like nothing happened and I will feel like a fool. Just a foolish love-sick girl.

1. Because we walked in without a reservation and there were 8 of us, at first they said we would have to wait at least 40 minutes. So then we decided to leave because if we waited, we wouldn’t have enough time to eat before the symphony started. When they heard that we were leaving, they ended up seating us in a private dining room. Everyone was so pleased, and I declared it was because we had all rubbed the lucky foot of John Harvard that day. [↩]
2. PCG is the president of our class. She was not in our hotel room, but she is actually GHG‘s roommate back home. [↩]