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When I was younger, I incorrectly assumed it was fine to date co-workers. But since I worked at a company that had like 400 people, with multiple departments — I didn’t think it would be the worst thing to date cross-departmentally on the DL. There was a totally hot guy in another department named Travis. Travis worked on the same floor as my department, and I would often pass him when I was on my way back from the kitchen with my bowl of goldfish, m+ms, pretzels and various cereals. If you’ve ever worked for an advertising company, the kitchen always has the weirdest free shit — in our case, wall-mounted dispensers of literally every type of sugary cereal ever made.
We had some real nerds in our department who loved things like Comic Con and other very pop culture cult-like things and Travis hung out with them a lot. He super loved Superman, and had like, Superman posters and rare figurines all over his desk. I think I first laid eyes on him at our weekly company sponsored Happy Hour on the rooftop. The company I worked for seriously thought they were the modern day IRL Mad Men. They spent ridiculous amounts of money on entertaining — not just clients, but the employees — with stupid things like party bus rides to Venice beach with a full afternoon of drunken bike riding up and down the beach. For no other reason than to maybe, celebrate that they had finished a proposal — not gotten the job, but just finished the fucking PROPOSAL.
Artwork by @khalidrahman306
Alas, one such weekly event the company always had, was a ridiculously early happy hour on Wednesdays. This was not a “pour a glass of wine at the end of the night” type event — this was fully sponsored by a tequila company (it would change weekly) with a hot female bartender serving some sort of signature drink that they would come up with, usually had a live band or a DJ, and always started at 4pm-ish. Sometimes, I would finally make it up there at 7pm — usually many co-workers were completely smashed by this time because the drinks were obviously free. Did I also mention this event was held on a rooftop overlooking Hollywood where any of these idiots could have fallen to their drunken deaths at any moment? It also seemed pretty non-HR correct to be encouraging people to drink a lot, on a weekday, and be in spaces where you might end up drunk with a co-worker and doing things that are not “company sponsored” if you catch my drift.
So one night, I made it up there and I met Travis. Travis always wore jeans, a white t-shirt and a black vest. Don’t ask me why I ever thought this was attractive, but I also wore headbands like I was LC on The Hills, and like, terrible statement necklaces. Travis had emo bangs too. I think the vest was some sort of nod to being like, Fall Out Boy or something? In our first conversation, I found out of course, that Travis was a musician.
Like the kids say, “IYKYK” — and if you know me, you could say the word “musician” from like several hundred yards away, and I will hear it like a fucking dog whistle and come running. Panting probably, too.
And here is where my obsession with Travis began. I’m talking like Cher tryna get Cristian to notice her obsession in Mr Hall’s debate class, like, showing up at his desk with presents and shit — ”Oh, my boss brought this back from Comic Con, it's a limited edition Superman figurine. There’s only 200 in the world…. I noticed you like Superman, do you like, want it for your collection?” It was whatever I could do to get his attention. Including wearing a headband like I was Blair Waldorf and complimenting his absolutely heinous vest.
Before you go off thinking, “oh here this bich goes again with her gift giving and not getting the cues that dude is not into her vibes…” this was not that. He would come by my office and bring flash drives with full albums and playlists of different bands we both liked and talk about what band he was saving up to buy concert tickets for. As far as I knew, the attention was reciprocated. And we went on like this for several months… like, I have so many free albums in my old ass iTunes thanks to Travis.
Our stupid company also had very large parties. Like literally for every single holiday. One such party was for Halloween in which they rented out a very popular nightclub, and put in a full candy bar (in addition to our normal alcohol sponsors), photo booth, live band line up and platform runway for the very competitive costume contest. I was all excited because Travis had asked over an email (Company email too, like HOW STUPID) if I was planning to go to the party…. In my head, I thought, “This is it! The night he will tell me he’s in love with me and we will get married and all the things!!” As Elle Woods once said, “This isn’t just any date, this is THE date.”
I worked very hard to put together my Twister dress that I bought from Party City, and all I had hoped for was that we would be in the photo booth so that the dumb little photo strip would catch my utterly surprised face when he finally professed his love for me… I could not wait.
But alas, I was at the party waiting for several hours before Travis finally showed up. I was waiting in the lobby, drinking some tacky ass signature drink with dry ice floating up all around my face waiting for this loser.
After an hour or so, I thought maybe Travis got caught up with actual work, since you know, it was a Tuesday at 4pm, and I was in a Hollywood nightclub dressed as TWISTER and waiting to celebrate Halloween before it was even dark outside like a child. So I guess I should have noticed that shit was OFF right then — but I was also like, four dry ice drinks deep, so my awareness was slow.
But so when Travis arrived, he seemed stiff and awkward, totally out of the norm…. And weirdly, his red-headed boss was with him, and she seemed kinda sloshed already. He said they had been finishing a project at the office and had been “pre-gaming” a little. When I asked him to do the photo booth with me, he oddly made sure to stay at least two feet away from me, making for some of the most awkward photos I’ve ever seen in my entire life…they weren’t even worthy of posting. I thought maybe I had just eaten wayyy too much candy corn and had terrible candy corn breath or something, but it was clear, he was trying purposely not to touch me.
The next day at the office, his red-headed boss and her friends were passing out flyers for a concert. She came into my office and placed a flyer on my desk and excitedly invited me to Travis’ first live performance at The Viper Room the next week. Like, a strange but seemingly actual invitation…
Side note: I am that girl who makes up the stories in her head. I mean, aren’t we all? But I really am that girl. Like, I sat there and I really thought, “Oh I bet he sent her over here with these flyers to make sure I’m there so he can profess his love for me ON STAGE!!!” Which you know, must have been why he didn’t say anything at the Halloween party, because he was planning this event the whole time, like HOW FUCKING CUTE, he’s getting his friends involved!!
If I could go back in time and just leave myself a post-it note that just says “stop. Being. delusional” like anywhere that my twenty-something year old self would have seen, I would. Like, maybe on those stupid cereal dispensers I visited every fucking day to make my tragic mix of fruity pebbles and coco puffs? I would also have written, “P.S. take that fucking head band off.” Because as Regina George once said, “That was fucking disgusting” (She was talking about a vest though, which weirdly also applies here)
So for the week preceding the event, I had begged my best friend to come to the Viper Room with me to see his show. She was not super into it, because she weirdly hates rock music and also this was a weeknight — and though you might think differently about people who live in LA going out to Hollywood nightclubs and bars on weekdays, you are very wrong about that, nobody really wants to do it. No one wants to pay $20 for parking in a seedy dark parking lot, argue that you are def on the guest list, pay $30 for a version of the drink you ordered with melted ice and too much tequila, and the bad audio mixer who doesn’t get any of the good shows to work at and fucks up the audio no matter what. Not to mention, the Viper Room is just always… sweaty. But this was a guy I LIKED — I told my friend, like this is THE guy, and don’t you wanna be able to say you were there when we had our official meet cute when I ask you to make a speech at the wedding?
My poor friend sucked it up, and smashed her feet into her platforms for me that night. When we arrived, I was busy choosing a place to stand on the dance floor where I would be sure he would see me standing front and center — so you know, like, in case he wanted to sing at me or propose, or whatever.
Side note: These *shows* on week nights are these weird arrangements that the clubs make where the *artists* have to guarantee a certain amount of ticket sales. So realistically, it's like a talent show — in which you could just invite your friends and parents to come watch you perform, but there’s really not any regular people in the room who didn’t know you already. So these shows are not for *real* rock stars…they’re just like, hoping your mom and her friends will buy a lot of alcohol I guess?
So my little dumb ass is front and center, thinking this show is a *legit* performance and that I was going to get in early on a *HUGE* rock star and make him mine. The room started to fill with what I recognized were other bands who were also paying to play, and their girlfriends, and moms, and families, etc. Like weird bands who looked severely metal, and not like emo John Mayer like Travis did. I thought to myself, “how weird that Travis is opening for a metal band…”
And not two minutes later, a giant group of women came waltzing through the door wearing T-shirts with Travis’ face on them. Did I miss the merch table? What the fuck was this?
They shoved me aside and took my front and center spot — and then, I realized it was his red-headed boss, and all of his co-workers from work. They cheered and sang all his songs, while I tried desperately to inch my stupid little 5-foot-3 head over them to try and see ANYTHING at all. Before I knew it, the show was over. And Travis and I hadn’t even made eye contact for not ONE of his ballads.
I tried to hang around and wait for him to load his gear in the back parking lot — I couldn’t give up all that time I had invested in making playlists and downloading songs to give to him, and all that ridiculous rare Superman shit that I bought…. I couldn’t just let it all fade away. But my best friends’ feet were wavering, I had put her through too much — and she was convinced Travis could give two shits about me and that he was just using me for free music by that point. And like, extra bodies for his dumb show that wasn’t even a real show. So as we were walking out to the parking lot — I see Travis standing by his van, MAKING OUT WITH HIS RED-HEADED BOSS.
Like. Are you fucking serious?! When they saw me and my friend, they pretended they were moving gear or like, reorganizing the amps or something. We picked up the pace to get to the car, because this was an incredibly awkward moment — and I couldn’t decide if I was angry, surprised or just wanting to call HR. Travis’ tried to catch up with us, and nervously thanked us for *supporting him*. As we drove away, my friend said, “I knew it. There was something up with that girl the second I saw her.” We drove the rest of the way home in silence. I didn’t even get a free T-shirt.
Turns out, Travis and his red-headed boss had started dating a few weeks prior — and she had made all those T-shirts herself and forced all of her employees to wear them to support him at the show.
I can’t say I know where things went wrong with this one. Was it the head band??
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