chat

I did cut off a long time childhood friend after a sudden realization that his entire personality was elaborate peacocking and he hadn't matured since 8th grade. We never really argued or anytbing, but I had always thought maybe he was oddly committed to stuff he had only learned about the previous week. I've seen him change religion more than 10 times. He's also been outspoken about multiple contradictory political beliefs.

I don't mean peacocking like his style of clothes was extravagant, rather, he would always try to seem and sound impressive or interesting. But just insofar as what he thought would get emotionally naive young women to sleep with him. Like he kept going to our college for years after he dropped out, just to hang where students would congregate. He'd bring an acoustic guitar, try to make idle conversation with women, then throw in whatever persona he had adopted that month, like "Oh I'm actually a recent convert to reform Judaism and I'm really interested in particle physics." One time he claimed to be following bushido and would carry around a samurai sword (resulting in an instance where he was banned from Starbucks for a year).

His behavior never really clicked for me because I'm naive and I wasn't aware I was asexual, so I didn't clock that all he truly cared about was meeting college aged women to sleep with. But about a year ago I got on a routine discord call with him and some other folks just to catch up, since none of us live nearby anymore. And my guy had a big announcement that he was converting back to Catholicism.

He had literally just gone on a Buddhist pilgrimage to some special island in Japan not three months prior. He had a Buddhist wedding. Oh yeah I forgot to say he's married, but he still does the same thing of trying to seem interesting to specifically naive college aged women. That always seemed like his target, was a 19 year old girl who came from a religious upbringing in the south who had never heard of... Zoroastrianism or whatever other obsession he had that month.

So when he said he was becoming Catholic again, I guess that's when it hit me somehow. He only ever cared about getting laid and that kinda put in question why he ever even hung out with me. Not like in that he wanted to sleep with me, I wasn't his type, but like how he'd suddenly abandon me when a pretty lady appeared.