I keep hearing all these internet jokes about insecure men who purchase large vehicles in order to reaffirm their manhood. I don't know if that's true, I think that they pump steroids and join the police force, but Aaron wasn't like any of those guys. Aaron instead disappointed me because I expected him to be a funny Jew, not a diminutive anger-basket with an attitude problem.
So, one time my friend and I are at some frathouse basement urging each other to chug grain alcohol, and, well, it's hard to say exactly how that story progressed, but the next thing I know Aaron is exploding and on the verge of ramming the grain alcohol bottle up my friend's ass, and consequently fucking it up not just for my friend who was trying to get laid, but also for me since I was the wingman. Aaron always had a mean face, and to be honest I judged him for it. It's easy to look at an angry person and to feel not concern, but rather frustration at the fact that their emotions are also affecting you.
It was not until a naked party on Old Campus that I would finally come to feel guilty for feeling frustration at Aaron's existential angst. At the naked party I was casually glancing around while sipping beer and managed to confirm that Gabriel Hernandez' penis was 10 times as large as Aaron's. But of course, I broke the rules by glancing around; I was just supposed to stare at the beer and women's heads.
As I finished my beer, the cops burst in and shut down the naked party. As I walked out, one of the female officers complimented me on my tie, the only attire I was wearing at the time. I hastily put on my black suit [long story], and walked out of the naked party, to find Aaron outside. "Hey, how's it going AJF?" I said. I used to affectionately call him AJF. I was laughing manically, for reasons that I cannot remember, and I guess it didn't go well with my black suit. Maybe he thought I had something with the party getting busted, but I surely did not.
"Do you know what happened, Ramon?" At the time my name was Ramon, but that is another long story. "No, I don't know what happened," I said as I kept laughing maniacally for reasons that I cannot remember, though I'm sure it was something fully innocent. Aaron looked frustrated, perhaps thinking that I was laughing at him, and he said, "it's a micropenis..." Causing me to get even more nervous and to laugh even more. Aaron gave me a death stare, grinned his teeth, and walked away. The black suit helped me blend into some trees and I lost him as he exited towards Wall St.
I can't help myself for laughing at something unrelated and for him to have presumed that it was related to him, but I do feel bad about the fact that I used to judge Aaron, that I used to see him as an angry grinch, when in reality he was just a man tormented. Now that I'm older and more mature, I can understand that it's sometimes hard to relate to people who are in a situation completely different from yours. Accordingly, I try to read about events in war-torn African countries, to remind myself of how hard it is to relate.