I'm in the position where my best friend has fallen in total love with me. It's not the "oh that boy loves me." It's like he's been in love with me for three years and I can't see him as more than just that, my best friend. We dated a long time ago, before we became "best friends." And I liked him a lot. But things happened and it didn't work out. But since then we've become closer. And I love him. I completely adore this boy. And sometimes I ask myself that question, if I really am in love with him and just can't admit it to myself, or what my problem is. He told me three days ago that he can no longer be my friend because being my friend was him setting his hopes high knowing they would just come crashing back down. My other close friend agree that I need to just let it go and let him finally get over me, but something tells me I shouldn't let this one slip away. What do I do?

unsigned

Dear Unsigned,

A confession of my own: I have the unpleasant habit of quietly reading aloud when I first review a document, such as your petition for advice. Your missive printed out by my typist, Jarwaun, this past Monday afternoon and cellotaped to the exterior of my tank for my inspection. Just afore I intoned your actual question, I was cut short by a sharp critique of your query.

"Oh, fuck her!" called out my lab assistant, Rob, still carrying the very large box of the Krispied Kreme Dough Nuts for which he had been sent to fetch two-and-one-half days prior.

I re-scanned the printout with my incisive eyes, "ROB, YOU ARE OF CONFUSION AND THUS USE A PRONOUN INAPPROPRIATE; THIS MISSIVE MAKES CLEAR THAT THE LOVER IS MALE — AND, IT IS QUITE POSSIBLE, THE PETITIONER MALE, AS WEL—"

"I'm not saying she — and, Lord A., I am so totally positive that the asker is a she — should fuck him, I'm saying that the whole fucking universe should fuck her."

I attempted to imagine this, but the image was distressing — especially considering that the greater portion of the universe is composed of dark matter, which one might surmise would have a generally deleterious affect upon contact with the generative organs. I must have blushed my perplexity, because Rob continued his diatribe with no prompting.

"Look, she loves him," Rob sneered, pushing the extra-large pasteboard carton of Nuts into Jarwaun's waiting arms. "She fucking adores him, and she doesn't want him to slip away, but still she doesn't want to date him." Jarwaun made no move to set the Nuts upon the for-snacking table, instead electing to stand agog, the Nuts held awkwardly afore his chest. "You know what that says to me? It says He's a nice guy but I'm too good for him, but she wants to keep him warming the bench as a back up, in case shit doesn't sort out for her. No one wants to be standing alone under the mistletoe when the ball drops and all that. Well fuck that noise. A big part of equal rights is holding every one to the same goddamn standard; if this was some hot-shot successful athletic guy keeping some pleasant fatty on the hook as his secret girlfriend so he always had someone to stick when he was lonely and horny, we'd rightly call the fucker a pig. I'm calling pig all over this shit."

The otherwise bustling lab ground to a halt as Rob spoke.

"And another thing," he continued, his breath hitching. "Do you know what the fucking best-case scenario is here? Seriously? If she get's shit her way, then it's this: She keeps her 'best friend,'" Rob bracketed the evidently hated word in oozing quotation marks of air, "hanging on the line, getting more and more tangled for her, until she finds Mr. Good-Enough-for-My-Perfect-Ass. Then when poor dumbfuck BFF keeps doing like he's always done — 'cause, you know, they're such fucking great 'friends' — all of a sudden he's crowding her and being a creepy stalker. So, either she gets old and ugly and settles for him and rakes him over the coals for the rest of their lives 'cause he's not Mr. Good-Enough-for-Her, or she leaves him high and fucking dry for her heinous friends to pick at and laugh about his little dick and saggy gut and what-the-fuck-ever. So, my advice to her is to fuck the fuck off, and my advice to him is to sprint to the nearest tittie bar with a pitcher deal, work the poison out of his system, and start tomorrow like a Brand New Fucking Day. No more dangling on the hook, bro'."

Rob panted with his exertions, but his advice was clearly spent. My typist, Jarwaun, muttered an impressed "Daaaamn" under his breath, but that did little to mask the ragged, breathing of the lab's director, Molly, who stood in the doorway, her face pale save for high color perched upon her cheeks.

Rob blanched, and his eyes sprung to wide, white-ringed Os. "I'm just sayin' that I knew a guy, one time," Rob said uncertainly. "This isn't, you know, a me thing. It's just a thing. That happens."

Pools glimmered in Molly's eyes, and her mouth tightened to a pale knot. She turned stiffly and left the lab altogether.

In any event, I am generally inclined to agree with the core kernel of the counsel offered by Rob and your close friends: Let your darling BFF go. It is as the miners do with their canaries: if you release the canary in the mine and it dies, then there are toxins present in the environ. But if—dear reader—if the canary returns in the mine then the love is true.

That said, I feel your assessment of the subsequent results is naive, at best. The BFF, he shall not "get over you." Rob, he is clearly conversant with the gross and outwardly visible machinations of the female mate-selection, but I believe that, in this last octet of years spent advising the human animals at large, I have finally gained something of the insight into the motivating female mind. You and your close friends, you shall set dear best friend free, but as he nimbly leaps into the brush, the site of his retreat will inflame the lust of the hunt in your hearts, and you shall do for him as the Dionysus' Thracian Maenads did for Orpheus. His instincts are right: either in one fell swoop, or in the course of agonizing inches, you shall tear out his still-beating heart. That he somehow persists in the delusion that he can avoid this fate is touching, but also saddens greatly.

All for the Best in this Best of All Possible Worlds,
Your Giant Squid
Editor-in-Chief
PMjA