When the emotions of the heart are involved, sanity and logic don’t have a chance.

Love triangles have been the foundation for many a good story. Empires have fallen and history changed because of two competing forces struggling for the affection of one coveted treasure. My story, however, though it indeed involves a love triangle, does little more than paint me as the stupid, star-crossed imbecile I am.

For as long as I could remember, Rick and Rhonda had been together. They hooked up during my freshman year, right before my fraternity’s formal. They were both a year older than me, and I was still hanging out almost purely with my fellow frosh. As time went on, though, and I spent more time around the frat house, I saw more of Rick – and, of course, Rhonda. I got along well with both, and I counted each of them as a trusted friend. We would all still be friends to this day, but fate decided to step in – or maybe I’m just a dumbass with a tendency to screw good things up.

Either way, I developed a big crush on Rhonda. While I was hopelessly pursuing another girl in her sorority, I would sometimes talk to her about it, just to use her as a sounding board to vent my frustration. She would always listen and give advice, and I found her different than the shallower, petty sorority girls who would come around on the weekend. I knew that she was strictly hands-off, of course, since she was Rick’s girlfriend. It was one thing to betray a brother in the fraternity, but to make a move on the girlfriend of a friend was something else entirely. Rick had gotten himself a good thing, and I admonished myself for being jealous and selfish instead of being happy for my friends.

Things weren’t ideal in their lover’s paradise, though. They had more than their fair share of fights, usually on the weekends when one or the other had one too many. People started joking that they divided their time equally between sleeping together and yelling at each other, without much room for anything else.

After many weeks of this, I took Rhonda aside and asked if she was happy being with Rick. She said she knew things looked ugly, but she assured me she cared deeply for Rick and no matter how often they fought, she wanted to be with him. Gradually, I let it slip that I had feelings for her too, and that it pained me to see her in a relationship where they argued incessantly. Despite my pouring out my heart, she was undeterred, and it was pretty clear that she cherished her relationship with Rick regardless of their problems and that she and I were not going to be together.

Looking at things from a sane, logical perspective, that would have been that and I would have left things as they were. I would have eventually learned to accept that Rhonda and Rick had something I couldn’t touch and that I should just be content to let them work through their bickering on their own. But when the emotions of the heart are involved, sanity and logic don’t have a chance.

A new year began, and I was a sophomore and Rick and Rhonda were now juniors. I had gotten over my own share of failed love interests, but I suppose I was still holding onto a dim hope that Rhonda would come around and fall for me. During a party thrown during Halloween, I worked up enough courage (thanks to a bountiful amount of Everclear) to make it clear to Rhonda that she deserved to be with me. Leaning against the walls dressed up in a devil’s costume, I somehow managed to get Rhonda alone in my room. The exact details of what happened after that were unclear to me until a few days later, when my brothers (after privately joking amongst themselves about what transpired) clued me in.

Apparently I had made some more romantic overtures to Rhonda, at least as well as I could in such an alcohol-induced stupor. After knocking over my coffee table and soliciting Rhonda for “just one kiss,” she left and found sanctuary in Rick’s room, where she told him everything – my feelings for her, my talks in the past with her, and my less-than-subtle drunken advances. Needless to say, Rick was irate for several days (though he eventually more or less got over it) and Rhonda and I don’t talk as much anymore (if at all) and never while we’re alone in the same room.

Rick and Rhonda’s relationship survives to this day, though my ego has never fully recovered from my stupidity. This is no story of love being found or lost, with a happy ending and a handsome couple riding into the sunset. Instead, it’s a story of an idiot frat boy, loaded on liquor and dressed like Mephistopheles himself, trying to squirm into the pants of his friend and frat brother’s cherished joy.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever escape my Halloween escapade, or if I’ll ever live to forget how I ruined two friendships and tried to break up a happy (somewhat) couple. But I’m pretty confident that the Drunken Demon Frat Boy From Hell won’t be showing his head again anytime soon.