I have several strange hookup stories from my past, and I’m going to start sharing them starting with this one. I was friends with this girl named Ashley for a couple years. She was in the same group of people in the punk/metal scene I used to hang out with. She had red flags all over the place, so I would have never pursued her even she said she wasn’t lesbian (questionable stories of men breaking into her house and assaulting her, off and on heavy drugs, crazy eyes, always had to correct you with “facts” she “knew but everyone else didn’t”). Most people tolerated her, but I had a way of talking around her that kept her comfortable without her reverting to “Red Flag Mode” most of the time. I hung out with a lot of people back then, but I always felt alone. I’d hang out with anyone to fill in that void until they would drag me into their drama, then drop them like a hot potato. We would chill by ourselves from time to time, and I sometimes dropped her off at the house of whatever girl she was dating at the time because she had no car.