continued: vertical challenge part II--my 1st boyfriend
in my teen opinion, his kissing prowess more than made up for his being under 5'10. and boy was i drawn to his brains! i laugh as i type this b/c i realize his kisses were decent, but more likely impressed me b/c i was crazy about him in that way you can only be so madly in love with someone when you're 15 and he's your "first", and your heart races and you get butterflies when you see him waiting for you in the hall after biology class. you get high from stealing quick kisses at your locker between classes. you daydream about him during french class and feel special b/c you're a sophomore and he's a senior and you're his prom date. he chose you over blonde, bimbo, cookie-cutter girls with names like anne-marie, shelley, or nicole.
you restlessly glance at the clock in each class, eager to see him the minute the bell rings. because you're seen as a "good student" and "good girl", somehow you ride on that reputation and miraculously get away with taking library & bathroom passes and using them to sneak out of geometry to meet him for lunch, b/c he eats on a different lunch shift than you, and for once you want to spend that time together, sharing fries. you meet again after school near the athletic field house, way past the school bus loading zone for another quick rendezvous before track practice. you make every excuse to see each other and ask him for help on your chemistry homework since he's about to graduate 1st in his class and go to MIT that fall. surely he can help you unravel the mysteries of acids and bases and ethers and esters and polymers. (AW, c'mon, M! you both know damn well you don't need a tutor to get that "A").
it's 1990 and you've just received your ticket to freedom (a.k.a. driver's license). summer is hot when you're 16 and in love for the first time. you're behind the wheel, and he's trying to teach you how to drive a stick-shift but you keep letting go of the clutch too early so his car starts to overheat, and you give up in fits of laughter and you end up doing other things where one thing leads to another. your mind is giddy with that cocky, rebellious teenage notion that you think you know everything and you listen intently to his music collection: depeche mode, nine inch nails, morrissey, and the cure cd's. better yet, he can play you beethoven's "moonlight sonata" on the piano 'cuz he's a sensitive guy.
he's there to soften the blow when your best girl-friend moves away to michigan. boy it hurts when she leaves town, b/c you feel a twinge of guilt for falling into the trap of spending more time w/ him than her because hey�you're in love for the first time and you haven't yet learned that standing-up your girl friend for a guy breaks an unspoken code of female friendship. (aahh, but you learn, and some girls never do). you leave for a month in connecticut and boston, and return in august to see each other before he leaves for college. he says sweet words about how we'll work out the long-distance thing and asks, have i considered looking into colleges in boston or at least massachusetts or somewhere in the northeast? hell yeah! he says peter pan bus will be key to our relationship continuing if i go to school in new england. and isn't it nice to have a girl to come home to on breaks?
now it's 1992 and you're off to college in massachusetts yourself, but coincidentally and not b/c of him, even though your h.s. classmates assume that's why you're going north. you and he are now more off again than on again, though you part on friendly terms, agreeing to date around. and�the last time you make contact is from a pay phone in boston's quincy market. it's october 1993. you're in beantown for fall break, and you're also trying to grow and find yourself, and somehow you've fallen head over heels with a classmate in your american lit seminar, and it's a weird time of growth for you and now you realize your high school self and your present self have yet to find a way to reconcile themselves.
