Dancing About Architecture

A brief history of love and how I am not good at it.  Some puzzling themes emerge, and our heroine begins to look even worse than she has already made herself out to be.

1.  EJS: This was the first boy I ever loved, in kindergarten.  I displayed my love by knocking him down on the playground and making him cry.  Oddly, he never returned my affection.

2.  AL: First grade.  Also knocked down on playground.  See above re: outcome.

3.  BS: Fifth grade.  Oh, how I loved this boy, with his olive skin and straight shiny hair.  We spent all summer together at the pool, goading each other off the high dive,  and I used to secretly kiss my hand and touch his desk with it when we got back to school.  He was the only boy without a partner in his class when it was time for the Parent’s Day dance recital, and the gym teacher made him pick a girl from my class to achieve balance.  I’ll never forget sitting on the stage with my classmates and watching him fumble with his choice, certainty rising like a balloon in my chest: He was going to pick me.  And he did.  When he said my name…oh happy day.

4.  RPS: This is the first boy I ever loved who I actually knew as a person.  We became friends when I helped him date my best friend.  (This theme will repeat.  Frequently.)  She never liked him as much as I did, and we used to talk on the phone for hours and hours every night.  During an illicit spin-the-bottle game at my 12th birthday party, he also became my first kiss.  He had these dimples you could lose your mind in.  We kept in touch for a few years, but eventually he moved to Florida and we lost each other.  Then, when I was 18, I went to Lollapalooza at our local outdoor venue.  During Rage Against the Machine’s set, I happened to glance across the crowd and see him.  I swear I went deaf for a minute from the sheer wonder of it.  We hugged it out, but I never saw him again.  I have a funny feeling he’s in jail now.

5.  CRB: Summer before eighth grade.  We actually met when I was in sixth grade, when he was–wait for it–dating one of my best friends.  They were a few years older than I, and it wasn’t until the summer before 8th grade that we were reunited and love bloomed.  I adored him, the way he smelled, his shiny braces, the ollies he did on his skateboard.  One night we were cutting through the neighbor’s yard, on the way home from the local playground, when he stopped, dropped his board, and kissed me.  Even though my first kiss was technically RPS, this was the first one that counted–spontaneous, post-handholding, and spine-meltingly glorious.  This is when I discovered, like a volcano erupting, what hormones were really all about.  He married the next girl he dated after me (this theme will also repeat.)

6.  The true love of my high school years was JMG.  He had long hair and drove a white Ford Probe and was definitely up to no good.  We met…you’re never going to believe this…when he was dating my (promiscuous, though none of us were angels)  best friend K and I fell in love like bungee-jumping off of a cliff, and bounced around on the end of that rubber string for years.  I would have followed this boy anywhere; thank God he never asked me to.  Once I thought I was pregnant by him and I had our whole lives mapped out (I was going to fix him.  Someone page my therapist.)  The last I heard of him, a friend of mine saw him and all he could talk about was how the girl he was dating at the time had shaved her ladybits into the shape of a heart.  Klassy.

7.  My college love arrived like a bolt of lightning the second week of freshman year, knocking on the door to borrow a book from my roommate…who he proceeded to date for a year.   Later, he married another roommate of mine.  They have an adorable baby, and awesome jobs, and own an apartment in Manhattan.  I really wish I had back the four fertile years I spent pining for him, but oh well.  You have to play the hand you’re dealt.  Did I mention that we shared a one bedroom apartment for part of those four years?  Nothing awkward about that.  Nothing self-defeating either, about sharing a bedroom with your unrequited love while he makes monkey time with your once and future roommate.

Hang on, I need a Xanax.

8.  Post-college I fell head over heels for my manager at the bar where I worked.  He started it though, and the good news is he was not then, nor did he ever, date one of my best friends.  The bad news is that he was living with someone else, and of course we were on the down-low at work, so there was a lot of (super hot) sneaking around.  He was ten years older than me, had a gold record, thought I was smart and funny, and I loved him like a biscuit loves butter.  I loved him so much that I twisted my whole personality around to please him, thereby becoming a new and presumably less attractive person.  He left me when he started dating an underling at his new job, and they are now married with two adorable blonde moppets.  I know this because they live two blocks away from me, so that’s fun.  The crowning moment of my stupidity in this relationship was when he said, I think I’m falling in love with you, and I replied Don’t say that, you’ll ruin it. And boy howdy, he took that to heart and never said anything remotely like it again.  As a testament to my resilience, I didn’t like anyone for about ten years after that little disaster.  He’s The One That Got Away.

9.  The first person I fell for after that horror show was this guy, and we already know how that went.

So there we have it; 35 years of love in depressing, unrequited bullet point format.  I don’t think I’ve quite had my share, but I aim to.