Luke’s Smooth Move

Normally I don’t recommend carnivals as good date options. There are many unromantic things about carnivals: food on sticks, piles of sawdust-covered vomit, and carnies, just for example. This story involves a carnival, and it’s a little romantic, but I felt I should give you the disclaimer above before continuing.

Luke gave me moony cow-eyes for a whole summer before we dated. I was completely oblivious. I thought we were friends. I had not yet seen When Harry Met Sally and I didn’t realize that men and women cannot be friends because the man pretty much always wants to bang the woman, even if she’s not hot. This would have been useful information to have when Luke and I started doing friend things together, one-on-one. I was doing buddy stuff like making crude jokes and punching him in the arm, and he was doing I-like-you stuff like…

Well, like taking me to the carnival. I’m pretty sure I tried to get other people to come with us and it didn’t work out. Maybe they were all smarter than me and realized we were a couple, even though I didn’t. In any case, we ended up at the tiny, dusty county fair together with a few hours of free time and a roll of ride tickets, purchased Dutch, of course.

And the ride he wanted was one of those swirly spinny ones with the cars for two people. I was game, so we got aboard. The seat was plenty wide enough when we got in. We were both skinny high-schoolers and there was at least half a butt-cheek width between us. But then the ride started spinning.

Luke had gotten the outside seat and I’d gotten the inside seat, and I quickly realized we were going to have a problem. I held on for a minute, but the centripetal force inched me ever closer to touching Luke’s butt with my butt, which seemed very un-buddy-like to me. Eventually my skinny forearms gave out and I thudded against Luke’s thigh, screaming my lungs out from either the ride or the touching, I wasn’t sure which. Luke just grinned, victorious in his butt-touching scheme.

I think it took us at least a couple more weeks after that to officially be “dating,” mostly because I was still blissfully oblivious, despite my butt having touched his butt. It’s a good thing my life didn’t depend on understanding male-female relationship dynamics. I would have been a goner.

Posted: August 10th, 2011 under Luke - 1 Comment.

Up on the Roof

Shane and I were long-distance internet lovers before long-distance internet lovers were really normal. Yes, in this way, I was weird. I know. Shocking.

He came to visit once while we were still dating. I can’t remember the exact circumstances, but he somehow ended up hanging out with me for the day. We played badminton and went to the arboretum and met up with some of my friends and he threw his arm around me amiably and took my picture and played with the family dog. It was a nice day. But the thing I remember most about that day was sharing my “hiding spot” with him. (Not as dirty as it sounds– but we’ll get to that.)

I don’t know if all teenagers do it, or just me, but I delighted in knowing things that no one else in my household knew. I knew, for example, that I could pop the screen off my bedroom window and climb out of it fairly easily. I tried it several times, just to prove it to myself. I never actually had to use my super secret escape method, but I could have if I’d wanted to.

I also knew that I could climb onto the roof of the shed in our back yard and sit on the side facing away from the house, and no one would know I was there. This I did fairly frequently. I had my own room (which was extremely lucky in a family as large as mine), and really, no one ever bothered me if I went to my room and closed the door, but the roof of the shed somehow seemed more private. I’d go up there to think when I really needed to be alone.

I took Shane up there. I’m not sure why. I can’t remember taking any other boyfriend up there. It could have been because I knew he wouldn’t be popping by to visit whenever he felt like it, and climbing up there to invade my privacy. But, mostly, I think it was because I just wanted to share something secret with him, that was only mine to share. In a lot of ways, Shane already knew me better than most people. He’d read my writing (fiction and non-fiction), and when you’re a writer (even if you haven’t decided yet that you’re a writer), that means something. So it was probably also because I felt more comfortable with him than I’d ever felt with Joe.

We sat up there together in the afternoon sun, reclining on the slope of the roof, soaking up the last warmth of the shingles. I don’t remember if we talked about anything important, or if we even said anything at all, but I remember feeling happy. It wasn’t a secret anymore that was just mine– it was ours. And I was glad.

Posted: July 28th, 2011 under Shane - No Comments.

Joe’s Smooth Move

Honestly, Joe wouldn’t have had to be all that smooth with me. I thought he was the best thing in the world. I was completely smitten. It didn’t matter that he had a dumb sense of humor, wrote awful poetry, and once popped a zit on his leg in my presence. I didn’t care– he was perfect.

But, despite my already thinking Joe was the best thing since… well, since my last crush, he still managed to execute some smooth moves designed to make me fall even more madly in love with him.

He went slow with me when we first started dating. I think he could tell I was a little… we’ll say skittish. Basically, I probably would have screamed, scratched him, and run away if he’d made a move too fast. I was fourteen and had never so much as held a boy’s hand before.

Joe was smart, though. He worked with it. He always had a ton of cats running around at his house, so maybe he learned the technique from them. After all, cats are pretty good at the whole scream, scratch, run away pattern. He’d wait until I made a tiny move. Then he’d make a tiny move. And before I knew it we’d be snuggled up next to each other and he’d be grinning in his victory.

He did this once in the back seat of a car when we were driving home with a group from some church function. He convinced me to sit in the middle next to him instead of leaving the middle of the bench seat open. We rode along for maybe twenty minutes or so just holding hands, and then he pulled the stretch-and-yawn and left his arm on the back of the seat behind me. It was so contrived I almost laughed.

When we hit a bump, his arm came down around my shoulders. When I started nodding off, he inched me toward him until my head was on his shoulder. And just like that, I was sleeping like a kitten on this boy who made me so giddy and nervous normally that I could barely stop fidgeting when I was with him.

That? Is a good talent to have.

Posted: July 25th, 2011 under Joe - No Comments.

Where Are They Now: Luke

Luke and I didn’t part on the best terms. Basically, I cruelly dumped him and he was heart-broken.

We tried to stay friends, but that doesn’t usually work when one person is over it (me) and one person is still in love (him). I’m sure it was misery for him, and I didn’t set out to cause it. Yeah, I dumped him, but I didn’t want him to keep on being unhappy because of me. So it was sort of a relief when he moved far away. I missed him, of course– he was my best friend before we ever dated. But he deserved a new start, and I hoped the move would give that to him.

For a while, we didn’t talk much. He moved to be with this girl he knew, and they started dating either right before or shortly after. I think they must have dated for something like two years. So, seemingly, it worked. Moved = new start = forget about Ramona and move on.

And then his girlfriend dumped him.

I’m not sure why, but the first person he decided to call when his long-term girlfriend dumped him was me, the last long-term girlfriend who’d dumped him. I tried to be a good friend. I tried to listen. I took his calls on the fire exit stairs of my office building and let him tell me what a bitch she was. I listened to him go through the same “but why” reaction that he did when I’d dumped him. And it was like I was dumping the poor guy all over again. I didn’t like it much, although I have to admit it was nice to spread the guilt around a little. Now I was not the only girl who’d ever broken his heart.

I had hope that it would be a permanent reconnection for us– that we’d keep being friends even after he got over the hurt of being dumped, again; that maybe this new hurt would replace the old hurt that I’d caused him. Alas, no. He lost a bunch of weight, got some tattoos, dyed his hair black, and started dating another girl. He’s married to her now and they seem happy– actually, kind of freakishly happy. So I’m happy for him.

But I miss my friend, selfish as it is. I wonder what kind of catastrophe it would take for us to be friends again, but I don’t want that to happen to either of us, so I just have to be content occasionally stalking him on Facebook and being happy that he’s happy. That’s what a good friend would do, right?

Posted: July 21st, 2011 under Luke - No Comments.

The List

I wouldn’t say I’m given to fits of romanticism, really. In fact, I’ve been described as a realist, or, if you want to think of it that way, even a pessimist. So I never had really firm expectations about my boyfriends.

My list of nonnegotiables for a mate has always resembled something like this:

• Kind to animals
• Literate
• Heterosexual

Everything else can pretty much go either way. I’ve dated guys with long hair and short hair, shy guys and outgoing guys, nerds and jocks, college-bound and not, funny guys and serious guys. It never seemed to me that any of that stuff was really a big deal, in the long run.

Still, certain things came along by chance, and they are memories I never want to give up.

• Joe’s great shoulder massages.
• Shane’s beautiful, eloquent letters in his fancy handwriting.
• Luke’s cartoon drawings of us as lions or fish or whatever creature he decided to make us that day.
• Matt’s made-up silly songs about every part of life imaginable.

None of those are things I could have put on a List of Things My Future Mate Must Do, but they were awfully nice.

In hindsight, I can see I might have needed a slightly longer list of requirements. Maybe should have added:

• Non-smoker
• Good relationship with preferably non-crazy family members
• Not too clingy or needy
• In close enough geographic proximity to actually, you know, see once in a while
• Confident…
• But not overbearing or controlling
• Totally into me (not into me as a curiosity, or into the me that he may someday be able to turn me into)

That’s probably really not too much to ask for, but I never thought to look for it. I never thought, “Hey, I deserve a guy who is totally into me,” or, “You know, I don’t think I can make this work if we’re never going to see each other.” These are valid thoughts. I just never had them.

And I can’t decide if I would have been able to come to a list like that on my own, or if I had to go through the crap first.

Posted: June 28th, 2011 under Joe, Luke, Matt, Shane - No Comments.