Author: Ramona

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.

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?

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.

Luke’s Dad

Luke’s dad had a horseshoe-shaped incision in his head, held together with big, black stitches when I met him. He’d just had a brain tumor removed. The stitches scared me, almost more than meeting his dad did. I was not good with other people’s parents. My parents were quiet, polite, and generally non-demonstrative, but in high school I discovered that not all parents are that way, and I didn’t quite know what to do with them. Especially if they had horseshoe-shaped incisions on the sides of their heads.

He started chemotherapy soon after that, so I never knew him when he was not sick. Still, he was spunky and cheerful, and yelled at his wife and sons with gusto. They didn’t mind, so I didn’t either– I guess. Luke confided that he’d been quite a handful as a kid (which I could well imagine) and once tearfully told me that he’d been a horrible son and he wished he could take it all back. It seemed to me that they dished it out on each other and it was all pretty fair and square.

Luke’s dad died in the spring. It wasn’t unexpected, but I don’t think that ever really makes it better. Luke and I did all the funeral stuff together. We took visitors at his house and ate all the food they brought. We stood with the family at the viewing. We rode in the limo to the funeral. I sat with him in the front row of the church. We rode in the limo to the graveside service.

I tried not to cry. I didn’t feel like I deserved to be allowed to cry. He wasn’t my dad. He was Luke’s dad. How could my sadness even compare a tiny bit to the sadness Luke must’ve felt? So I only cried a little, and as covertly as possible when I was with Luke.

When I came home, I would shut the front door, sit on the steps, and weep, sometimes for hours, because I was sad for Luke and his mom and his little brother, and sad for his dad that he wouldn’t get to see his sons grow up, and sad that anyone ever had to experience this completely unfair death thing.

And then I would make myself think about how behind I was on my homework and how I’d missed choir practice at church, and I would get up and do the whole Life thing, even though Luke’s dad was dead. Luke came back to school and made jokes and drew funny cartoons on my notepads, even though his dad was dead. And for a while, everything we did was even though Luke’s dad was dead.

But I guess that’s how it’s supposed to be. Sometimes you have to do things for a while “even though.” And if you do things “even though” enough times, you remember why you were doing them in the first place.

You get better at the Life thing again.

The Ones that Got Away

There are boys in my story that will never have the status in my mind that The Exes do, mostly because we were never really a thing in the first place. That doesn’t mean I don’t remember them, though.

There was Don, of course. Don and I were best friends in middle school. He’d just moved back to the States from Africa, and he sort of attached to me when he came back, because I’d written him letters while he was there. We were both, of course, incurably nerdy, so we were a good pair. We rode our bikes everywhere together, spent most summer days hanging out. He would come over to my house, climb our avocado tree, and pick avocados to toss down to me. Then we’d put them in his backpack and ride to his house so his mom could make us guacamole. It was all very My Girl, except without the bees and funeral parlors.

In my mind, we were really too young for a boy/girl thing. Plus, everyone always thought he was my little brother because I was a towering hulk and he was a tiny little white-blondie.

My family moved across the country after middle school, and I never saw Don again. But who knows what would have happened if I’d stayed?

There was George. I met him in college between boyfriends. We went to church together once. I wasn’t particularly into church at that point, but I went because another friend asked me. This other friend, Mike, (who I think was vying for the position of Boyfriend at the time) wanted me to come to his church, and he set up a carpool for me with this guy who lived in the dorm across from mine.

George was really nice, and liked to read, and was addicted to coffee, and was impossibly adorable. But I stuck my foot in my mouth multiple times. I said something insulting about 5th-year seniors and then he told me it was his 5th year. Oops. I was also a little mean to Mike because he kept inserting himself next to me at all points during the day, like an ankle-biting yappy dog. In hindsight, it was not the best strategy to be mean to the guy who was also friends with George, despite his yappy ankle-biting tendencies.

After we had lunch with Mike and some other friends, George dropped me off at my dorm. It was freezing and starting to snow, but I remember feeling warm and happy, thinking George and I might have something.

But, George never talked to me again, and I never made the effort either. After my three-year relationship with Luke, I was pretty confident about my charming-ness, but I realized with George that maybe I wasn’t as sweet and lovable as Luke thought I was. When I started replaying the day and realized what an ass I’d been, I was pretty embarrassed. So the George that could have been never was.

So here’s my tip on impressing guys you might want to have a thing with: Don’t be an ass.

The Worst Thing Matt Ever Said

“You’re kind of a fixer-upper.”

I’ll give you a moment to let that sink in. Please keep in mind that a guy who, at the time, was choosing to date me said this. To my face.

I should have dumped him right then. It was really a fairly accurate portrayal of the relationship. We would fight, he would sigh like a martyr, and he would make the conclusion that it was all my fault, obviously, but he was just going to have to put up with me because I was, you know, three years younger and obviously incapable of rational thought. “You’re kind of a fixer-upper,” was uttered at the end of one such fight.

But, instead of dumping him, I think I just stood there and looked pained. He back-pedaled a little. Not much. He tried to explain that he meant I was a “work in progress.” That didn’t sound much better to me.

I think the thing, probably, that hurt so much about this was that he’d just thrown one of my deepest insecurities right up in my face. I feared that I would always be this second-rate, mediocre person, in need of a whole lot of help and maybe never able to meet my potential.

I heard, “I might love you someday, but right now, you’re not good enough for me.” I heard, “You are a piece of crap that people only put up with because they can’t find anyone better.” I heard, “I am getting out of this relationship as soon as I do find someone better. But since I’m banging you, I guess I’ll stick around a while.”

The shit of it is that I believed him. Sure, I was mad, but I believed him about the supposed fact that I was a “fixer-upper.” I honestly had come to the conclusion that I wasn’t good enough for anyone, even the asshat standing in front of me, comparing me to a crappy house.

It took years to get over that. Not just the worst thing Matt ever said, not just the relationship, but the feeling that I was never good enough, and that everyone who loved me really only did it because they could get something from me for a little while, and then they would move on when they found someone better.

So I think that makes Matt the winner. Prize of Worst Thing Anyone Ever Said To Me goes to the esteemed Matt. I’m sure he’s honored.

The Worst Thing Luke Ever Said

I have to tell you that Luke never said anything to hurt my feelings. He supported me and agreed with me about everything. It was… disconcerting. He’d get mad and say things about other people, but I never heard a single note of an angry tone in his voice when he discussed anything with me, if you can call them discussions. He mostly just did whatever I told him. It was terrible.

So the worst thing Luke ever said to me? “Can’t you please just give me a reason why?”

The summer after my freshman year of college, I came home broken. I’d taken an ROTC scholarship my freshman year, and the ROTC program had pretty much beaten most of the joy out of me. I’d utterly failed at every aspect of it, had managed to fail one of my classes (my first failing grade in all my life), had failed to get enough of a scholarship for my sophomore year to make up for the ROTC one I wouldn’t be getting anymore, and, oh yeah, I had a boyfriend who was living at home and selling vacuum cleaners part-time, and who followed me around like a devoted puppy.

Perhaps you’ve noticed by now: When I’m down and out, I tend to take drastic measures. I reinvent myself, or I fall in love with some boy I’ve never even met, or I dump the guy I’ve been dating for three years who’s never given me any cause to be anything but devoted right back to him.

So I dumped Luke. He cried. A lot. And then he blubbered, “Can’t you please just give me a reason why?”

I’m not a heartless bitch. There are at least little pieces of heart in my chest, I promise. And that’s why I couldn’t tell Luke why I dumped him. The bulleted list of reasons why was way harsh.

  • You are nearly twenty years old (which, like, is totally an adult, duh) and you are still living with your mom, selling vacuum cleaners, and making lame jokes about how your job sucks… literally.
  • You never ever disagree with me, and it’s kind of true that nice guys finish last. You at least need to stick up for yourself when I bait you on purpose (not proud of that, by the way), but you won’t even do that.
  • I’m in college now and I want to meet new people and see new things and make new friends, and I can’t do that if my high school boyfriend is around all the time.
  • Your idea of a good time is wearing a nerdy costume (usually a super-hero themed one) and driving around town hollering incoherent phrases in Spanish at anyone we happen to drive past.
  • I have outgrown you.

See? Harsh. So I refused to tell him. I may have mumbled something about how it just wasn’t working and it was me, not him. And he would cry some more and beg for an answer again. We spent several weeks in a row doing this.

And then he let go. I’m not sure what happened, but he stopped calling to ask me if we could talk and stopped finding ways to run into me (like, oh, showing up at my house randomly). He let it go.

Maybe he read between the lines and figured out the reasons. More likely, though, he figured out that he deserved better than to devote himself to me, or at least the broken, pissed off version of me. He deserved his own happiness. And he went out and got it, and never sold another vacuum cleaner again.

The Worst Thing Shane Ever Said

“I don’t really think what we had counts as real love anyway.”

I’m not going to be naïve and try to claim that Shane did not mean that. I’m pretty sure he did. I’m pretty sure he also hoped it would wound me. He had his reasons. And he aimed well.

Shane and I were sort of doomed from the start. We were dating on the Internet before Internet dating was even a thing. And we were fifteen. Nothing good was going to come of it.

We wrote impassioned letters. We flirted in real-time chat rooms. We emailed daily. But we didn’t even meet for months. And, when we did, we weren’t sure how much of our online game-playing should or could actually transfer into the real world. It was awkward to say the least, complete with a strange kiss that missed the mark, I mean, literally. He went for my cheek and got my ear, and that was our lone taste of physical passion—a poorly-aimed peck.

And it was high school. I chafed at anything that was difficult to explain or that made me seem abnormal. Shane was both of those things. My friends wanted to know about him, but I couldn’t say and still maintain my cool. Every time I mentioned “boyfriend” and “Internet” in the same phrase, I turned beet red and felt the need to disappear. While I was pretending to be some kind of flaming-haired, kick-ass, girl-hero with Shane, in my real life I was a shy fifteen-year-old whose only wish was to (please, dear God) at least sort of fit in for once.

And so, when Shane brought up in an email that things were maybe not quite working out and that maybe we should talk about it, I felt a huge sense of relief. No more trying to explain him. No more embarrassing out-of-the-norm stuff to think about. I could be normal, and I desperately wanted to be normal. I didn’t stop to think whether I wanted to be normal more than I wanted to love this boy. I don’t think I realized that was the choice. The relief was so overwhelming that I didn’t even have room for guilt.

I was surprised when he wanted nothing to do with me after that, but I let him go. Years later, I got back in touch with him, to his reluctance, I think. And that’s when he told me he didn’t think our love really counted anyway.

And maybe that’s when I realized that I’d made the wrong choice.

 

The Worst Thing Joe Ever Said

Let’s be honest. Sometimes we say things we regret. Sometimes other people say things they regret. And I’m just going to give the guys the benefit of the doubt here and assume that they regret these things that they said. That’s not going to stop me from writing about them, though.

“I was actually going to ask Bianca out. But then you came along.”

Oh, heartbreak of heartbreaks. Bianca was absolutely my nemesis in high school. She was tiny and cute and had long hair that she made funky braids in. She could pull a damsel in distress act like no one I’ve met before or since. And she repeatedly tried to steal Joe.

She had known Joe before me and, apparently, when I arrived, I messed up the entire youth group dynamic, and Joe was the only person who understood! She explained all of this very woefully to anyone who would listen and then she’d drag Joe off for private heart-to-hearts. I don’t know what happened in those private heart-to-hearts. I can only hope they weren’t private someotherbodypart-to-someotherbodyparts. In any case, all of the blame, in my mind, was heaped upon Bianca’s head, despite Joe’s obvious participation.

So I wasn’t a big fan of Bianca.

After we stopped dating, Joe came back a few times, and attended a few youth group functions. One in particular I remember was a “lock-in,” which was basically a coed slumber party for teenagers. I snuck off to take a nap around dawn and Joe found me and we got to talking. And he said the infamous, “I was actually going to ask Bianca out. But then you came along.”

I didn’t stab him in the eye. I probably deserve a medal or something.

Where Are They Now: Joe

I was 14 when I met Joe. It was long, long ago. I was a freshman in high school and he was (gasp) a senior. He was my first boyfriend, my first kiss, my first little taste of heartbreak (although the real heartbreaks would come later). He was blonde, beautiful, confident, lovely.

We broke up, sort of unofficially, when he went to college after he graduated– went to college in California, about as far away from my East Coast city as he could get. We didn’t talk much. I was busy with school. He was busy with school… and other things. We wrote a few letters. Not that many. And things just sort of faded away. It was gentle.

He came back that summer and we went out once or twice. He drove me around in his car, too fast, and we saw a movie. I wouldn’t let him kiss me, even though he asked.

The next summer it was the same. Except he showed up at the front door, all white teeth and blonde curls, and asked me if I wanted to “hang out.” I turned him down. I’d started dating someone else.

And then we never saw each other again.

Fast forward, years later. Through the grapevine, I heard that a friend of mine, Skipper (not her real name), had gotten married. Skipper and I worked together for a few summers, but we weren’t ever really that close. She was, frankly, a little too dippy to hang out with on a regular basis. I think my response to the wedding news was along the lines of, “meh.”

And then I saw a wedding picture.

It was Joe. Maybe 75 pounds more of Joe, but yes, it was Joe. Standing next to the bride, wearing a tuxedo, being all groomlike. I hadn’t really even known that they knew each other.

Facebook stalking ensued. (What? I’m not a saint.) Joe was a copy machine repair man, moonlighting as an improv comedian. I was not really surprised. I’m pretty sure that a fairly accurate Beavis impression can only get you so far, and as I recall, that was about all he had in his bag of comedian tricks.

A couple of months ago, I got an invitation to Skipper’s baby shower. I got this invitation in email, but upon further examination, saw that it was an email notifying me that the invitation was via Facebook. The title was, “Baby Shower!!!!!!!!!!!!” Skipper was the host of the party. Yes, she was hosting her own baby shower and sending improperly punctuated invitations out to 500 of her closest friends via Facebook. My sister texted me, “Where is this girl’s mother?”

So, my first boyfriend Joe and his dippy wife Skipper have produced offspring. The baby is due in August.

And that’s where Joe is now. I’m sure he’ll teach his daughter a Cornholio monologue as soon as she can speak.

Musical Legacies

All the boys I’ve loved before have left their marks on me—sometimes in the form of emotional scarring, sometimes in the form of broken belt loops (but that’s a story for another day), and quite often in the form of a musical legacy.

Shane, romantic that he was, sent me a mix tape.

I realize I’m dating myself here, but mix tapes used to be the absolute height of dating demonstrations of love. There was a lot of planning that had to go into the appropriate mix tape. You had to make it something that showed yourself, something that the person you were wooing would be impressed by, and something that got across your feelings about that person. I, personally, was not great at mix tapes. I would generally just start willy nilly picking stuff and when I ran out of room on the tape, I was done.

But Shane’s tape was a work of art. He picked a huge variety of music, from instrumental soundtracks to The Moody Blues. In the liner, he wrote commentary on each song in his fancy handwriting. He put “It’s All About Soul” by Billy Joel on the tape and, in the liner notes, told me that it was the song that made him think of me. I wasn’t sure what to think at first—Billy Joel is a little notorious for back-handed compliments. In the end, though, it became one of my favorite songs… still is, actually. I bought Billy Joel’s greatest hits in large part because my Internet boyfriend from high school put him on a mix tape for me once.

Luke made his own contributions. He was actually in a “band” in high school. But, from what I gather, the “band” mostly just messed around and screamed unintelligible lyrics from time to time before dissolving into fits of mirth.

But, he learned “Crash” by the Dave Matthews Band, and played it and sang it for me. This was a big deal. Luke did not sing for anybody, except to entertain small children and to scream unintelligible lyrics from time to time. He waited until it was just him and me and his guitar, and it was one of the sweetest things he ever did for me. I can’t really tolerate much Dave Matthews Band, but “Crash” is still one of my favorite songs, like, ever.

Matt was a strange one. He was into Irish metal. You read that right. I never could quite get into it, despite the concerts he dragged me—uh, invited me to. He did, however, leave me with a lasting love for The Corrs, who don’t sing Irish metal, but are Irish at least.

My favorite song by The Corrs? “I Never Really Loved You Anyway.” I think Matt may have gotten the short end of the stick on his musical legacy.

Let’s Still Be Friends

Someone, one of the two people in a relationship, always wants to be friends when it’s over. It’s usually the person who did the dumping. Therefore, it was usually me.

I didn’t set out to be a heartbreaker. My first “breakup” was really more of a non-breakup. Joe went to college, I stopped calling and writing letters, he slept with some girl, and we never got back together. It didn’t really hurt my feelings, and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t wallowing in self-pity while he was banging what’s-her-name.

I wouldn’t have minded staying friends with Joe. He wanted to stay friends with the possibility of benefits. I flatly turned him down and we never spoke to each other again.

I definitely dumped Shane, although he brought it up first, so it was kind of me being a weenie about dumping him. Honestly, the whole long-distance Internet boyfriend thing was cramping my style a little. I did really want to stay friends with him, but when you rip out someone’s heart and stomp on it (intentionally or not), they sometimes don’t want to keep emailing you regularly. This mystified me for many years.

Shane and I spoke to each other once a few years later. He told me he’d never really loved me anyway and so, in that case, our break-up really hadn’t been that big of a deal and I was forgiven. I didn’t feel much like keeping in touch after that, either. I guess if I’d been a friendly ex, I would have been happy that he’d managed to cobble back together the pieces of his broken heart, but instead I was just pissed.

I dumped Luke, too. Poor Luke. A few months after I dumped him, an acquaintance of his asked me about him, and I told him we broke up.

“Dude,” the friend said, looking almost as heartbroken as Luke had when I’d done the deed. “That must have torn him out of the frame.”

Guilt: I haz it.

Apparently, this you-dumped-me-and-now-I-hate-you thing has no statute of limitations either. At age 29, a good ten years after we broke up, Luke came back to town for a visit. He invited all his old friends out to meet him for drinks via Facebook—I mean, pretty much all his old friends, even the ones he never talked to in high school, but then friended on Facebook years later. All his old friends except for me—the girl who was his best friend forever before we dated, and who was exclusively with him for three years. Yeah, he didn’t invite me.

I almost unfriended him on Facebook for that.

The Hanger-On

My most recent ex-boyfriend, Matt, still had the power to piss me off two months after our last conversation. Sometimes I caught his weblog. Well, ok, honestly, I stalked his weblog and jumped on every new post, scouring its contents for the mere mention of my name. Hey, not proud of that.

One particular entry had to do with the fact that he thought it was stupid that there was a picture in the campus newspaper of a lesbian making a soy-based latte for her partner.  He just got so angry every time someone outside of the norm got any attention, and that made me angry.  One of the things I loved about college was the mixture of people.

Anyway, I never commented on his weblog because I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he could still annoy the piss out of me after all that time, but sometimes I just wanted to tell him, “If the whole world was just like you, as you seem to want it, we’d all be unhappy, self-righteous bigots.”

I don’t think that would have earned me a whole lot of points in the Not-a-Bitter-Ex Department.

The First Tongue Is The Deepest

I’m no Pollyanna, but I think we’d all like to believe that the physical part of a relationship is not the most important part. We’d all be wrong.

My first kiss with Joe was my first kiss ever. He took me out to our high school football field at night to “look at the stars.” (Yes, we’ve already established that I am stupid.) When we got down to the track, he abruptly stopped, gave me this weird look that I thought meant he was about to puke, but actually meant that he was about to kiss me.

It should have been great. I mean I wanted a swelling trio of violins and light from heaven and sparkles shooting out my toes. I wanted a kiss. Instead, I got a fat, ashtray-smelling tongue shoved not so delicately into my mouth, and amounts of slobber which I still cannot fathom today.

So I stood there and let him swirl his tongue around in my mouth for a while before I, like, faked a hug so I could turn my head, wipe my mouth on his letter jacket, and tamp down my gag reflex.

And the sweet nothing Joe whispered to me was, “You’ve never done this before, have you?”

I couldn’t very well defend myself. I was fourteen; he was seventeen. It was a catch-22. If I claimed innocence, I was a rube. If I claimed experience, I was not only a slut, but also a bad kisser. I went with innocence.

He took that to mean he should give me lessons, so I had to endure another twenty minutes of his overzealous saliva. Shortly, though, his charming friend Kevin pulled up in his shit-can of a Thunderbird and honked the horn. Joe walked up to the parking lot to talk to him and left me on the track, hidden in the shadows. I stood there, by myself, for probably fifteen minutes, wondering if I should stay, or walk up and say hi (although I really didn’t like Kevin at all), or maybe do a lap or two around the track in the dark.

Joe came back grinning—the ass. When I asked him why, he said that Kevin had asked him if he needed any condoms.

I nearly died on the spot, and then when I didn’t die, I wished I had.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my first kiss.

The Art of Courtship

I think we, as a society, should go back to the way things were in those Western romances I used to read. You know: when a guy wanted to date a girl, he’d go ask her pa if he could court her. Then they’d sit in the common room with her parents and sisters and visit with each other, or, if they were really naughty, they’d sit out on the porch together with glasses of lemonade while Ma watched out the kitchen window and Pa glanced over his shoulder from the barn every now and then.

Ah, the bliss of a simpler time. When you take the physical aspect out of the dating phase, you get to the stuff that really matters a lot faster. Hey, call me old-fashioned, but I speak from experience.

Shane (ex number two, for clarity’s sake) and I had a very western romance courtship, actually. Except, instead of sitting on the porch together with lemonade, we wrote letters and emails. Yep, we were a long distance couple. Internet lovers, if you will. Anymore, a lot of my friends are in long distance relationships, but back in high school, it wasn’t all that common of a thing. (How are you supposed to make out with your boyfriend under the bleachers if he lives in Montana, hm?)

Anyway, the beginning of our relationship had no physical aspect at all. Just words. That’s not to say it wasn’t sexy. Even at the tender age of fifteen, Shane could turn a phrase like you wouldn’t believe. His love notes were beyond compare.

It was those words, I think, that made me feel closer to him than I’d ever felt to Joe, despite the fact that Joe’s tongue had been down my throat regularly for the full ten months of our horny little tryst. The thing is, when you’ve got someone’s tongue down your throat, it’s hard to talk about your hopes and dreams and all that.

The downside of getting all that Hopes and Dreams stuff out there so quick is that you find all the skeletons in the closet a lot faster, too. Shane knew a lot of my faults even before I realized I’d let them out of the Bag of Bitchy.

Oh come on, you know you have a Bag of Bitchy. It’s full of all that stuff that you sort of stow away during those first few months of a relationship, whether you mean to or not. Then, quietly, the Bag of Bitchy comes open just slightly and an itty bitty bitchy escapes. But then the little bitchies left in the bag get all agitated that their friends have tasted freedom, and before you know it, the Bag of Bitchy is wide, wide open and all you can see is your guy’s hind end retreating as fast as it can.

And you wonder why he dumped you.

I wonder what happens to the Bag of Bitchy when you’re single for a really long time. Do you get so used to not hiding stuff that eventually you just don’t have a bag anymore? Or do you collect so much bitchy that by the time you meet a new guy and it’s time once again to bring out the Bag of Bitchy, the bitchies you’re trying to hide won’t all fit?