First Date

"Why love if losing hurts so much? We love to know that we are not alone." ~ C.S. Lewis

I didn't start dating until I was 17.  I was pretty geeky and not just a little anxious about the whole "boy" thing.  I'm not sure what exactly prompted the young man to ask me to the prom, but I think it was a matter of one brainy, geeky kid finding another brainy, geeky kid.  He could pretty much count on the fact that no one else had asked me.  The funny thing is that I no longer remember which brainy kid was first.  I think it was a guy named Tom, who was a physics afficionado.  I don't know.  I went to a couple of dances with different guys that I had absolutely no interest in whatsoever.  I was horrified to discover that they actually thought they were going to kiss me at the end of the date.  Wait a minute.  I don't think anyone ever mentioned that before.  Even a hug seemed a little too intense for me then.  But not for long.

I was a major star in the literary magazine group, offering cogent comments about others' works and submitting quite a few of my own, all of which were published.  (I know this means absolutely nothing, so don't think this is self congratulatory.)  It was a small group, not more than 20. Michael was one of them.  I'm not sure why it happened, but one night I decided that I was in love with him.  Until that night, he was just another one of the boys in the group.  I hadn't even seen him that day, but there was going to be a meeting the next day.  I spent the rest of the night dreaming of him.  Michael was very bright, very articulate and he seemed a bit lonely just like me.  I think I believed he was some tortured genius stuck in a home with people who didn't understand him.  Like me, except for the genius part.  He was very good looking in a boy-who-wears-glasses kind of way.  Much better looking than any of my previous prom partners.

I made my interest known to him when I asked him to a dance.  You know, one of those dances where the girls ask the boys.  He lied and said he was going with someone who was completely out of his league.  The rest of the school year, I pined away.  I developed facial tics when he entered a room.  I adored him.  He was a year older than I and after he graduated, I was left adrift.  No one else interested me.

He showed up at a friend's house one day in December.  I'm not sure how he found out I was there, but when I saw him, I distinctly remember wondering why he wanted to take a walk with me.  Not that I would ever have declined the invitation, even though the temperature outside was very brisk.  I had my love to keep me warm, you know.  I don't know what we talked about.  Just the close proximity to him made me a fucking idiot, I think.  I was just so thrilled that he would even consider being with me outside of the usual confines of the literary magazine meetings.  Hell, he wouldn't even sit by me at the meetings.  

After he left, it took me days to get back to normal.  I was deliriously happy.  Shortly after that, I got a call from the previous editor of the magazine, asking if I wished to go with him and Michael to a teacher's house for a visit.  Oh my god.  Yes.  Yes yes yes.  I was alone at the apartment at the time.  My mother was in another city, visiting my asshole father.  (That's a whole other story.)  I tidied up as best I could.  I was reading Dylan Thomas' poetry and Michael commented on it when they arrived.  We hung out at my teachers' house for a while, they brought me home and that was that.  At the time, I wondered why Michael even came along.

Shortly after that, we had the annual literary magazine Christmas party and Michael was there.  I think we said hello, but I was waiting for him to approach me.  He never did, but I noticed that he watched me as I chatted with other people.  I was the editor of the magazine that year and felt comfortable enough to mingle.  (Mingling wasn't then and isn't now one of my best interpersonal skills, although I've learned to fake it when I have to.)  After the party was over, I told my teacher that I saw him watching me.  "Well, he's going to need to do something more than just look," she said.  Hey, I wasn't picky.  Watching was fine with me.

Prior to the end of his Christmas break, he came to my parents' house and asked me to go to my teacher's house with him.  I'm not sure I was ever happier than that moment.  On the way to her house, he pulled into a park where people from my high school tended to hang out.  I was puzzled. He turned off the engine and grabbed me.  We kissed for what seemed like an eternity.  In retrospect, I think I should have insisted that he at least buy me a coke before we made out.  I didn't care.  After that, though, no guy was ever allowed those kinds of liberties.  Hey, I have standards, you know.  They just didn't apply to him.

That was the first date that really counted.  All of the others were practice dates, wasted time.   It was one of the first times that I ever got anything I wanted.  I mean anything.  My home life was never what I wanted.  The loneliness I felt at school never went away.  But that day with Michael gave me hope.  I could see that it was at least possible to have things turn out the way I wished.  It was also the last time any young man even attempted to resist my charms. That date marked the end of who I had been.  But, as we all know, the good times never last.

America held hostage day 1659

Bushism of the day:

"Free societies are hopeful societies. And free societies will be allies against these hateful few who have no conscience, who kill at the whim of a hat." - Washington, D.C., Sept. 17, 2004