25 June 2002 ~ Love and mistakes, or, Binghamton is WAY too fucking small... (Part One)

This week, I have run across no fewer than TWO online journals with entries about former loves and former mistakes, also known as ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends.

Whew. THAT's a scary subject...

...But I think I can do it too... Nobody had better yell at me for this... Here goes nothing...

Age 12 ~ 6th grade ~ Jeremy
This was so classic. He passed me a note one day -- just shoved this thing in my face and RAN. I didn't even see his face. The note was something to the effect of: "Hi, I saw you at the last school concert, and I like you. Will you go out with me? Circle one, yes or no." It was signed "From, Jeremy," and gave his phone number at the bottom. Up until that point, I SWEAR I never saw this kid before in my life. But neither had I ever had a boyfriend, so I circled "yes" and had my friend Brianna (who was a total twatrag, but I think it was repressed lesbian tendencies that were screwing her up...) give Jeremy the note back, along with MY phone number. As sixth-grade romances go, it was pretty passionate. We even held hands during the "couples skate" at Roller Dome. Once, some people arranged for Jeremy and I to get together after classes under somebody's picnic table across the street from the middle school, and french kiss. Everybody was going to watch. I chickened out though, and sneaked out the back door of the school, and quickly boarded my bus home. Not only was everybody going to watch, but Jeremy WAS kind of dorky. He was so skinny, the other kids called him Needle Nuts. I couldn't bear the thought of losing my french-kissing-virginity to a kid called Needle Nuts. The next morning, Jeremy told me he liked some girl named Lydia, and that he was dumping me. Six years later, I had a mini-war with Lydia's aunt Julia over a different man. Binghamton is a fucking ridiculously small town.

Age 14 ~ 1994 ~ T.
T. and I met during a community theater production of "Wizard of Oz." He was a techie, which meant he got to play with the headsets, fuck with the curtains, and watch my best friend and I stretch before the show. T. was a very young version of what I've come to know as a Dirty Old Man. He was 21; Jayden and I were 14. T. was also a MASTER at back massages; he could LOOK at you and your shoulders would relax. That was how he won me over. Of course, then he wanted to "massage" other parts of my body that were fairly NEAR my shoulders... And of course, being 14 and STILL retaining my french-kissing virginity, I thought that meant he loved me, and that someday we'd get married and have like, hoards of kids or something. Shit, I was stupid. I barely KNEW him. But I did managed to write him into my first book, (which, NO, I am NOT going to EVER let you read); Jayden's favorite sentence (which the bitch STILL quotes at me) was: "His eyes probed mine." Being a 14-year-old romantic is disgustingly difficult, particularly when you think the crisis is one of forbidden romance (he was, after all, 7 years my senior), and the REAL problem is that your "lover" just wants his dick sucked. Heh! In retrospect, the best thing about T. was that his best friend got me into Pink Floyd. And at least with T., I lost my french-kissing virginity. Oh yeah: and my mom HATED him. (Although she used to take care of his little sister Carmen in a pediatrician's office... As I said, Binghamton is too damned small...)

Age 16 ~ 1996-97 ~ Erich
Erich BEGGED me to go out with him. He'd been begging me to go out with him since we were ten years old, and his mom gave him twenty dollars to take me to see "The Little Mermaid." When, after SIX years, I still wouldn't go out with him, he resorted to some pretty stupid tactics. First, he latched onto this girl Stacy; he'd promise to drive us both home after school, and then conveniently "forget" something at his house. Then, he'd drag us both into his basement, and he and Stacy would make out, while I sat there, bored and fairly grossed out. The thing with Stacy was a ploy to get ME to join in, but I always refused. I would have preferred Stacy SO much more than Erich; Erich was just such a freaking dumbass. Plus, he'd been an ugly ten-year-old. When the making-out-with-Stacy trick didn't work, he bought every album Tori Amos (my then-favorite musician) had ever recorded. He bribed me to hang out with him by offering me rides home, rides to the coffeehouse, and the honor of correcting his homework, all of which I accepted. I STILL wouldn't let him call me his "girlfriend," even after we'd lose our respective virginities to one another. Cold-hearted bitch, you say? Yes, but I just didn't LIKE him... YOU try ignoring somebody for SIX YEARS when all they EVER do is pester you to go out with them! You try doing that when NOBODY ELSE of the male species will LOOK at you. Hey, I took what I could get, and unfortunately, it got me pissed off, patronized, and smacked in the ass once when I "misbehaved." The last straw was when Erich met my friend Valerie and the two of them began recreating the Stacy-basement-makeout sessions during their lunch period. I broke up with Erich for my (gay) friend, David. Upon realizing he'd been dumped, Erich began fervently making out with Valerie whenever he thought I was watching. Then, despite his unfortunate, rampant heterosexuality, Erich began making out with Gary, the boy who was to become, for a short period of time, the love of Valerie's life. Binghamton: too fucking small for its own good.

Age 17 ~ 1997 ~ David
David and I had met three years earlier; he was sitting on a piano bench playing the theme song from "Twin Peaks," I started singing along, he smiled at me, and I fell madly, passionately, irreparably in love on the spot. Three years later, we struck up a friendship, went out to lunch one terrifically hot July day, and then we went back to his apartment to listen to his new Savage Garden CD (shut up; it was cool once...), and, somehow, there was some sort of bizarre weather... maybe like, a windstorm or an earthquake, or something, and the whole world kind of shook, and our lips met, and... Ohhh, DAMN I loved that man. I still do; David's one of those people who, near or far, is always going to make me smile. David was my first love. He was perfect in so many ways, at least to me at 17... He could quote Twin Peaks backwards and forwards. He made the best damned lattés in town. He let weird little vampire kids stay at his apartment without freaking out. He was 7 years older than me too, but my mom actually liked him. Hell, even my DAD liked him, even though David was, you know, a homo. Now, David's room-mates were Marianne and Neil, who were my dear friends (SMALL TOWN), so I managed to sneak out a few nights and stay at David's apartment a time or two. To his great credit, David behaved himself, despite the fact that I didn't WANT him to. David and I broke up (not that we were ever officially DATING or anything) after three weeks (and five days), because he was in love with another man. That would have been Peter. We'll get to Peter later. Binghamton is so small it makes me sick. Oh yeah: and three years later, when I went to visit David in North Carolina, he STILL remembered about that stupid Savage Garden CD...... *sigh* I hope David never, ever changes; not a bit. He's my Ferris Bueller.

Age 15-20 ~ 1995-2000 ~ Peter
It started out with a stupid letter. I don't know what my problem is, really, but I can never just let people drift away into the abyss; I always have to write them a damned letter and hope they come back. I REALLY need to stop that. For three years, Peter and I were best friends, despite his habit of compulsive lying, and the fact that he'd convinced everybody he knew that he was dying of AIDS in order to get some sympathy. (He wasn't dying of AIDS... It really was just a shitty act...) And just about three years after I'd sent him that first gahd-awful letter (three years and like, twenty POUNDS of letters later...), we became lovers. We stopped speaking. Then we started speaking. Then I moved to Santa Fe and spent my time writing him letters. Then I moved back and we were STILL lovers, but he moved away four days later and we stopped speaking. Then... oh, fuck, it was five years of torment and shitstorms. And Peter slept with everybody in town. Not really too difficult of a feat, really, seeing as Binghamton is an incredibly small town.

Age 18-19 ~ 1998-99, Santa Fe ~ Mike
Mike and I clicked because we both liked orange juice. How lame is THAT? We both liked orange juice, and so we went back to his room the next day, and I took his virginity, and we spent the next like, eight months eating microwaveable Pizza Bites, driving to and from Albuquerque for something to do, watching "X-files" and Jerry Springer, and, of course, drinking orange juice. Of course, other than those things, we really had almost nothing in common. Which is not to say we didn't like each other; I think we still think of each other as good friends. But seriously, orange juice cannot be the basis of a relationship. SERIOUSLY, it can't. Mike and I were great friends, but we were a LOUSY couple. In other news, Mike got married last week to his high school sweetheart (who IS a sweetheart; if my peers absolutely insist on doing this whole stupid marriage thing, I'm infinitely glad these two picked each other... I sent them their wedding present yesterday...)

Age 19 ~ 1999, Santa Fe ~ Brian
Brian listened to the coolest music ever. He also wore one of the coolest hats I'd ever seen. He also had a zillion stories of really freaky things that had happened to him. I bet the cool hat was eaten by a giraffe that happened to be wandering the streets one day whilst Brian was out shopping for a loaf of bread at a market in Algeria to brush up on his French. THOSE were the sorts of things that happened to Brian. He called me "Beautiful" every time he saw me. I have a sneaking suspicion he called several women "Beautiful" every time he saw them, though. Now, Brian had a girlfriend back home in Idaho. And I worked in the college post office. And I could VERY WELL be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure Brian would not have written DAILY postcards to his girlfriend in Idaho had I not sold him one 20-cent stamp, DAILY. Brian had blue hair then, and a skateboard. I had the biggest crush on him for an absolutely excrutiating semester of sitting behind him in English Composition. You should have seen the notes I took. Heh. No you shouldn't. The best time we ever spent together was a drunken evening of holding hands, staring at the ceiling, and talking about hitch-hikers. Another case of shoulda-left-well-enough-alone-and-not-written-letters, but I swear I'm never going to learn that lesson. Now, Brian has purplish hair and a collection of bikes on his back porch in Seattle. And he has this on-again, off-again thing (which I DO NOT PRETEND TO UNDERSTAND AT ALL, and therefore will not comment upon) with one of my classmates from Santa Fe, who also lives in Seattle now. Come to think of it, Santa Fe was pretty damned small too. Brian and I are still friends, despite the disastrous kinda-love-affair in 2001, and despite the fact that the skateboard was much cooler than the bikes.

.......Okay, kids, I gotta finish this up tomorrow; I'm fiending for pizza... Tomorrow will be the good part -- the controversial part! the provocative part! -- the RECENT stuff...!

*gulp*

Why did I START this???

~Helena*