except, here's the deal, I didn't actually WRITE anything in June. So I'm gonna tell stories instead. I'll edit and add as I deem necessary. Probably a work in progress.
What exactly is this SoIIAL (what, you think I'm gonna write it out every time?), you say? I shall tell you. It's Holly's phrase, which I summarily stole. I think she'll understand as long as I give her credit where it is due, as we all tend to steal Holly's quips - believing in the power of an elegant turn of phrase and a grin, as she does, a person is bound to produce some gems. She uses it to refer to the summer immediately after her high school grad-gee-a-tion, where there were, as the title would suggest, some less-than-advisable liasons taking place. I use it in the same way, except for me, it does not refer to one specific summer only.
Could I really have started early enough to have fit FOUR of these in by now? Well, I am the poster child for precocious. The answer is yes, of course, yes. They're annual events. As summer approaches, I have to get into the appropriate mindset - which is to accept that I'm going to do stupid shit and to remind myself of my no regrets policy - and to turn on the charm.
I think it's important at this point to note that every boy I've ever had an interest in during the summer months, I got. My luck's not bad as a general rule, but there's just something about June, July and August that has me covered in spades. It probably all started with TiP, where no one ever fails to get a significant other (or two or three) (or at least I never did). But that's not exactly ill-advised, now is it? That's nerds getting together when they're finally around enough other nerds to be able to find someone un-socially retarded and yet a match in intelligence (or for some of the nerds, I think social retardedness was actually a qualification. It takes all kinds.) No, the first summer had a few boys at Duke, and then I came home for the fireworks, and two more. This is where Peterless Pan comes in, and the story about him and Everyone Else, and the manner in which we chose to get him back ... this is also where the midnight drive to Clinton and The Day With The All-Nighter, The Hangover, The Gallon Jug of Water, And The Ephedrine come in. Whee. Yey for being barely fifteen and "in love," going to driving school by day and pole/pool table dancing by night. Ahhh. This one's definitely in the running for Most Ill-Advised Summer Lovin', though I gotta say it's close.
The next two years included a good friend apparently becoming confused about what we were doing and telling everyone we were dating, discovering the one last couch in the PH (there's more now, thanks Herb!), going through several people unconsciously trying to replace the prince, my neighbor coming over to borrow the gas grill and actually intending to cheat on his long-term girlfriend, and the thing I am most proud of and yet will never confess to, not even here. (I'll be your best-kept secret and your biggest mistake) There was Shhh! He's Waking Up! and camo paint and lots of "shopping," and giggling our way down the tunnel. I guess I ought to cop to the fact that there was an awful lot of my "forbidden love shit" those two summers. I hate being told what to do and what to think ... and it comes out in the form of really poor decisions. But oh! how they make me laugh.
And this summer. This is the other one in the running for the championship here. I can win Never Have I Ever six ways from Sunday now, let me tell you. I'm a real PH kid. "I didn't want to be rude, so..." There was a beach, a sudden affinity for cigarettes, throwbacks to freshman year, crushes I wanted to work and yet became instantly turned off by as soon as I admitted to them (as tends to happen; I have yet to figure out why this happens.), a lot of vodka and a lot of Awkward. And some guy named Ty. As always, the most ill-advised liason of all happens to be my favorite, and the only one that I wish weren't just a summer thing. I guess writing all this makes me seem like, well, some kind of slut but I promise you that's not the case. Not all of these got serious (of course, they're funnier when they do), and I'm cool with it all. But I've come out of every summer with a relationship that I was happy in. Constantly switching boys is honestly not my natural or preferred state of being, but it's almost like I need the summer to get stuff out of my system so I can be a devoted girlfriend for the rest of the time and not wonder what I'm missing out on. Except, this summer is ending and I'm still single - and I know why. And it's cool, too, except I hope the one guy who was important realizes that, even though usually I'm just playing around, he wasn't a game.
I guess that's the risk when you make your life into a constant source of entertainment, a series of unrelated vignettes with each more atrocious than the last.
