The night was still, well, as still as it gets in Northeast Ohio in early June. Summer was upon me, freedom was at hand, and I was sitting on the couch at home on a friday night. Just five months earlier I had decided that this would be "the best summer ever spent" with the addition of a motor vehicle to my arsenal of responsibilities, yet there I sat. To me, though, this was no easy task. I was not simply sitting on the couch killing brain cells with the twenty-seven inch television -- I was on a quest. Extreme sports such as watching television had never really appealed to me, there was usually some deeper meaning to whatever mindless activity I appeared to be enthralled with. That still night in June, in the summer of my Junior year of high school, began my quest for understanding, enlightenment, and my search for any semblance of truth remaining in my life.
I scraped the back of my neck, the only feasible cure for the twinge I felt run up my spine, crawl through my heart, and creep up the back of my neck. Unable to reach the exact spot, I gave up. Switching remote control hands seemed like way too much work to itch my neck, and... "Hey! 'Grease' is on!" I forgot about the discomfort that the itch, and the couch, and my situation in general had been causing me for a split second to pay attention to John Travolta's masterpiece. Singing along with the all-too-familiar tunes, I laughed uncontrollably at my horrendous display of vocal talent. At the time I was pretty sure that the only thing that had "chills multiplyin" was my younger brother as he cringed. It didn't really matter to me, though, I was having fun and, hey, I knew all of the words. Bored with the sudden lack of song and John Travolta's all-too-perfect hair (I could totally relate to this guy), I slumped back in my seat at the couch. This wasn't why I was watching television, I had abandoned my quest of the moment for one of the greatest musicals of all time, I was hopeless.
"There aren't nearly enough shallow people on t.v tonight." I grumbled to myself about this serious lack of material to make me feel better. Back in my self-loathing and brooding mode, I sought comfort in the form of people on t.v who appeared to have it better than me but were really a lot worse off. I mean, anyone who needs an ego boost big enough to date two women at once and then dump one of them has issues far beyond my own comprehension. I was, in essence, pissed off at the world for not granting me the same shallow affections that so many others enjoyed. I was, for once, living the way I knew was right: through honesty, passion, and love; but, I was pissed. Life had dealt me a rough hand lately, and I was making the best of the worst of it, yet I remained in my slump. Not even "Summer Lovin" could pull me out of this, no matter how cute and innocent Olivia Newton John was. Everything just reeked of hopelessness, until the phone rang.
Jerking from my state of subconscious, I threw the remote to the floor, sending titanium batteries in opposite directions. A shrill ringing invaded my head, and my first impulse was for Tylenol, until I realized that it had slight pauses in between ringing. Reaching for the phone to my left, I knocked it to the floor to join its fallen comrade from the K-Mart Electronics Department. From the floor a voice escaped, begging the same relentless question successively: "Hello?...Hello?!" Instead of moving my arms, I too slumped to the floor and held my head against the earpiece of the phone: "Hello."
"Is Rick there, please?" Her voice was pleasant, and familiar, but I couldn't put a name to it at the time.
"Speaking, who's this?" My tone was accusatory, though I didn't mean for it to be. I waited for an answer to my question, but was met with another request.
"Oh, hey. What's up?" Ignoring my question purposely, no doubt, the same cool voice asked her own.
"Not much, just watching 'Grease.' " I too decided that the identity of the caller was unimportant, as she had seemingly done. For all I knew she could not know who she was, maybe she had amnesia and had found my telephone number and wanted to know who SHE was. These were the things that ran through my brain in such situations, not your typical 'Joe Thinker.'
"Wow, me too. Well, I guess I'll just let you get back to that. I was wondering if you wanted to come over and watch 'Buffy,' but that's o.k." Her last statement gave me enough to quit jogging my memory and put a name to the face, and I smiled. Smiles were not frequent for me, they needed inspiration, yet she always managed to upturn the corners of my mouth. Elyse, who had originally seemed like a "girl-of-the-moment" but turned out to be the first woman I loved, spoke with a ring of dissapointment.
"Hey, whoa! I've seen this movie more times than I can count, I'd love to get out of this house for once. I'll be over in a few minutes, o.k?" Deciding that I wasn't giving her any other choices after her invite, I awaited her confirmation.
"O.K, see you then..." Her voice trailed off before I heard a click, I hung up the phone and pulled myself off of the floor. I was suddenly full of energy, just at the sound of her voice, and I was ready to see her.
Interestingly enough, Elyse knew how I felt about her. She was aware that I was in love with her, and that I was sure it was love, and rather than shun me because she didn't return those feelings we remained close friends. It would have killed me to not be able to see her after my confession, everything about her got to me. Her nearly shoulder-length, chestnut hair always fell perfectly, at least in my eyes, and when I held her it smelled like what I assume heaven smells like. At some point, I decided that her eyes were the only chocolate that I could ever really stand, and that her smile made me melt inside like one of Sean's popsicles on the pavement outside on a sunny afternoon. She was perfect, for me at least, but there were two problems: she didn't believe that, and she just didn't return those feelings to me. I was crushed two months earlier when she told me this, but I was dealing. Elyse had become one of my closest friends through strange situations. I found that one of the people I had tormented two years earlier, her, was one of the easiest people to talk to about my problems. During my sister's death and my relentless feelings for her, she remained an open forum to listen.
Flipping on the outside lights of our white, bi-level, home I walked out the door twirling my keys as I approached my blue Dodge Neon. With the turn of my ignition my ears were forced to adjust from the calm silence of the night to the raunchy guitar solo of my punk rock mix c.d. I pulled out of the driveway after a quick check of my mirrors and made the forty-five second trip to Elyse's house. When I reached the deadend of her street I pulled onto the road so as not to leak car fluids on her driveway and I sat there. Thinking to myself, something I had done a lot of in my time, I sat in my car. With arms wrapped around my steering wheel and my forehead pressed against it, I spoke to anyone who'd listen, but nobody was around. I wish I could say that things like that weren't typical of me, to lose myself in emotion and just ramble, but they are. In the months and even stretching back as far as a year before all of that, I had become a changed person. I no longer lived for the same things that I lived for before and I no longer cared for the things that I cared about before... I was living for me, for my impulses, and emotions, and thoughts rather than for those of the world around me. I had become, in all honesty, more selfish and self-serving than ever before yet I was happy. By abandoning my previous tactics at conquering life I had denounced being miserable and embraced the things that made me happy. I pulled my head away from the steering wheel, I unwrapped my clenched arms, I looked at her house, and I smiled.

The night was still, well, as still as it gets in Northeast Ohio in early June. Standing before her door, I trembled a little bit as I adjusted the collar of my favorite shirt, and my eyes wandered as I fixed the bottom of my pants around my shoes which, upon return to their previous state of staring at the door, were met with Elyse's own eyes. She grinned as she opened the door and I walked in. Following an awkward silence after the typical greetings of two friends, we spoke of school and then of "Buffy." I guess anyone could call me a bit of a freak when it comes to that show, I know almost everything there is to know about it. I even try to emulate my favorite characters in my everyday life: showing off Spike's swagger, Angel's mystery, and Xander's wit. I'm what some would call a "Buff-a-holic" or, in lamens terms, a nerd. Most of the time, when we spoke of "Buffy," I wasn't sure where the line between being impressed and being freaked out was with Elyse so it was pretty easy to just be myself. Being unaware of that line made me think of how pointless it was to try and be someone I wasn't, so I did what any logical person would do, I went over and beyond.
"Wait, so you're saying that you like Angel because he is 'hot?'" Placing emphasis on the last word, my eyes widened as I considered the dynamics of the character I most admired on the t.v show and how his "hotness" had never really been considered by this alpha-male.
"He IS hot. Don't tell me that you don't consider the girls on the show attractive." She laughed at my disbelief, and I blushed at her last statement. I guess it was true, I thought that at least Cordelia, played by Charisma Carpenter, was "hot" but it wasn't the main reason for my love of the show.
"Angel kicks ass, and for far more reasons than you thinking he is 'hot.' The guy killed countless people out of cold blood and is now on a path of redemption for things that were out of his control. Stuff like that should seriously outweight his 'hotness.' Cordelia is 'hot', but there aren't too many dynamics to her character, at least at this point besides her 'hotness' and superficiality." I spoke with conviction, trying to disprove her theory of Angel being hot because, truthfully, I didn't like to hear her talk about other guys. Sure, it was stupid, but it was how I felt and I couldn't deny that, even if it was for one of my favorite people in the world who happened to be a fictional character.
"Whatever, lets just watch this." She picked up the sixth season of Buffy which I had purchased less than a month ago and had finished a day earlier, I would rewatch the DVDs countless times so rewatching them with her was no issue, in fact, it was a blessing. Being alone, even if it meant watching Buffy, was something that I had done for a long time. I had become obsessed with solitude until the point where it began to drive me insane, to the point where I almost feared being alone. Placing the disc in the tray, Elyse dimmed the lights and walked back to the couch where I sat. With two cushions remaining, she decided to make the most of them and layed down across both with her head resting in my lap. Admittedly, I was taken aback by her desired position of viewing. I had figured she might end up on the other side of room rather than near me, and I had never even dreamt that she might lay there across me. I let out a soft sigh and watched the DVDs that had come to define a part of my personality, but this time with her.
It wasn't as if I had never been this close with a girl, there were a few from my past that I had chosen to forget; but, I loved her. My heart was in my throat most of the night, for hours I sat there choking back professions of love, exclamations of unfairness, and requests for understanding. Looking back on things, I still don't know how I got through that night without losing myself. It's hard to describe without the sadsack redundancies of love, but they're all as true as people make them sound. Getting lost in her eyes, falling into another consciousness at the smell of her hair, and disbanding from this world all together by holding her all seem to fall into that category, yet it remains true.
Although I knew my curfew had been violated hours earlier, I remained in my post at the left end of the couch, her head in my lap, my eyes fixated on her. I broke the silence between us with the cracking of my knuckles, a habit formed long before my realization of loving her. Elyse's mission in life, sometimes, seemed to correct my bad habits and obvious flaws, hence her cause for concern. Without words, she reached over and grabbed my hand and pulled it close to her chest so that I could feel her heart beating. Varying from it's constant speed, her heart began to race, and so did mine. A resurging feeling overwhelmed my body as I could feel every ounce of blood flowing through my veins like a river overflowing a dam. Feeling her hand move, I glanced down at where she had taken my distracting extremity. I was met with her own eyes and fingers laced so delicately that the slightest variation could send them crumbling. I slumped in my seat, drawn to her face by eyes so deep and brown that I found myself lost inside of them. I gazed through her eyes while she stared into mine, and through pursed lips she asked the question that would come to define a huge part of our relationship; whether that be platonic or not.
"What are you thinking?" Her words fell onto a breeze that escaped through an open window and trailed off into another dimension. A whisper so soft, so delicate, that they carried no weight.
"N...n..n..nothing." Stammering back into reality, I realized that I had seemed disconnected. Knowing full well what I was thinking, and knowing that she knew I was thinking something, gave me a bit of guilt for my response.
"What are you thinking?" Persistent for an answer, her words packed more punch the second time around. She knew me, she knew my thinking face, and my hopeless face, and my "you're a wanker but I love you anyways" face, and my "I love the way you laugh" face, and I could not, I WOULD NOT lie to her again.
"I'm thinking that for the first time in my life, I'm in love. Not only am I in love, but I have the person that I do love in my own arms and there isn't a damn thing I can do about it." I was never one with words, not on the spot at least. Taking preference to venting my emotion on paper later gave me time to think, but not here. If my word choice wasn't thoughtful, or tactful, or even close to romantic, it WAS honest. I was sick of hiding it, she knew, I knew she knew, and there was no reason that I couldn't tell her that anymore.
A hopeless sigh escaped from my mouth as I gazed at her face, thinking more about my love for her and how a girl so perfect was the thing my dreams were made of. Life was unfair to begin with, and the rules always seemed to change to make it work against me even more. Elyse stared back at me, looking through my eyes, observing the very deepest parts of my soul, and she smiled. For a split second I thought about smiles, about how they were so significant in the body language of a human being. Her smile screamed reassurance, and belief, and understanding, and I smiled back. Craning her neck to look at me once more, she leaned upward toward my face. She moved slowly and gracefully, like a swan that cranes their neck to observe anything of unimportance, and she placed her lips against mine. For a second, I decided that whatever it was in her lips, that was what Heaven was made of. It was everything in life that was good, it was cool to the touch yet it permeated my soul with warmth. She pulled away as slowly as she had moved in, a U2 bomber who had successfully completed their mission, and closed her eyes.
The night was still, well, as still as it gets in Northeast Ohio in early June. I sat on Elyse's couch with her head in my lap and I let my head fall back against the couch. Whatever had just occurred, I wasn't sure of. I felt a twinge in my arm as I pinched myself to wake up, but I remained where I was. Questioning it seemed unfair, leaving things as they were seemed illogical, so I just let things go. For a brief instant, I lived in the moment without care for tommorrow. For a brief instant, I was happy, a recurring theme in my summer.