Yeah, I know. What an appallingly gushy stock photo. I dunno, maybe better than a cartoon arrow-through-the-heart?
Earlier this month, I went to Don't Forget Your Art, a delightful quarterly series which spotlights authors/writers, poets, musicians, storytellers and other artists from the Greater Boston area in an intimate venue. (Disclaimer: I'm scheduled to be in the one taking place this coming March 1.) Eric Moore, the personable chief organizer, also serves as the emcee while displaying his own talents as a comic and storyteller.
On this particular evening, Eric shared a series of short reminiscences about his brushes with love, from childhood to young adulthood. They were sweet, funny, self-deprecating and very relatable: Perhaps the best one was from his early teens, when the girl whom he admired invited him to go for a walk through their school -- including a part of the building which was quite dark. They had a nice stroll, Eric recalled, but as it ended he realized that she'd presented him with a golden opportunity to, well, do more than just walk and talk. And he'd blown it. (They did remain good friends, however, he added)
Of course, these anecdotes often spark your own rumination about past romances -- or rather, would-be romances -- especially as a middle/high school-age kid. It seems like everything is just so magnified at that time of your life, and there is usually one moment of truth on which the possibility of love (or something like it) depends. Say or do the wrong thing, and you just can't get back that opportunity.
I was about halfway through middle school when I got my first, honest-to-hormones crush. Her name was Mary (all names in this narrative, other than mine, have been changed so as to protect privacy), and I don't know why, exactly, I liked her -- you know, liked liked her. I just thought she was pretty, had a nice smile, seemed quite sociable, and that her movements were like those of a swan. OK, probably not that last one. What more did I need?
Inevitably, but unfortunately, I made the mistake of disclosing this adoration of Mary to my classmate, friend and neighbor Ted.
"Hey, great!" said Ted, and as an endorsement of sorts, added, "She's got big, bulging tits!"
In fact, she didn't, but that wasn't really on my list of criteria, anyway.
Naturally, I did what just about any middle school boy would do in that situation: I kept my mouth shut and my eyes open, trained on Mary. But news of my disclosure to Ted invariably started making the rounds. In fact, our mimeographed class newspaper at one point ran a gossip column, all names given as first initials only, in which it was revealed that "S's eyes bulge out whenever M walks into the room." I could rightly point out that I wasn't the only male "S" in our class, but fat lot of good that did.
And then came the announcement of the school dance.
This, naturally, had the effect of a large boulder dropping into a small pond, and waves of speculation surged about who was taking whom to the dance, or might ask to dance. So it was one afternoon on the bus ride home from school -- Ted and I sitting towards the back, Mary and her friends in the front -- when Ted demanded to know if I was going to ask Mary to the dance, and if not, why not?
I folded. "Well, yeah, I think I am probably gonna ask her."
With absolutely no hesitation, Ted yelled, "HEY MARY! SEAN WANTS TO ASK YOU TO THE DANCE!"
There was a sudden quiet. Mary turned around, and she actually did not seem displeased.
"Really, Sean?" she asked, and there was a hint of anticipation in her voice.
If this were a just world, gushingly romantic music would've swelled from some invisible source, and I would've stood up and declaimed (in a booming masculine voice), "Yes, Mary! I've been thinking of nothing else these past few weeks! Let me escort you for an evening of the purest joy we will ever know!"
Instead, my throat went dry, and then I -- I who was generally regarded as one of the more well-spoken students in the school, I who so convincingly played the role of Rod Serling in our class production of "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" -- I stammered out something like, "Well, I dunno, I might, um, not sure if I'll be around that weekend, but maybe..."
So much for that.
It wasn't a complete debacle. I endured a few scattered incidences of mild teasing, but my schoolmates were more interested in discussing the more-or-less confirmed couples going to the dance. I went and had a good time, and even though a few days before Mary had sent me a note warning me not to ask her to dance, punctuating it with an all-caps "BUG OFF," I worked up the courage to do so; she declined, politely.
A year later, I had a quite different situation, but no less awkward.
I had been hanging around a small group of girls who were extremely focused on match-making. From what I could gather, they would collectively decide which boy in their social circle was suitable for whichever one of them was available, inform him that he had been chosen and ask him -- more or less rhetorically -- if he would consent to being coupled. (Their term for this was to "go with" -- not "go out with" -- i.e., "Will you go with Rhoda?" I remember the father of a schoolmate who'd been thus matched once asking "Where are you going, and what happens when you get there?" Parents...)
I suppose it was only a matter of time before they got around to me. Sure enough, one afternoon, just before our end-of-day homeroom, two of the group told me that I had been selected to "go with" Sue Anne.
I had suspected this might happen, and it presented something of a problem. The fact is, the one in the group I was attracted to was Phyllis: She was pretty, flirty in a friendly, non-malicious way, and seemed aware that there was a world beyond middle-school social machinations. Sue Anne was cute and had a nice smile, but she was no-nonsense to the point of intimidation.
If I declined on Sue Anne, that would theoretically mean I might have a chance with Phyllis. But it was unclear as to whether Phyllis was already spoken for, or even at all interested in "going with" somebody. Besides, the repercussions of turning down Sue Anne might be more than I bargained for.
In the end, I decided that maybe going with Sue Anne would at least keep me in the orbit of Phyllis, and perhaps things might sort themselves out, somehow. And frankly, I was curious about this whole thing, and just what it meant to go with a girl. I gave my consent. Within minutes, Sue Anne had scrawled our initials on one of the blackboards, which in middle school was akin to a marriage license.
In time, I discovered that Sue Anne had some very definite ideas and expectations about what going-with entailed. Instead of waiting for the school bus with most of the other kids at the end of the day, she directed that we stake out our own spot, far from the madding crowd (although sometimes we were joined by her friend Georgette, who was going with my friend Murray); when it was time for me to leave, I was permitted to give her a decorous peck on the cheek. We had regular phone conversations, such as they were: "You never say anything," my mother marveled, which was largely true. Sue Anne did most of the talking, usually about other people in her group (or was it "our" group now?). If I got bored, sometimes I'd blow softly into a pitch pipe that I held near the mouthpiece, and when Sue Anne asked what that sound was I'd say something must've gone wrong with the phone line.
Three weeks into our going-withness, Sue Anne demanded that I get her a ring. I was quite taken aback at this, to say the least. While later that year I would open a savings account, at the time I was living allowance to allowance, and a good chunk of it went to buying Marvel Comics. I certainly wasn't going to ask Mom for financial assistance.
But since Sue Anne had given me no specifics on the kind of ring she wanted, I figured I could improvise. So I broke off the ring portion of a plastic slide whistle, festooned it with magic marker colors, put it in a little box...and completely forgot to take it with me the day I visited her place. In fairness, Sue Anne cut some corners, too: The little photo of herself she gave me had obviously been snatched from her little brother -- I could see that she'd scratched out the inscription to him and written in my name.
I was gobsmacked a couple of days later when, returning by train from a visit with my father, I saw Sue Anne waiting for me on the station platform. My mother, in one of those bursts of parental inspiration both profoundly sweet and horribly embarrassing, had called Sue Anne and invited her to come along to pick me up.
That was probably the high point of our relationship. A couple of weeks later, Sue Anne informed me that we were broken up, although she gave no reason. (I was told -- as opposed to reliably informed -- that there was someone else involved, but I saw no evidence of this.) I felt no pain. After all, the circumstances surrounding the beginning of our going-withness had been just as mysterious and random, so it's not like I had much of an emotional investment. And I will say that there were a couple of other girls in my social circle, outside of school, who had caught my interest -- and supplanted Phyllis in the process.
It's easy to say that neither of those experiences constituted "love," but they are the kind of baby steps we may take on our way to (eventually) the real thing -- situations in which, perhaps for the first time, we really start to wonder how others see us, and whether we need to be a certain way that's different from how we might see ourselves.
And, like I said, when we're that age, these are so often moment-of-truth instances in which the door either opens or closes, period full stop. Maybe, if I had somehow worked up the courage to ask Mary to that dance -- or turn down Sue Anne's mandate and hold out for Phyllis -- I would've wound up gaining that much more insight into how love works. I have my doubts.
Fortunately, when you're an adult, maybe it's not such an either/or, red pill/blue pill scenario. You make a fool of yourself on the first date, you take a deep breath, explain and apologize, ask for another chance, and you might just get one. At least it's not all unfolding on a school bus full of judgmental peers.
Epilogue: Many (many) years later, I caught up with Mary on a visit to my old hometown. We reminisced about middle school, I confessed to my crush, which she kinda/sorta remembered, and we laughed and laughed. God, it was good.
I haven't seen Ted since the last year of the Nixon administration, and I have no idea where or how he is. If we were to run into one another, I don't know if I'd get around to bringing up the whole thing with Mary, but if I did I'd at least try to get him to acknowledge that he'd been a real jerk -- and pay for my drink.
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