Where to start
This is not a sobstory
20 ish years ago I met this teenage boy, and somehow sitting
mostly silently in a room with this boy I fell in love with him. It is
important to note that I was not much older than a teenager myself.
One night he confessed to me that he did not like girls his
own age very much. I said, perhaps you should try dating older women? I was all
of 22. I meant me. Stupidly, so stupidly, I meant me and hoped that my hint
would somehow take, or that I would somehow get brave enough to tell him. I was
kinda dating someone else, but it was a rebound and I was ready to move on, I
thought. Two days later, the teenage boy was dating my best friend. And a year or
so later I married my rebound. End of story.
No, that isn’t the end of the story. Of course it’s not, why
would I even write it if it was the end? That would be pointless.
Several years later, I divorced my rebound. I had two
children. I was a 30-year-old mom. And the boy… the boy was single again too,
living with another good friend and one day, I realized that I was still in
love with him. Of course, it makes sense that I should have told him so. Of
course, I didn’t. I was a single mom. What would he want with me? And while I
was agonizing over whether to tell him, of course he met a girl. And then he
moved away, back to where he came from, to go to college.
I have never made good decisions when it comes to men. I had
no good model. I don’t know what I am doing with them, and I never really have.
I can be forward in low-stakes situations. In high-stakes situations… I don’t
have many of those, because I can’t breathe and my heart stumbles and I run
away.
A couple of years later I met someone, and I remarried. And
when the boy got married, on the other side of the country, I cried myself to
sleep. It made no sense, really, none at all.
I don’t want to be one of those old women who has a picture
of a young man in a shoebox, a picture they drag out from time to time to cry
over, because it represents a risk never taken. A might have been. I have a
photograph of him with my daughter on his knee.
Fast. Fast. Forward.
I divorced again. And then he divorced, and three thousand
miles away a little piece of my
not-entirely-competent heart quietly, secretly rejoiced. I started talking to
my friends, saying I should tell him. I should tell him. Shouldn’t I tell him?
I should tell him, right?
Because telling someone and being rejected is way better
than getting old and dying with What If hanging over you, the shoebox of elderly
tears. I figure. It has to be.
Oh, no, I didn’t. Of course I didn’t. Are you kidding me?
Why would I tell a man on the other side of the country “hey dude, BTW I have
always kind of been in love with you, just FYI”? How would I? Fuck no. Even if
it made sense, even if it were perfectly reasonable, I don’t know how to do
that kind of risk, to make myself
vulnerable that way, I never learned how to. So I didn't.
But still, it lived with me, and it kept creeping into my
mind. What could I lose by telling him, really? It would be better than never
telling him. If it didn’t go over well, if it was completely unreciprocated, he
lives on the other side of the country. We could just pretend I never said
anything, and forget about it.
I wanted to tell him. I was terrified, I felt like a friable
winter leaf, strong strong bold me just gut-clenchingly frightened, fragile
enough to be blown down the street in a strong breeze. My friends were lukewarm
about the idea, at best. Probably not a good idea, I guess. Shelf that. Another
year went by.
And then he said he was coming to visit for our friends’
anniversary party, and I made my resolve. I could make it light, make it non-threatening and non-vulnerable. I could keep myself protected
Ohhh the reality was so different. I am forty-two years old,
and I have never learned to be smooth, and I almost chickened out. I bet you’ve been there, but
you were probably seventeen. It was a party, and all our friends were there. I
was way past my tired point and I knew I should have gone to bed, but… if you
have ever been a dumb kid who kept drinking because the boy/girl/whatever you
liked wasn’t done with the night yet, you know.
I had myself convinced. Not gonna say shit. But I walked
into the kitchen and this neckbeard I don’t really know, a friend of a friend, was
in there. “You really like that guy, don‘t you?” he said.
My drunk-girl, at-the-end-of-the-party,
should-have-gone-home-hours-ago self said something like “Yeah, but nothing
will ever happen.”
Neckbeard said “Does he know?”
I said “how could he not know? If I’m that obvious?”
Neckbeard says “Listen. He’s a nerd. He won’t know unless
you clobber him on the head and drag
him back to your cave. I know about this, I’m a nerd too.”
So, I went back outside with the blood and liquor roaring in
my ears and I told him. That part’s kind of a blur, but I remember that I said
“I’ve always had a thing for you” and he said “you’re fucking with me, right?”
I had to convince him. I had to unravel the weak-ass
explanations about this twenty-year goddamn infatuation I’ve been packing
around. I’m pretty sure I convinced him I was serious by kissing him, and the
kiss was amazing. And then our host shooed us off to sleep and we laid down
together and made out and my MIND WAS GODDAMN BLOWN because what do you do when something you’ve wanted for
that long is actually happening? I felt like a seven-year-old at Disneyland,
man, I felt amazing. Even with too much alcohol in my bloodstream I was tuned
in, making slurred confessions of affection with an addled brain and tongue but
with the connection to every nerve-ending in my body completely, brilliantly
lucid.
We didn’t have sex. There were times when we were
half-undressed and god knows we
weren’t shy about touching each other, but we didn’t.
And then it was morning, and he walked me to my car and gave
me a hug and I stole a kiss and I drove off and that was that.
I saw him again before he left. I thought (hoped) we would
be alone, but it was him and his brother and then other friends joined us.
There was no kiss, just an awkwardly unintimate hug at the end and a promise
that he would return soon for a longer stay. And my heart stumbling like a
drunken sailor, my heart wanting him, my heart confused about whether to sing
or sob, my heart at least not destined to be the old lady heart that breaks
over a picture of a young man with a toddler on his knee, tumbling endlessly
over the question of what if, what if, what if.
