A Prologue, of Sorts

I have never been the sort of girl to have a serious boyfriend or even a string of non-serious boyfriends.  You know that girl, the one who’s always in a relationship or in and out of a relationship.  I’m the other sort, the sort that’s always on her own.  I have serious and extended crushes of a painful nature, where I agonize about the guy but am too afraid to make a move or when I do make a move, it goes horribly wrong and unreciprocated. 

I remember my first serious crush; I liked him for years, literally years.  As soon as I laid eyes on him, I was in a swoon. Even though I was only in the 2nd Grade I was sure this was it. All the girls were – he was freakin’ adorable.  Four years later, upon learning that he was leaving my school to go to a different middle school, I was so bereft that I engineered an “end of year” party at my house solely for the purpose of cornering him in a game of spin the bottle.  Of course it didn’t work out that way, but I remained undeterred and when we met again at some point in high school, I actually got up the nerve to ask him out and he said no.  

As I re-read these words, I sound like quite the little creepy stalker.  There were guys that I “went out with” in middle school while I was waiting for my crush to realize we were made for each other.  This was when “going out” didn’t mean that you actually went anywhere with the guy, just that everyone knew that you were spoken for and you might stand next to each other at one of the middle school dances.  There were really just two of them – one who got me a potted geranium and a pair of clip-on earrings for my birthday (which I think I may still have somewhere) and another who asked me for a poster of Paula Abdul for Christmas as she was “totally hot.”

And of course there was my prolonged obsession with Joe McIntyre of the New Kids on the Block. Sigh. You could tell the depth of my devotion by the lack of wall space in my bedroom NOT covered by pictures of him or the rest of the band. I begged my dad to take me to my first concert to see them at Merriweather. Before his Alzheimer's really started to eat away at his memory, my dad used to love to tell the story. He said that he stuck napkins in his ears, laid down on the ground watching the planes flying overhead, and pretended that he wasn't surrounded by thousands of screaming girls and that his own beloved daughter wasn't acting like a lunatic.

A few months later, my sister kindly and foolishly agreed to escort me to their concert at Baltimore Arena so my dad's eardrums could continue recovering. I dressed up for the occasion, sporting my best tapestry vest and wearing my NKOTB earrings. Thankfully there are no pictures to record that special moment. We were seated up in the nosebleed section, but still I was so certain that he was staring at me and singing "Please don't go, girl!" and that this was a sign that we would be together forever. I tried in vain to convince my sister to go hang out in the soundproof parents' lounge. I think she suspected my plan of hurling myself at the stage, giving Joe my phone number and promising to love him forever.

A chubby and bizarre girl who liked school and was dubbed more than a little weird, I made my way through some extremely awkward middle and high school years.  I attended a single-sex high school which meant that most of the time if I wanted to go out with a guy I was going to ask him out or at least make some effort to throw myself into his path.  This along with my looks and general lack of self esteem meant that I didn’t have a whole lot of boyfriends. 

My first semi-serious boyfriend probably didn’t realize that he was in fact my boyfriend as he turned out to have quite a few other girls in tow.  I think we technically only dated for about a month and then were on-again/off-again as he attempted to parlay that into something akin to friends with benefits. The thing I remember about him most was that he thought his car key should be able to open up my car as we both drove 1988 Chevy Novas (and repeatedly tested this theory over two years in spite of all facts to the contrary).

My second semi-serious high school boyfriend definitely thought we were an item.  He was fun and sweet and a little too serious which freaked me out as I was preparing to go to college and he still had two more years of high school.  Maybe even then I was destined to be a cougar.  The death knell sounded when he spent entirely too much money on a seriously ugly necklace for my graduation present.  Last I heard he had become a skinhead so I feel like I made the right decision to end that relationship before I left for college.

Ah, college.  The time when you’re supposed to fall in love 100 times and date until you can’t see straight anymore!  That’s not really what happened to me.  I definitely got off on the wrong foot as a freshman by developing a crush on an incredibly cute junior, who as fate would have it was just discovering that he was gay. I still remember how I felt when he further broke my heart when, sitting in a movie theater getting ready to watch a Janeane Garofalo movie, after I told him that everyone said I reminded them of her, he sat silently for a minute and then said "No, you don't remind me of her at all. She has the prettiest smile." I remember a few other crushes in college, including a brief dalliance with the son of my advisor who was a sophomore when I was a junior. But really I had no boyfriends or even actual dates while I was in school.

After graduation, things continued much the same in terms of a dearth of dates. One of my friends persistently tried to set up me and some of her other single girlfriends. The problem was that she usually tried to set us up with guys that had been interested in her but she hadn't reciprocated their feelings. At the time it irked me somewhat, that she would try to set us up with guys she had rejected but I know that she is primarily a practical person and more than likely reasoned that just because it hadn't worked out with her, that didn't mean that these gents were suited to one of her friends. And after years of Internet dating where I have to rely on someone's representation of themselves in cyberspace without any knowledge of who they are in real life, I am way more grateful for her attempts to fix me up with guys who she knew were at least not crazy or rageaholics.

Things started to pick up a little bit a few years later but that is another story for another day as it is far too nice outside to be so contemplative indoors.