Oh, the disasters of youth.
(Beware: re-creation of youth ahead.)
To begin with:
Having always been the smallest and goofiest, uprooted from Long Island to South Florida at the age of thirteen - probably the worst age ever for anyone, even without a transplant to the land where your grandparents literally go to die - I suffered through years of incessant bullying; everything from prank-calls to prank-dates to being chased into public restrooms while being barked at, literally, like a dog - my adolescence, no joke, was John Hughes epic; it was Oprah prime-time special epic.
So eventually, seeing no other way out, I clung to my best friend Jane*, who was adorable and blonde and had lots of admirers and pageant crowns and trophies and sequined dresses, like a Madame Alexander doll with a baton. Which meant that when she joined the marching band I eagerly joined with her - even though I lacked things like experience and musicality and talent... also I occasionally had problems, you know, not injuring myself when I walked. Still. I actually learned to play the clarinet and spin a six-foot flag (and even in my old age can still toss a mean quad - look out, boys!); I also developed a slightly mean-spirited wit and an oversized wardrobe that often made me look like an angry midget basketball player. I read a lot of Edith Wharton and Star Trek novels. I kept Mulder and Scully collector's barbies on a shelf next to Princess Leia from A New Hope. I was always prepared for any occasion with a Mel Brooks reference. (Actually, that's still true.) I was admittedly a little defensive and mean.
I was, in short, a nerd.
Thus it came as a huge shock, my senior year, when the captain of the drumline - that's the bandnerd equivalent of the captain of the football team, for you non bandnerd laymen - inexplicably began showing up wherever I was; before first period, after practice, in the bandroom, after school - there he was like some nerd groupie - this tall guy whom everyone liked, who was so talented and charming you couldn't help but crush on him, even if my go-to move was to ignore him and/or tease the shit out of him like some retarded asshole. Me in my baggy jeans and huge t-shirts and my thick wool socks from Target, my horribly awkward jokes, my obliviousness when it came to guys; I'd see him and immediately say something like, "Why the lopsided new haircut, LaSalle*? Did your blind grandmother shave your head?"
Yeah.
Nevertheless, he'd call and we'd talk about silly things - moving to Europe after high school, hopping on a jet plane and taking off to Amsterdam, where I would take a World War II tour around the city and Matt would smoke weed at bars and get "European drunk" with hot Dutch girls. That he even talked to me about such things, that as a result I knew which bra size he found most fascinating (34-C - oh god, I hope he's not reading this) was seriously the coolest thing ever.
Then one Saturday, at the Auxillary car wash, when the other twirlers and I were busy scrubbing down Ford Expeditions in our inappropriate bikinis, getting tipped by middle-aged rednecks who would watch us and dirtily ask us to please pay special attention to the mud flaps, Matt showed up out of the blue and brought me lunch - a Number Four Combo from Checkers - a "move" I of course missed, thanks to the double-cheeseburger.
After about ten minutes of me silently shoveling fries into my mouth like a fry dispenser, he finally made his big move:
"I like you," he said. "I think you should be my girlfriend."
Around a mouthful of cheeseburger: "I'm sorry, what?"
"Go out with me," said Matt. "You're weird, but it's cool. I like you."
Still waiting for the punch-line of this bizarre joke, I repeated, "I'm sorry, what?"
"Look, I don't think anyone else has asked you out. They haven't, have they?"
"Not really." I shrugged, trying to pretend it didn't matter that the furthest I had ever been with any boy was when I'd let the foreign exchange student see up my skirt in the teacher's lounge at the ninth grade dance (he'd told me I was pretty and then he let me eat his chocolate bar). "Well," I babbled, "There was this one guy in this AOL role-playing chat-room that Nik* and I like - The Pub in the Lake? His name's HanSolo25. Well, that's not his NAME name, but you get what I mean. I think he lives in Michigan. He typed a rose at me last time we talked - well, before I got kicked off. Dial-up ruins everything."
Sheepish, I shoveled a few more fries into my mouth.
Matt's left eyebrow shot up. "Whatever," he said. "Just go out with me, okay? Why not? We march together and we talk all the time anyway, and you're cool when you're not saying something completely retarded. Let's go out. Sound good? I'm stealing some of your fries."
And so it went - the first time I got asked out, for real, by a boy who wasn't gay.
I turned my head and mouthed "YES!" to myself. This was all going to be totally great, I thought. Totally, totally great.
I turned back around and nodded my head, yes.
Jubilant, Mike gave me a nuggie - it was a done deal. We were boyfriend/girlfriend! (In the gutter outside of a Checkers - right before he donated a whole $1.00 to our bucket for me to wash his dirty-ass car.)
It was a stunning romantic moment.
Later that week, after convincing myself that having a boyfriend would probably be just like working really hard on the Algebra II homework I never understood either, I got up each morning at 6am, tried on nine different unfortunate skirts from 5-7-9, and posed in front of the bathroom mirror, testing out equally unfortunate turns of phrase. Absurd things like, "Hi, can I reserve this seat next to the Snares? I'm Matt's girlfriend." Or, "Hi, can you scooch a bit? I'm dating the drum captain, thanks." Or, "What's up, single losers? See that hot guy over there? We totally make out. Totally share saliva. Bet you didn't see that one coming - BAM!"
(Oh, seventeen year old me - why can't I go back and slap you?)
Matt, meanwhile, was just confident enough to pass for slightly arrogant, also no less than eighteen feet tall, while I was shy and quiet and just tall enough to legally sit in the front seat without a booster (missing the limit in Florida by about two inches - holler!) Matt was known for being talented on Snare Drum and I was known for having thrown up on the bus on the way to Medieval Times - twice. The world I had come from was one in which I'd once waited by the fountain at the Wellington movie theater for hours, not realizing that I had been asked out as a joke. Matt, meanwhile, had already gone through plenty of girlfriends, and as a single guy, he constantly swam in a sea of stupid and flirt. My world was not Matt's world at all. Nevertheless, I liked him and it didn't matter - after all, Jack and Rose had made it work in Titanic, right? (until the Titanic sunk and Jack froze to death - why wouldn't you get on the damn lifeboat, Rose?? -and then Leonardo DiCaprio didn't even get nominated for a goddamn Oscar... oh shut up all of you, you know you saw this movie 17 times when you were in high school, too.)
Fast-forward a week.
After what ended up being our first real date - not actually a date at all per-say but a group of band dorks hanging out in front of the Winn Dixie on a Friday night - Matt pulled into my driveway, killed the engine and turned to me, his face expectant. For a second, I thought of my grandmother's matzoh ball soup and that moment right before digging in. Being both Jewish and a late bloomer, I'd only ever looked at food with that same expression of primal anticipation. If someone had told me that eventually I'd want to put anything other than food in my mouth, I'd have laughed in their face - unless they meant Leonardo DiCaprio (delicious) or David Duchovny (also delicious); at that point, I'd only ever seen kissing on TV or from a non-creepy distance; I'd only ever hung out with my gays and the other nerds and a few couples who'd once used my study group to make out - ultimately, I was the brainy, clueless Velma to Daphne and Fred's obvious fucking around in the back of the Mystery Machine.
"I wanna take you home and I wanna cook for you," was the first thing Matt said - in a slightly creepy voice. He still had that look in his eye - like he was thinking which condiment might make me taste better.
"What?" I said, hugely nervous. "Okay, yeah. Okay."
(Was he going to kiss me, I wondered? Is that how this worked?)
Matt took off his leather band-jacket - with a flourish that nearly resulted in injury - and added,"I'm Italian. We're very passionate about our food. We're just very passionate in general. About everything. You know?"
"What?" I repeated, and flattened myself against the car door.
(Now? Was it going to happen now??)
"I make some amazing ziti," Matt added, waggling his eyebrows.
"Huh?" I managed, growing increasingly frantic that I had somehow missed the euphemism and thus ran through my mental rolodex of well-known and lesser-known sex words - could a piece of ziti possibly resemble anything dirty? A penis, maybe? A very tiny penis?
No, that couldn't be right.
"You're gonna love real Italian cooking," Matt went on. "It's so good - so much better than Olive Garden. That's poser food. Real Italian makes your mouth water until you're hungry for more. And then I'll give you more. You know?"
Another eyebrow waggle.
And suddenly I absolutely couldn't wrap my brain around this weird version of Matt - with his spaghetti-talk in the creepy voice with the waggly eyebrows. Had I missed something? Had I missed my moment? Was this kiss supposed to happen before or after the Italian sex metaphors?
At this point my brain was working so hard I accidentally smacked the back of my head against the passenger-side window.
"Oh, shit. You okay, J?"
"Um," I said. "Yeah. Yeah, I am. No, I am. No worries. No worries!" Then, in a heart-pounding daze: "My mom makes pretty good meatballs - they're so awesome. Like just round and juicy and... with like, tomatoes. Uh. I should really try them sometime. I mean, no - you should try them sometime. I mean we like latkes and kosher things too. Because we're Jewish. Um. That's not what I meant."
Which of course garnered only one possible response: "You have a concussion, Morris?"
"No," I said, my eardrums ringing. "Sorry. I don't know why I said that. I don't have a concussion."
I shifted into what I thought was a sexier position - still smooshed against the window, but now with my palm upturned by my cheek.
(When was this going to happen? Now?)
(NOW?)
Matt shrugged and moved in ever closer.
(NOW???)
"You like meatballs?" he asked, his hands pressed to the window on either side of my head. "Because let me tell you, I could put them in your mouth..."
And finally, finally grateful to have latched onto one thing I DID understand - a bad dick joke - I managed, "Is that your big line, LaSalle? You're gonna put a meatball in my mouth?"
Which is when he FINALLY moved in to kiss me - my first kiss ever ever EVER- and being both petrified and excited and at the same time somehow picturing my mother's meatballs, I kissed him back with what I had convinced myself was the passion of Kate kissing Jack (shut up people, it was a cool movie back in 1997 and you know exactly how many times you replayed that stupid Celine Dion song.) In reality, so much effort went into this kiss that I accidentally leaned onto the horn - BEEEEEEEEEEEP - scaring the shit out of both of us, and then - in the midst of my panic - biting him in the tongue and throwing him forward into the dashboard, where he hit his head.
Commence nerd freakout:
"Oh, God," I managed. "I'm so sorry! I'm so, so sorry! I was thinking...I don't know what...meatballs?"
(Why I said that out loud I'll never know.)
Matt rubbed at the side of his face, now imprinted with radio buttons, and backed away.
"I'm so, so sorry," I repeated, my embarrassment now a live, nuclear thing. "I'm so sorry. I'm just, I'm so new at this, like I haven't kissed any, I mean at all, no - not at ALL, of course I've kissed guys, um, you don't know him, the guy I kissed I mean, you don't know him, and I...I mean we could still be, um..." I struggled for a word, and after a few blank, panic-filled seconds, I landed somehow on "Juicy?"
And buried my head in my hands.
Another stellar first.
"You are fucking weird," Matt finally declared. "Really weird. I just don't get it. Sometimes you're awesome and sometimes it's a shame. You'd be hot under other circumstances." And off my horrified expression: "Oh, come on. Don't look at me like that. I bought your ticket tonight, didn't I? That shit cost me eight dollars."
BAM! ROMANCE!
Not long after this First Kiss Of Disaster, Matt and I decided to go back to being friends - ah, how short young love can be. On the one hand, I'd crushed on him for so long and he'd actually liked me back - the first boy to ever really like me or want to kiss me - and man I wanted to hang onto that. On the other hand, we were completely inept as a couple, he kept wanting me to be someone less weird and I kept wanting to be myself - also, could have lived without him demanding I pay for his prom ticket and tux. Oh, high school - you crazy bastard.
And thus, I let him go.
It was a bittersweet end to an awkward first experience.
As an adult, I'd like to believe that the awkwardness of my first experiences will be directly proportional to the greatness of what will happen when it all goes right. Or at least, that's what I tell the dog as I stare into the endless avalanche of snow blocking my front door.
And even if cute boys still, to this very day, make me so nervous I occasionally turn back into that overgrown SuperNerd who babbled about tomatoes in a parked car, I suppose I also have to remember that one of these days, I'll meet that guy who digs SuperNerds and is into all of me, and not just pieces.
(Which is gonna happen before I'm eighty, right?)
(Right?)
Sometimes, I wish my dog had a few answers.
(And not just because I want life's answers, but because a dog that could talk would make me so much money.)
* real names omitted to protect the old and not-so-innocent
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