V-Day!

I think I'm going to try to settle into a weekday-only posting schedule, but this is not just any weekend. Today is Valentine's Day. I thought a lot about what to post today -- maybe a poem, something of Donne's or Shakespeare's, or that Cummings piece about the syntax of things. In the end I decided to celebrate the holiday by sharing a love story with you. One of my own, since I haven't collected anyone else's yet. It's the story of my first crush. I'll call the girl Ann because I've never known a girl with that name.

Ann and I were in the same grade, in middle school. I saw her a lot during class, but we interacted mostly during after-school theater, when we produced musicals together. We were low on the totem pole, doing behind-the-scenes tech work or bit parts on the stage. She hugged people a lot, and to be honest that's probably where the crush came from; I've always been vulnerable to that, as though to hug a person were to love them. To be fair, though, I also digged how she threw herself into the work -- optimistic, commited, and extroverted. She seemed like should have been happy, and some of the time she was, but sometimes she seemed cloudy instead. I wanted to make her feel better.

Ann had nothing up front, and as a result the other boys in the class made great sport of her. I remember one boy once saying she had "negative tits;" I don't remember whether she was in earshot. I never joined in, but I never stood up for her either. I guess I should be a little ashamed of that, but you know how middle school boys are. Or maybe you don't. Just in case, what would have happened was that I would have been ostracized even more than I already was -- middle school was when I was just beginning to be socially accepted after a very rocky time in elementary school -- and that the other boys would have mocked me by spreading around that Brian had a crush on Ann. The response of a leader to that kind of thing would have been to own up to it proudly and take advantage of the publicity to ask her out, but I was an introverted middle school boy and I was terrified of girls in general and rejection in particular (so not that different from now). So instead I just sat there when they called Ann ugly, thinking to myself "well -- I don't think she's ugly."

My fantasies about Ann were pretty chaste, as you'd expect from a middle schooler still a little unclear on the mechanics of sex or why people were so interested in it. In my imagination, we were in a dark place and something terribly upsetting had just happened to Ann. We leaned on each other and she cried on my shoulder. I rubbed her back and we held each other. The fantasy was just that -- nothing particularly sexual, just what one friend would do for another intimate friend. But then I've always had trouble with the difference between friendship and romance.

I don't remember when that crush went away. It was probably when I got hit on for the first time, a completely different story that led to my first relationship. But that's a story for another time.

Happy Valentine's Day, lovers! And Happy Valentine's Day, Ann!