First Love

Inspired by Julie's recent post about a highschool boyfriend, I've decided to dig into the vault and present, slightly fictionalized, The Boyfriend Files.

Mike #1

Sometime between the end of grade eight and the beginning of grade nine, I'd become pretty; it was a standard teen movie makeover plot device: I cut my hair and started wearing miniskirts. Problem solved.

So life was looking better at the beginning of highschool than it had at the end of senior public school (which was when I'd tried to kill myself; it didn't have to travel far to be a significant improvement, Dear Readers). And there were dances! Do you remember the institution of the highschool dance? Sanctioned displays of contained heterosexism. I wonder what our teachers thought of it? By day, tough and disciplined deliverer of mathematical wisdom; by night, chaperone, ensuring that no one gets knocked up or overdosed while on school property. It must be odd.

My first year of highschool was the year of Milli Vanilli. Do you remember them? And New Kids on the Block. It was 1989. Grunge was waiting in the wings and Hip Hop in its most public incarnation at least was still mostly innocent; but at my first highschool dance, it was still prep and squeaky clean. I went with some friends and stood by the wall, not understanding how one went about being asked to dance, Dear Readers, having been painfully limited in my previous experience with boys. So I stood, anxiously, and watched, and other people were dancing (but I wasn't), and other girls were being asked (but I wasn't), and I still didn't have a clue about what I was supposed to do. Fidget? Lean against the wall and look unconcerned? Giggle with friends? How did this work, anyway? I haven't got a clue how it looked to anyone else but it felt tremendously awkward, until a skinny boy with dark hair and big blue eyes asked me to dance, and I said yes, and it was my first dance ever. We danced to Milli Vanilli's Girl I'm Gonna Miss You (I'm laughing as I type this). A sad song for a first dance, but as it turned out, prophetic.

His name was Mike, and within a few weeks of this dance, he began dating a friend of mine. This went on for some months and I crushed on other boys and nothing happened and then they broke up, and one day we were riding home together on the city bus, and he asked me out, and I said yes. First boyfriend.

It was just before Valentine's Day, and I know this because he gave me a present that year--my first Valentine's Day present! I think it was a teddy bear holding a little red heart, but I can't remember. It was something you'd buy in Hallmark anyway, themed appropriately. Was Valentine's Day torture in your school too, Dear Readers? I don't know if this is typical, but ours was a smorgasbord of humiliation for the lovelorn, with the popular and beloved receiving school-sanctioned fundraising vallentine's day treats from friends and admirers that they could wear publically and flaunt all day long, and the heartbroken and shunned forced to wear their loneliness on their sleeves. It was brutal.

I didn't know this about myself then, but I fall fast and I fall hard. Fortunately, Mike was a really nice boy. We Fell In Love. Capitals and everything. He kissed me for the first time in the upstairs hallway of my house, the open part between my brother's room and the guest bedroom. I don't remember anymore what led to that kiss, but I can still close my eyes and recall the electric jolt from head to foot. What a revelation. Who knew it would be like that?

So much did I love him (in the way that fifteen-year-olds do) that I sulked and pined through a week's family vacation in Orlando (poor me! forced to go to Disneyworld!). We stayed right in the park, at the relatively inexpensive family resort; and I remember the buses, and the gift shops, and the rides, and I remember lying in the family hotel room at night and falling asleep to the memory of my first kiss.

Everything was going so well. Until he told me that his family was moving.

Brantford, he said. But it wouldn't be the end of the world. We could call, and write (in the days before emails, you know; real letters. I used to be the queen of those), and visit, and soon we'd have our driver's licenses and could drive. Not so bad. His parents listed their house for sale and signed on the dotted line for one in Brantford.

And then, Dear Readers, disaster struck.

On a Tuesday he came over, glum and anxious. We sat down on my bed (there may have been chaperones at the school dances but supervision at my house was fairly lax), and he looked at his knees, and said, "My parents are backing out of the house deal in Brantford. It's illegal. So we're skipping the country and moving to Las Vegas."

I kid you not. We really had this conversation.

"When?" I asked.

"Thursday," he replied.

And they up and went.

For a while longer, we carried on by phone and letters as planned; but the calls got shorter, and the letters got thinner, and with a head full of Victorian nonsense and tough Montgomery heroines, I broke it off by pretending I didn't love him anymore. Oh the invisible tears I poured into that letter. It might be sad, if it didn't make me laugh.

"It's so romantic," a girl I went to school with said. "Like Romeo and Juliet. Two star-crossed lovers!"

This was my first inkling that romantic might not be all it was cracked up to be.

I heard from him a few years back thanks to the magic of the internet. At the time, he was married and still living in Vegas with a little girl. I hope he's still doing well.

So: First Dance. First Boyfriend. First Kiss. First Love. First Broken Heart. First Soap-Opera Level Plotline. But not the last, of any of these, by any means.

Posted by Andrea at November 13, 2007 7:46 AM under Me

EMAIL this entry

(comments fields are below this section)