aoife

A story from 8 years ago which somehow explains a lot about me:

I don't remember how it started. I remember "meeting" him at the mall and some wiseass comments he made about me having a big...nose. Pretty blonde blue-eyed Aryan boy, he knew it, and yet somehow he was a joke in the way that boys are who are too conventionally attractive in a subculture that pretends to prize unconventionality but quite often just ends up prizing different-for-different's sake.

But he liked me, and I wasn't really used to being liked. Most of my life, really, I've been uncomfortable with people who know what they want when what they want is me. Every now and then I've been able to put that fear on hold and go for it, usually when I have to pursue. I like pursuing, I think.

But this boy pursued me before I realized that I was worth the effort, called me late at night and wrote me notes in school, met me at the movies and put up with my "friends," and I never even kissed him. I thought I wasn't into it, but by the end of it I really wanted to and was scared to.

16 turned to 17 and somewhere in my teenage years I stopped being afraid of people liking me. Got my heart bruised a few times, my ego bruised more, and fell in love. And I suppose I have this boy to thank for it, the first person really to spend a lot of time trying to convince me that he felt something for me.

And for years, every time I ran into him he'd ask me why I didn't want to date him. Except I guess I didn't really know.

I could tell you why I don't want to date him NOW: he's 24 and more damaged than anyone should be at this age, two kids and in the process of a divorce and I just spent a few weeks hooking up with his best friend, voted for Bush, works a corporate job, and plays rock'n'roll in his parents' basement, where he's living after moving out of the house he shared with his wife.

Wife. I still can't accept that word in connection with people I remember from high school.

But we went for drinks and read the notes that I'd found in a shoebox in my closet, laughed at ourselves and talked about the existence of love and the rot in America, ("I'm not really a Republican!" "You just said you were! You can't be a rebel and be a Republican!"), Mel Gibson Christianity and top-five movies and rock songs, divorce and kids and messy sex and my crushes and kung fu and hockey. Things most people don't want to think about, let alone talk about with someone they've seen a handful of times since their juvenile crush. He played me his songs, and hugged me goodnight, and I went home with a smile.

And he paid for our drinks (A fucking novelty--what's a girl got to do these days to get someone to buy her a drink?) and when I flipped open my notebook this morning to make a note to myself, I found a note: "You're still the same Sarah. Love, J."

And he stopped by my work today to bring me the CD of their band that I'd been asking the other boy for for weeks, to laugh when I asked him if me being the same Sarah was a good or bad thing, and to make his friend hover around the desk wondering what we were talking about.

Mostly, to dissolve the bad blood between us and leave us with nothing but a good memory and a good friend. And one can never have too many of those. Friends who genuinely make us feel better about ourselves.

And so: my past meets my present. Living in the place that I went to high school for two years once again, after having spent six years living in New Orleans and Colorado, back in this small town where everyone my age was my friend in high school or there was a reason we're not friends--most of the time it makes me really want to get the hell out so I can move ON with my life, but I'm working and working and writing and every now and then reconnecting with an old friend that I'd forgotten how much I liked.