There Is No Title

The first time a boy ever caught my attention was in the fourth grade. His name was Norris. He was in the gifted and talented class with me. One thing that you should understand about that class is that it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are intelligent, but it definitely means that you are strange. Most of the students in our class were lacking basic social emotional awareness, and I seemed to have an exorbitant amount of it. We each excelled in certain specific subjects, and were terribly lacking in others. Norris was a tall, skinny, large blue eyed creature with buck teeth. He was excitable, and had an unrelenting optimism and naivety that I recognized as sweetness. He hopped around like a pigeon searching the pavement, only instead of day old bread crumbs, Norris craved attention. He was starved for it. He would do virtually anything to soak up the laughter and disingenuous companionship of the other kids. His desperation to fit in, found its audience in gym class, where we shared the field with the other classes. 

On one particular day in the kickball line, Norris’s friend/bully John found a Texas-sized cockroach next to the fence. It was two inches long, fat, and juicy. John and the other children encouraged Norris to eat it. They encouraged him with false praise. I tried to intervene, “Don’t eat it Norris, they’re just going to laugh at you behind your back, they’re not your real friends.” Norris spat angrily, “You’re just jealous because no one wants to be your friend.”  The other children laughed at the well timed insult. Norris too laughed at what a loser I was, just as the giant cockroach passed his overbite. 

The first time I officially confessed my love for someone, he was called Gavin. We were both thirteen. We went to the same school. We had Speech & Drama class together. 

Before Gavin, I had not had any real middle school crushes. I did however have a bully who my mother insisted was in love with me. Arturo was his name. He made romantic gestures like kicking my chair, pulling my books out of my arms and tossing them on the floor, tapping me on the shoulder and running away, and popping my bra strap in the hall. One day, I was quietly doodling the Beatles logo on my notebook, when Arturo kicked the leg of my desk and said rather flirtatiously, “The Beatles suck.” He then proceeds to extol the virtues of what he claimed was a far superior band, maybe I have heard of them? Cypress Hill. Cypress Hill he said was, “more popular” and therefore “better” than the Beatles, who he says, “no one likes.” Never one to back down from a debate about musical precedence and the virtues of what was then my favorite band in the universe, I replied, quite eloquently, that his argument was in fact, “dumb as shit.” 

Arturo continued, “No one likes the Beatles, everyone loves Cypress Hill.” I would like to be clear that I am not bashing Cypress Hill, I feel they have a place in musical history the same as many other bands, but to compare them to the influence and longevity of the Beatles is absurd. I think that if given the opportunity, the members of Cypress Hill might possibly agree with me. My argument consisted of one well crafted statement. “The Beatles are beloved by millions around the world.” Arturo’s counter argument consisted of an experiment. “How many people like the Beatles? Raise your hand!” No one raises their hand. “How many people like Cypress Hill? Raise your hand!” Everyone raises their hand. “See. Cypress Hill is better.” It was not astonishing that no one else in this classroom, located in Houston’s notorious Northeast side would prefer a fantastically fun Lowrider-Gangsta-pop band like Cypress Hill to the Beatles, what was surprising to me was that he saw this as some sort of victory. My admonishment came swift, “I don’t think that your survey has an accurate sample.” There, that will show him. Arturo had the look of a sixth grader who just heard another sixth grader use words like survey and accurate sample, “You’re weird.” Our bully-love affair ended once he discovered that I was more nerd than hot girl.

 You cannot imagine the rationalizing process I went through as I agonized over whether or not to tell Gavin how much I cared about him. I thought, ‘If I like him this much, then obviously he must like me back. We must be meant for each other.’  Life isn’t that cruel. That last statement is admittedly embarrassing, if only it weren’t what I actually said out loud to myself, just before I picked up the phone. After thoroughly convincing myself that our love was meant to be, I dialed his number. He began by telling me about something he saw on the news, another neighbor shot dead in their front lawn. Impatiently waiting for my opportunity to blurt out my affections, I laughed nervously. 

“Why are you laughing?” 

“Oh, sorry, my sister said something.” Good save. 

He continued talking about the terrible double homicide that was on his street, until unable to restrain myself, I blurted out, “I really like you.” He said, “I really like you too.” My heart was in my throat, because it was fairly obvious his like was not presented with the same depth and seriousness as my own. I offered clarification, “No, I like you, like you, I want to be your girlfriend like you.” After a long pause, he replied, “I don’t like you like that.” LIKE THAT. Those last two words shot through me, piercing my sweet, little teenage heart. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even hear him anymore. He said something, but my ears were incapable of processing sound. My eyes were blurry from tears. I threw down the phone. It dangled from the kitchen wall and grazed the floor as I stood there crying. My mother shouted at me to hang it up properly. Instead, I ran to my room, buried my face in my bed, and poured my tears into my pillow. 

Mom came running in the room after me. She was mad about the phone. “What the hell?!” I didn’t look up at her. “What’s wrong? What happened?” she said. I couldn’t speak. It was painful. It was more painful than anything I had ever felt up to that point. I knew I could never talk to him again. I felt destroyed. I explained to my mother that I was in love with a boy who did not have those feelings for me, or rather, my mother deciphered that information from a series of shriek-filled broken segments of speech that were somehow half-crying and half-talking. She said, “There are other boys.” I snapped back, “NO! There are no other boys!” All of my Shakespearean drama lessons were being put to practical application. 

“I will never love anyone again!” 

“Yes, you will. I promise, he’s an idiot.” 

“No he’s not, I’m hideous. No one will ever love me.” 

I traded my pillow for her arms. 

“You are beautiful, and everyone will always love you,” she whispered into my hair. 

“What does that even mean? God! Go away!” I yelled, and returned my face back to my wet pillowcase. 

After Spring Break, Gavin told everyone at school that I was in love with him, and threw myself at him. To be fair, he might have been hurt that I immediately stopped speaking to him out of my own shame and embarrassment. Or he might have also been a dickhead. I began to hear rumors that he was telling people we had slept together, and he was describing my naked form to them in painstaking detail, as though he had first hand knowledge. He got a reputation for being a ‘ladies man’, and I got a reputation for being a ‘ho’. None of which was true, but in the junior high world, truth is only what people are willing to believe. I was further humiliated when he used his new found fame to curry favor with one of the girls who used to tease me. Nothing stings like seeing the guy you like, date a bitch that called you pig-nose for two years in elementary school. 

Credit to my mother’s intuitiveness, I did in fact get over Gavin. Although, it left me with a certain level of cautiousness. I was forever fearful of sharing my feelings with love interests. I hesitated confessing those feelings, and learned to wait until I was sure that they would be reciprocated. Sometimes the surety never came. Occasionally, if I felt really strong about a person, I’d set them up with a friend of mine, sabotaging myself out of sheer protection. When I found myself in a relationship, I became an expert at deciding the most fortuitous time to break up with a person. Breaking it off, before they could have the opportunity to break it off with me, was like a drug to my teenage neurosis. I am not blaming Gavin for all of this, it wasn’t all his fault. I was far fucked up before he came along, but his rejection and subsequent shaming certainly didn’t help me become more secure, as specially the way he handled everything like that.  

I managed to survive middle school. My first year of ninth grade, I became a hormonal nightmare. I thought about sex constantly. I think I might have been in love with every person in my school at one point or another. I never told any of them about it. I preferred to admire them from a safe distance.

My mind changed the first day of the tenth grade, a new girl was transferred to our school. Her name was Christy. She had blonde hair that fell below her waist. She was graceful. She looked like a renaissance painting. I was obsessed with her. Drawn to her movement, I found myself following her down the hall, entranced. I had to talk to her. I wanted to tell her that she was the most beautiful girl in our school. Most of all, I wanted to touch her soft hair and lips. Is it as soft as it looks? Christy noticed me one day, and as she turned to greet me, her hair flipped around and grazed my face. She apologized, but I was dizzy from having just had her hair touch my mouth. “I think I might be in love with a girl,” I said to my best friend Joseph. He replied, “That’s cool, I guess.” His nonchalant approval was all the momentum I needed to tell my mother. 

My mother Donna informed me that I was going through a phase. Apparently, bisexuality was on the rise in teenage girls in the 90s, she had read all about it in a magazine. “Bisexuality is to the 90s” she said, “what neon clothing and big hair were for the 80s.” Christy and I dated for most of tenth grade. She was my first real relationship. My mother was nice enough to her, but I was not allowed to tell my step-father Carlton or my siblings. 

Christy was a senior, and she had flunked a grade, she was already 19 and living on her own. She lived in a tiny trailer behind her cousin’s home. I never knew why because she never wanted to talk about her parents, but I assumed she had a Carlton of her own. “I love you,” I said. “I love you too,” she said. As she held my hand, the butterflies in my chest took flight. Sometimes I would sit for hours and play with her long hair. She was like a real life barbie doll that I got to play with, which is probably a wretched way to describe a whole human person, but that is quite honestly as best as I could describe my fascination with her. Christy’s magical allure also had its downside. She had a way of making you feel like you were the greatest person that ever lived, while simultaneously the worst. She was incredibly sexy and equally as manipulative. I felt tormented by the way that she danced around our school like Pan. Everyone loved her, and all of the boys wanted her. Watching her play flirtatiously with my male friends, both irritated and intoxicated me. Our relationship ended when I caught her with my friend Brandon. I was devastated. Partly, because I loved her, and partly because–fucking Brandon! Brandon had fucked every girl in our social group, but me and Christy. Now she was pleading with me to allow Brandon into our relationship, extolling her love for the both of us. I was disgusted at the prospect of sharing her, and decided I’d rather be alone. I felt betrayed by both of them, and although Brandon was an attention-seeking fuckboy for sure, I didn’t hold it against him. Simply because, one time I saw his father grab him by the throat and throw him into a wall. Brandon was a fucked up mess, and Christy was a siren for lost souls. She graduated that year, and I never saw her again. 

“You have to see her new beau, he is so handsome. He looks like Brad Pitt!” I overheard Donna gossiping about my love life via telephone to her sister. Jeff was a painter. When I brought Jeff home, I had to explain to my mother Donna that I was not cured of my bisexuality, and that I was still very much into both men and women. However, that did not stop her from thanking everyone in her prayer group for helping fix my body of its sinful desires. My mother loved Jeff. Partly, because he had a penis, and partly because he was absurdly handsome and a shameless flirt. I didn’t realize it yet, because I was bewitched by his charms, but Jeff was a player. His energy was magnetic, he’d walk into a room and everyone just looked at him. He knew it too, and he would avail himself with all it afforded him. When he interacted with my mother, she became a gushing child. Jeff and I ended, after I heard Donna on the phone telling my Aunt Rhonda that she had a fantasy about him. I knew he was enjoying that attention a little too much, and it was only a matter of time before my Mom became the other woman. That might sound absurd, but she loved younger men, was notoriously promiscuous; and I wouldn’t put it passed a coked-out Donna to sleep with my 18 year old boyfriend. It was easy to leave Jeff behind because I wasn’t emotionally invested. I wasn’t prepared to fall in love after Christy. Can you be prepared, or does it just happen? I think at the very least you have to be open to it. My reciprocity changed when my circumstances changed, and I had to leave Houston for Wimberley, Texas. 

There was a sign on the edge of town that read, “Welcome to the Village of Wimberley.”  There was one grocery store. A couple of restaurants. No museums, No art, No music venues, and it was well in the middle of nothing. I spent my last semester of highschool here. Having transferred from an art school smack in the center of a cosmopolitan city, it was shocking to discover that there were such places in the world where John Hughes’ villains actually existed. You could have drawn more three dimensional characters in a comic book. There were actual football jocks at this school. Like a bad movie, the athletes slapped girls’ asses in the hall, as willfully ignorant teachers looked the other way. The athletes were the stars of this rural Texas village and behaved like redneck celebrities. On my first day, I was called a devil worshipping lesbian. Lesbian because I bucked one of their advances, and devil worshipper because I was wearing all black while I did it. 

This was the setting in which I met Jordan. Jordan had a face covered in acne, he was a short, stocky guy with the hairiest body I had ever seen on a 16 year old. I was 17 at the time, and I fell for him pretty hard because of his gorgeous smile, his confidence, and knowledgeable, opinionated, and varied musical taste. It also helped that he could play the guitar. I liked the way he would take command of a room, and inevitably become the center of attention. It was fun to be around. He always smelled very nice, which for teenage boys is a definite plus. However, the qualities that first attracted me to him, soon became tiresome. Once we had sex, he became obsessed with it. Jordan broke down every boundary I laid before him. I soon became more blow-up doll than girlfriend. 

I met the next ex-love of my life on the dance floor. Drenched in sweat, I made out with this beautiful woman in the Numbers parking lot, then drunkenly serenaded her with an acapella version of Depeche Mode’s Somebody to Love. With that, Rhiannon was hooked. She was fairly submissive and quiet, she deferred to me for almost everything. This was a new experience for me. I enjoyed being the dominant one for a change. Rhianon was a child of immigrants, and her parents were very traditional. Just as Christy had with my family, I pretended to be a totally average, straight, Christian girl from Rhiannon’s school when I visited her home. Rhiannon was an 18 year old brand new baby lesbian and still not ready to come out to her parents. Our relationship ended when Rhiannon’s mother caught us making out on her bed and chased me out of their home, striking me repeatedly with a broom, while yelling violent expletives in Vietnamese. Rhiannon and I caught each other’s eyes as her mother was closing the door, and in that moment, I could tell that I would not see her again. 

The Buzzcocks’ Ever Fallen in Love is a gritty pop punk song about the agony of loving someone that is bad for you. We often lament these experiences of supposed “bad love” choosing to focus on the negative experience itself, rather than the lessons that come from them. I still love all of them in some way or another. They helped me learn more about relationships, myself, and ultimately what I am looking for in a partner. Except for Arturo, I never liked him, and still don’t, he fucking sucked!