A drabble. Nothing to really take seriously. :3 Except maybe laugh at. Go ahead: laugh! Criticism not needed, as I doubt I'll ever look at this again.

Regardless

Who says you have to date your high school sweetheart?

I think what makes this entire situation all the more pathetic is the fact that I had known him for four years and saw him six times a day. I never really spoke to him save for the few pleasantries you need to make when in one another’s presence and whenever I was involved in a conversation with our mutual friends. I never really spared him a glance and I most certainly never cared whether he was in school or not and just what he was doing within the building.

At least until the last two weeks of senior year where I suddenly looked at him and quite literally, seemed to have seen him for the first time.

I remember seeing him around freshman year and thinking him to be a rather ugly girl. He was on the shorter side and, reasonably, chunky. The sort of body structure of an adolescent boy who had yet to hit a growth spurt. He had frizzy blonde hair that reached just past his shoulders and looked as if he could have cared less about its aesthetic. He was not the kind of boy any girl in her right mind would ever seek as a romantic interest.

Sophomore year was no different except that I began to see more of him when his best friend began dating one of my friends. In fact, it was during this time that I had my first physical encounter with him. Which, I must add became an extremely embarrassing moment in time. It was just after school had let out for the summer and my friend was hosting her sweet sixteen. Since her boyfriend and my object of intrigue were best friends, naturally he showed up at the party. Midway through, I had risen from my seat, only noticing him (absently) a few times, and had, I think gone onto the dance floor to appease my friends. I learned during this time that his name was Mike, when another friend tried to engage him in conversation.

Anyway, I stepped out onto the dance floor and after awhile, returned to my seat, only to find it occupied by a certain awkward, blonde boy. Instead of dragging over a new chair from across the room or asking him to move, I decided (especially since the chair was roomy enough) to take a seat behind him. I later described this embarrassing scene to my friends as “stealing a chair from him while he was still in it”.

It took him perhaps a good ten seconds to realize that he was no longer alone in said chair and quickly turned around, noticed yours truly and—shot up and out like a rocket to the moon. I suppose that at the time, it was incredibly funny. The blush on his plain but otherwise pale face, the way his eyes shifted to the floor in ridicule, and how he denied my offer for him to take the chair back in soft, quiet tones.

Back then, he was merely another shy, sweet boy I could have cared less about. Boys didn’t interest me. I was more interested in Ray Bradbury, V.C. Andrews, and rock music. I didn’t want a boyfriend. I didn’t even wear make up. Perhaps if you were to have told me at that party that I was going to embarrass and embarrass myself in front of the boy of my dreams, I probably wouldn’t have shown up. But what’s done is done and I didn’t even remember the incident until recently when I listened to Led Zeppelin’s Over the Hills and Far Away. The same song that had been playing during the encounter. It wasn’t even worthy to be written in my journal after I had gone home.

I don’t remember much of junior year. I probably saw him a few times, but I don’t remember much. I was more focused on my graduating friends and my SATs. I was more concerned with passing Honors Physics and surviving my extremely liberal psychology teacher. If I did see him, I didn’t care.

Senior year, I saw him everyday. Our homerooms were right next to each other and we were in the same hallways four times a day. One of my best friends, who was in my homeroom, was good friends with mi amore and spoke to him frequently before we had to be seated in the classroom.

He had changed since freshman year: now sporting the frame of a boy grown more than enough inches and had shed whatever unnecessary weight clinging to his formerly fourteen-year-old body. He wasn’t gangly arms and legs. In fact, he hadn’t exactly disposed of all his former weight either. His face was still a bit full, but it added to whatever it was that made him attractive. The extra weight gave his face a porcelain purity found only among boys his age despite whatever experiences he may have had, according to our mutual friends. (A pothead? Who’d’ve thunk it?)

His hair was still long although he had cut it mid way during the year. Instead of it being a blonde version of Janis Joplin’s undo, it became curly and much more Jim Morrison: falling over his eyebrows and framing his Archangel Gabriel face. His eyes were blue and deep set on either side of his prominent yet rounded nose.

I’ve read that in Japan, men find the nape of a woman’s neck to be as tantalizing as a woman’s legs are to men in the United States. Women, on the other hand, are not quite as meticulous. Anything from the way a man sweeps back the hair on his forehead to how he brings a mug of coffee to his lips can be seen as sensual.

In my own, opinion, however, the most attractive feature on a man is his wrist and hand. The small knob of a bone that connects the hand to the forearm and the way it pokes out from under the skin, prominent and gracefully lanky as well as the thick tendons on the back of the hand and the vein that runs along the forearm were perhaps the most alluring qualities God bestowed upon man.

I suppose it helped that my Romeo played guitar and was in the school’s band. It gave me reason to stare at his hands. The hands of musicians and writers were always lovely things to behold: from Billy Joel’s pianist fingers to Sebastian Horsley’s dandy writing hands.

I noticed him first in March. It had snowed the previous day hard enough to close the school during the underclassmen’s testing days. That day, we’d had a delayed opening where more than half of the senior class chose not to show up. We had not been a part of that majority.

His homeroom had been so limited of people that it had been decided that they share my homeroom. I always sat on the left side all the way in the back next to my good (gay) friend. And, of all the empty seats in that expansive classroom, he chose the one nearest to me against the wall.

At least until my friend arrived, plopped down in the seat beside me, and exclaimed:

“Hey, man, what’re you doing in my homeroom?”

It really is much too difficult to believe that a boy with such a soft, even, Brian Jones voice and shy smiles, hit on anything that moved. I can’t honestly say I’m not surprised when I heard that he chalked up a girl on a cruise. And I most certainly remain in denial that this angel faced boy smokes. Pot, too for that matter.

But then again, much of the same could be said for me. I certainly don’t look like the type to con her way into a movie theater for free. Nor did I appear to be the type of girl with so many frustrations and personal grievances kept to herself. The sort of girl who, if driven over the edge, would rant and rave to herself, speaking to her mirror and pointing out all the things she despised about herself, on the brink of tears but never allowing herself to cry only to walk back out into the world blasting The 5th Dimension.

Never judge a book by its cover?

My eye always remained on him after that homeroom adventure where I tried to distance myself by reading The Vampire Armand but eventually joined in on their conversation.

He became recognizable. Always wearing the same shirts every week. Some days he wore The Beatles Let It Be. Then he would wear the album cover for Led Zeppelin I. Occasionally he wore The Grateful Dead and I almost always saw him wearing The Doors’ appropriately titled record. The latter, which made me exceptionally happy as The Doors, were my favorite band. Right up there next to Zeppelin and Queen.

I never spoke to him after that.

I saw him in the hallways all the time. And I know he saw me. In fact, whenever I greeted my wonderful (gay) friend on his way back from physics and mine back from lunch, in our signature way (we did this little tongue flap and tried to imitate David Lee Roth), he always laughed. But it may also have been due to the fact that we looked (and sounded) pretty ridiculous to the outsider.

But I swear he looked back at me a few times and smiled.

He really is such a sweet boy.

He always saw me. After school, I waited for my friends by the payphones and he waited for his driving partner by the wall next to me. One day, he stole the phone booth from me and I suppose he noticed how I stood across from him by the lockers because he never did it again. Although he did seem to peer at me from around the corner at times.

The last two weeks of high school had been hell. I tripped in front of him three times, once due to my (gay) friend stepping on the backs of my shoes but the other two due to my feet having minds of their own. I never made eye contact with him when I knew we were within proximity and I never, never spoke about him to our mutual friends.

All of which were probably a mistake. Especially if I wanted to get to know him better. Maybe get his number.

I saw him graduate. I saw him look at me while I hunted for my seat in the gymnasium. But it could have been because I’d passed him three times and still had not found my seat. It really didn’t help that the names printed on the chairs were size six point five.

When graduation was over and parents were fanatical about taking pictures, I turned once, as the sun was setting and saw him crossing the field, head held high, hands in pockets, blonde hair let loose like Robert Plant, but when I turned away and back again, he was lost in the crowd.

I don’t suppose I’ll see him again. Maybe I might. We do have many of the same friends. But what do you say to a boy you never really could meet eye to eye? You’re both shy, but that doesn’t improve the situation at all. He would never make the first move. Regardless of how many girls he may have chalked up. Besides, I’ve no concrete proof that he had any interest in me what so ever.

What could a curly, blonde haired, blue-eyed boy see in a quiet, longhaired mestiza? A small, conservative, bookworm Asian looking girl whose foot seemed to live in her mouth?

I don’t know. But then again, I suppose I could always daydream about it.

So I’m going to college next year. I may never see this boy again. I don’t think it matters. I’ll never forget him. He was the first, honest to God, boy that I ever really liked (I don’t count the one in 4th and 5th grades). He was the first boy I ever thought about kissing. The first boy I ever wanted to hold hands with. The first boy I ever wrote a story about. Maybe he’ll become a stuffy piece of furniture in my mind’s eye someday.

But for now, do you ever really get over your first love? Regardless of whether you dated them or not?