edge of 17
It was the end of my junior year of high school, classes ended and Summer break had just started. I wrote his number down in my sketch pad on the last page, and he wrote mine on his hand. We agreed to meet up once Summer starts and hang out, skate, chill at park and do whatever. I hadn't thought much of it at the time, but there was something in the air that made me giddy, or it could have been the Summer approaching. He was my classmate and group partner in Illustration Art Studio class and known as the class clown. The rest of our group would often get in trouble by association. I didn't mind though, it was entertainment to pass the time. He was two inches taller than I was, had a short cropped tuft of thick black hair, medium build, and a smile that's worthy of a photo at any angle, thoroughly well liked and an incredible illustrator. He would make fart jokes, penis jokes, pop references, often with drawings, doodles, or voice imitations. He would be Beavis and another guy in the group would be Butthead. The jokes sometimes repeated, for an entire school year, but that didn't stop us or the rest of the class from laughing aloud each time. There was a charm to him that drew us in like an audience awaiting the punchline. My attraction then wasn't of the sexual kind, I was still too naive to know. It was an admiration like the kind you would a pretty flower, or cool toy, or an awesome friend. He was a cool guy to hang around and a source of laughter for me. He was likable and I felt at ease around him. When Summer came, we started to hang out.
Summer break went by rather quickly. It was the only Summer that I didn't have a job, or had family obligations to tend to, so I spent it by doing what I figured all the other kids would be doing, nothing. We sat on apartment front stoops in the East Village and played spitting games, stole refills of coke from McDonalds on Broadway, snuck into movie theaters for matinees. We would go skating at Central Park and chill there until the sun went down. He was excellent on roller blades, and I was clumsy and awkward. He flew around gracefully around me but never once taunted me about it. We just laughed and laughed and laughed. On days we didn't meet up, we would talk on the phone just about anything and everything there is to talk about at seventeen. TV shows, movies, cartoons, games. In his case, he would go on end about his new roller blades, the new barings he had gotten. We talked about our families, our history, what we wanted to do with our lives. All the while I laid on the floor in my bedroom, staring off into nothingness, dancing around in my head to the sound of his voice. Days like this would pass, and each day that floated by, my feelings for him grew stronger and more intense.
The weekend before the first day of our senior year, we chatted on the phone like we normally do, about how much we hated the idea that classes were starting, about what classes we were going to be in together, what design schools we were considering, and a whole lot of other nonsense. But something was different. My heart was pounding, a pain in my throat the size of a baseball was welling up, my entire body shook from nervousness. That afternoon, I decided to tell him that I liked him... in a more than a friend kind of way.
In hindsight, we had never talked about dating before, about girls, or boys, about relationships, or sex. Our collective seventeen year old minds never once went there. How could I have assumed that my attraction for him, and my subsequent declaration of it, would amount to anything that would be advantageous to a developing relationship? I just knew I simply had to... to just tell him. And that's what I said. "You're probably really shocked and confused at what I told you, and I'm not asking you to respond to it or anything. I just really wanted you to know." My voice quivered to the shaking of my body, and it sounded alien, like a small dying animal. He was silent. For what felt like hours. And to save myself any more embarrassment I said "Anyway, I'll see you in class. Bye." and hung up.
In school the next day, I feigned excitement at the dawning of our senior year. One more year and we're home free, officially the oldest in school, the prospects of college, and preparation for a whole entire new world ahead of us. The energy was in the air. But something else was on my mind. It was him. And what was to become of us. I went along with the motions and headed to each class. In my backpack was a letter I was to give him. A sort of apology letter, or reconciliation letter, or explanation, or whatever it was in hopes that he won't hate me forever. I felt ashamed, confused, and conflicted. I regretted that I had told him anything at all. Above all that, I still liked him. Each class I sat in, the ones we were to have together, there was an empty seat. When the teacher did role-call, no one would respond when his name was called. As the day went by, every class I went to where he was absent, the weight in my heart grew heavier by the minute. I fell silent at dinner that night, ate little and did not sleep. Playing out in my mind every word I said on the phone that afternoon, recounting each second he was silent, while a darkness grew inside me.
I found out weeks later from mutual friends that he had dropped some classes and switched out of the ones we were in. Since no one else knew what had happened between us, no one questioned why he switched. That day I found out, I went home sobbing on the bus. The walk to my front door seemed to take forever. It was the most intense heartbreak I had ever felt in all the seventeen years of my life. It was the worst outcome that could have happened. Had he joked around or laughed at me, or said "I can't be your boyfriend, but I'd still be your friend." I would've accepted happily. But I guess I expected too much.
Senior year went by and I eventually got over it. I started going to a youth group in West Village for LGBT city kids, acceptance started to finally sink in and I was growing into myself, physically, mentally and emotionally. That year I also attempted coming out to my family, which failed miserably, but I'll save that for another story. We passed each other more than several times in the hallways through the year. He would always avoid my gaze and pretend not to know me. Even when our old group would meet up, he'd hardly even look at me, let alone have a conversation. It was as if the entire year of friendship was wiped clean and I no longer existed. So I shelved away those feelings I had for him and forced myself to grow up.
{}-annie lenox- no more i love yous
He used to comically mimic the song "No More I Love You's" by Annie Lenox, where at the start of the song that goes "doobee doobee doo doo doo... ahhh" The rest of us would laugh and sing along. He did that so much randomly that it embedded that very school year and that Summer break into my being forever. And I grew to love the song, it represented a time of my life where things were forever changed. Whenever that song comes on the radio, I would be transported back to my old bedroom, in the summer time of 1997, on my bedroom floor, staring off into nothingness, dancing around in my head to the sound of his voice, wishing I were his.
++
And it feels like I'm seventeen again
Feels like I'm seventeen again
Looking from the outside in some things never change
Hey hey I'm a million miles away
Funny how it seems like yesterday
- eurythmics 17 again
Labels: inspiration, Life, love, music
posted by Joey at 11:23 AM
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