LOST
Last night i had a dream about my first "boyfriend." And then today i found him on myspace. I haven't seen him since i was 16. He was my first love. Not my first sex, but my first romance. Sex came much later, and never with him, but that's getting ahead of myself...Some of the most romantic times i've had in my life i had with him, before i was even 16 years old...
When i was 13 going on 14 my mom started dating his dad. Two single parents so whenever they wanted to see each other i had to see Chris. Which was fine. The first time he was kind of stand-offish, but it got steadily easier. We actually became fast friends. My mother being a bartender, and his dad being a regular there, we often had to engage in "bar sports" for entertainment. We spent lots of time playing pool, and darts, and drinking cokes, and eating tiny bags of chips, and when we'd had enough of that there was a hill on top of which the bar stood, and which at the bottom lied a giant park with swings, slides, jungle gyms...everything a blossoming pubescent needs to have some silly fun in the cool fall air. Simple day-long playdates ended up with the two of us calling each other more than our parents did, and the few trips they took together were as much ours as theirs. On a weekend trip to the lakeside cabin where his father often went to get away from the city, we stayed up all night talking in that sleepover way teens do. We laughed so hard our stomaches sched and whispered loudly. We fell asleep side by side on the floor of the living room, holding hands, just as the sun was peeking over the lake.
That was pretty much it. We were 14, going on 15 and in love. He lived an hour away from me, and we went to school in different towns. We had none of the same friends, and he hated visiting his father who suffered from a pretty bad case of Manic Depression, but he came each weekend without fail so we could see each other. As the year went on we grew closer. His mother would allow me to come spend the weekend and sleep in the guest bedroom so we could see each other more. Which was, of course a rule we broke on the very first night when he introduced me to Slayer's "Reign in Blood," while i walked around his room touching, and picking up everything. Getting to know these little parts of him i'd never been able to before. We sat up for hours talking about everything before he talked me into staying in his room against his mothers wishes, and we made out heavily for the first time. I fell asleep in his arms, fully clothed. In the morning his mother yelled at us, told him i would have to go home and grounded him.
For the next few weeks we carried on in a way usually reserved for older kids. We were only 15 but no one in the world existed but the two of us. He was allowed to talk to me on the phone while he was grounded but that wasnt enough. Each night after his mother fell asleep he would tip-toe downstairs to the garage, put her car in gear, roll it to the street and drive the hour to my house to sneak in my window lay with me until the early morning hours. We would listen to the Cure's "Disintegration" and whisper in the dark, make out heavily and then lay half sleeping until 3 or 4 in the morning when he would climb back out my window and drive the hour back to his house. On the nights he couldnt risk the drive we'd fall asleep talking on the phone and just listening to each other breathe...
Time went on though, and being a teenager and him scarcely being around i found myself having parties, and hanging out with older kids, and realising i sometimes liked being able to do things when he wasnt there with people who didnt know him...I met someone else, and we simply lost touch.
A short time after, i befriended someone i'd gone to juniour high with, and he turned out to be Chris' cousin. So he came back to town a couple more times to hang out, but things were never the same, and we never connected again as older kids.
Just before i turned 17 i went to live in Ohio with my dad to get away from my sister, and he came to see me once at my mothers house. They told him i'd moved away but not how to find me, and they never told me of the visit until i moved back home at 19. I called his house once then but they told me he'd moved away to Tennessee or something like that.
In the following years of my life i've thought of him often. I remember those times, and the pure unashamed way we loved each other as kids. I remember his eyes were so black and piercing. I always loved that we looked so similar with our tan skin, and black hair and eyes, that people would always ask if we were brother and sister, and we would look at each other and laugh, shaking our heads.
Last night i remembered the first time i ever went skinny dipping was with him, but it was during one of the times he came back to hang out with his cousin and things between us were awkward. He asked me if we could try dating again and i said no.
Then i dreamed about him. In my dream he looked just as he had back then and we were happy, and doing..something...dreamy and vague. And this time when i typed his name into myspace search, he was there. Like he'd always been there. The same eyes. He's older now, and has a wife, and 4 kids, but seeing his face again, not suspended in a memory in my head, but HIM real, and alive has left me sleepless thinking about that time in my life. Regrets. Again. A running tally of all the mistakes i've made. I'm not sorry i'm here now, or how my life has turned out, and even if i hadnt decided to let him go then, i'm sure it would've happened eventually as it does with age, and time, but the awful way such beauty turned black...how easily i let something so perfect slip away. And it'd be different if i could say i'd learned from the mistake, but really it only served to show a pattern i would follow to the present. And that's why i'm still awake. I'm washed with waves of all the hurtful things i've done to the men who've been there for me, if for no other reason than I decided they were not the one to have me anymore.
I could list the names but i wont. Know for now that to this day, you are not forgotten, and that i fight these demons everyday to not add another to your ranks.