I live a senseless love life so all of my crushes were inexplicable and the symptoms of my inability to embrace asexuality:
Rollin (6 years old) - Probably my first love. He was my best friend at the Challenger School for the Gifted and Talented and taught me long division with fraction remainders at the age of 6. And we loved to play Doctor…I stomped on the bees and brought them to him half dead and he was supposed to bring them back to life, but after a whole afternoon of this, he got really frustrated because they kept dying. And now he’s a doctor (I give my sadistic self all the credit). I hated him and talked so much shit about him to my mom. But that’s because I didn’t know what love was. Until Foreigner showed me.
Linus (7 years old) - we had a game called the Pants Down Game, which mostly consisted of us jumping up and down flashing each other.
Josh (4th grade) - He flipped me off when he found out I liked him. Yeah. But I’m not the one who hid behind the equipment room picking my nose.
Philip (7th grade) - he turned out to be a total dick. And then dated a fat chick.
Corey (9th grade) - I had a HUGE crush on him. Bad hair, pegged his jeans, but still. Walked by him every day and never said anything. But then one day, he smiled and it was beautiful. So I told my friend who was friends with him and she told him that I liked him and he told her to have me call him (yes, it IS that complicated).
So I did and I was scared sh*itless and talked to him for a few minutes. At the end of the call, he was kind about it and said, “Hey, you don’t have to be so nervous.” That was nice. But I was too scared to call again and never looked him in the eye again, mostly running away if I passed him in the halls. Yes, that’s my way. I was the master seductress.
Joe (12th grade) - a pretentious asshole who treats people who treat him well very badly. I wrote him a detailed letter telling him how badly he treats people and he called and talked to me about how the letter opened his eyes and made him realize the changes he wanted to make in his life. And then he went off to college, became some kind of activist, decided that his family was too bourgeoise for him since he grew up in the “ghettos of Redwood City,” and dropped out of college. To this day, I hear he’s still a self-absorbed, self-important asshole.
Gabe (college) - he said the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me: “I’m your monkey. If you want coconuts, I’ll climb up that tree and get you coconuts. Cuz I’m your monkey.”
Carl (college) - We went out and then he told me he had a girlfriend. And then he invited me to his place for a “platonic” hanging-of-out and made a point of showing me his bed, then put on a foreign film, showed me the tattoo that canvassed his back and tried to feed me the “Nice shoes” line (the next half of that line is…”wanna f**k?”). Yeah, I left because I wasn’t interested. Don’t like cheaters who use bad lines and are terrified of their girlfriends.
Andrew (’00) - I seemed to always insult him without meaning to. I tried to compliment him by telling him that he looked like Marlon Brando, but I meant Brando when he was young and he got mad cuz he thought I was calling him fat. Then another day, he was wearing a light blue button-down and I told him that I liked his shirt. Then I realized that my boss (a woman) was also wearing a blue button-down with khakis and blurted out, “I think Melissa’s wearing the same outfit.” He said, “You mean they make this for men?” That was a funny comeback but I feel bad about that comment to this day. I really didn’t mean to insult him; it just always seemed to come out that way.
That guy at Coffee Bean who worked at the Rehab Halfway House (’04) - You stared at me every day until I finally said hi to you. You invited me to sit with you, and then after 20 seconds of small talk, started reading the paper, holding it up in a way that blocked your view of me. So I left. Yet you would still continue to stare at me when I came in. I realized that I have a thing for crazies.
