Infatuation burns like red hot fire in your veins. Although completely enclosed in a bubble that was damned near impenetrable, I found myself transitioning from socially awkward fifteen-year-old to socially awkward but maddeningly crushing fifteen-year-old. The object of my affection wasn’t Mr. Popular nor Prince Charming. Lacking in social grace, he wasn’t unfathomably handsome, his swagger wasn’t fearless, and frankly, his essence didn’t reveal a broken soul who needed a princess to come and swoop him into the arms of amor. Mike was a fifteen-year-old boy whose words were humdrum and who was, plainly, a prosaic blank canvas (a conclusion that would be proven incorrect six months later) with nothing to offer to me. His accent was foreign and had me guessing, although he’d share it with anyone who asked—I could never ask, I’d be so terribly nervous. South Africa. We dated for five months, and it revealed to me not a mundane, tedious boy whose mind rang with the drone of sex, sex and more sex (perhaps occasionally, but we never had sex, so it didn’t matter), but a complicated masterpiece of a soul. Granted, I wasn’t fully aware of the very avid recreational use of substances and alcohol, but the past is the past. And he was so very intelligent, his ideas and beliefs illuminating me to concepts that would have evaded me for ages. And he was so keen as to listen to what I could conjure up, and it was a beautiful bond, we were the best of friends, resting intertwined in a patch of damp grass in his complex, the stars whispering to us a secret melody of a great expanse of universe. We traded secrets and kisses, and imagined notions that were utterly mind-blowing to us. If you concentrate on your vision, doesn’t it seem as if your sight is a garbled mess of colorful static? Yeah, we envisioned this, and we defined these chaotic little reality-sized television bugs as “starflies.” It’s astounding what a druggie and a lunatic can create from such useless (but wonderful) observations.
And then the summer arrived; I found myself drifting and falling into a listless torpor of existence—and I broke up with him. I didn’t love him, but I certainly cared for him, and I cried, I wept for his absence. But I needed time for myself, only myself, and I couldn’t take him on this journey. Junior year was an excellent road of self-discovery and new beginnings, and it unfolded before me in the blink of an eye, and I never thought of him and I never daydreamed “What if…?” My fantasies didn’t ride on the wind, and I obtained a new crush (however I never went for it, thankfully), and the world revolved smoothly on its axis.
But fuck it, the butterfly effect is so strangely powerful. Flap a wing, and an earthquake knocks down a Chinese village: make a wrong call and hear a voice that just tears you down into a whole new level of infatuation.
We started to text again, fingers typing away, and I swear, he eventually knocked me down like a stack of cards Chinese earthquake.This was no ordinary crush (is there such an idea?), and I knew this from the very bottom of my heart, and it frightened and enticed me. Every day, I was tempted to push the boundaries further and further. Instead of, “Hey, how are you?” perhaps “How’s it going, handsome?” As if by some bizarre trick of magic, it was as though I needed him. I craved his aura and his voice, and when he passed by one day, I was so completely paralyzed by him. What the hell had he done to me? It was May of 2009, a month before we would finally kiss (I mean make out and viciously grind and writhe in pleasure from the friction between our clothes) and “stabilize” into a relationship, that I was suddenly struck like lightening by the epiphany:
I was absolutely and maddeningly in love with Mike.
We flirted and gushed. We revealed what we had become in that span of being apart, and quite shockingly, we had become completely different people—and fell back into each other as these different people. We had grown like flowers in a garden, flourishing from the waters of life and its obstacles and its joys. The year as individuals helped to connect us as two spirits prepared to meld into a singular being protected by the purity of love. What we spoke and what we admitted were beautiful, were sublime and lovely and arousing. When I let slip that I preferred long, shaggy locks (however, I was perfectly ready to accept whatever he came to me as), he out of the blue, one day, wrote to me: “I’m growing out my hair because someone likes long hair.” My fingers trembled and I grinned like a lunatic as blood pooled into my burning cheeks.
But sometimes, happiness is a short period, and a storm brewed on the horizon, and we were caught in it. We encountered a dilemma, caused by my own fickle nature and my desire for true love (mistakenly gone askew in my head), and… separated temporarily. It was only when I realized my mistake that I requested a reunion (after scheming to my friend as to figure out Mike’s feelings for me, in which he admitted to my friend that he loved me; oh, the joy), and we were together again. Permanently. We fought and argued, and experienced passion and love and intimacy that had escaped us two years prior. At fifteen, we were quick with our tongues dancing and arms wrapped around one another, and we indulged in oral play once (I was on fire!), but sex and nudity were a no-no. At seventeen, I was willing and prepared; I wasn’t nervous or uncertain, I knew what I wanted and who I wanted, who I loved, and the bliss of first time sex was… fucking indescribable, but insane and amazing and perfect.
And here we are, at eighteen, a perfect mess, a complicated duo, a graceless waltz, a black and white rainbow. I love him, and I know it’s highly likely that we will drift apart; fall in love with different people; marriage; kids; careers. But for now, in the time that we have for us, he’s what I yearn for and what I have and who I love with all my heart. He taught me so much about myself and about life, and as a boy and girl who fell in love for the first time, who had sex for the first time, who experienced the realities of a serious, long-term relationship, I can truthfully say that we will never forget each other.
