The one who won't leave me alone

This entry is going to come at you in more than one installment. There’s a lot to say.

This redhead hasn’t left me alone since I met him in 1993. I was 13, he was 14.

I call him Firecrotch

Firectorch was my first kiss. Like, real kiss. With tongue. Like, my first make-out session. Both of ours actually. My memories of that kiss was the same as Harry Potter’s first kiss with Chou Chang: wet.

Firecrotch, the pain-in-the-ass, likes to remind me sometimes, that I have a soft spot for him. Just a couple words or phone calls here and there that makes me remember.

He tends to pop back up in my world every-so-often, especially when I’m not crushing hard on someone else. And if you’ve read any of the other entries in this blog, I crush a lot and I crush hard. I admit it is kind of obsessive. If I were one of these dudes and knew how hard this girl was crushing, I’d be scared. And that’s why I give these guys props when I think they know it.

Anyway, I went to an overnight camp in junior high and Firecrotch was my “boyfriend” for about two weeks. I remember the precise moment when I decided I liked him; it was on the volleyball court. I loved the combination of his strawberry-blonde jew-fro and the weird acid-washed bright blue t-shirt he was wearing. I told my friend that I like his hair.

She runs off and tells him I have a crush on him. How junior high is that?

Somehow it gets discussed that he likes me too and that he should “ask me out.” And at some point a couple days later, we were playing capture the flag and we end up alone.

“I have something to ask you” Firecrotch says.

“I know” I say.

“Will you, um, go out with me?”

“Yeah”

Granted this isn’t exactly how the conversation went, but it was something like this. We “dated” until camp was over. I kissed him good night on the cheek once probably almost a week after we started “dating” and he went “wooooo!”

We argued about the Batman and Robin cartoon that that was on tv, I had a crush on Robin (for some reason I found a cartoon character hot. See that looking at that picture up there at the top? he's totally my type, buff with glasses!)

There are a couple really cute pictures that I have of us cuddling during the after dinner song sessions. Come to think of it, I don’t know if I have any other pictures like that with any other guy, I wonder how much this says about my love life... I’ve hidden these behind other pictures. I won’t get rid of them, but I don’t want to look at them.

My brother was a CIT, a counselor-in-training for my group session. Basically he was a camper who got to go to camp for free in exchange for sitting around in the evening waiting for campers to sneak out of their cabins and more time to make out with members of the opposite sex. My brother was Firecrotch’s CIT. I think it freaked Firecrotch out a little bit. My brother liked to tease him, of course, that's an older brother's duty.

We never really “broke up.” I think it was just a camp-is-over type of thing. I called him when there were raging fires near his house. He was terrible on the phone.

We stayed friends. He came out of his shell once he got to high school. He was girl crazy. Girls loved him. We never made out again. But we would hang out whenever he was in town visiting family.

I developed a real crush on him. I never knew what to do about it. I still don't.

Part 2

The one who drove a white minivan

Whenever I see a white minivan I think of Jason, my high school crush.

He was a gorgeous sandy-blonde mild-mannered boy who probably turned out to be gay. I can't be sure since nobody has heard from him. And stalking him on the internet doesn't get me very far, although I feel like I might have seen that he's a second grade teacher as of four years ago.

I did my regular thing by hiding my love for him by becoming his friend. We even hung out a few times. I thought about calling this post "the one who taught me how to properly wash my car windows" because that's what he did. I didn't know I needed to use a paper towel to get the water off the wiper with every stroke. I mean my Mom never did that, but her windshield always looked like crap.

I obsessed about when Jason would call me back, if I would get to sit next to Jason in the one class we had together and if Jason would ever in a million years see how cool I was and want to make out with me.

Of course I was the good friend and even hooked him up with Amy, a friend of mine, for prom... what a good friend I was. She was a water polo player and could kick any guys ass. Amy had a smoking hot, buff body. It was a little masculine at times. Some guys loved it, some thought it was a little scary. Jason was a swimmer, and we all know what swimmers bodies look like.

Don't get me wrong, my prom date was awesome as far as the fun-ness level goes, we danced the whole night long. But he was not as gorgeous as Jason.

Amy and Jason looked really awkward in their prom picture.

Our school paper always ran a joke issue at the end of the school year making fun of all the graduating seniors. Amy's was nominated "most likely to be a man." Jason was nominated "most likely to date Amy."

This stuff is too perfect to make up people!

The one who made my heart skip a beat

I know it sounds totally cliche and silly, but that's the only way I really know how to explain it.

Joey would smile at me as he passed by and I would get that crazy nervous feeling in my stomach, one that I would later feel when climbing the stairs to my dorm room and the one who was painfully shy. There was one time where we were talking and because he was looking right in my eyes, I literally could not speak. I was physically unable to so.

Joey was a year ahead of me and I first remember having a crush on him in in 7th grade. I was lucky enough to be one of the nine little ones to be cast in Anything Goes, the middle school musical. I was also one of the lucky ones to have a line. It was "I'm not a sinner!" Ironic, don't you think?

In the spring of my first year in junior high, I tried out for the softball team and auditioned for the musical. I didn't get onto the team but got cast in the musical, that was the end of sports for me. My fat ass and I would squeeze into costumes rather than do laps around the field. And I was happier for it.

Anyway, Joey had one of the main roles and had one of the most beautiful voices I had ever heard. Perhaps my earliest memory of him, and quite possibly the moment I started crushing hard, was when I witnessed a cartwheel attempt in the gym in front of everybody. He was probably trying to show off for the disproportionate percentage of girls in the room. He fell flat on his ass. It was one of our first cast meetings and it was all over for me.

Oh, how I loved the boy who landed on his ass.

I did my normal thing of trying to be his friend and get frustrated when he disappointed me.

I hated any girl who had a crush on him and was jealous of any girl that was a sincere friend of his. I remember hating this one girl with a passion, but she was a spoiled rotten bitch that had no sense of reality... I'm obviously over it. I'm sure she's a nice girl these days...

What was so bizarre about my crush on Joey is that he wasn't that good looking. Now my high school crush, he was the most beautiful boy I've ever been interested in, but Joey? Not really. But with my already established track record (remember the one who reminded us of Gonzo from fifth grade?), that's not a surprise.

I'm going to make a generalization now, one about children who are of mixed race parents, especially those that are half Caucasian and have Asian. They are usually very good looking, right? Really beautiful features and skin? Joey kinda got the wrong hald of the chromosomes. He had his Dad's bulbous Polish nose and he was bow-legged. But I thought he was dreamy, for years. I judge not by the book's cover. It must have been that voice, and that he had a sweet soul.

I think it might have all ended for me when I professed my love for him at the end of 8th grade. He would move to another campus and I wouldn't see him regularly again for another year, so I figured what the hell?

So I wrote a note, and gave it to my friend and she gave it to Joey.

No response.

Not a surprise.

What was I expecting?

There were rumors in high school that he was gay, or that all he wanted to do was get married and have as many babies as possible. He also became freakishly OCD. He continued to sing though, and I loved every minute of it. I think he's trying to be a jazz singer these days.

I ran into Joey and a high school friend of his at a bar when I was home from college once. I thought Joey was so boring t talk to. I had a much better time talking to his friend, who told me about his love for the Harry Potter books and persuaded me to read them for the first time.

There have been very few moments that I can recall in my live where I felt the way Joey's presence made me feel. And I'm still looking for that.

The one who made me a Beatles mix tape

This is the boy who is responsible for my initial love of The Beatles.

In 8th grade I was friends with this group of nerdy indie rock boys. I realise in retrospect that I should have dated at least half of them at some point since they were cute, sweet, smart, funny and dorky, totally my type! But at the time I was too shy to do anything about it. And so were they. And anyway, I had a crush on the boy with the beautiful singing voice that made my heart skip a beat whenever he talked to me or looked in my general direction. So I was too distracted to see these boys as potentials. Even when it was totally obvious.

Matt loved The Beatles, LOVED them. I told him that I didn't know where to start with them since there were so many albums. So he made me a Beatles mix tape that I listened to up until last year when I got a car that sadly didn't have a tape player. It's a great tape. I miss it. It's sitting in a box in storage somewhere.

I hooked him up with a friend of mine, which I stupidly managed to do several times in high school. I realised in college when I was hanging out with the same group of boys over a holiday that I always kinda liked him. I also noticed that he had really bad breath, so maybe it wasn't a bad move afterall.