The Texan

"Crazy for thinkin' that my love could hold you,

I'm crazy for cryin', and crazy for tryin',

And I'm crazy for lovin' you."

-Patsy Cline Showcase, 1961

The summer after I graduated college, I got hired to go to Texas for a summer job. It was a very exciting opportunity to try something new...but I was moving to a teeny, tiny town in the middle of the Panhandle of Texas. The nearest large city was Amarillo, a 30 minute drive away, and it was also a 30 minute drive from the truly glorious Palo Duro Canyon.

Once I arrived in Texas, I was bewildered by the landscape and how different it looked from anything familiar to me on the east coast. Everything was so....FLAT. There were very few trees and, for that matter, very few of ANYTHING that was green, however it still maintained this exotic beauty and allure.

Even more beautiful and alluring? That enigma which is: The American Cowboy.

They were everywhere. It was absurd. EVERYWHERE. You couldn't look across the street without seeing some 6-foot-something-10-gallon-hat and jeans-wearing-boot-stomping-spur-clinging COWBOY. I could barely walk two steps without drooling on myself. I really did feel like I had stepped off the plane into a little slice of the 5th circle of heaven.

It was only a matter of time before I was bound to literally stumble into one. Brady (yes, his name was Brady. That was pretty tame for these parts...I actually befriended a human being whose birth name was Rifle.) was in the middle of his course at West Texas A & M University studying Animal Science. He drove a MASSIVE red Chevorlet truck and owned a beautiful horse named Rooster.

Brady was a simple man. In fact, he was so simple that I don't think he was capable of carrying on a conversation with a brick wall. But to this chick, that couldn't have mattered LESS. We met one night through mutual friends sharing cases of Keystone Light. I had brought my guitar along, and Brady and I ended up taking turns serenading the group. We ended up sitting in the bed of his truck exchanging the guitar back and forth. Because it was Texas and everything was so flat, there was an awesome thunderstorm raging away some 30 miles in the distance. There were fireflies encircling the parking lot (Vomit, I know...but it was too perfect NOT to remember all of these ridiculous details.)

We ended up having some sweet smooches in that truck bed until the sun came up. Next thing I knew, he was saying, "Oh wow, I gotta get on to work, darlin'. I'll see you later."

Sighhhhhhhh....

This story is simple, because the encounter was simple. Sometimes the sweetest things are the simplest things. I got to have a wonderful affair with an extraordinarily handsome, albeit stupid, cowboy and I'll remember it as long as I live.

"So...ya wanna....have some cake?"

"Call me unpredictable, tell me I'm impractical,

Rainbows, I'm inclined to pursue,

Call me irresponsible, yes, I'm unreliable,

But it's undeniably true,

I'm irresponsibly mad for you..."

-Papa's Delicate Condition, 1963

I've never been one to be the first to put forth the moves. Oh, sure, I'll obsess about you. I'll daydream all day long about how we're going to stumble into each other in the rain, you'll offer to buy me a cup of coffee to make up for it, and the next thing you know there will be wedding bells and 4 beautiful tow-headed children running around our gorgeous front lawn....but I'll NEVER be the one to be forward. I won't offer you my number, I won't say "hi" first, but I WILL spend time on the treadmill creating the most elaborate reveries about our impending life together.

I'm insane. But honestly, what girl DOESN'T get a little carried away from time to time?

I'm constantly talking about how difficult it is to meet eligible men in New York City, and the response I've gotten from most of my male friends is, "Well, why don't YOU ask someone out? Give someone your number! Go for it! Guys love that!"

Eh...well...here's why I don't.

Senior year of college, there was one strapping young lad in my theatre circle. He was a little bit of an oddball, DEFINITELY the crunchy, artsy, impossible to read type. He had the most delicious blue eyes and wavy blonde hair that he could never be bothered to wash. I've noticed through the years that I am strangely drawn to this scruffy type. If you look homeless and can remotely look good holding a stringed instrument, chances are I'll drop trou right in the middle of the street.

I digress.

Hippy-boy was always into all these intense theatre pieces, so if I ever ran into him outside of class I would just bring up something depressing OR the vast enigma that is mother nature. Worked every time. We had a few delightful conversations and I just enjoyed being swallowed into his swimmy stormy irises. I developed a small crush on him. Nothing too intense, but I knew that if the opportunity arose, I would jump him.

Well, the opportunity arose. It was a Saturday night at Mill Creek Apartments, where ALL the theatre parties happened. It was someone's birthday, and everyone looked nice. I chose to wear a KILLER white Marylin Monroe dress. I've only gotten positive responses for this dress, so I figured I would be in good standing.

After a little liquid courage (being about 4 cocktails), I made my way over to where hippy-boy was standing on the porch. We stood, we chatted, I admired his chiseled shoulders and LOVED the way his mellow demure stuck out from all the other flambuoyant personalities at the party that put so much effort into sticking out. He stood out completely effortlessly. About 20 minutes into the conversation, I was struggling with an internal monologue that went something like this:

"Um...JUST GO FOR IT! GO FOR IT! You're wearing a hot dress, and, he's a GUY, why wouldn't he respond well?!! Lean in! Take the plunge! Touch his arm, take his hand! Move closer! For God's sake, just GO FOR IT!!!!"

Being someone who has never been aggressive.....the best I could come up with (which I blurted out awkwardly): "So, um...I have some beer and cake at home...um, ya know, so...do you wanna come home? Like, ya know....."

Come HOME?!?! What?!? As soon as I heard it come out of my mouth I wanted to vomit all over myself. No, I couldn't have slyly brushed his arm and kissed him on the cheek, I had to just be THE MOST AWKWARD human being in the universe.

Hippy Boy took one long glance up and down my figure, cocked his head to one side and said, "Nah.....I'm gonna say no."

Oh god. OH GOD. I was crushed, obviously, but at the same time I had given THE MOST absurd excuse for a pick up line. I don't have a suave hair on my head when it comes to this dating stuff. And I'll tell ya something, grace sure isn't coming along with age.

Putting myself out there in this particular scenario was definitely the irresponsible thing to do, but I really believe that one of these days responding irresponsibly to someone is going to get the win!

I mean that in a strictly non-trashy way, of course. Not win like, "Dude, I TOTALLY scored with this random dude last night...". NO. I mean like, being a little irresponsible with my remarks will charm some lucky fellow INTO my life someday. Maybe.

"Wouldn't it be nice if we were older,

"And we wouldn't have to wait so long,

And wouldn't it be nice to live together

In the kind of world where we belong,

You know it's gonna make it that much better,

When we can say goodnight and stay together,

Oh wouldn't it be nice..."

-The Beach Boys, Pet Sounds, 1966

The first one. Like, the first real one. I was seventeen years old, about to graduate high school and start a whole new chapter of my life. High school bud-ling into college bound young woman.

And then, of course, I got smacked in the face by a terrible, terrible case of stomach-swerving, tongue-swelling, can't go without 24 hours of talking to each other L-O-V-E. I mean, for real.

I have this theory that if one is on a precipice, right smack on the verge of plummeting into something completely life-altering and novel, THAT is the moment where you will meet someone who really rocks your world. Of course. OF COURSE, Universe.

This story is a long one.

Bob and I had been classmates for 7 years. I had always known him as this absolutely ridiculous ham of a human being, one who NEVER missed a chance to be funny, dress funny, make people laugh and be the center of attention. He had a huge personality and always loved being very involved in school activities. Towards the end of my senior year in 2005, after school let out at 8th period, I would leave my art history class which was next door to the TV Studio in the East Building of Enloe High School. I would usually run into my friend Aaron Motsinger, we'd stand around and chat, and at some point, Bob would join us. We would then begin the trek from the East building over to where our cars were parked on the other side of school. As spring began to blossom, I saw less and less of Aaron after 8th period and more and more of Bob. Eventually, I began the game of "time-yourself-to-see-how-exactly-perfectly-you-can-run-into-him-so-it-looks-nonchalant-and-unplanned-and-completely-coincidental". Every girl who has gone to school has played this game before, to some extent.

Our after school conversations somehow turned into something more...Bob was the goalie for the lacrosse team and somehow I found myself becoming more and more interested and involved with attending their games. I had other friends on the team, of course, but I became the number one fan of the Enloe High School men's lacross team. At one point, I even took an XXL "Enloe Lacrosse" T-Shirt and sewed it into a jersey dress that I would wear to all the games.

I've mentioned before that once I'm sold on someone, I'm not ashamed to show it. I think wearing a self-constructed jersey dress advertising the sport I came to watch really took the cake on all the embarrassing displays of affection I've concocted. I might as well have run across the field during half-time wearing a sandwich board painted with "I LOVE BOB EVERETT" on both sides of it.

I got an extraordinarily positive response from the dress, mostly from the lacrosse guys, so I continued my support throughout the spring. I showed my affection for Bob in other ways too, one time I baked him an apple pie and left it, fresh and hot, in the drivers seat of his Chevy, because I bet him that if I was wrong about some random thing I insisted on, I would bake him one. I haven't the slightest recollection of what that "random thing" was, but I'm absolutely sure I insisted purposely wrong just so I could bake him the pie.

I am a ridiculous human.

Anyways, Bob invited me over one afternoon to "tutor him in Algebra". Pah!!! Tutor, my ASS. He ended up physically assaulting me and we had a drag-out tickle/wrestling fight all over the living room. Apparently this was the 17 year old Bob's way of saying, "I like you, too."

At the end of my senior year of high school, there was about a 10-day span of each department of the high school holding a special event to honor the seniors in the group. OBVIOUSLY my "people" were the Drama Kids, and each spring the Drama Club held one such event. Even better, everyone got dressed up in cocktail attire and serenaded each other with special performances. There was bound to be one selection in particular that would bring everyone into sobbing "oh-shit-we're-graduating-from-our-comfort-zone" hysterics; my year it was Oasis' "Wonderwall" being performed on an acoustic guitar by a lad named Corey.

The day of this event, I was with Bob in the afternoon, and since I knew he had an affinity for dressing up, I invited him to attend. As I was leaving his house, he haphazardly grabbed me by the shoulders and planted the fattest smooch on me, leaving me in complete awe. I had day-dreamed about this moment for weeks...just waiting for him to make the first move. Knees shaking, I got into my car and barely managed to squeak out, "I'll see you tonight...I guess..." and drove away with the stupidest, toothiest grin on my face.

That night, at the awards ceremony, there was a miscommuncation with the Drama Department, and my name wasn't announced as a recognized senior. I sat there, waiting, as one by one, all of my friends were called up and applauded for their moment of recognition. I sat perched on the edge of my seat, just waiting, thinking, "Oh, well, surely I'll just be at the end, then. Yeah, they're going in alphabetical order, but, you know, I'll be in there eventually."

And then, it came: "Please give one more round of applause for our talented, hard working seniors as we wish them all the best in their years to come! It's been a joy working with each and every one of you!"

I was glued to my seat. Exasperated, not exactly sure whether I should march myself up on stage saying, "Um, SURELY you've forgotten me", or burst into tears and run out of the auditorium, I weakly applauded and watched everyone else on stage cry and hug and wave.

I chose the latter option. I tried to be as graceful as possible, with an, "Oh, I'm just running to the facilities..." air about me, but I'm sure I wasn't successful. I made it just outside the auditorium and around the corner before I collapsed onto the floor and cried my heart out. This was supposed to be MY night, too! I should have been up there with all of my friends, being recognized as a senior who was involved with almost every single play since 2003!! I had never felt so excluded and utterly rejected.

And then, who should walk around the corner with a flower? It was Bob. Apparently he had seen me dash outside of the auditorium in a fit and followed me right out. I was SO humiliated....teary and blotchy and snotty no doubt with mascara streaming down my face and all over my cocktail dress. He helped me up and walked me to my car and just hugged me as I tried to blurt out, "THEY sniff DIDN'T snort CALL sniff MY whimper NA-A-A-A-AMMMME!!! sniffsnortsniff".

Sweet, sweet Bob. He suggested we leave and go for a drive. Of course I accepted his offer.

He put me in his Chevy and drove me to the North Carolina Museum of Art, where they had extensive outside grounds. We parked the car and decided to just walk. He held my hand and we followed the winding path through all the outside art installations to the bridge above I-440. By this time, Bob had me cackling and howling about something ridiculous. He was always good at cheering me up and putting me in a jolly disposition no matter what the situation.

By the time we got to the bridge, the air was crisp and full of electricity. I had never had so much fun with someone I also wanted to kiss, I had never been able to just TALK and be myself and not worry about saying something utterly stupid, because if I did, Bob would just laugh at it. Not laugh in a mocking way, but in a wonderful way. We kissed for forever on that bridge. I didn't care about anything else anymore. I didn't care that I was graduating and that he was a year younger, and I didn't care that I was leaving Raleigh and going to college, and I didn't care that I had just been dumped on my ass by the Drama department. Nothing mattered, nothing except I had a wonderful boy in my arms and he made me feel wonderful. That night sealed the deal.

For the rest of the summer, we were inseparable. He would surprise me at work, he would come over and cook breakfast, he would take me to concerts and drive me around in the truck and we would sing bluegrass. I would cozy up next to him in the middle of the seat, just like they talk about in all those country songs, and stick my bare feet out the window. I have never felt that way since. I was so, so very in love with him. In that pure, naive, and perfect way that a 17 year old has the capacity to love. My grandmother from Missouri met him and said to me, "You know, that young man reminds me of your grandfather."

Towards the end of July, he had started football camp for the coming fall and I was getting ready to go to college, literally and emotionally. We had briefly discussed it and came to the conclusion of, "Well, Chapel Hill is only 30 minutes away, we'll just see how it goes!". However, I felt him pulling away slightly. Something just was off.

One afternoon, he invited me over and was really weird on the phone. I got over there, my normal, bouncing, in-love self, but could tell that he was totally cold. We sat on the couch and he explained, I truly believe to the best of his ability, that he didn't want to continue being together while I was in college. I felt like my organs had fallen out of my body and exploded on the floor.

I cried, in exasperation, "But, but, I love you!"

WRONG. So wrong. The time to tell someone that you LOVE them is NOT, as I learned from this experience, when they are trying to tell you that they no longer wish to be in a relationship with you. Insisting that you LOVE them in panic does NOT change their mind. It only makes them feel terrible and awful even further.

I lost my cool, and sprinted out of the house, into my car, and I do not remember where I drove that afternoon. I don't remember the rest of that day. Someone had taken away the best thing that had ever happened to me, at that point, and the worst part was that the SOMEONE who had done the taking was, in fact, THE BEST THING in question.

Breakups are hard. Getting dumped by the first person that you truly feel something real for is even harder. I learned over time, that it was for the best for me to start college with a clean slate, even though the only person I thought about my entire freshman year was Bob. His memory haunted me, and to be honest with you, it still does. I still think about Bob and the possibility of "if". 17 year old Sara was so consumed with that feeling that I think it's only natural.

In the years past, there have been hiccups between Bob and I. We've gotten together both as friends...and as more...and it's only egged me on in a way that isn't good. But I think most people have been there. It's really hard to feel something so intense and make it go away all together. I think most people have had hiccups with a person who was very important to them in their lives, even after the relationship is over. I think it has something to do with comfort and "for old times' sake". Bob and I are still friends, very good friends. He knows me better than most people do and I still trust him more than most people I know. He is a good person, and even though at one point it felt like he broke me in half, I now understand why, and that it was for my benefit in the end.

Bob gave me the gift of that feeling of being sweetly and so very ultimately 17 years old, and also that it's okay to be young at heart. I will always carry that with me.

"Embrace me, my sweet embraceable you.."

"Embrace me, you irreplaceable you,

Just one look at you my heart grew tipsy in me,

You and you alone bring out the gypsy in me,

I love all the many charms about you,

Above all I want my arms about you,

Don't be a naughty baby, come to mama, come to mama, do...

My sweet embraceable you."

George & Ira Gershwin, Girl Crazy, 1930

My first real “boyfriend” was sophomore year of high school. Jake qualified as a real “boyfriend” because he was one year older, had a car, and would take me out to places and pay for things. He introduced me to his parents and I to mine, and included me in on things as his “girlfriend”.

I was unaware of just when exactly this transition happened. There was never a moment of, “Okay, I like you in this way, now you are my boyfriend and I am your girlfriend”. In most of my experiences, things have a way of progressing from one state to the next without a conversation, they just…well, go there. It drives me insane, because I’ve been in circumstances where I’ve made a very embarrassing assumption about the other person where they did NOT agree with the subsequent title with which I introduced them, but in my defense, how was I supposed to know the difference?!? If nobody has the guts to actually DISCUSS the direction of things, how could I know that we’re still “just friends” to everyone else, even though you’re going to feel me up in the backseat of your car or the couch in your basement later? Isn’t that the difference between friends and boyfriends/girlfriends? Maybe I just gave it up too quickly.

I digress.

Jake was, in a word, dreamy. I had actually met him a few years beforehand at the well known “North Hills Club Dance”. The North Hills Club in North Raleigh held these events about once every month, and it was an excuse for kids between the ages of 13 and 16 to get all skanked up, go out without the supervision of their parents but other slightly tipsy adults, grind on each other to whatever music was currently overplayed on G 105.1 FM and stick their tongues down each others throats. I wasn’t a member of the North Hills Club, so I could only attend if I was with someone who was. I had a few friends who were in this circle, but going to a North Hills Dance was a very rare and special treat. It made me feel like I was in the cool circle in Raleigh.

One of these times, I literally, as cliché as it sounds, spotted Jake from across the room. He was tall and lean with dark hair and piercing blue eyes, way too handsome for someone like me to ever talk to. However, I got up the nerve to cross that dance floor and ask him to dance, and to my surprise he said yes. I never DREAMED that 3 years later he would be kissing me in my mom’s kitchen. Well, okay, I dreamed about it, but I never thought it would actually happen.

I had reunited with Jake at school, and our first “date” is so adolescently adorable it makes me smile to this day. Sophomore year I had 5^th period lunch and he and his friends had 6^th period lunch. For weeks he had invited me to join them to go, gasp!, off campus to lunch, which juniors with cars were allowed to do. I was but a sophomore, so if caught, I would have gotten in big trouble. Not only that, but I had my hardest class during 6^th period, the dreaded chemistry. Yuck. I hated every minute of that class, so going to lunch with dreamy Jake was OF COURSE much more appealing than sitting in that dark, cold classroom copying down formula after formula. I don’t ever remember one sunny day sitting in that classroom.

One day, I had had enough. I gave in. I ran into Jake, as usual, on the breezeway as I was on the way to chemistry and he was on the way to lunch. He flashed his perfect smile at me and grabbed my hand and said, “C’mon…I know you want to.” I did want to. I said, “okay.”

I walked with him down to his car…it was a humid and cloudy day, not quite rainy, but definitely the kind of day that makes your windshield fog up. He drove me around the corner to Subway, (omg it was soooooo romantic) where he paid for my footlong sub. After driving me back to his parking spot, we sat there and sipped our sodas, and I tried to stumble out intelligently formed sentences that weren’t “OMGYOUR’ESODREAMYDOYOUKNOWHOWCUTEITHINKYOUAREANDICAN’TBELIEVEI’MSITTINGINYOURCARRIGHTNOW….”

He wrote “I <3 Sara” on the windshield, he even spelled my name without the “h”, and it was magical.

I decided to give him special attention on Valentine’s Day. When I am sold on a person, I am not at all ashamed to embarrass myself and make it known to them. And I was sold on Jake. So, for valentines day, I made him a giant rice krispy treat heart that wrote “Be Mine” on in icing. I delivered it to him personally at the end of the school day, and then my mom picked me up and drove me to a voice competition in Greensboro. I smiled like a fool the whole way.

Our next important encounter was in my kitchen. He had come over the afternoon before I was meant to be driven to school to be in the spring musical “Crazy For You”, and we baked cookies. He decided to put on Diana Krall and swing dance me around the kitchen. I could barely breathe. He twirled me in front of the oven and kissed me right there. My insides melted.

We had a wonderful spring fling full of outdoor frolicking, bare feet and kissing, and then his summer took him on a trip to Costa Rica for a whole month. There was no talk of ending our relationship before he went, but after he came back, I knew it was over. He did it in the politest way possible, over the phone, and I was painting my bedroom purple with my 2 girlfriends Rebecca and Leigh, so at least I wasn’t alone.

Jake and I are still friends to this day. It was a charming chapter of my life. He is still educated, cultured and dreamy as ever, living in California and wooing girls all over the country. He still respects me as a singer and an artist…but he will always be special to me.

"The Boy Next Door"

"The moment I saw him smile, I knew he was just my style,

My only regret is we've never met,

Though I dream of him all the while....

But he doesn't know I exist, no matter how I may persist,

So it's clear to see there's no hope for me...

How can I ignore the boy next door...."

Hugh Martin & Ralph Blane, Meet Me In St. Louis, 1944

My next encounter with love was completely unexpected and then completely unrequited. It was upon my first day of high school, August 2001. My first class of the day was chorus, which, at that time was definitely my thing. As per usual, the ratio of women to men in a public school choir was about 18 to 1, there were 3 guys and almost 30 girls. I walked in, selected my seat in the back section of the sopranos, and scanned the class once over to see who I might recognize.

And there he was.

Sitting in between two other guys in the middle of the group, this one sported a simple smile, brown unruly tossed hair and a wrinkly polo shirt.

I was smitten.

Later, I learned, his name was Brian, and he was a baritone. He was, and still is, in fact, one of the nicest and most genuine people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. He didn’t say much, but when he did, it sounded like the gospel.

I, much to my dismay, am often a woman of many words. Most often too many words. But around Brian, I was speechless. Let us not forget, however, that it was 2001 and on the cusp of the digital age. I didn’t have to talk to him in person! There was the perfect solution: Instant Messenger.

I do not recall how I managed to obtain Brian’s screenname, BBBBB74123, but I am quite stealthy when I want to be. I started an online dialogue with him, and his greeting was always, “howdy”. I died every time.

Through Instant Messenger, I was able to talk about and ask all the things I so desperately wanted to in person, but was too stumped to do so. We would talk for hours, and at the end I would practically have to wipe the drool off of my keyboard. I learned that he loved sailing, he played the bass (I have learned through the years that I am coincidentally drawn to bass players. No logical explanation exists.) and lived in North Raleigh among other things. These dialogues went on for months.

And then he met Rachel Slagle. Boo.

They dated for awhile. He was so into her, and it was so obvious, and it was so painful for me to watch. That affair ended right as auditions for the Enloe High School spring musical occurred. Our teacher had selected “Pirates of Penzance”, and everyone that I was friends with was auditioning. My voice teacher at the time told me I was a shoe-in, and I had a great audition and a very promising call back.

I was cut. I was devastated. Brian, being a male, had of course been cast, along with what felt like THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE. While I watched all my friends scurry off to the auditorium after the 8^th period dismissal bell for rehearsal I staggered to the bus, alone. While they spent their afternoons tantarah-ing I spent mine at home, petting my puppy on the couch and yearning.

During this time, of course, this little slutbag in the chorus of the play had wooed Brian, but I maintained it was ONLY because they were spending every afternoon together. It was ME who had long, in depth IM conversations with him, it was ME who had this digital connection!! If I had been in those rehearsals, I thought, it would be ME doing the wooing!!

They “went out” for a grand total of three weeks. After the play ended, their affair ended with it, and I couldn’t have been more pleased.

Eventually, I moved on from Brian, but to this day he still holds a soft spot in my heart. He plays bass in a band based out of Nashville now, and I’ve been able to meet up with him both in New York and at home.

This anecdote does have a happy ending, actually, as I did get my moment with Brian. It’s almost disgusting. Have your trashcan ready.

Junior year, I was up for the Junior Prom Princess (I know, I know, gross.) Since I am a ridiculous human being, farthest from “simple” and “boring” as you could possibly get, my best friend and I decided to go to prom together dressed as Disney’s Cinderella and Prince Charming. I mean, like, to a t. We could have gone on the grounds of Disney World and taken pictures and signed autographs. We thought it was hilarious.

As it turns out, I actually won the title. I was shocked…..and of course thrilled. This was suburban high school heaven for me. And who do you think was elected my Junior Prom Prince?

Brian. You may turn to your trashcan now.

I got to have a dance with him all alone on the dance floor, and it was absolutely heavenly. At this time, I wasn’t nearly as in love with him as I had been 2 years earlier, but Freshman Year Sara was completely fulfilled.

History is full of clichés. And I'm a sap.

I don’t know why the sappiest clichés of them all get me into a twitter, but I am the biggest sucker of them all. But in this day and age of texting and blogging, of online profiles and web surfing, have we lost all sense of romance? Is chivalry really dead?

Does that ole' black magic called love still exist today the way it did when Ella FitzGerald and Louis Prima sang about it? Someone had to write the songs about it, someone had to write the screenplays for the movies. Where did Rogers and Hammerstein find their inspiration if not for witnessing the real thing? Otherwise, how would they have written such wonderful and memorable songs?

But seriously….how does one do it? In these days of dating websites and virtual reality, how do you meet your white knight? I sit around watching golden age movie musicals (I am particularly partial to Rodgers and Hammerstein. I also should have been born 50 years earlier than I was) and wonder about this stuff. Some might say, “Well, there’s your problem. You don’t want to fall in love, you want to fall in love in a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.”

Well, maybe I do. And maybe the scenario is unrealistic, but I don’t think the feelings are that much different.

Now I’ve had my share of frolics in my past 10 years of dating. I thought it would be a fun project to chronicle them from the start. I have always been a sap as well as a giver, and one who is keen to give everything I have in exchange for someone to just let me do it. “Just let me love you”, is my motto.

So, here I am, just-a “waitin’ for my dearie”…

It all began at Martin Middle School in 1998. I was on the fresh side of 11 years old, and had never had a boy pay attention to me before, let alone actually talk to me. I went with some friends to the only place 11 year olds could possibly go outside of school and the supervision of parents to socialize: Jellybeans, the roller rink. All the kids did it. Going to Jellybeans on a Friday night was like going to the 6^th grade version of Cheers.

This one, fateful Friday in September, I went with a group of brand new friends that I had met at school. I befriended one Brett Marshall, who I thought nothing of at the time, mainly because he had asked out some other girl to go to the rink with him. Before I knew it, he was writing me notes and giving them to me between classes and sitting next to me at the lunch table. In fact, we had a little “double date” going on every day at 4^th period lunch, I would sit there next to Brett opposite Cindy and Roshi, another pair. I started eating peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches, since that was Brett’s meal of choice. It was all very civilized, but Brett seemed to have much more experience in this area than I did, so I just went with the flow.

The notes progressed into phone calls, the phone calls progressed into daily communication, and the words “I love you” and a whole bunch of mushy smushy language was used, and I went along thinking that this is just what people my age who were “going out” did.

Brett then asked me to the “Gobble Wobble Thanksgiving Dance”, and I was simply thrilled to actually have someone to walk in with and dance with, as opposed to standing against the wall like I had the first time around.

And then, Friday the 13^th came. Friday the 13^th, exactly seven days before the Thanksgiving dance. Lunch came and went, as usual, and then after lunch, six fateful words came my way.

“I just want to be friends”

“Alright”, I thought. “Well, aren’t we friends already? That seems reasonable”.

Not 2 minutes afterwards, 6 girls came clucking over spewing their apologies and asking if I was okay. I was completely unphased, unaware that my “boyfriend” had just dropped me on my tush. I approached him once more, greeted with a look of stone.

“Did you just break up with me?”

“Uh, yeah”.

“Oh. Okay. Are we still going to the dance together?”

“Uh, no.”

A surging feeling came over me. It felt like I had been crushed by a giant boulder, only instead of feeling it on the outside, I felt it from the inside out. That feeling of honest, pure rejection. I had been wined and dined and dropped, all the while having no idea what was really going on, or how I should behave. I sobbed throughout my classes the rest of the day.

The dance came and went, as did many others. I did get over Brett. Years later, Facebook told me that he was chubby, bearded, balding at 23 and practically engaged to some simple Raleigh girl. And you know what? That is just fine with me.

Many of my run-ins since then have ended, and the guy has ended up with some simple, boring girl. Not only have I learned that I am the farthest possible thing from “simple” and “boring”, but that I will never be that way. And I don’t want to ever be that.

Okay, so, amendment to the Brett story. Facebook now tells me that he is also in NYC working for NBC. I just shot him a message to see if he wanted to grab coffee. So….stay tuned.