"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.