romancing my history: a small tangent

I don't know many people who credit middle school as the best years of their life, and I am no exception. Aside from my first flirtation with romance, some great T.P.ing stories and two of my best friends to this day, I left middle school with little more than a heavily bruised psyche and a desperate need for a change of pace. I convinced my parents to send me to a private school in another city (one that required driving through the Oakland ghetto to get to - it kept things interesting) and was surprised to find that many of my new classmates were people I'd met my first half of kindergarten before my family moved cities and I changed schools mid-year. I don't know if that distant connection helped me get to know people, or if it was my determination to start afresh, or perhaps it was the wicked cool plaid flannel vest and baggy jeans I'd cajoled my mom into buying before school started, but I found myself part of a tight group of friends from the get go. While we weren't the most popular kids, we were basically friends with everyone, with plenty to do, places to go, and people to crush on. Things were going great, so naturally, I got a boyfriend.

He was gorgeous. I saw him at a spirit rally and set my sites on learning everything about him. It turned out he was good friends with the two guys I'd become closest too (a shared hatred of algebra made for quick bonds and creative note passing) and suddenly we were an item (high school didn't seem to be that different to middle school in this way). But oh, there was a catch. I soon learned from his buddies (quickly becoming my closest confidants - man that can make things tricky in high school) that my new man was just that, a bonafide MAN, whose virginity had been lost the year before to a beautiful older girl. Oh, what a dilemma. I had the biggest crush on this guy, but I had yet to even fully make out with anyone (the majority of my kisses still having been done in the company of numerous girlfriends, for verifications sake, I suppose?) and now I found myself in the big league. This is not to say that he put any pressure on me - sex was nowhere near on the table, and looking back I cannot imagine the patience he had with me as I dealt with this news. The effect it had on me was to stifle any urge I might have to start acting on the ever-present high school hormones we were all juggling, as I desperately feared that I wouldn't add up, that I didn't know what I was doing, that I would be sub-par in my kissing. It is entertaining to think what a big deal this was at that time. For, just as in middle school, our makeouts (or lack thereof), were still everybody's business.

I don't even remember how long this went on for - but it was a number of months - probably close to six, in which we spent lots of time together, got to know each others' families, went snowboarding, smuggled beers up to my cabin with our friends, snuck out in the middle of the night and hung out all the time after school. And all the while, I wouldn't put out. Like, at all.

Oh how badly I feel about this now! I feel for him for putting up with it, and for me and the fear of that contact that I had. It all stemmed from insecurity - from my inexperience with how simple kissing can be, with how basic physical contact works. As soon as his history was introduced to me, I was completely unable to progress naturally in getting to know and be comfortable with him, I simply set all physicality to the side.

I had to tell this part of my relationship history, which in all its awkwardness and immaturity actually had a few moments of true sweetness - but which more importantly paved the way for my first great romance that would eventually unfold. Had I not had to face the consequences of the tension, insecurity and doubt I did in trying to make something work when I had an impenetrable wall I couldn't even define surrounding me, I don't think I would have known how to take such a wall down when I realized I was in love with his best friend two years later.