Relics from the Past

It's funny to look at where I am now, and look at where I've come from, and realize that since the third grade, nothing has changed.

How many frogs has a girl got to kiss in her life to find a prince?


I could literally sit here and list every guy I've ever had some insurmountable crush on, but since you probably don't have 45 minutes to read a list of names you've never heard, I'll save you the time and tell you only the very best.

Timmy Slevin - 3rd/4th Grade

Fig. A - Cursive Practice, circa 1994

Jason Covella - 3rd-6th Grade
He was a year younger than myself, but that didn't stop my daydreamed love affair with the strawberry blond hottie in the classroom next door. At one point the school was putting on a play, "The Will," and knowing he was going to get the male lead, I spent the week before auditions praying to the love gods that I would get the female lead, which he would "kiss" at the end. Unfortunately I got the part of the villian (a much more substantial role, but nothing could console me at that point) and was painfully jealous of this girl Tracy for too long of a time.
8th grade rolled around and I was throwing the Birthday party to end all Birthday parties. At Party Time my mom and I were ordering some kind of balloon-made archway masterpiece from the woman behind the counter, who asked how old I was turning. "Oh, you're my son's age. You might know him." "What's his name?" "Jason Covella." I almost dropped dead.
I haven't seen him since.

Huey Rufenaught - 7th-10th Grade
The first day of Junior High was a stressful one, but upon sitting down in my health class at a table with two very cute boys (A. Huey and B. Nick Rossi [more on him in a minute]) life seemed to be ok again. As it turned out, our table mates were our new groups for all the projects in the upcoming semester, and all the better for me. Huey, a Vietnamese/Swiss wrestling stud, had me at "Hello." I spent every morning waiting impatiently for that class. Who knew health would be so fun? And likewise, who had any idea I was such a wrestling fan? I went to every match I could manage, even through my high school years. Fast forward to the day in 9th grade when the Marines hung out in our quad trying to show all the boys why it was cool to be in the military, and Huey kicked every other guy's ass at both pull-ups and sit-ups. And did so without his shirt on. I was unable to move, let alone look away.

Nick Rossi - 7th Grade
Nick and Huey became friends, and although Huey had some magical essence about him, Nick was adorable and for me a lot less intimidating. He and I talked and flirted endlessly in our Literature class 5th period, and none of my friends could understand how he could be so nice to me when I guess he was sort of a big jerk otherwise. We developed a very innocent flirtation relation, which involved me wearing his sweatshirt. Totes the big deal at the time. Come summer he went away to a camp for a few months but wrote me a few sweet postcards and signed them "Love, Nick". When 8th grade rolled around, we hadn't seen each other in months and there was a flirtation no more. Sigh.

Josh Pometta -10th/11th Grade
After my freshman year I transferred to a different high school in the area, where I found Josh. He was kind of a bad-ass, which is totally not my type, but I found him excruciatingly sexy for some reason. Word quickly got around, and his girlfriend Jessica (who happened to the the captain of the cheerleading squad) was all but excited about it. He loved the attention, apparently, and went out of his way to flirt and hang out with me at every available opportunity, which I absolutely ate up. We always had at least a couple classes together which made school that much more enjoyable, 'til I ended up in a history class with his girlfriend. She confronted me in class one day over a little hot-tub get together I was having that night, which she'd found out he'd RSVPed to. I couldn't help but wonder why she wasn't more mad at him that he had decided to go.
In 11th grade my best friend and I were sitting around joking about this ridiculous crush I had and decided, just as a funny stupid idea, to make a little shrine thing. I bought his football pin (a fundraiser where they take a photo of each of the players and make each one his own pins, which they sell for a few bucks a piece) and put it in there, along with a few pictures of the two of us from different times in class, at parties, etc. He'd left his t-shirt at my house the night of the hot-tub party which I put in there too, along with a necklace he had broken in class and had given to me to fix.
Eventually, when said best friend started dating him (I've never gotten over that, by the way. Thanks a lot.) I threw all that shit in a bag and left it on her doorstep in a fit of jealousy and resentment. Oh high school... those were the good ol' days.

After crushes upon crushes which were nothing but fruitless and frustrating, I finally had my first boyfriend just before I graduated from high school. It was the same old first relationship, I didn't really know what I was doing, but I liked him, he liked me, and we spent every second of time that we had together until we were so tired of being together that we broke up, but kept seeing each other every so often just to help dig that knife in a little further. I moved away to college and he'd come to visit every so often, we would hook up, I would remember why I had grown tired of him, we would fight, and he would leave.
I finally got over him the day I met the next crush, who, to this day, is still the most intense and dramatic crush I have ever lived to tell about.

Rob K. - Freshman year of college
We met online and it turned out he lived a few blocks from my dorm. I was only a little freshman, but he was a senior, with the same major as me, in the honors program, and on the rugby team. He was funny and charming, and in my opinion a total stud, and we had instant chemistry. Our first date, coffee, was supposed to be short and sweet but ended up lasting 4 hours. We realized we wanted to keep hanging out, so we drove to the top of a mountain and watched a meteor shower. I was done for.
The next month and a half were the most magical I had had in my 18 years. Thanksgiving weekend away from him was tediously long and we spent hours on the phone recounting how much we missed each other and how we wished we could fly to one another's houses. When we got back to school I couldn't have been happier to see him, but all of a sudden he felt like he couldn't be in a relationship because he'd be moving after he graduated. In JUNE. I was crushed. We didn't talk for a couple months and I felt I had moved on. After Christmas break it was his roommate's birthday party, and I decided to make an appearance. He spent the whole time staring at me, flirting with me, hugging me, and finally telling me how much he missed me. That's where it all went to shit.
I spent the next 3-4 months staying at his house almost every night, after he'd go out and get drunk. I thought I was completely head over heels in love with him and that he felt the same way. It was one sided.
One night I went over to hang out and a group of girls showed up. He disappeared into his room with one of them, all the other girls left, and I started to feel really odd sitting there in the living room with his roommates, wondering what was going on. When I got up to see, the door was closed and locked, and inside was my purse and dorm room key.
I sobbed violently for the next hour while his roommates banged on his door, tried picking his lock, and tried to climb through his window to get my purse for me. They yelled to him and called his phone and he didn't answer. He finally opened the door a crack and threw my purse out.
I spent the next 9 months on a steady stream of Vicodin from the moment I woke up until I went to bed; otherwise I couldn't stop crying. I sent him poems I wrote, lyrics to songs, music videos, more poems, more songs, letters, entries in my diary, pictures of us.... and whatever totally shameful things you should never EVER send someone who broke your heart. I would drive by his house to see if his car was there. I would look at his Myspace. Eventually I started sleeping with whoever wanted me, including his roommate, with the hope that a night of attention from some other guy would fill up the empty space I had in the pit of my stomach. It didn't.
Two nights before he was going to move to Washington D.C., he called me. I thought I was going to throw up. My heart was racing. He said he missed me, that he wanted to come over and see me before he left. He came over around 1 in the morning, completely shitfaced. He kept trying to have sex with me. I wanted to snuggle. He got angry and picked me up off my bed and threw me against the wall. I tried to get back on and he kept pushing me to the floor. I tried to stand up and he kicked me in the ribs. Finally he noticed I was bawling and let me back on and passed out. I woke up, covered in bruises, to find him scrambling to get dressed. "I have no idea how I got here. I have to go."
That was the last day I saw him, the last day I spoke to him, and the last day I ever missed him.

Sophomore/Junior Year of College
These were tough years for me because I always lived with a group of guys, anywhere from 5-14. And the guys in the town where I lived all looked like they should be modeling for Abercrombie (which a few of them actually did). I ended up hooking up with a few of them, others I would profess my love to and they would say it would never work because we lived together but would flirt to death with me, others had girlfriends... but in the end nothing of substance ever came out of those exchanges. Those two years were kind of a blur but I'm sure I was having a great time anyway.

Since then I've stuck with more normal relationships with guys. More like an actual dating, or serious relationships, and less like a star-struck mega crush that totally consumes me. I'll never forget how fast my heart would beat though, or how one smile could make the rest of my week disappear into obscurity.

Double sigh.