Memories of Dates Gone By

This story is dedicated to hotheadred who has inspired me to buy Photoshop and learn how to use unsharp mask. I mean, seriously, What!

(Also, it’s long, but it’s worth it. Ladies.)

Scene: High school, my senior year.

I met the girl I thought I was going to marry one day. We met on a retreat and bonded over some heavy, emotional baggage, with a side of mutual attraction. A few weeks went on, some more emotionally intense stuff happened (e.g. a mutual friend’s father died unexpectedly, just days before our friend was supposed to go to the *first Gulf War, meaning that he didn’t end up going, which we had all hoped for, but this was obviously not the way we wanted him to get to stay home)*.

Hours were spent on the phone, followed by pages of letters being written, (letters… how do I explain letters? See, back before email, we used to write stuff down on paper, and mail it to people, and they’d get it a couple days later. Yes, days — I know, crazy, isn’t it?) and yes, tapes were indeed mixed.

We also shared a few fairly, ahem, intense… hell, you couldn’t really even call them “dates”, really. We had done all of our talking already, so when we got together there was, um, less need for talking. Nothing anyone could get pregnant from, but plenty we could still both enjoy. (Insert me blushing 18 years later.)

We lived about an hour apart, so we could only be together a few times, but as I said, we were in constant communication in the days when that took a lot of effort.

Then she dumped me, and later slept with the aforementioned mutual friend on or about my birthday about two months later.

So. Yeah.

Not only did she dump me, she did so about 2 weeks before my Senior “Semi-Formal” to which I had already bought tickets, and had already told my friends about this amazing girl (who none of them had met) who I was going to be taking.

So. Double Yeah.

I talked another girl, who was just a friend and who knew the whole situation. She let me know that she would love to go to the dance with me. She also somehow managed to do so without it seeming like the pity-move that you’d pretty much have to assume that it was.

But I didn’t care, I was thrilled. She was cute and fun and I knew we’d have a great time.

Now you may find this hard to believe, but I was the guy who would go to one of these dances and just go absolutely nuts. There were only 43 of us in my class, and about 20 of us had been together since 1st grade, and we just had a blast together. I’m sure we all looked like idiots during the “fast” dances and like awkward pendulums during the slow dances, but no one cared. Well, I didn’t.

The day of the dance arrived, as did my date. She looked super-hot, plus she was “the girl from another school” which was always a big deal (you know that intrigue of the “outsider”). We tore it up on the dance floor, and just had a superlative time. Honestly, I forgot that I hadn’t planned to go with her, and probably had a better time than I would have if I was with the girl I thought was The One.

After the dance we realized that neither one of us had eaten, so we stopped at a local pizza place (where else would two overly-dressed teenagers go?) ate, talked, laughed.

Later we rented a couple of movies and went back to my mom’s house. We sat on the couch watching them. No, really, we were! I was sitting on one end, she had laid down and put her head on my leg. I remember thinking that I had been dreading this night before she had agreed to go with me, and was amazed how much fun it had been.

I looked down to discover that she was looking up at me. Next thing I knew, we were kissing (it’s amazing how flexible your neck is as a teenager) which was completely unexpected, but—I must say—really, really nice.

Then she stopped.

“I’m sorry…. I think I’m going to throw up.”

Which she did. Fortunately she made it upstairs to the bathroom first; unfortunately, she spent most of the night in there throwing up.

It was pretty much obvious to anyone who wasn’t me that the likely culprit was food poising from the “seafood salad” she had eaten at the local sub shop, but, boy, let me tell you, there’s not much more damage you can do to a teenage boy’s sexual self-confidence than go from kissing him to several hours of retching.

I remember this story whenever I’m tempted to think of how “fun” it would be to be young and dating again. The Wife and I will periodically look at each other and express our gratitude not to have to date anymore.