To a Boy Who Will Never Know

So, I wrote this thing last night because I was feeling sincerely mushy and girly. And because I wanted imaginary closure. It's the first thing I've written in over six months, I think, and I had the biggest, stupidest smile on my face as I typed the last few sentences. Save me.

To a Boy Who Will Never Know

I fell in love with you when I was 19. And it was in my twentieth year that I think I fell so completely for you that my life changed. Whether in a miniscule or major way, I spent the better part of my twentieth year so completely enamoured with you that I forgot that other boys existed.

You went away just before I turned 21. You went to Japan for six months that turned into 12 months that turned into 18 months. It was a working holiday and we used to joke that you’d get married to a Japanese girl while there.

“Married or knocked up,” I said, fork stabbed into a piece of lettuce. We were sitting in the break room. It must’ve been a Saturday; I rarely worked any other day because of uni. You rarely ate during your lunch break and I used to wonder how you managed such a seasonable weight when skipping lunch. Sure, people say skipping breakfast makes you gain weight but shouldn’t that mean that skipping lunch makes you lose weight?

“Nah,” you said. You smiled and, inwardly, I cried out in absolute delight. I was a delusional little girl then. I was so taken by you, your every smile, laugh. Every nuance, every movement. It was almost sad.

“You say that now!” I joked.

“No way,” you said, steadfastly. You were always steadfast.

“Yeah, we’ll see. Do you have facebook? I want to see your pictures from Japan,” I said. I tried to maintain my cool but I was really nauseous at the thought I might never see or hear from you again.

I think that only teenage girls can understand the feelings to which I refer. Only teenage girls know the extensive range and intensity of emotions that one can feel. The sad thing was that I wasn’t a teenage girl then. I was 20, technically a woman. I had the medicine cupboard of sanitary pads and panty liners to prove it too.

Maybe I looked at your smiling face too long. Sometimes, I tried too because I thought that was flirting. Really, I think I came across as a little stalkery or maybe disturbed. Regardless, you never said anything about it and sometimes I even deluded myself into thinking you got the message.

“Anyway, my break’s over,” I said, standing up.

“Yeah, see you out there,” you said. You were lying on the couch as per usual. You were always on the couch, lounging. I hate lazy people, I really do. I can be lazy but I hate it when other people are lazy. Does that make sense? But, with you, I never hated your laziness. To me, it was endearing. You were like a little boy on his summer holidays. Days that stretched onto more days of absolute freedom. School was just a dot in the distance. Kilometers away, never coming any closer.

Never coming any closer. No, you were going even further away from me. Never to come any closer.

I walked out of the break room. I pretended that you watched me from the couch, eyes on the back of my head, my shoulders, maybe lower if I was lucky... I pretended you thought about me. It didn’t need to be romantic. Just the idea that you maybe gave me a second thought, maybe wondered if I was working the same shift as you. That was enough to get me through my twentieth year. And in my twenty-first, I lost you.

*

In my twenty-first year, I finally got the scrotal sacks to leave med school. I’d been thinking about it for a few months by then and, if I was being honest, since I’d been accepted to med school. I took six months off tertiary education and spent most of it working. It wasn’t the same without you and I spent almost every one of those days imagining you lounging on the break room couch. I pretended you were still there and it made everything, my indecision in myself, my choices, my future, alright if only for a few moments of synthetic images.

In my twenty-fourth year, I finally graduated from uni. Not in the degree that I started with but with a degree that I liked. It had been two and a half years since I’d last worked in the store, our store. The place we’d met and the last place I’d seen you. I hadn’t heard from you in all that time.

On a Wednesday afternoon, about two weeks after I’d graduated and two months until I’d get a call-in for an interview for my first adult job, I walked home from the shops, a bag of bread in one hand and a carton of apple cider in the other. The only alcoholic drink I could tolerate. It was almost 7pm but the sun was still in the sky. It was an Australian summer; the days here are so long like you can’t get rid of them.

It was in my twenty-fourth year that I finally saw you again. At first, I didn’t think it could be you. But it was the same head of unruly black hair, the same lopey, slopey walk. The same dopey shirts that never fit you quite right. I’d been in love with guys since I’d fallen in love with you and they always wore perfectly fitted shirts that hinted at gym workouts underneath. But nothing could compare to the shirts you used to wear that hinted at a summertime barbecue underneath. You were everything I swore I would never want in my adolescent days and yet I’d been perfectly and honestly enraptured by you.

“Ryan!” I said. It was definitely you. You’d turned around, on your phone. For most of the time I’d known you, you’d had a really crappy, old phone despite being a tech guy at work. It was only a few weeks before you left that you’d upgraded. That was you though, wasn’t it? You were ironic without trying. You were perfect while being imperfect.

“Yeah?” you said. You looked up and I was too happy to feel self-conscious about what I was wearing, what my hair was doing, what my skin was doing, what I was doing.

“Hey!” I said. I walked towards you like I was being pulled in with a rope.

You looked almost the same. You’d lost a little weight, all that tofu surely. And your skin was devoid of most of the acne you’d suffered through in your early twenties. But you were still essentially the same. And hell, so was I.

“Do you know who I am?” I asked. A grin lit up my face. I was floating on clouds, I was so gone by then. I was on ecstasy. E, e, e, e, e, e, eeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

“You look so familiar,” you said. You squinted your eyes, thinking deeply. “How do I know you?”
“Top Office,” I said. I didn’t want to delay it any longer. I wanted to see the acknowledgement in your eyes, I wanted to hear you say my name.

“Top Office?” he said. “Wow, that’s so long ago… Sally?”

“Yes!” I said. It was a cheer, a wallop to the back of the team’s star player, a whoop, an orgasmic cry into the night.

God, I was so done for. I was so done for the second I clamped eyes on you. The first time I saw you, I thought you were absolutely weird. You were so sloppy, quiet but outgoing. These were things I’d quickly grow to admire and love about you.

“Sally!” you said. You were never scared to show enthusiasm, the opposite of which was a fault of mine. “How are you?” you asked.

“I’m great! How are you? God, it’s been so freaking long,” I said. My heart was racing. I was 19 and 20 again. I was 19 and 20 at the same time. But I was 23 but I was 19 but I was 20.

“I know!” you said. All exclamation marks. Every sentence. “You must’ve graduated uni by now?”

“I just graduated,” I said. “What about you? When did you get back from Japan?”
“Wow,” he said, thinking. Thinking face. You were thinking. What I wouldn’t give to go into that brain and see what you were thinking. “About a year and a half now? Then I spent a few months in Finland with my brother. I’m back visiting my parents then I’m going to aviation school in Denmark for a couple of years. I’ve already down a semester online with the school.”

Just like that, I felt my heart sink down and out of the soles of my feet.

“Denmark? Wow.”

“I know. I can’t wait,” you said. Your smile wasn’t enough this time to distract me. Your eyes were the brownest of brown. Dirt brown, poo brown. Brown brown. I lost myself in the excrement.

“That’s so cool. I didn’t know you wanted to be a pilot?”

“Yeah, I kind of was thinking about it for a few years before Japan. Or I wanted to get into photography but I figured piloting would be more… international.”

I laughed. Out loud. Very obnoxiously and too loudly for what the situation called for. You didn’t care and laughed with me. We stood there, two people laughing way too loudly for the situation.

“Oh, my God,” I said. I wiped a tear from my eye. “We have to meet up for coffee or something. I have to hear all about Japan and Finland.”

“Sure!” you said and, my God, you actually sounded enthusiastic. It lifted me like a Wonderbra on a chilly morning.

“Do you have facebook yet?” I teased. We’d had this conversation before. You laughed as you remembered. Thank God, you remembered.

“Yes! Add me. Ryan Button. We should meet for coffee next week. I’m going up north to visit my brother in Exmouth the week after that. I won’t be able to wait until I get back to see you again!”

It felt like I’d broken in half. Did you realize what your words did to me? How you could turn me from devastated to overjoyed with simple sentences like that? Did you know what I’d felt for you at all during that year I’d been so… into you?

“I’m going to facebook stalk you so hard,” I joked. I wasn’t scared to say these things with you. Maybe when I was 19 I had been but now, I felt different. I wanted to be in control, I wanted to be an adult. “Did you end up getting a girl pregnant in Japan?”
“Not to my knowledge, no,” you said. “Let me give you my number, anyway. We can go through all the girls I could have possibly gotten pregnant in Japan and then come up with ways to skip out on child support in case I got one of them le preg.”

We exchanged phone numbers and, my God, you had the same phone as the one you’d left for Japan with. No, not the super old flip phone (hinges. Those phones had hinges) but the one you’d upgraded to just before you’d left. It had been new and state of the art then. Now, it was so old. It was so you.

“By the way,” you said as the interaction came to a close, “I never thought I’d get the chance to say this to you but I figure I should do it now before it’s too late.” I’d gone through enough tea breaks with you to never get my hopes up at such leading statements anymore. You were always prone to grand introductory speeches with main paragraphs that left you feeling a little flaccid.

“Yeah?”

“I kind of liked you when we were working at Top Office. Like, I liked you quite a bit.”
“Really?” I said, feigning surprise. “You never said anything.”

“I guess I didn’t want to make things awkward,” you said. For once, you almost seemed shy.

“That’s kind of funny,” I said. My heart, my hips, my feet, my head lurched forward. I was an adult, a woman, a university graduate. I was moving out in three months. I’d be married in two more years. I was no longer a 20 year old virgin; I was a 24 year old sex god.

“Because I kind of liked you back then too. In fact,” I said, and this is when things got very dramatic and just like how 19 year old me would have wanted it. “I still kind of like you. Quite a bit.”

 J

I Can't Get Over You

It's official. Jessica Darling is bumming me out. What started out as a charming and unique look into the internal psyche of an atypical teenage girl has turned into a very depressing foray into the internal psyche of a slightly depressing woman. I don't know how much more I can take of it (I am reading Fourth Comings, the fourth (get it?) book in the Jessica Darling series). What's perhaps worse is the constant back and forth with her and Flutie Tutie. I wish, I wish, I wish Megan McCafferty had left it at, say, book three and ended with them blissfully in love and still in college.

Now, Jessica has graduated college. I don't like thinking too far into the future (like, the idea of being a working gal and not having the structure of tertiary education to guide me is frankly terrifying) so reading about Jessica and her confusion about her future is like reflecting on my own doubts and questions. Ain't nobody got time or wants to do that.

I had to stop halfway through reading Fourth Comings last night to start reading Lola and The Boy Next Door. And yes, Lola and The Boy Next Door is just as good as the name suggests. Yes, it involves a boy next door and yes, the boy is the love interest. Excuse me? What's that? Yes, freaking awesome storyline. Do you want to know what else? They were childhood friends and then he moved back into town.

WHAT'S THAT? Fucking awesome.

It occurred to me the other day that it would be a lot easier if someone rich and famous came to town and we ultimately got married and I lived off his riches until the day I died. He bumps into me whilst I'm strolling through the city, being all wistful and special. In this alternate universe, I'm comfortable enough to go on solo outings, just me and my cup of coffee (because I drink coffee in this alternate universe because I'm very mature and have matured tastes for such exotic delicacies), my thoughts and these boots made for walking.

There I am. Strolling, just strolling. Gazing longingly into the distance, thinking, "Damn, I can't wait to see what's out there." I also have a slightly British accent. I'm very distracted by gazing longingly into the distance and accidentally bump into Rich and Famous Guy.

Who is Rich and Famous Guy, you ask? I'm not sure. I just know he's Rich and Famous but he's also very intelligent, funny, kind, personable and has nice biceps and triceps. I know this because, when I "accidentally" bump into him, I grab hold of his highly toned arm to steady myself.

"I'm so sorry!" I gasp, all feminine and wiley.
"It's okay!" he says. He's momentarily distracted by the impact but then we make eye contact. Sparks fly. He's very taken by my very delicate and ladylike physique (har) and kindhearted eyes (HAR!). "I'm Rich and Famous," he continues.
"Hi, Rich," I say, suddenly shy but in a charming way. "I'm J."
"Why don't I take you out for a coffee? To say sorry for bumping into you," he says. Oh, his voice is smooth like red velvet cake (I don't even like red velvet cake).
"But I bumped into you!" I say. This is when he purposefully and comically nudges/bumps me. Gently because I'm a woman and therefore of great fragility. Handle with care.

I laugh. He is Funny with nice biceps and triceps (I know because I slap him on his arm with laughter as I chortle at his mild mannered joke).
"Okay," I say. "Let's go for coffee."

We have coffee then fuck (sorry). Then we get married and I never have to finish uni or work ever again. I just be feminine and wiley and of slim physique and slim waist and waste. It's great.

J

Poutine

She seems particularly inebriated in this one:



I am enjoying it.

J

Use a Spoon!

THIS SHOULDN'T BE THIS FUNNY:



But it is.

J

Bon Appétempt

Ugh. I love this hobag so much:



I just keep laughing. Sometimes, I'm not sure what I'm laughing at but I just keep doing it anyway. Part of me thinks, "God, it's almost too good. I prefer the rawness/rawnitude of someone slightly less funny and therefore more endearing."

But then I think, "Shit, just shut up, J." Then I keep watching videos until whoops, it's exam today and I haven't studied more than half the material.

J

A Shocking Human Being

This R experience has taught me a lot. I used to think I had fabulous self-esteem. I used to describe myself as opinionated and egotistical, albeit in a half-joking way but still, I thought I was pretty damn great. But, as I reached the end of my teenage years and started uni, I sunk lower and lower until I couldn't imagine ever describing myself as opinionated and egotistical.

Sure, I was the same person with my close friends and those I'd known for a long time. But I was the opposite of who I felt like inside with people I didn't know well. I stopped answering questions in classes, stopped challenging myself, stopped wanting to be around people. I started seeing myself as stupid, ugly, fat, unattractive, unworthy of love (omg, cheesy), respect or admiration.

I've known this for a long time but honestly, it kind of came to a peak when I got to know R. I wanted, and still want, so badly for him to like me and want me as much as I wanted him. But, so many times, I second guessed myself and wondered whether I was good enough for him. Am I pretty enough? Am I smart enough? Am I nice enough? What would a great guy like him see in me? Shit, he's so good and I'm so terrible. Why would he even look twice at me?

I had very similar feelings during my Zeter Febbs interlude. Shit, what would such an intelligent, witty, tall human being want to do with a shrub like me? Whenever Little Mishelle or Big Michelle used to say, "You're too good for him," I used to think, "As if."

That will always hold me back if I think like that. How can anyone dare to be great if they only ever think of themselves as the lesser understudy?

J

Dear Marcus

Dear Marcus "Flutie Tutie" Flutie,

I need to tell you something. I suspect you are the man of my dreams with your penchant for cryptic one liners, observational poetry (a new genre that will explode in the new future, I am sure), lanky limbs and hypersexual proclivities.

Remember when I remarked that your creator, Megan McCafferty, failed to describe the state of your forearms let alone describe them adequately in the way I desired? Well, she is released from my bad books as she has more than adequately described your "pelvic V." Yes, the very one Katy Perry described as being the most attractive part of the male physique. And yes, your pelvic V must be very amazing and, if you really did exist and if you existed in 2013 instead of 2002 (?) as in the books, I think we would be meant to be.

To hell with the rest of them. We could sit on car hoods and stare out into shimmering city lights atop some sort of lookout just 15 minutes out of whatever podunk American town we deigned to reside in. We would live the perfect American YA novel. We would fight and lose touch then make up. The sex would be explosive. We would have a pregnancy scare but, doowop, it would thankfully come to pass that I was not pregnant. But then, tragedy, as we would find out the I was infertile, never to carry child. Ever.

Alternatively, I really would be pregnant but then, in some sort of accident, I would lose the child. We would both be distraught as we would realize that, hoo, we actually do want to have that picture perfect suburban life with the two kids (or three, in my case), Subaru and corn on the cob. Albeit, in an ironic way.

Alas, you are already gone. I am reading you some 10 years after the fact. After your creation. After you came to pass and after you came to leave. I'll always treasure you, Flutie Tutie. You are a fine fictional character.

J

The Hardest Part

I missed the best part from my story yesterday. As we were talking in the staff room at the very beginning of my shift, we started talking about all the crap we were having to buy to bring with us on our respective holidays/extended work/travel plans. He asked me where he should buy his clothes from as he doesn't go shopping very much. I asked him what he usually wears and where he buys his clothes from.

He was tentative.
"...Live?" he said. Oh R, I sympathize. When people ask me where I bought a certain item of clothing from, I suddenly become very self-conscious of my style choices. Will they judge me for my devotion to K-Mart (or my recent shift towards Target)?
"Why don't you just buy your clothes from there then?" I asked.
"I don't know..."
"Well, what do you usually wear?" I asked him. We were standing close (I am exaggerating the proximity of our closeness to convey the primal urges I felt at this time. They were manifesting themselves as delusional thoughts).
"Like, those shirts with the things," he said.
"..."
"You know!" he said. "Those button up shirts with the pattern."
"Pattern?"
"Like, the little squares and stuff."
"Plaid?" I asked, as tentative as he had initially been. In my mind, I was screaming, "PLAID? PLAID? DO YOU MEAN PLAID? DO YOU MEAN PLAID?"
"Yeah! I think that's what it's called. Plaid."

Well, well, well. I sized him up, sized him down, sized him sideways.
"You should buy more plaid shirts then," I said with all the authority in the world. "Plaid is a universal style. Stick with plaid."
"Yeah, I think I will," he said. We smiled at each other and I left the staff room to start my shift.

J

Cardiac Arrest (Be Still, My Beating Heart)

"Sup," I said to him as I walked into the staff room. I didn't expect him there already. I thought his shift started at 12pm, not 11am. But there he was, lounging yet again. He does love to lounge.
"Not much," he said. "How are you?"
"Good," I said.

And so it began. As we were closing up at the end of the day, I said to him and some of the other guys, "Guess what? I can do the pallet jack now. Kyle showed me."
"Really?" they all said, evidently impressed by my impressive physical abilities.
"Yeah!"
"Come on, then," R said. "Show me."

So, I went with him. We spent 15 blissful minutes together as he helped me bring in the pallets from outside. Him somewhat tutoring me in the art of pallet jacking (off); I had previously exaggerated my jacking abilities. I made my "pallet jack off" joke and he laughed for long enough to convince me that he found it legitimately funny.

It was exactly like in the books. The guy teaching the girl some new skill. The girl melting at the knowledgeable voice and words of the guy. The guy saying words of encouragement, so sweet and tender in his patience. Every one of his smiles, his chuckles, his gentle instructions, never pushy, impatient or mean, sent me closer to the edge.

Is this the perfect closure to this chapter of my life? Only a few Saturday shifts to go. Only a few more times to look into this brown eyes and bask in that glorious smile.

Later, as we were officially closed for the day, an older gentleman carrying a little quarter Asian baby walked in. I was off closing up one of the registers so watched from afar. R, smiling widely, went to hold the baby. His niece, I presumed. If I had the balls, I would have jumped him right there and then. It took a lot of self-control to fight those urges to procreate with him and create our own quarter Asian babies.

The older gentleman and Ryan carrying the baby left soon after.
"Bye!" he said. He seemed so happy to be holding the baby. I've spoken to him about his niece before and he's so obviously in love with the baby. It is goddamn beautiful.
"You're holding a baby!" I said with a laugh. "Whose is it?"
"It's my..." he struggled to find the words. "sister's baby. My niece."
"I thought you were going to say it was yours!" I said.
"Better hope not!" the older gentleman said, laughing as well. I guess he is R's father.

It was a blissful afternoon shift.

J

Jessica, Darling!

I am in the process of reading the Jessica Darling series by Megan McCafferty. Have you heard of this series? I went into this reading experience off my recent The Princess Diaries high and expecting something similar. Kind of childish but still, there's nothing quite like Meg Cabot's ample, swoonworthy (haven't used that word in a while) descriptions of Michael Moscovitz's forearms. Word, Meg. Word.

Well, let me say that Sloppy Firsts, the first book in the series, is nothing like what I imagined. It might even be better. It's kind of hard to say. For one thing, there is a satisfying amount of profanity, references to masturbation, sex, statutory rape, shitty parents, drug overdoses. But it's all wrapped up in a package that has been delivered across the street from the usual The Princess Diaries-type tween scene books.

While it has plenty of darker tones, it's still injected with enough humour and teenage romanticism to please both sides of me. The side that loves reading about the dark, dreary and depressing and the side that will sit in a dark corner and read about Michael Moscovitz's forearms for eight hours in a row.

Then there is Marcus Flutie. Marcus Flutie is the main romantic interest (as far as I can tell). What can I say about Marcus Flutie? Well, he's no Michael Moscovitz (there have been no remarks on the appearance of his forearms so I can't comment in that regard. But he has not invented any robotic arms for cardiac surgery yet so I think my judgment is fair). He's a little Jess Mariano meets Rob from 1800-Missing-You (another classic Cabot series) meets Macon from How to Deal (the movie adaptation starring the Benjamin Button-esque Mandy Moore) meets someone from Dawson's Creek I'm sure (I have only watched a handful of Dawson's Creek episodes but he feels like he would fit in that creek).

I will tell you how the rest goes. So far, I am enjoying it.

J