Romans Preserinate

In which our Hero describe the pre-loves of his life

I played doctor with E. It’s not at all surprising, we grew up a few houses apart, we’d been playmates since we’d turned 3½ and later we got caught up in that popular-at-the-time fad called kindergarten, and school.

I don’t remember how old we were. I don’t remember much, actually, except the location, the feeling of nervousness at doing something that seemed furtive and that I was with her. We were just around the corner from her backyard, in a curiously not private part of the semi-common backyards of the area. I’d guess 5 or 6. She made me an offer I really didn’t know what to do with but seemed pretty insistent on me meeting her challenge.

How does doctor go, anyway, because really it was much more a I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. Seems like there should at least be a stethoscope involved. Anyway, it was one brief moment, and that was all there ever was.

C was a girl I met when I switched to my new high school, and met is really overstating the relationship. I didn’t have a crush on her, I didn’t fantasize about her (No, actually, let’s be clear. I actively and consciously decided that the moral of all those stupid sitcoms and movies is that you do *not* fantasize about someone you know so that you *never* *ever* make an embarrassing mistake that causes that information to leak. No happen, no leak. Capice?).

But C was different from the girls I’d grown up with at my old school. You might ask why, and I’d tell you. It’s because C had breasts. Again, this is not strictly remarkable because the breast fairy was at work well in my class before I reached the storied halls of high school, but the thing about C was that she didn’t dress in the standard girl tops that armoured her bosoms against the ferocious eyes of men.

Not that she was slutty either, I wouldn’t say she was exposed or anything. No, really, the big deal was that she wore clothing that was grown up. And sometimes from my seat, I could see the shape of her. Just take her in and consider her like a sculpture.

Nothing ever happened. But when I think of childhood and girls, she comes to my mind so…

There was a girl in the high school library who was loud, vulgar, and completely off-putting. In retrospect, though, it occurs to me that her mockery probably counted as interest.

I don’t remember her often. But I do wonder if she was just mean or if I was really that oblivious. Or maybe if I’m completely misremembering to make myself feel better about the lack of romance in high school when TV says I should have at least been paralytically interested in someone, or vice versa.

My first girlfriend was G. It was a whirlwind romance, three months from beginning to end, just after high school, just before university started. She was an alumnus of the same camp program I’d gone to, although from a different camp, so we had not lived a month in common, like Even. I was kind and attentive and she was fun to talk to and there was chemistry. She came to see me, stayed at my house. She was my first kiss, in my basement.

I visited her hometown, and between her parents, we had a lot of unsupervised time. I’d use a baseball metaphor, but if I do the story goes the way most of the baseball games I played went, which had less to do with reaching any bases and mostly standing in the outfield and wishing I’d stayed home.

The outfield was of course metaphorical. The left standing alone was not. I wasn’t a wreck who would never recover from the heartbreak; in fact I don’t find the emotional echo of the loss at all. But I remember being sad about it for a while.

Seems silly to revisit this stuff, given that they really are just childhood memories. I count my grown-up relationships as starting after this point. Then again, I’m curious how my telling of the story changes, and if my memories are my memories or distorted beyond belief.