The Crushing Beauty of a Crush

There was a boy I was in LOVE with, when love meant the answer to every problem, wish, and fantasy. When love meant I had memorized every freckle, the curve of every eyelash on his perfect face from late nights studying his yearbook photo. I was in 6th grade and he was in 8th grade. I still remember his first and last name but he didn’t know I existed, until a few girls in the 8th grade caught wind of my crush and decided to use him to punish me for having tits (which was illegal as a 6th grader when the 8th graders in question had none.) The girls paid him a dollar (a dollar!) to ask me out. Of course it was a joke, but I wasn’t in on it. I saw a glimpse of what I believed to be love and I said yes. When I soon understood it wasn’t real, I tasted my first crush—the realization that what you dreamed of will never be.

Flash forward three years. I’m a freshman in high school. It’s New Years Eve and I’ve created a sufficient lie for my mother to let me out of the house. Everyone in town goes to the pier for NYE—it’s lined with bars I can’t get into but it doesn't matter because older guys with flasks in their low slung pants spill onto the promenade. I’m drunk on the sips of strangers and the new identity of a larger school, free from bullies. I’m no longer a child, though it’s debatable I ever was one. And then I see him—Channing Seralle. That’s not his actual name but a name that perfectly rhymes with his. Kinda nice, right?

Anyway, I see him and it’s like he sees me, too, for the first time, but with the recognition of who I once was, what he did to me for a buck. Of course my obsession has waned by now, but there are those people in life that hold for us the impossible, and when you cross paths with them, that old belief in dreams, fantasies, love coming true floods back and reignites desire. And for him, who knows if he had girls pining for him anymore—I represented someone who loved him unconditionally, in the sense of loving him without even knowing him, just knowing of him. To me, he was a celebrity. And to him, I was a fan who reminded me of his youth and possibilities, when he was king walking down the halls of our tiny middle school; I was a groupie who loved him simply for how he looked, who I thought he could be. All his possibilities.

He kissed me.

It felt like an accomplishment so big I could never again achieve that level of greatness. I had done the impossible, the ultimate fuck you, the most beautiful consolation prize for my sobbing 12 year old self finding out she wasn’t in on the joke. The joke is the one the universe plays, bringing them back around to us.

This week’s story reunites a high school crush—unrequited, missed opportunity. Read “Unfinished Business”….