:::by jill:::

the first time a boy said he loved me:

i'm fourteen. we've been friends since i moved here, and more for three months. something like that. our mothers are best friends; we spend afternoons together in the grass and the woods or on his ripped up couch while mel and my mom sip wine inside and talk theater. yesterday i kissed him (after three months, finally) -- he was midsentence and i interrupted him with an impulsive nervous kiss (my first, too, though i lie and tell him that i'd kissed other boys before; it lent me confidence). it was strange and warm and summery. the evening melted with the humid night, full of crickets and cut grass and warm lips and tongue.

i'm on the phone with him tonight. he tells me: i'm going to tell you something, and i'm going to hang up after i say it and call you back. i'm sitting in my bedroom on a cordless phone i painted with glitter. why? i ask. he says, because i'm nervous. i pretend not to know that he's going to say it and i say, okay. the phone says, i love you - and clicks dead.

i knew he was going to say it, but i cry anyway. good tears, releived ones, that say "somebody loves me". disney princess tears. the phone rings again and i pick it up quickly and say i love you too.

for two years we felt like that summer. i stayed fourteen and in awe of someone wanting me. in awe of some semblence of love and terrified of ever losing it.

the second:

seventeen. been burned too many times now. always wanting to find someone who was easy to love like he was, someone simple who i could kiss and love in the same twenty four hours because they'd say it first, all i found was men (boys) who'd love things about me (my hips, said one, my neck, another, my laugh, the nice one) but never love me. i wanted more movie love, the kind that you don't think about but just happens. it never did, and finally the disappointment was too much - i just stopped looking or expecting or something. told myself no more until i was older. love was too hard. lack of love was too hard. i tell everyone as much, advertising myself as that cynical bitter girl. being hurt is very en vogue.

i meet him after amelie with ali, my best friend - he's the female me, she says. he's crazy. we have sushi, the three of us, and he's great. i adopt him into my social group, see him every weekend. bounce on trampalines and go to pizza places. i don't even admit to myself that i'm falling slowly in love with him, although after the first time we hung out alone, benne, (who i then barely knew) figured out that i had feelings for him. i refuse to admit it - i don't need to be hurt again, or to risk losing him as a friend. he's not attractive, i would tell myself, avoiding his green eyes. in a conventional way. or i'm going to college soon. or he's too close of a friend. anything to protect myself from someone else who'd love parts of me but never all.

on new years eve i fall asleep with him, curled in a chair in my friends room. i wake up and think this is what love feels like. i think this is not being afraid. and then i remember that we're not together, we're just sleeping next to eachother. i remember that i could get hurt. we part guiltily and move to the kitchen for breakfast. i don't know what he feels.

less than a month later we're together, again with me kissing him first. it's good, almost too good. a month and no awkwardness, only goofy smiles and more kissing and comics. but i'm not scared. i trust him. but not enough to say it yet. not enough to risk getting blown off. or think i'm in love but really have it just be fear, like it was with tyler. it's not even summer yet - it's frozen january and there's snow on the ground.

another week - i'm sitting on my kitchen counter, a head above him, and i say it. i love you. dann, i love you.

and i'm surprised that i do. even more surprised that he says it back.

the snow has long-since melted, but it's still not the same hazy summer feeling from before. everything is sharper, clearer. the heat isn't hazy and thick and cushiony. it doesn't make me afraid of the cold that will come later. and it's as if by saying "i love you" first i took the words back, made them mine with my own meaning. what loaded words they are - "i love you". how casually i'd sometimes say them. but not now. they're no longer a response, but a truth, as real as the ocean is wet or the earth revolves around the sun. i love you.

i used to think that without love i'd dry up and blow away. the desert sand. now that i know i won't, love is not something i cling to, clutching desperately for fear of losing it. it's a person who gently holds back.

like the tree you climb blindly in the night, looking down and knowing, lucidly, that somehow you won't fall.

<< 2002-05-24 @ 7:31 a.m. >>

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