It was easy to love him. Maybe because his heart sounded honest when I pressed my ear against his chest. Kah-thump. Kah-thump. I will never leave you. Kah-thump. Kah-thump. We could lay here forever. Kah-thump. Kah-thump. We can turn into a pile of entangled bones and dust. Kah-thump. Kah-thump.
Maybe it was because I have always believed in happy endings. I like to shut off Titanic right in the middle and pretend it never sank; pretend Rose and Jack got off that ship and had ten cute, artistic, red-headed babies and spent their lives laughing and drinking beer and reminiscing of the time they met on that great big boat. I never let myself watch the end. The romantic in me won’t allow it.
Or it could have just been the fact that he was the first boy I ever loved, and there’s something really intoxicating about the first time you fall in love. It’s like chugging a whole bottle of whiskey – it burns and it tingles and you feel kind of sick and the world becomes a huge blur of laughter and inhibition.
I remember the exact moment I realized I loved him. We were laying in his bed and a song by George Barnett came on. The one about Thor, angles and heaven above. I loved this song, and he knew that so he started to sing. He started to sing and it sounded like a cat that was being slowly strangled and I laughed and pressed my palms against my ears and he just sang louder. When I went to escape the awful droning of his off-key melody, he pressed me tightly against himself and nibbled lightly on my ear and I knew in that moment that if I could be anywhere with anyone – if I could stand on the Eiffel Tower with Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley and lightly sip champagne as we discussed the good ol’ days of Hollywood-- I wouldn’t. I would be right there in that tiny twin sized bed that just barely had room enough for both of us as long as he held me close, listening to this gangly boy sing this wonderful song.
It was in that moment I knew I was in love. I knew I was ******.
After that all I wanted to do was say it. We would be ordering chinese food and I’d think “I feel like having something other than seseame chicken. I love you.” We’d be driving down the road and he’d be ******* about construction and I’d think “Yeah, it is annoying that it takes thirty minutes just to get down 33rd but I love you.” My love for him infected everything I did. He was the most beautiful virus I had ever been plagued by.
Relatively speaking, it was barely a blimp on the vast radar of a lifetime. I can’t remember the start and end dates exactly. I don’t remember much about that year at all, actually, except that it was filled with breathless kisses and nervous firsts. I remember that he always smelled of laundry detergent. He lived in the basement, which was also where the washer and dryer was kept. and the smell of fresh clean clothes and Tide stayed embedded in his skin. I still breathe in deeply when I walk into the detergent isle at smiths. Habit, I suppose. It always transports me back to then. It was one of the best years of my life.
We broke up eventually. He never told me why. But in the end it was really just life. Life has a way of changing the most permanent things into temporary ones. Thankfully, it can do the same with a broken heart.
I’d like to know he ended up happy.
I plan on falling in love again, too. Each time its own masterpiece. My heart is my romantic Michelangelo. Every time it beats it produces a new and beautiful Sistine Chapel, but instead of paint, it is pain and pleasure that spatters against the ceiling.
He is still my favorite piece, though. Our love is my most treasured creation, even if it only lives through memories. It lives in a young girl’s laughter, in an awkward boy’s terrible singing voice, in the innocence of two teenage lovers between the sheets, who haven’t yet experienced the pain that echoes within the terrible truth that love is sometimes not enough.
Every now and then when I’m feeling old or unoriginal or just depressed, I pull out the memory of my first love and his strong, honest heart. I replay my favorite parts in my head. I smile at what I see. I’d like to think he does too.