Day Thirty-seven - C'mere

In my very short time attending seventh grade for the first time, a few things happened of relevance : on the one hand, I met the guy who became my one true friend that year, and maybe for a couple of years afterwards we still kept in touch. This kid was the sort of kid I'd never thought I'd meet : his parents were well to do architects, they lived in a very nice house, they often went to New York city on a lark, he had plenty of toys and he liked comics as well; he was also more sophisticated than the other kids I knew, he listened to grown-up music and read Patricia Highsmith novels. And why he went to a rather shoddy and past its prime public school, I never quite knew. He was also a very good looking guy. I hesitate on calling him beautiful, because he had some oddities about him, but he was by a country mile the prettiest guy I'd ever seen - and naturally he was blonde and had blue eyes, and athletic to boot. All the things I was clearly not...

Which meant that on the other hand in our class there were two real pretty girls - they both had the same uncommon last name, and yet were completely unrelated. One of them was very, very pretty, and the other one was achingly beautiful. She was my first true crush, and goddamn, how I pined for her. So one day in a break between classes, I was looking for this friend of mine - the cool cat - and he was nowhere to be found. I asked a few of the other boys if anyone had seen him, and someone gave me a rather vague answer that they'd seen him somewhere off to the side of one of the school's secondary buildings. Knowing perfectly where it was - it was, after all, near the same smallish building where we took shop - I found him there smooshing my erstwhile imaginaty paramour - and by golly, whatever magic they were doing with their tongues is something that I, lo these many years past, still haven't been able to quite figure out.

They saw me as I approached, and though I lingered but shortly and scurried back to where I could let my tears flow freely, unseen from others, when we did meet again - just as next class was starting - he noticed that I was visibly distraught, and asked me if I was feeling that way because of them. I lied and said no, but he saw through me and said that he valued our friendship more and that he'd walk away from the girl - and god's honest truth, that's just what he did. Strangely enough, I'd come to find out a bit later on that both those girls from my class were actually dating other guys maybe a couple of years our seniors, and for some stupid reason or the other, the girls and their guys once decided to pick on me and threatened to kick my ass. I didn't back down, actually, and told them that whatever they could bring, I could do do them tenfold. A lie, a hollow one at that, but stil a lie that ended up working out.