Story time!
I have always loved a good story. I’ve been reading since kindergarten, and I’ve been writing since I knew how to string words together. My fascination with people is due in large part to my interest in their stories. I love to hear about my mom and her family, and I never get tired of the Boy’s childhood stories. I think it’s important to share stories, especially with future generations, and I like to think that one day one of my descendants will want to know what I was like at their age.
With that in mind, and with the idea that one day I may not remember these stories, I’m trying to get them written down. I’ll probably keep them here as I finish them. They won’t pop up too frequently; they take time to write. But they’re important, and I can’t think of any better place for them.
Today, I want to talk about the Boy. The Boy is one of the most important people in my life. Actually, I’m starting to think that he’s the protagonist here. He is my very favorite person on—or off, I’m sure—this entire planet. He’s my hero, my inspiration, my motivation and one of the only good things to come out of my attendance at UNF.
We met during my first semester at the (accursed) University of North Florida. Honestly, I would never have talked to him on my own; I don’t talk to many people to begin with, and, really, all I knew about him was that he was from Venezuela. What on earth could I possibly have in common with him?
Lord, I was so wrong. I am about most things. It’s okay. Somehow, I don’t mind being wrong about this.
We were in Introduction to Forensic Science together, and the professor, in his infinite wisdom, put us in a group together for the final project. The group agreed to meet online and chat about the project via instant messenger at a specific time, and, lo and behold, the Boy was the only other person online on time. I messaged him, and we started chatting a little bit… We quickly discovered that we had quite a bit in common, starting with a natural inclination toward all things geeky.
The first time we ate lunch together, we went to Renna’s Pizza. We went through a whole list of fandoms. “Hey, do you like…?” “Did you ever see…?” The more we talked, the more excited I got. Here was a guy with interests that paralleled mine, a pretty good taste for music… and, hey, he was kind of cute. (Or really cute. Or… okay, the Boy is hot. Shh.)
We started having lunch almost every Tuesday and Thursday, and then we started meeting around classes… Before I knew it, I had developed quite a crush on the Boy. One afternoon, I had every intention of asking him out. We were walking to my car so I could drive him out to his, and there was a bit of a lull in the conversation. We had those occasionally, despite our respective penchants for talking. I took that opportunity to comment on the shirt he was wearing: a black tee that said “I only date crack whores” across the chest.
“Hey, so… do you have a crack whore these days?”
He paused and frowned a little, clearly confused. “Huh?”
I pointed to his shirt. “I was just wondering…”
“Oh!” He laughed. “Yeah, I do.”
Curses. She was his girlfriend from high school, and she was in Tallahassee. I dropped it, and I did my best to ignore the little butterflies the Boy put in my stomach. We hung out all the time at school, and we got to be closer and closer, and I slowly became okay with just being friends. Sometime during that first semester, the Boy and I started making plans to hit up a hookah bar in town. Somehow, word of these plans got to the Boy’s girlfriend, who quickly told the Boy that she forbade him to go share a hookah with me. In her words, sharing a hookah with a girl was equivalent to kissing her.
The Boy promptly dumped her. He never did take kindly to being told what to do.
After that, I held a little bit of hope that maybe, just maybe, he’d take some kind of liking to me, and we’d date… But it never happened, and I was too scared to ask. I’d mustered the backbone to start that conversation once, and at least that time the result was only that he already had a girlfriend. It wasn’t an outright “I don’t want to date you” like I could conceivably have gotten after they broke up, and I didn’t want to know that he wasn’t attracted to me in any way, shape or form. I just… didn’t want to know. So I said nothing, and we continued hanging out as we were.
Somehow, over time, I realized I didn’t mind that we weren’t dating. We hung out all the time as it was, and the months passed quickly with the Boy around. We took classes together, and we met before, after and between classes. If we were on campus, we were only apart if we were in classes we didn’t share. By summer we were together five or six days a week. I used to joke that we live together; we just happen to sleep in separate buildings.
Today, we joke—perhaps not falsely—that we know more about the other than God himself. He knows most of my darkest secrets and more of my stories than anybody else. He knows how I’m going to react to things. He knows what I’m thinking before I think it. I can generally say the same thing about him. We joke, too, that we’re developing a bit of a hive mind; we speak in union frequently. “Get the hell out of my head” is a common cry between us.
We work, as we are. It’s strange to admit it, because it’s not something that will happen, but I could definitely marry that boy and live happily ever after (I don’t tell him this; it’s hard to say that without it being taken the wrong way, and while he usually gets what I’m saying anyway, that is a conversation for a late, mildly intoxicated night). We’re definitely planning to get a place together when we move out of our respective parents’ homes, and he is coming with me to Europe after graduation. Our relationship is not romantic; it’s not sexual. But he is absolutely one of the great loves of my life, and no matter what happens, I am glad to have him.
I’ll share plenty more stories about him; we have quite a few by now. The ten-hour trip to Tampa, which should have taken three hours. His car. The night his stepfather kicked him out of the house and nearly hit him. The weekend when he came out. He’s been through a lot, the dear; his strength never fails to amaze me.
So yeah. The Boy. He’s something else.
