When I was 17, in my senior year of high school, I fell for a boy who was 19. He pegged his pants, rocked high top cons and slicked his hair back with unpaid-for tins of Murray’s. He was a Punk; I most definitely was not.
I don’t remember how it started but it had hardly gotten past first when he called the game on the not uncommon excuse that he was still madly in love with his ex-girlfriend. Even though she had switched teams and was now making out with a homely goth girl in the quad during lunch break, he wasn’t over it; I could sympathize, but since he wasn’t gonna be making out with me either, I didn’t.
Instead I pined and tried to play cool so he would see how cool I was, without making it obvious that I was trying to make him see how cool I was (ever played that game?) til he’d realize I was the coolest and ask me out again. And sure enough, around 6pm on Valentine’s Day he called.
Or, more accurately, our mutual friend Pony Boy called because Ryan had punched out multiple windows in the little bungalow he shared with his dad, and Pony wanted to know if I could come on down there and stitch him up. I know romance when I see it, so of course said yes.
Much as I wanted to play Florence Nightingale, an honest look at his gashed forearm and sewing-needle-threaded-with-dental-floss-set-up said our evening was going in a different direction, ie. a trip to the ER with Ry passing out in the front seat and Pony Boy barfing out the window in back (these romantics had spent V-day drinking straight gin and giving each other stick and pokes to drown their teenage sorrows—ask me what my friends do on holidays now.) But by the end of the night I was rewarded with a newfound understanding of hospitals, an extended curfew, and a boyfriend. Perhaps not the craziest Valentine’s on record, but an unconventional one for sure.
As it turns out, I have never been very good at conventional relationships. Nor would I say that I have ever fallen for conventional people—or maybe it’s simply that when it came to love, they all tried. It sounds simple but it’s not, so I say this as the highest compliment to each of them.
I feel incredibly lucky for the people I have loved in my life and who have loved me in return. I firmly believe there isn’t one ‘right’ way that people should have to love and in this I know I’m not alone; I’m still learning as I go and so grateful to be riding this train with all the lovers and friends.