It's easy to run off at the mouth about love. Especially when sex is involved, words tend to flow with an earnest conviction. Big promises are made. There is an element of theatricality to romance that's impossibly seductive. My instincts are not extroverted ones (though I can be awfully gabby when my defenses are down). I'm usually quiet and speak in mumbling fragments, occasionally punctuated with a dry zinger. But I have been seduced, on more than one occasion, by the lure of the spotlight; imagining myself on stage, engaged in a grand act to symbolize the depth of my feelings for someone.
When I was fifteen, I cut class after lunch and caught a ride to another high school with one of my friends. My friend S went there and I was sunk in love with her. I didn't have a car and she lived on the opposite end of town and had her own boy issues. We had become friends talking on the phone almost every night for over a year. I wanted more.
My friend dropped me off in front of her campus and I hopped the fence. It was still lunch period for them and I was immediately caught by one of the roving hall monitors. I told him I was just visiting and wanted to see S for a few minutes. He knew her and took me to the area where she was eating with her friends.
I was excruciatingly embarrassed. We had never seen each other in person before. It was 1993. There was no Facebook or Google. The only thing I knew about her were the general descriptions she had given to me over the phone. Pale, blue eyes, blonde hair, freckles. I had no idea how she would react when she saw me. I felt like a disgusting skink with a dirty mullet and floppy shorts. I had hoped she would be under a tree in some remote corner of the schoolyard.
Instead, she was eating in the band room with thirty other students. I had a full audience staring at me as soon as I walked through the door with the lanky guidance counselor who explained that I had stopped by from one of the other schools in town to say hi to S. The room rippled with gasps and wide-eyed stares. S blushed and looked at me in amazement. I felt like I wanted to burrow a hole in the ground and crawl away to some subterranean nest.
Nothing dramatic happened. I had no idea what I was going to do when I got there. I didn't have some grand proposition or a dozen roses stuffed into my backpack. I just wanted to see her. We talked outside for ten minutes then the lunch bell rang and the guidance counselor told me I had to leave. I gave S a quick hug and then followed him off campus.
I felt a dizzy sense of relief that nothing catastrophic had happened and that she hadn't run screaming from me. I was also stranded in a part of town I had never been in before and had no money for bus fare. So I walked home. It was an eight mile walk and took me close to three hours.
A year later she moved away for college and I never heard from her again. But I still remember the tingle of walking onto the metaphysical stage. I forgot my lines and lost the part, but it felt good to try.
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Love Machine: My Mother
Love Machine: Thanks But I'll Pass, or Handling Rejection
Naked Machine: Buying New Underwear, or Sex in a Dressing Room
Date Machine: Look Ugly in a Photograph
Love Machine: On Your Own, or Moving On
Love Machine: Going to Bed Angry
Love Machine: The Hooker on the Corner
Sex Machine: Having Sex on Inauguration Night
Sex Machine: If You Can Get Me Hard I'll Show You A Good Time
Date Machine: Tool Academy, or Watching TV with Your Girlfriend
Sex Machine: Getting Laid
Love Machine: I Was a Six Year-Old Virgin, or Is There A Happy Ending?
Date Machine: Getting Pierced on a Date
Love Machine: Hitting Snooze on the Morning After
Date Machine: Let Me Seduce You With The Cardigans
Date Machine: I'm Too Sexy For Your Blog