She was
beautiful.
She was not and never would be a
model. She had neither a model's
perfect body nor a model's
perfect face. But she had
riveting green eyes,
tousled blonde hair, and a
nonstop electric smile. She was
captivating,
gorgeous,
sexy,
beautiful.
If I may indulge in the tired old
cliche, it was
love at first sight.
And it got better after I finally got to
meet her and
talk to her.
Smart as a whip,
funny,
enthusiastic, always
smiling,
goofy when she could be,
serious when she had to be. She even enthused over
Guns N' Roses in my presence, so I had no choice but to
fall madly in love with her... and I wasn't the only one -- at least two other guys I knew were
head-over-heels in love with her, too. We'd stand around and look
smitten whenever she breezed through the room. I'm sure we looked quite
amusing.
And when it's all written down here in
black and white, it looks so damn
trite, doesn't it? Reading over that last paragraph makes me personally
ashamed, both as a
writer (Who hasn't read this
story countless times in badly-written
potboilers? Or in the
adolescent stalker-poetry scattered around E2?) and as a
person (Why couldn't I have fallen for someone more
fascinating and
unique? And why didn't I know her well enough to be able to
explain exactly
why she was
fascinating and
unique?). Nevertheless, the
cold,
hard,
embarrassing fact remains: I was utterly, completely, helplessly
in love.
It took me so long to build up enough
courage to ask her out, but when I did, I was
surprised (surprised, hell --
flabbergasted is closer to the right word) when she said
yes, she'd love to go out sometime. We were coming up on
midterms, so she asked if we could wait two weeks before the
date -- that was fine with me; to be honest, I needed that long to decide where we were going to go. I asked friends of mine where we should go and what we should do; most of them said I was a
unique and
interesting guy and should pick something
atypical and
out-of-the-ordinary to do. For a while, I planned on a
picnic in the
dorm basement, but I eventually decided that was
too out-of-the-ordinary. I finally decided on the
traditional dinner-and-a-movie...
So the day came, I picked her up, we ate a nice
dinner, we ate some
ice cream afterwards, we were too
early for the movie, we browsed through a nearby
bookstore, we went to the
movie, I dropped her off back at her
dorm, I drove back to my dorm and
berated myself all night long. Did it go well? Would I have any way of knowing? Did she give off any
cues or
clues indicating whether she had
fun?
Sweat and
worry, all night long...
When I saw her in
class the next day... all I saw of her all day long was the
back of her head. She never looked at me. She didn't
wave. She didn't say
hello. For me, that was the
cue I was afraid of. She didn't have
fun. She was in no way interested in another
date.
Bourbon was plentiful in those days...
It was three months after I had
graduated and had left
college behind forever, that the words "
playing hard-to-get" suddenly forced their way into my forebrain. Was that my
problem? Had I misinterpreted playing hard-to-get as
disinterest? Or had my original
interpretation of her
behavior been right all along? Was there any way to tell for sure? I
ran farther away, enrolled in a
graduate school, and tried to start
dating again. But I ended up comparing everyone to her: none of the eyes were
green enough, none of the smiles
electric enough. The few girls I asked out sensed that I was comparing them to someone else and turned me down
cold.
Eventually, I got
tired.
In the end, one cold, hard,
embarrassing fact remains: I let her get away because I was too
afraid to ask her out again. She may have said
yes. She may have said
no. But because I couldn't find the common
courage to ask the
question, I alone
shoulder the blame for
what-could-have-been. Someday, maybe I'll stop being a
coward. Someday, maybe I'll stop
living in the past. But first, I'll have to throw away the
e-mail address I dug off her
high school's
alumni site... and I'm just
not ready to do that yet...