About a boy

You kinda broke me.

You had a crush on me, I had a self-loathing complex.

You were tall. So was I.

I felt hideous. You thought I was beautiful.

We were kids so all you could say was, tiffany? hubba hubba.

You fucking nerd. I loved it though.

And you stared at my chest. I was growing quite fast and did not understand where all the attention was coming from because the prior two years your girl was rail thin and laughed at.

Now she’s wearing a size C cup, gams out of her neck, skin smooth, clear, and dewy, and straight white teeth, and a mega watt smile her therapist tried to coax her to shine every time they met. The eyes are having at her body and so her mom says, it’s time to take you to the mall. She gets fitted for a new bra, new shorts, the whole outfit.

We were on the top of the stairs waiting to go outside to wait for the bus. I am just as much of a social pariah as you, a nerd, but an angry one with a body and a mean streak. You tell me, out loud, that you liked me liked me and I felt my throat constrict; what the hell do I do. Everyone is looking at me. The laughter is starting, the fingers are raising, all I wanted was to get out of that hallway with some of my diginity in check.

awwwwwww the nerd likes tiffany. ooooooohhhhhhhh

They did not understand the weight of that cruelty. They couldn’t know. They weren’t in my head nor inside my home. They were not me.

So I did what I could, to establish that I was not one to be fucked with, to establish that no nerd, no matter how much we had in common, no matter how much I liked him too, was going to embarass me and walk away unscathed.

My hand. I shook it and looked down at the kids below us, and back at you and them and back again. One shot. Mom’s spaghetti. I punched you in the mouth.

Now the laughter and pointing were directed at you not me. I saved my ass while sacrificing yours, for the moment at least.

Teacher pulls me by the collar out of the bus line and I end up in detention, my mom’s cigarettes in the inside of my desk, all I wanted was to leave that fucking room and smoke. I was 12.

So yeah 8th grade was fun, yea?

I decided to date you then. I gave you a note, I remembered that. And when we friended each other on Facebook years later, and you drunk messaged me that one night, you told me that you kept that note for a whole year plus. You told me you thought I was soooo pretty and you coudln’t believe that I of all girls, would write a note like that to you. Like bro no one gave a shit about ya girl. It was body body body body, let me look at your paper, what’s the answer to #12, body body body boobs body body. We were kids. This is how kids do.

I really fucking liked you. I don’t need to discuss, out loud, on a public blog, some of the shit we got into, but it wasn’t that at all. It felt… right. Your fondness of me felt real, it felt genuine. I had just gone to a dance with four other girls and like 40 boys at that Masonic thing I did when I was a kid. The amount of boys who fought to dance with me was so bizarre I had a hard time with it, even years afterwards. The hottest boy there picked me, chased the van that we were in just to get my number. But what it ultimately boiled down to, was, again my body. And what he wanted to do with it.

I liked him, too. But there was only one thing he liked about me, and at that time in life, there was no way for him to get into my pants as he lived 200 miles away from me, and we were only 12 and 14, respectively.

But you were different. And while yes, my body was still a driving factor in how you perceived me it wasn’t the factor, and it was why I actually wanted it to last longer than you allowed it to.

No we never went on dates but we held hands[1] and hugged but you feared me. I didn’t know that until almost 20 years later, after a night you’d had too much to drink.

The years that followed

Man I have not gotten over that whole time. Watching my arch nemesis cozy up to you in front of my face at the play at your high school… her skirt all hiked up. I saw you there and wanted to talk to you but you ran from me. And there she was, the same night, rubbing her scent on you like a fucking cat, right there, for me to see. I told my best friend, hey we gotta go. we gotta bounce. She asked me why. I couldn’t articulate it, but I felt the walls closing in on my life, from all sides; the boy I loved, my best friend shrinking away from me, the fact that I knew that, while it was a foregone conclusion I was destined for good things, I was, in fact, never going to college, my mental health failing me, and my mom hating me for things I couldn’t control. I said to her, we just gotta go. I want to go home. And we did.

I remember seeing you in a car on a summer day by the farmers market. I had went into a psych ward for the first time in freshman year of high school, where the medicine they gave me put 50lbs on my frame, easy, in only two months. During the summer I was able to take off quite a bit of that weight, I was wearing lipstick now, and colored jeans with nice striped tops to match. My hair was straightened and soft.

I saw you there in the car. I always wanted to be a manic pixie dream girl, only I was black and tall and angry and no one gave a shit about me in the slightest. I always felt that I was not enough; I wanted to be the Drew Berrymore of Southside, somehow.

And so I walked up to your window. I knocked on it. You looked over at me and jumped, that jump scare will never not hurt me or make me laugh.

I tried to get you to roll down the window but you just stared at me. And I remember… I remember this: I kissed the window. I left my lipstick lips on the window in what I can only describe as my wannabe manic pixie dream girl moment, my hand on the window, my lipstick lips, full of confidence and swagger. I am not sure why I did it; my only guess is that I wanted you to feel the full weight of the decision you made at the end of 8th grade graduation, to fully and defiantly brush off my attempt to say goodbye to you by giving you a hug and leaving me standing in the middle of that fucking basement, embarrassed, with my hands bare, that it was a moment that I wanted you to think about forever, that letting me get away was the biggest shit the bed moment you’d ever have with any girl ever. And I don’t know how it went down for you after that because they sent me away.

And for me it was constantly thinking about that moment, in that basement. Waking up from dreams about you.

And what is tragic is I still dream about you. It’s always me, trying to get you to like me, to care.

You mentioned in our last chat, some 13 years ago, that if you had known what was happening in my life it what went down would have been different. You would have hugged me, and held me, because I would have needed it and you know, I don’t think that would have happened. Hindsight is 20/20. And maybe it would have, who knows? All I know is that.

Your comments to and about me on Facebook when I had that account meant something to me. Especially this one, which I will remember to the end of my days:

Remember me fondly when you conquer the world.

That. Yeah, that.

Idk man here’s some Brittany Howard

There are miles between us
Time between us
There is something between us
I may be a fool to dream of you
But, God, it feels so good to dream at all
Something short and sweet
There’s always a light over my head for you
I am waiting, I am waiting
Time will always try to kill me

There are mountains between us
There is time between us
Oh, ain’t there something between us?
Something short and sweet

I don’t care if I should
Do you wanna hurt me?
‘Cause I’ve been hurtin’ all alone
It didn’t kill me, no
But it wasn’t no fun
Come and get you some
Just the beginning
I only want the beginning
We’ll give each other all of our best and then
Time can do what it wants with it

There are mountains between us
There is time between us
Oh, ain’t there something between us?
Something short and sweet

So, why can’t I wait?
Why can’t I wait? Why can’t I think?
Why can’t I wake without you always appearing?
Oh, I better not wait too long
'Cause time is gonna kill it
Time is gonna kill it
Time is gonna kill it
Time is gonna kill it

  1. And other… things… 👀 ↩︎

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