A SIMPLE CRUSH

It seems I’ve got a schoolboy crush. It’s simple, based on very little and it’s not going to go anywhere. I’m one hundred percent good with that. I just like the fact that, at fifty-seven, this guy can still have such a thing…and pretend the word “schoolboy” has any application to me.

 

I’ve attended lots of author talks, gone to many writers’ conferences and bought some books on writing, but I’ve avoided classes. I feared them. I didn’t want my writing to be dismissed or mocked. I didn’t want to be overwhelmed by the vastly superior talent in the room. More than anything, I didn’t want irrefutable confirmation that I couldn’t write. 

 

At the beginning of 2022, I decided I needed to shake things up. I wanted something more than a one-shot workshop about writing. I enrolled in an eight-session writing class called Queering the Personal Memoir…or something like that. It’s offered by Hugo House, a wonderful writers’ hub in Seattle. I’d attended a few afternoon workshops there in the past, always looking for an excuse for a road trip to the Emerald City. Pre-COVID, these were led by local authors and attended by local writers and Spice Girl song title folks. A sunny side up result of the pandemic is that, by offerings going online, the faculty and the students come from farther afield. Our instructor is a published author who lives in New York City. We’re a small group of students, but we hail from Seattle, Dallas, Orlando and NYC. Two of us are from Vancouver. 

 

During the first two sessions, I was highly distracted by…myself. I’d participated in many Zoom events but, typically, I was a listener, taking in a performance or an interview with an author. Zoom one-on-ones with a mortgage broker or a psychiatrist were brief. I’d see my image in a rectangle on the screen, but I managed a fair job of fixating on the other person’s tie or the yellow sponge resting on the counter in the background. What kind of person doesn’t put a soggy sponge out of sight? But these writing classes go on for two hours. There are usually nine of us in attendance and I can amuse myself by pretending we’re some queer version of “Hollywood Squares” or the opening title of “The Brady Bunch.” But then I get bogged down remembering that closeted Paul Lynde died of alcoholism and closeted Robert Reed died of AIDS. The distracting images lose their fun factor. I stop visual contortionism and, there I am again, right there in the Jan Brady box, middle child syndrome bubbling up again. 

 

Focus! They’re talking about writing. Something about a braided essay. Or, no, they’ve moved on to discussing the stakes in the work.

 

I’m paying for this! It seemed a reasonable amount but then there was that conversion to Canadian dollars. I really need to get something out of this.

 

Still, that face of mine. Disappointing. Frightening. Weary, gaunt, so old. If the Italian mafia, a Mexican cartel or the Norwegian underworld find some need to torture me to confess something, all they’d need to do is sit me in a tiny room and force me to stare at my image. “Okay, okay! That yellow sponge in the background was mine!”

 

Thankfully, someone told me to put a Post-it over my image. Brilliant! My level of technological problem solving. I have to move the Post-it around as my face appears in different places on screen, I’ve gotten speedy at adjusting. It’s like an office supplies version of Whack-a-mole.

 

I’m now drawn to another distraction, a more pleasing one: a classmate. My crush. He had me from the moment he logged in that first class. Feast your eyes on that background! The entire wall was filled by a bookcase loaded with books. 

 

 

And then, of course, there was the figure sitting in front of all those books. A strikingly handsome Black man with closely cropped hair and a starkly serious demeanor that jolted me every time he broke character to flash a smile. 

 

 

This man is not one of those students who needs to speak every five minutes to process his learning or to show what he knows or thinks he knows. There’s one in every class, right? Actually, in this class, there isn’t. These are genuinely nice people, the kind I’d show up to class early for just to hang and get to know each other more. Especially a certain someone. My crush often holds back, sitting silently as others chime in each week. Then, he takes his moment to offer a sage comment about tweaking the structure of an essay in a simple yet shape-shifting way that makes the writer’s work more polished, more powerful. 

 

 

Bonus factor: the clothes! Every week he’s appeared in a gloriously stylish cardigan or hooded sweater, something that tells me it’s brr-cold in The Big Apple, something that begs to be touched. Yes, there’s a sunny side down to all this Zoom-i-ness. 

 

This week the class spent the first hour critiquing my 3,000-word essay. My anxiety and insecurity led me to writing eight possible essays to turn in, each sounding more overwrought and woe-is-me. After slogging through one that was a greatest hits medley of All that I Wrong with Me, I’d had enough. Verbal diarrhea and persistent nausea are not the writerly vibes I strive for. I drafted a new essay, this one “lite” and packed with humor…or, at least, what I think is funny. How would the class react? What if my crush held his starkly serious demeanor for the entire two hours? What if he attacked my work? What if he said nothing at all, eyes downcast as he examined Wordles on the phone resting on his lap?

 

They thought it was funny! Feedback included references to Andrew Sean Greer and the hallowed Nora Ephron. Okay, not with regard to the whole essay but, if someone can cite an Ephron moment, I’m doing an (extremely clumsy) happy dance. 

 

Find yourself a Post-it to block that image. 

 

When my crush chimed in, he smiled. He said, “There were laugh out loud moments on every page.” He cited examples and, by golly, laughed out loud. It wasn’t a throwaway “LOL.” He meant it!

 

My crush chimed in again later, laughing again, saying he wanted to know more about what I’d referred to as a past partner’s “condom collection.” Well now. This was getting intimate. In truth, there was zero innuendo in his comment, but I prefer to misinterpret as I wish. That’s what crushes are all about. Lots of imagining what could be, even when Be Mine will never be.

 

Two more sessions to go. We’ll review his essay on the final day. I’ll be unabashedly biased, gushing over his catchy phrasing, his refreshing point of view and how hooked I was from the first paragraph. If it turns out this man can’t write, I’ll sound like a fool. But then that’s how crushes go. I’m such a silly schoolboy. At my age, it feels good.

 

 

 

HEARTLESS

To be clear, it’s not just Valentine’s Day. I’m not a fan of many holidays. Even if some come with a day off. Conceptually, I am appalled that we require a particular day to honor our mothers, our fathers and the one we love (if we happen to be so lucky). I’m not big on birthdays either. I suppose it’s all couched in years of feeling unworthy, but I believe we should celebrate people in our lives each time the moment feels right rather than out of obligation. I should also think we are reflective beings who can stumble across epiphanies (or be reminded through healthy conversation), awakening us in periods when we have overlooked our expressions of love and appreciation. The just-because celebrations are more meaningful than days sponsored by Hallmark and Lindt chocolates.

But to be even clearer, Valentine’s Day is my least favorite of the forced fêtes. I am a color-connected guy so maybe my discomfort dates back to primary school with rooms draped in red paper chains of hearts and Cupids. As a redhead, I was told that the color didn’t suit me in terms of clothing. Never wear red was a mantra instilled in me as strongly as Don’t talk to strangers. (Yes, I had a few nightmares about lap visits with mall Santas, but I’ll quickly repress those once more.) While my classmates arrived at school in red tees, I stuck to brown. It was the go-to color of the early seventies, very practical for absorbing the constant grass and mustard stains of a clumsy boy.

Valentine’s Day went on steroids when I moved to East Texas in tenth grade. Everything is bigger in the Lone Star State. Various school clubs raked in their annual operating budgets by conducting competing Valentine’s Day fund raisers. Heart-o-grams. Roses (red for sweethearts, yellow for BFFs). Balloon bouquets. Chocolates. What a boon! If you’d swapped class rings and letter jackets with your Forever Love, then you had to splurge and bestow upon him/her the works: a heart-o-gram, roses, balloons AND chocolates. Deliveries came all day during breaks between classes…and during classes. It was an agonizing spectacle for have-nots like me. The day belonged to Team Taken. Arms filled with these tokens of love, textbooks remained in lockers, keeping pompoms and batons company. (Yes, that first year in high school, my assigned locker-mate was a majorette.) It was up to the sad sacks like me to share our textbooks if any teacher had the gall to plan anything other than showing a movie on this day of love learning.

In university, one of the clubs I joined appeared to combine therapy with fund raising, deciding to sell dead flowers for Valentine’s. Alas, this was still Texas and we failed to make a single sale. I took home a dozen dead flowers, perhaps as a reminder that sometimes misery does not love company. (This fund raising flop also confirmed I’d made the right decision in not becoming a Business major.)

The first time Valentine’s Day had real meaning I was 26 and deeply consumed by first love. This was it! Soulmate! Yes, Forever Love! That night, we sat together on his sofa and exchanged gifts. I’d scribbled a half dozen versions of my message of love on notepads before finally professing my love and adoration in the loveliest offering Carlton Cards had to offer. I have no idea what I got him. Presumably, it was some combination of grocery aisle Valentine’s convenience and a stylish clothing item to compensate for his fashion challenges. I held my first ever wrapped Valentine’s gift in my hands, my name on the card which he simply signed. (Why compete with the terms of endearment from the Hallmark pros?) My eyes watered. All these years of slamming the holiday and suddenly the day and this gift meant everything! I unwrapped a framed picture of just John, smiling away in a checkered red and white hoedown dress while wearing a Carmen Miranda fruit platter wig on his head. He giggled with glee and I was relieved my eyes were already wet.

What the hell did this picture have to do with romance?

Forever Love ended a month later. What’s most embarrassing is that I wasn't the one who called it off.

For the most part, I have managed to duck and cover on subsequent Valentine’s Days. It’s a mere pit stop between the far worthier Groundhog Day and St. Patrick’s Day. Still, I can never wholly forget the occasion, being as I work in an elementary school. It’s still a time of equality and excitement when children must give a card to everyone in the class and the day’s primary objective is to ingest as much sugar as possible without throwing up. (I didn’t have to use the mop bucket even once yesterday!) I was caught off guard the day before, when a boy held the door open for me and asked, “Are you excited about Valentine’s Day?” I repressed a reflex snort and convincingly answered, “So excited! Candy and chocolates! What could be better?” And just like that, I’d obliterated a year’s worth of healthy eating education. Damn VD!

The day will be over soon enough. I’ve got lots of sorting and discarding to do as I prepare for my upcoming move. Tomorrow will be a new day, a regular one where my single status won’t be any more pronounced than I usually make it. Perhaps I’ll buy my own chocolate bar even though I really don’t care for the confection. Even better, the drugstore will surely have those yummy Red Hot hearts on sale for 25% off.

Be Mine? Ack! Be gone.

  

HEART IN FACE

Oh, here it comes again. Valentine’s Day. My local drugstore had the displays up on New Year’s Day, but the holiday is officially in my face when my Starbucks cup has a big red heart on it. Somehow the brew seemed bitterer as I drank it. (Seriously?! Bitterer is a word? My Microsoft grammar check prefers it to more bitter. Alrighty then.)

Yes, I am not in love with Valentine’s Day. No surprise since I am not in love at all. I don’t need a day to separate me from the haves. I can feel it every day If I want to. True, this day is not about me at all. The have nots simply need to find other things to pass the day. Sudoku. Oven cleaning. Old episodes of our hero, “Mary Tyler Moore”. (She still rocks those bell bottoms.) If you’re in love, lucky you. You don’t really need a day to tell your partner how you feel, but throw in your support for Hallmark, Hershey’s and other providers. No doubt about it, I would too.

My disdain for the day came relatively late in life. Back in elementary school, I had teachers who admonished students and parents that all children in the class had to receive cards or Be Mine heart candies. Or both. My teachers taught me that Valentine’s Day is for everyone. Liars. They also colluded with my parents in feeding me lovely ideas about Santa, the Easter Bunny and that creepy bedroom imposter, the Tooth Fairy.

In high school, I learned the truth. V-Day is for the select few. In Texas, the girls who already flashed their boyfriend’s class ring and wore his letter jacket received roses, mums or balloons. Public displays of affection became more obvious as the couples took over the courtyard benches for hand holding, hugging and kissing. It was just as well that I was sexually confused back then. I didn’t stand a shot at enticing either gender with my overly enthusiastic case of acne and my white boy afro. I had a pick that I kept in my back pocket to poof it up several times a day—big on big hair. (Maybe I was harkening my inner Janis Ian as I wallowed in the words of “At Seventeen”.)

Even when I fell in love for the first time, Valentine’s proved to be a disappointment. Before going for dinner, John handed me a wrapped gift, eager for me to open it. I tried to follow mature unwrapping etiquette, tugging at the taped folds instead of savagely ripping the wrapping to examine my first ever V-D present. John beamed with anticipation. Look at him, I thought. He truly loves me. At last, Etta, at last.

I pulled back a corner of the wrapping to reveal the back of a picture frame. Yes! I’d finally reached Have status. A photo of us I could proudly display in my apartment! Uh, no. As I flipped the frame over, it was just John in the pic. In drag. From a time before we were together. Hmm. He laughed with glee. What a drag indeed.

I have only a week to wait out the holiday. There will be no online messaging, no coffee dates during the awkward interval. You don’t start something right before Valentine’s. Truth be told, holding off is not a sacrifice. It’s just part of my V-D whine.

I’ll get through it. Always do. Janis Ian, Jann Arden and Adele can keep me company. And tomorrow I’ll be ready. I’ll remember to bring my plastic mug to Starbucks and pass on the paper cup with the heart. It’s better for the environment. And my psyche.