Sixteen
1987. A McDonald’s parking lot. Somewhere in America. After a youth-group-thing. On an oddly spring-like Wednesday night in autumn.
Everyone at my high school went to these non-denominational Christian youth group meetings on Wednesday nights during the school year. Even the denominational Christians. Even the non-Christians. Even the shy kids. Even the really popular kids. Even the nerds, which was sort of where I landed in the skew of high school culture — I was an art nerd.
Anyway, everyone went to McDonald’s right after the youth group thing. We’d all jump into whoever’s car — fighting like hell to get in a car with the gender-opposite you were into — or the car with gender-same that you didn’t know you were into…(Just in case you were thinking: hey, maybe this is an 80s LGBTQ love story!, it’s not.)
And, somehow, we’d all just end up at the same McDonald’s. There were two in town, and this was very much before smartphones, so how we knew which one to go to is still a mystery to me — cuz sometimes it was the other one.
My BFF at the time, Sara, really liked this guy, Chip. Chip was totally into her that night. I admit: I did like him once, but then I didn’t. I didn’t really like anyone at that time.
Not that it mattered, but I was 16 and never had a boyfriend.
I’m lying.
It totally mattered.
It was the most important thing to me at that time.
I needed to feel loved because I felt so unloved and so painfully lost.
So, that night at McDonald’s there happened to be a guy — a magical looking guy. Magical looking and popular…everyone wanted to talk to him and his friends. He and his friends went to a private boys’ school and, somehow, every popular guy from the youth group — all the popular guys from my public school — knew who they were.
The popularity thing, I’ll admit, was intriguing. But, more so… he was something exquisite: his hair had thick, wide, black curls, cleanly trimmed on the sides, heavy on top; his lips were full, heart-shaped, and magenta pink; and his eyes were darker than chocolate. He was delicious.
Also: he drove a vintage car. And it was beautiful, like him.
So, after watching him through the McDonald’s window while Sara flirted with Chip and I sat with other friends and ate my McNuggets and drank my milkshake, I ran outside and, with the courage of a thousand art nerds and the lust of an unloved 16-year-old, said: “I love your car!”
Everyone had been calling him a name that wasn’t his — he said he didn’t know how he got the nickname, but didn’t care. (For this story, we’ll just call him Rico.)
And he said he should take me for a ride in the car sometime and asked for my phone number. And smiled. And I was in love. Actual love.
Because, at 16, that was pretty much all it took.
By December, which, I think, was two weeks later…maybe it was a month, we were passionately in love.
And, as someone new to the world of boyfriends, I’d found a romantic gem. He’d leave roses in the screen door jamb for me to find in the morning when I left for the bus. Notes and hand drawn portraits in our mailbox. He gave me a ring to wear — told me he wanted to be exclusive. (Which, of course, I was already being considering he was my first boyfriend.)
He took me to two formal Christmas dances. We spent all the time we were allowed to spend together — weekends, after school, even Sundays at his dad’s church.(Remember my BFF, Sara? She and I were not spending much, if any, time together during this. And, she was a total bitch about it. But I didn’t care.)
It was late January when the rumors started.
I don’t know why exactly they started then, but random people told me things: Rico supposedly passed out with this guy in a bed at a party we both were at and he wound up giving this guy a hand job; Rico was at this gay club with this old guy and wound up having sex with the old guy, and a few other guys, in the bathroom; Rico and his brothers are all gay.
I ignored the rumors because I knew Rico was obsessed with me. He proved he loved me — and that he wanted me.
We’d find dark places along the back roads, park, and make out to Depeche Mode — completely, the sexiest music of ever (in the late 80s). We went clubbing and I’d get hit on and he’d smile. He would tell me it was sexy that I was getting hit on by other guys — and then he’d disappear for a while. Once, and I don’t know why we did this or why I agreed to it, but we played truth or dare with his friends in the back of his vintage car; he said he thought it was hot when I would kiss his friends. Which was weird to me, but I also felt a rush from his satisfaction and from being wanted.
So, reality check: he could not be gay because he had me.
Early February. Drama class.
Most of the drama kids were like any drama class’ drama kids: dramatic and a little awkward. Our teacher, however, was terrible. She was the queen of gossip. So we spent most of our classes just gossiping. We rarely did any actual acting, just sat in a circle telling stories about other kids, teachers, or ourselves. While it was sort of fun, it was also pretty annoying.
One of my classmates, Shawn, was gay. He was one of the few out people at our school and he had a very steady boyfriend who went to another school. At some point, the drama class gossip session turned into a debate about Rico and whether or not he was gay. And I remember so clearly, like with vivid, technicolor clarity — Shawn standing up, centerstage, as any good drama kid should’ve done, and yelling, “I know Rico’s gay because he slept with my boyfriend in my bedroom last week!”
And, as any good drama kid should’ve done in reaction to this statement, I ran, stage left, in a fit of tears to the basement of the auditorium. Several friends followed and swarmed me in an overly dramatic hug.
That night, through tears and waves of nausea, I broke up with Rico.
Strangely, I didn’t break up with him because he’d cheated on me. I broke up with him because I was sure he was gay.
I didn’t really get any of it — like what it meant to be ‘gay’ or what it meant that he dated me and slept with guys. I didn’t even get that what he’d done was cheating — that he made a promise to me and broke the promise.
Instead, I worried that maybe I had AIDS (it was the 80s and HIV and AIDS were not at all understood). I worried that maybe I was, somehow, also gay. I worried that I wasn’t attractive and that’s why he slept with guys. I wondered why he picked me to be his girlfriend. I wondered if I was just a cover for him. I wondered if everything I felt, everything he’d shared and expressed, if any of it was even real. I wondered how I could be so totally, unbelievably dumb.
That Valentine’s Day, a week after I broke up with him, Rico left a rose and a letter in the screen door jamb. He’d written a confession of sorts, with a lot of innuendos and hidden messages — things I didn’t get and wouldn’t actually understand until about a year later when the horrible facts of his childhood were discovered by police.
But one thing that I did get: he really did love me.
At 16, most of this didn’t sound like this in my head — and maybe it wasn’t completely formed yet, but here’s what his Valentine’s letter helped me understand —
His letter didn’t help me understand how he could love me and be attracted to men at the same time; that would make sense much later, when I became more aware of my sexuality and self.
But understanding that didn’t really matter after I read his letter.
What mattered was that my first young adult love and my first heartbreak were real — I wasn’t totally dumb.
(Oh, and then this nugget of wisdom would not come from his letter and would, unfortunately, take a while for me to learn: do not dump your BFF when you start dating someone.)
Today I wonder if ours was a chance meeting on that oddly spring-like Wednesday night in autumn or if it was actually by some strange ‘divine’ intervention that we found each other.
Our paths, our journey, had crossed before — I had lived in the rectory of his dad’s church the year before he and his family lived in it; he and his brothers used the room, that was specially built for me, as a playroom. We were in the same Kindergarten class, sitting four chairs apart in our class picture. His father led the church my family had proclaimed, in a dramatic stand during a sermon when I was six, was not correctly speaking the word of God, causing a drastic rift in the church which resulted in my family starting their own church.
And, Rico and I had a lot in common that wouldn’t actually come to light for a while. We both came from similar kinds of abusive families, though I would know much more about his than he, or most people, would ever know about mine. I would wonder, time to time, if he could feel that energy in me — and that’s what he found attractive.
Had I not met him then, I wouldn’t know what it was to stand on the outside of this: the depths of a person’s experiences are, more often than not, completely unknown.
In ways that would take years, even decades, even till now, before I actually understood, while other loves came and went and stayed, the impact of Rico’s brief existence in my life helped me to emerge and has never left me.
Sixteen
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