The summer before 8th grade was transformative. There was an utter shift in the ratio of me pursuing to me pulling. I was getting attention from boys in a way that I never had before. On top of that, after my discovery of the website tumblr.com and my new found love of youtubers such as Hannah Hart and Ash Hardell, something else was dawning on me with increasing urgency. The word “bisexual” would not leave my mind.
In Colorado (where my mother still lived and where I returned on my school breaks), being bisexual as a teenager was as common as wearing jeans or dying your hair. Everyone was doing it. In South Carolina (and especially on Daniel Island), however, being openly queer-anything was enough to make you a total pariah.
I tried to come out for the first time to my friend/neighbor (all my summer friends were friend/neighbor) Callie. We were at the complex pool copying a game we had seen in the movie Saved, which I’d just shown her the night before. The premise of the game is simple: you and a friend dip under water and share your deepest truths. I must have shouted “I think I’m bisexual!” into that water a dozen times, and swallowed at least a half-cup of chlorinated water in the process, but unfortunately, Callie wasn’t getting the message.
Since I didn’t like any girls at that moment, I decided it could wait, and I didn’t press the matter any further.
I loved visiting my mom over the summer and I loved staying at her apartment complex on South Sheridan Boulevard. At my mom’s place, I got to be more-or-less cool without having to change my personality. Although I was still a geek, me being broke and looking broke didn’t factor in the way it did living with my dad because…everyone was broke. My hand-me-downs and ripped up rue-21 t-shirts and shorts were trashy and tacky during the school year, but were the peak of chic as far as my friends at The Green Gables were concerned.
I had a handful of genuine friends as opposed to the couple I had at school, and they were all within close proximity to me. We were all in each other’s houses near constantly, moving in packs, peeling off for small times to touch base with our families if we’d gone too long without stopping in.
Beyond Callie, there was her brother Chris, who was two years younger than us. There was David, a boy who lived two buildings down from us and who shared my love for Zelda and the stickers on Facebook Messenger. Chris and David were both friends with Kyle— another beautiful boy with striking blue eyes, who always seemed to be getting into more trouble than he looked capable of. Marnie and Marita lived down the hall from me. They were both a little younger, Marnie was the same age as Chris, and Marita was two years younger than her, but still, they made good enough company. I was always a bit closer with their older cousin Ricky, who was two years older than me, and lived just a courtyard over.
That summer of 2013, another cousin, Adan, came to stay with the Marnie and Marita family. I met him shortly after his arrival. He was sitting outside with the three of us, as well as some of the other girls from around the complex. We were all taking turns singing and practicing “The Cup Song”, while an afternoon storm competed with our claps and slaps and over-strong pre-teen voices. I can’t remember a word that Adan said to me at that time, but it somehow came out that he and I were the same age. Before we all went inside at the end of the night, Marnie informed me that Adan liked me and that he would be reaching out to talk more on Facebook Messenger.
This was my first time being approached, so to speak, by someone interested in me. As a result, it was my first time having to ask myself not “what do I like about this person?” but rather “which of my criteria does this person meet?” For Adan, the answer looked like:
a.) dark-hair and an okay haircut.
b.) an unrepulsive face.
c.) no outwardly obnoxious behavior.
It being summer, there was no way for me to gauge Adan’s academic prowess, so I had to give him the benefit of the doubt, especially since he knew next-to nothing about Doctor Who. I also decided he deserved extra points for making an earnest move on me. Therefore, he was good enough.
We started messaging that night and the conversations were fine— if not a little boring. The rush of getting attention from someone who potentially thinks you’re hot can make up for a lot when it comes to dull small talk. I’m sure we ran through all the classics— The Question Game, Truth or Truth, Never Have I Ever. I’m sure I divulged several of my “intimate” secrets and even more elaborately constructed falsehoods. Such was the beauty of texting a boy.
The beauty was short-lived. It turned out to be that Adan was no better than the other immature boys our age. In person, he would mostly just do things to get on my nerves. He would steal my phone and make me chase him. He would tease my friends. He would call “The Cup Song” stupid. General annoying behavior.
Even though he was still relatively nice in our conversations on Messanger, I had to cut him loose after just a few short days. This made things only slightly tense between Marnie and Marita and me, but it all blew over once he eventually returned back home.
My second boyfriend of the summer was Caleb.
Caleb and I met at the complex pool. He didn’t live at the Gables, but his aunt did, and she let him borrow her key. The day I met him, I’d been out running errands with my mom, so I’d arrived at the pool later in the day than usual. Caleb and his brother were already hanging out with my friends when I got there.
Caleb had dirty blond hair that curled around his face in little spirals even when it was wet. He looked to be about my age. He had a baby face with full, blushy cheeks, and a soft voice; but he told me he was actually going on fifteen. I was still newly thirteen— and he told me his brother was actually closer to my age (I will not comment on his brother, you can see previous descriptions of the boys my age). In addition to our novel age gap, Caleb also informed me that he’d skipped a grade— meaning he would be starting eleventh grade, or “junior year” in August.
Sitting by the pool, he let me wear his Colorado Avalanche hat. He complimented my glasses and told me that I “looked equally beautiful with them on and with them off. Just different beautiful”. He held my hand and told me stories about his high school theater adventures— all the lead roles he’d gotten since freshman year, the stunts he’d been asked to perform.
Several things intrigued me about Caleb:
a.) His shaggy, curly hair (this would continue to be a weakness for me).
b.)He skipped a grade (indicates superior intelligence).
c.) Our shared interest in theater (Bonus: A man involved in the arts should indicate a man in touch with his emotions and secure in his masculinity— at least according to my middle school logic).
d.) He was older, therefore potentially (and thus far demonstrably more mature).
All of my memories of Caleb are of him without a shirt on. All of our meetings took place while we were partially clothed, because all of our meetings happened at the pool. He had an outtie-belly button, which was both eye-catching and off-putting, but I was willing to overlook it, seeing as there was a certain air of vulnerability between us, not usually present in other courting situations.
For four days, Caleb would ride his bike five miles up the incline of Sheridan Boulevard to meet me at the pool. There, we would swim and play and flirt and chat the whole day from morning until late afternoon. At night, we would text each other and I would read each one allowed to Callie, giggling and kicking my feet as I begged for her input on what to say next.
For the duration of those four days, Caleb and I were planning out our first kiss.
There must have been some clear chemistry between us from the outset, because on the first day we met, after an hour or two of us all chatting and getting to know each other, Chris dared the two of us to kiss underwater. I had never kissed anyone. I knew that I never wanted my first kiss to be on a dare, though I didn’t mind the idea of my first kiss being with this boy… I was paralyzed with indecision. Caleb saved me when he took my hand and looked into my eyes and said “I don’t want our first kiss to be on a dare”. I was filled to the brim with butterflies.
It was decided. We would kiss… it was just a matter of when.
When I told him that our kiss would be my first kiss ever, it made everything seem more significant. He felt he needed to get it exactly right, for my sake. I appreciate the sentiment even though, at the time, I was really just trying to get down to smoochin’.
Sometimes, boys (and other people too, but really, really, boys) will put so much pressure on themselves to be absolutely perfect and to get everything right on the first try. Under all this pressure, they have no choice but to fold before they do anything at all. Caleb, for instance, assumed that as a young teenaged-girl, my expectation would be to have a totally magical first kiss. What Caleb didn’t know is that due to my parents’ separation and my witnessing of their shared toxic relationship and all their toxic relationships that would follow— in combo with my self-imposed rejection therapy throughout elementary school— I’ve always been somewhat of a relationship realist. That is to say, that I’ve formed a habit of maintaining low expectations and approaching romance with a level of protective-detatchment. For goodness’ sake, I wasn’t really thinking that Caleb would be my Prince Charming or that we would go on to date long-term. I was going back to my dad’s house across the country at the end of the summer, and regardless of that, and eighth grade and an eleventh grader in a relationship did not reflect particularly well on either party (even I knew that).
Caleb knew all this too. These facts all weighed more heavily on him than they did on me. He told me that he was afraid that if we kissed we would be too attached to each other, he said he didn’t want to break my heart, and in the end, he just couldn’t find the romance in kissing me by the complex pool in front of all my friends. He broke it off before the fifth day.
I was pretty upset about it, mostly because I wanted to go into 8th grade having already had my first kiss. With Caleb out of the picture, the odds of that dream becoming a reality were becoming increasingly slim. I deleted our messages so that I wouldn’t check them obsessively. I ended up regretting this decision, because I never saved his contact and so I was never able to get back in touch with him again.
As I rode the Amtrak train back to South Carolina with my grandmother, I searched for him on Facebook, Instagram, and even Snapchat. My efforts were futile because I did not know his last name.
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