Preface: Hello, hello
Just a couple things before you start reading.
A.) I was SO SO sick last week. That is why this post is late. It is the first week I’ve ever missed a post for this series. I’m hoping it never ever happens again. If I ever miss another installation BE CONCERNED.
B.) I’ve been really into reading. I just finished Project Hail Mary and Half His Age by Jeannette McCurdy. Both were really good, but unfortunately the latter made me very ANGRY. AT ALL MEN. What else is new?
Anyway, I recommend both books. Read them at the same time (like me), it’s fun.
I was very very tired writing this one. I hope you enjoy:
A few days later, Jason was walking me to the buses at the end of the day when he asked me why we weren’t dating.
I reminded him that it was because he had said it would be a good idea to wait.
“I did?” he seemed genuinely surprised.
“Mmhmm.”
He looked down at his hand holding mine and rethought his logic. “I don’t think it’s necessary.”
“Okay,” I agreed.
“So we’re dating then?”
January was ending. I was less than a month out from my split with Caylin, and already (and unceremoniously), I was in another relationship with Jason. Eighth-grade me wouldn’t have believed it.
He still didn’t kiss me. We were at school— not a suitable environment for a romantic first kiss. Everyone was all around. Instead, we looked longingly into each other’s eyes and hugged. Jason murmured something sweet about what a cute girlfriend he had. My heart fluttered, and I was excited to be his girlfriend.
There was something else too— dread. Why dread? It was the same feeling I had when Caylin asked me to be his girlfriend. It was the way the moment seemed to happen so quickly. One second, I was not a girlfriend, and the next second I was, but everything still felt the same. More than that, everything was the same in that everything that was weird and awkward before was still weird and awkward; additionally, I felt the pressure of the label. It wasn’t just one thing that stressed me out; it was a little bit of plenty: I was scared of the potential for physicality, I was scared of the sudden emotional weight of being a girlfriend, and I was scared of the possibility of getting dumped. All of these feelings were swelling beneath the positives.
Of course, there were positives. And it wasn’t too difficult to focus on them. I objectively felt cooler having Jason as my boyfriend. He was like a manifestation of my tumblr reblogs. He was a real-life, cute skater boy. He was funny, he was deep, he was emotionally complicated. It was what I wanted.
I told Wesley the news when I got on the bus.
He didn’t miss a beat, “If he hurts you, I’ll castrate him.”
Something gratifying about dating Jason was the fact that Solaria’s dislike for him far outweighed my dislike for Freddie. It was petty.
Freddie and I were friends for all intents and purposes. We talked every day at the bus stops, and on several occasions we’d hung out without Solaria. At the end of the day, we were neighbors, and there wasn’t much else to do in the Township at any given time besides hang out.
Solaria and Jason were not even in the vicinity of friendship. Their interactions were essentially limited to the lunch period the three of us shared, but the interactions were nearly always passive-aggressive, if not downright hostile. The two of them were locked in a battle for my attention, and I was enjoying it, though I adamantly pretended not to. They took shots at each other while attempting to make me laugh. Jason said Solaria’s hair was the color of salmon. Swim North Salmon-Head! Solaria said that Jason looked like Will Ferrell, then started quoting Talladega Nights.
My problem was that Solaria made me laugh genuinely far more than Jason did. It meant I was spending a lot of time giggling, then apologizing, then scolding her.
All the while, passions between Solaria and Freddie were already starting to cool. Things still got intense between them. I still found myself having to avert my eyes and play ignorant when they were in close proximity, and I still resented this, but Freddie’s intrusions on our hangout time were becoming less frequent. Meanwhile, Solaria’s complaints about him were stacking, and each one was more cutting than the last.
By February, they were broken up.
Solaria was a wreck for the week that followed. I spent my fair share of time talking her down from different nervous breakdowns. I spent hours on the phone with her in the wee hours of the morning, consoling her. Of course, she’d broken up with him, but there was still consoling to do, because she did love him.
I was thrilled, obviously. I finally had Solaria all to myself. Our time together could be pure and unadulterated by boys.
Jason was a minor complication.
We couldn’t see each other much outside of school. He lived close to the school, about 10 miles away from my house. He was sixteen, but he didn’t have a car— only a long board. The public transportation in West Ashley was nonexistent. I could have asked for a ride, but I wasn’t really in the business of asking for rides to boys’ houses, and I wasn’t interested in fielding any possible boyfriend questions that could arise.
If I’d been really committed, I could have ridden my bike all the way to the top corner of Shady Gables and up Glenn McConnell Parkway, but biking outside the neighborhoods seemed next to unfathomable (and like another good way to get in trouble), so I never tried it.
There was one other time we met at Sonic. Wesley was there and the Micky. We all got food, then went to the park. While we walked around, I joked around with Wesley and got to know Micky. Jason, not really getting enough attention from anyone, moped around. I was holding his hand, but not focused on him, so he became petulant. Wesley and Micky called him out for it quickly, which only made it worse.
We left the park and went to the convenience store; by that point, Jason was downright grumpy. His cool edge was fading right before my eyes. It was and ick— a small ick— but an ick nonetheless.
Micky suggested we walk back to his house. It was getting late, and I was supposed to babysit that night. I asked if the walk was short and if I could get picked up from there.
“If we can get picked up from there,” Wesley corrected.
He told me that it was a short walk and that it would be fine.
It was a three-mile walk with a portion through the woods.
Melissa was parked outside when we got there. She was not happy with me. She was nervous for me. I was way later than I was supposed to be. The walk took much longer than expected. Now that I was late, everyone else would be late. Melissa wasn’t really mad about that, but she was nervous for me, because my dad would be. And that was scary. But I was already resigned to it.
I kind of felt like it was worth it.
When we got home after dropping Wesley off, my dad was sitting at the table with his mad face on. His mouth was in a deep frown, and his forehead was creased. His hands were folded in front of him. He grumbled something about me being irresponsible, and he gave me a nasty look, but his time constraint saved me from any further reprimands.
Jason texted me asking if I’d gotten in trouble, and I relayed the extent of it to him. I made it sound like it wasn’t a big deal, and for the first time, pissing off my dad didn’t really feel like a big deal.
Jason told me he was sorry anyway. I told him it was okay.
He went on:
i’m sorry we didn’t get any alone time. i was trying to get some space from wesley and nick, but they weren’t getting the hint.
i wanted to kiss you.
Then he sent me the song “Part of Me” by Neck Deep.
this song makes me think of you.
The kiss. The kiss was a source of stress.
Caylin had no particular interest in making our kisses romantic. Almost all of them were exchanged either at school or on the bus. This was a contributing factor in our split— lack of passion. But we were kissing consistently from the time we started dating through to the end.
My relationship with Jason was all passion. It was intense emotion and longing and angst. He was dreamy and romantic. He could see the sadness within me, and he was drawn to it, and I liked that. We could have been characters in a John Green book.
But we weren’t kissing.
Pressure was building day by day. The first kiss had to be romantic, which meant the first kiss had to be private. The idea of being in private with Jason and kissing made me apprehensive. I knew he had more experience than I (and unfortunately, I knew the extent of it after witnessing Delilah interrogate him about it at lunch). I was still interested in making out, but I was not ready to jump right into that or anything else.
There was still affection. He gave me one of his hoodies (it was drenched in his body spray), and I wore it every day. He walked me from class to class, and he kept my textbooks in his locker. He played with my hair in math class. He held my sweaty hand during pep rallies. We texted every night.
Intimacy beyond that was a slippery slope I was afraid to set foot on.
February 13th was a Friday that year. We had a long weekend for Presidents’ Day. Solaria was at my house for a double sleepover (Friday and Saturday).
We were laying in my twin bed, side by side, on our stomachs, kicking our feet back and forth. I was texting Jason, but really, we were texting Jason, because she was seeing everything.
i want to see you tomorrow.
“Oh my god!” I shrieked when the text came through.
“Oh my god,” Solaria agreed.
I texted back:
i can’t get a ride tomorrow 🙁
Immediately, he said:
i was thinking i could come to you 🙂
“Oh my god!” I was in disbelief.
The two of us were laughing hysterically. There was no way Jason could come over.
On the surface, sure, it was fine. It was actually ideal. It just so happened that my whole family was going to be gone for the entire day of February 14th. Melissa and my sister were going to be busy with a church event, and my dad and Kendra were going to be off at a race. If he was ever going to come to my house, that would have been the day.
But it couldn’t have worked.
For starters, Solaria and I were already hanging out. We were in a mental zone that few could begin to understand. Freddie was able to tolerate it because he had to. His access to Solaria was dependent on my presence as a third wheel half the time (any time they wanted to see each other outside of school). Jason was not in the same boat.
He had been exposed to minuscule amounts of Solaria and I’s shared energy at lunch, but the levels were so low they were insignificant. At school, I kept my dials turned drastically low in most environments (with the exception of the APHG classroom and, as the semester went on, the Drama classroom).
This remained true around my boyfriends, even outside of school; it was hard for me to be myself around them unless I had my friends with me. As far as Jason was concerned, I was a very quiet, reserved girl.
I was myself around Wesley and my girls, and I was really myself around Solaria. I was myself and something else. We were something else. It was magic. It was witchcraft. It was something Jason was not equipped to handle. Solaria and I both knew it.
Secondly, his only mode of transportation was his longboard! Without speaking, Solaria and I both had the image of him wheeling down Bees Ferry Road. It was heinous.
“Do you want to see him tomorrow?” Solaria asked like she knew it was ridiculous.
“No!” I said too quickly. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
I texted back:
i don’t think i can tomorrow… i’m babysitting!
He responded:
i can come by your house.
i’m really not supposed to have anyone over.
I was crafting a web of lies to get out of seeing my boyfriend on Valentines Day. I was doing it to get more quality time with Solaria. I knew what it was, I didn’t care, nothing was going to happen anyway. No one else could have understood it.
He responded:
maybe i could just drop something off? like flowers? or chocolate?
Even this offer seemed like too much. I didn’t know why, but I didn’t want any of it.
i can’t answer the door when i’m home alone with my sister.
This was a reach. I wondered if he had doubts.
i could just leave them at the door.
I felt bad. What he was trying to do was nice. It was romantic. I wasn’t letting him do his romantic thing. I wasn’t ready for it.
i would feel really bad if you came all this way just for that. it’s really okay!
It took more back and forth, but eventually I talked Jason out of doing anything for me on Valentine’s Day. I happily spent the day with Solaria and Wesley eating sushi and ice cream at the Bi-Lo.
Shortly after Valentine’s Day, in a gesture of devotion to me, Jason swore off eating meat. I don’t know if my Valentine’s stunt prompted it directly, or if it was in response to my general disaffection and preoccupation with my best friend. Either way, I insisted that, while I appreciated the romantic sentiment, the life change was unnecessary.
I’d adopted “My beliefs are my own, I don’t want to force them on anyone else,” as my mantra around insecure meat-eaters the day after I put the burger down. I’d said the exact words to Jason right when we met. I repeated them after he announced his plan, with an addition:
“You shouldn’t stop eating meat unless you really believe it.”
“I believe in us,” was his answer. “I love you.”
He was set. There was nothing I could do. He was in love with me, and he needed a way to show me how big that love was to him. It was big enough to give up corn dogs and chicken nuggets for the foreseeable future.
“I love you too,” I felt silly saying it before kissing, still, but I thought it was true.
I spent most of 9th grade depressed, but I had good reasons.
My home life was a mess, beyond the optics issues. I was witnessing my father’s marriage fall apart in real life, while he simultaneously participated in a fresh, new, toxic relationship under the same roof. Essentially, every weeknight, my dad and Kendra were either screaming at each other or screaming at Melissa. Melissa was spending every night on the couch, while Dad and Kendra took the master bedroom. Melissa had an autoimmune disorder that caused her to be ill and in pain constantly, which made the whole thing even more morbid. Night after night, I would listen to my dad riffle through her medication bottles and call her a junkie, all the while I was just grateful he wasn’t screaming at me for something.
Apart from that, I was just embarrassed to be alive; I was embarrassed of my family, embarrassed of sexuality, embarrassed of my face. I couldn’t seem to figure out the key to fitting into a space and I was worried I never would. I felt like too much.
Winter was coming to an end; it was late February or early March, and I was talking to Solaria about some of my feelings. I remember crafting a specific metaphor: I told her that I felt like a shattered vase and that I was constantly struggling to keep the pieces together. I told her that all the things that brought me temporary enjoyment, like seeing my friends and doing well in school, were like “tape”.
“Jason is different,” I told her, “Jason is like glue.”
Our text messages with each other must have been getting really deep. There is no other reason that Jason would have been glue, especially when our relationship was essentially confined to school.
Solaria saw through my metaphor immediately, and it annoyed her. “Jason is not your glue.”
“He’s special,” I argued.
“He’s not. He’s an idiot. I wouldn’t trust him to hold together two magnets.”
“You don’t know him like me, so you just wouldn’t get it.”
She resigned, “I guess not. Maybe I don’t want to get it. I just don’t like the idea that the only thing between you and a cliff is his Will Ferrell-looking-ass.”
“I have to tell you something upsetting.” Solaria found me as soon as I got off the bus. We were halfway through March.
“What is it?” I asked.
“You know how Jason stopped eating meat?”
I groaned, “Yes.”
Solaria gulped. I thought she was going to tell me he ate a Slim-Jim or something…I wouldn’t have cared about something like that.
“He’s been hunting,” she said.
“Hunting…” To be fair, there was some nuance to hunting. 70% of boys in our grade hunted. We lived in the South, it was a part of the culture. My real opinion lay in what he was hunting for. If it were hunting for trophies and sport, I was going to have a problem. But if he was hunting for food, I didn’t think it was a problem. Even if it meant he was eating meat.
So I asked, “What is he hunting for?”
Nothing could have prepared me for what Solaria said next. She signed, but her eyes got wide, like she was eager for me to know. “Squirrels.”
“Squirrels?”
“Yeah, squirrels. In his backyard. With Billy Bradgers. He told me about it yesterday.”
I confronted Jason about it as soon as I saw him.
At lunch, he pleaded. “You don’t understand, it’s ethical.”
“How is it ethical?” I asked.
“I don’t use a gun, I use a bow and arrow.”
“I don’t care how you are killing the squirrels if you are still killing them for fun.”
“It’s not just for fun!” he argued, while glaring at Solaria over my shoulders.
“What else is it for?” I asked.
“Meditation. I’m getting in touch with nature.”
I was unimpressed.
He went on “And… It’s for food.” Now he was reaching. He knew my logic for hunting, I’d shared it with him before. He knew that if he was eating the squirrels, then the activity would occupy the space of an ethical loophole in my mind.
It was true that I would have taken a squirrel-eating boyfriend over a cold-blooded killer boyfriend, but I truly didn’t want either.
“You’re eating squirrel?” I didn’t even try to hide my disgust.
“Of course!” he said it like it was obvious.
“You’re bringing squirrel home to your mom to cook?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, I’m cooking it over a fire.”
I said to him: “I don’t really believe you are eating squirrel, but even if you are, I’m grossed out by the concept.”
He offered to bring one of the next for me to see, but I declined.
I spent the rest of the lunch period ignoring him.
By that Sunday, he was dumped via text just like his predecessor. I just couldn’t excuse the squirrel-acide, and anyway, I needed more time to focus on my friendship with Solaria.
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