Who can forget their first love? I was a late bloomer in every sense; my first was not until I was seventeen, and I could have passed for fourteen. He was tall, olive-complected and broad-shouldered, with mahogany eyes. I was slight and fair and light-eyed. We met at school, immediately bonded, and it was not long until we were inseparable. He had an energetic charm that I found irresistible. He was unabashedly physically affectionate and had the ability to erase my shyness with his mere presence. We would constantly hug and hang on each other and lie around together. I even kissed him on the forehead or the cheek a few times. It was so beautifully unrestrained...
The night I truly kissed him will forever be burned into my mind. It was late and we were half asleep, lying around and talking. In an uncharacteristically impulsive moment, I leaned in and kissed him. He laughed and covered his face, so I pulled his hands away and kissed him again. Once again he shrugged it off; the conversation quieted, and he fell asleep. My emotions careened from euphoria to panic and back again until I drifted off to sleep. The next morning we resumed as if nothing had happened. We never spoke of that night. A short while later, I told him I was in love with him; he was impassive and said, "I love you too," as if he misheard me. We carried on as usual for months, but soon he began drifting away from me; I resisted and our relationship cooled for several weeks. When we eventually reconnected, I had reconciled my feelings for him and ensured that I always kept him at arms length, so to speak.
We remain good friends to this day, but it often seems that the young man I now know bears scant resemblance to the charming boy of a few years ago, my first love and my first kiss. Whether he changed or I did, I will never be certain.
I will always wonder what he was thinking at the time. Did he care for me so much that he was able to look past my clumsy advances? Was he so naïve and innocent that he could not see what was right in front of him? Perhaps someday I will ask him.
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Sigur Rós - Viðrar vel til Loftárása
About Me
- 3.I.
- Recent university grad, somewhere in the gray area of early- and mid-20s.
4 comments:
Beautiful. And indeed you really should ask him.
Of course he knew what was going on, no one is that naive.
Yeah I had a friend not dissimilar to that at all. Inseparable, beautifully loving, physically affectionate but ultimately straight. We never kissed, obviously, although I tried twice. Dumb dumb. He's still in my life, though, and still a wonderful person, so that's nice.
My first kiss (a girl) was when I was 14. My first love (also a girl but a different one) was 16, and, yes it was seriously love, not adolescent confusion. What's a gender as a thing to fall in love with? I fell in love with a person who is still the best thing that ever happened to me. Anyway, my first gay kiss was 19. Normal bloomer in some ways, late in others, earlier than you in others. Sexuality is complicated. Anyway, that's a beautiful post.
that youtube video is really powerful, both of my parents are dead but it is still amazing the force their gaze or aproavel means to me. Man a life spent kinda fucked up, eh?
I agree. Sigur Rós has many impressive videos, but this one floors me everytime. Such a beautiful little love story...
You are right, parents hold a definite power over most of us (even in absentia). I think that is why coming out can be such a crippling process for many.
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