makes me want to shake eleven-year-old me. But my fifth-grade crush really didn’t like me back. I know this, because I wrote him a note asking him to check the box yes or no if he wanted to be my boyfriend. But after that, at least he stopped picking on me. God only knows why.
Sixth grade came. A whole new school. New people I didn’t just spend the last six years with. New boys to crush on.
First there was Edward… and then Frankie… and then Greg… all so very different, but all of them gave me butterflies and made me try out my signature with each of their last names. And I finally had my first kiss. It was a fast, terrifying peck on the lips in the stairwell after school.
Suddenly, I was addicted. That adrenalin rush… or whatever it was from kissing a cute boy. Man. I wanted more. I wanted like… three kisses back to back. Phew! That would be super exciting.
Seventh grade brought my first real boyfriend. Meaning he asked me to be his girlfriend and we even went to the school dance together. Jed was missing part of his right middle finger up to the first knuckle. An accident from when he was little. It was barely noticeable, but when some bully finally did catch sight of it, he made some weird joke about Jed losing it inside me. I must have teeth down there and bit it off. I didn’t get it at the time, not understanding he didn’t mean my mouth, so I didn’t realize why people thought his dumb joke was so funny. Like, har-har, I bit my boyfriend’s finger off… you’re so funny. I didn’t understand everyone else knew he meant I had teeth in my pussy that bit his finger off while he was fingering me. I didn’t know what fingering was back then, so it went right over my head. It was also very confusing when Jed dumped me because of the bully’s teasing. I loved him. Shouldn’t we have stuck together? Shouldn’t he have taken up for me and told them he’d never done that to me before?
But again, twelve-year-olds. Face… meet palm.
At the end of seventh grade came Henry. I don’t really remember why I liked him. He was the weird quiet kid who always wore a black trench coat all day. He was an amazing drawer. His art was dark, and he liked drawing guns and stuff. Nowadays, that would be a super bright red flag. And who knows, maybe the same thing was going on for him, and because I was sweet to him and basically demanded he be my boyfriend, and sit with me at lunch, and walk me to my classes, and made him be my partner during assignments and projects, that changed the course of action he might’ve taken without someone like me.
I loved him.
We stayed together until the very last day of school, but lost touch over the summer. And when we came back the next school year, we didn’t have any of the same classes. We were still friendly in the hallways, and waved at each other at lunch, but neither made a move to rekindle our “romance.” Years later, I found out he made a name for himself doing custom artistic stocks on rifles. Beautiful work.
Eighth grade brought Zach. Whoooooo-wee. He was super smart, and super cute. He was in my science class, and the teacher sat us together. I didn’t know a damn thing about him, but goodness, he smiled, and it lit up the room. Especially after he got his braces off. He asked me to the dance, and I said yes. Little did I know, his parents were stupid rich. He picked me up in a limo… for the eighth-grade dance.
I loved him. But… I don’t think Zach liked me very much. In fact, I don’t think Zach liked any girl very much. I think Zach liked boys a lot though.
Ninth grade. High school. That brought a whole new batch of boys.
There was Jared. And he’s probably who I would say was my first real boyfriend in the more grown-up sense. We did things after school together all the time. We went to each other’s house, went to movies, even spent New Year’s Eve together at his parents’ friend’s party. This was when I learned a lot more about hormones and physical experimentation. Up until then, I still had only had a couple of pecks on the