Carlos and Alejandra
Even though I don't intend for this blog to follow a chronological order, sometimes you just need to start at the beginning.
Carlos was my first boyfriend. Alejandra was my first crush. A standard start for a pansexual like myself.
Actually, that reminds me. You might want a bit of description of your heroine. I'm cis female, pansexual, polyamorous, and have severe astigmatism (but who can tell these days with contact lenses) and terrible posture. I'm tall, dark and curly haired, blue eyed, and white enough that a friend has nicknamed me 'Moon Child'. I'm curvy in places that my lovers have seemed to appreciate and attractive enough, but at the time of this story I was a skinny 5th grader who wore thick glasses and Winnie the Pooh overalls and hated my frizzy hair.
Alejandra was my best friend from 1st grade until the end of elementary school, when she decided she was cooler than I and abandoned me to fend for myself while she became one of the 'popular' girls. This was a process, not an instantaneous goodbye, so there was a time when I was still attending sleepovers at her house but becoming increasingly aware that my presence wasn't desired at them. And that's where things were when I heard about crushes. (As an aside, this is also where I heard about periods, butterfly hairclips, and Bonne Bell lip gloss.)
Crushes, according to elementary school girls of the 90's, are the boys that you like a lot and want to kiss and let touch you. I was confused by that explanation, and I told Alejandra I didn't think I had had any crushes yet. What followed was an examination of every boy in our class with crush potential for me, but none stuck. The pressure to have a crush like the other girls, though, continued after the first evening to become a sickness, the boy-craziness of preteen girls. Until I had a crush, I would not be like them.
So Carlos became my acceptable crush, and my first boyfriend. Carlos, who I knew from playing computer games together on the school computers, who was kind and quiet and had beautifully soft tan skin and dark brown eyes that I did actually like to look at. Who agreed to be my boyfriend when I asked him, and went to see the Road to El Dorado with me at the movies- my first 'date', chaperoned by my Dad, who drove. When he unceremoniously dumped me during our 6th grade Safety Patrol field trip to DC, I remember feeling a bit sad to lose our friendship along with it.
Now, I don't think he was really my first crush. Years later, armed with the knowledge that crushes can be on boys and girls alike, I realized my first crush had been for Alejandra the whole time. The way my heart sped up when she held my hand crossing the street, the way the perfect shape of her lips is still etched into my memory, those are the things you remember about a crush. She had tan skin and deep, expressive brown eyes too, and maybe that's why I could be attracted to those same things in Carlos, features so unlike my own but that they both shared. But he didn't have her little breasts that were beginning to need a sports bra, that I couldn't stop staring at when we changed into swimsuits together. He didn't have her gold stud earrings that I wasn't allowed to have yet, that sparkled when she shook her head at me. He was my first boyfriend, but she was my first obsession.
And maybe that's the real reason our friendship didn't work out. Maybe Alej, who did ultimately finish her rejection of me with the cruelty that only preteen girls can have, didn't know how to express yet that she didn't like how I stared at her. Maybe that was the only way she could react to a female friend who had become that tongue-tied and awkward around her, or maybe her parents (who were religious) made that decision for her. These are events of nearly two decades ago, who can say?
Whatever caused it, her rejection hurt me much more deeply than Carlos' did. That hurt festered into a distrust of female friends that lingered much too long, which became a fear of relationships with women in general. I'm happy to report that that fear is long gone, but for a time it colored my friendships and romances alike, and you'll notice it in some future stories before it's gone.
As the author, writing this now, this is the first time I would have an 'It Gets Better' type conversation with my younger self. I'd like to tell her: you will enjoy relationships with everyone, not just one gender. And you'll remember Alejandra, not with anger at what she put you through, but with fondness for the things she taught you and the way she made you feel.
And anyways, she friended me on facebook a couple years ago.
Carlos was my first boyfriend. Alejandra was my first crush. A standard start for a pansexual like myself.
Actually, that reminds me. You might want a bit of description of your heroine. I'm cis female, pansexual, polyamorous, and have severe astigmatism (but who can tell these days with contact lenses) and terrible posture. I'm tall, dark and curly haired, blue eyed, and white enough that a friend has nicknamed me 'Moon Child'. I'm curvy in places that my lovers have seemed to appreciate and attractive enough, but at the time of this story I was a skinny 5th grader who wore thick glasses and Winnie the Pooh overalls and hated my frizzy hair.
Alejandra was my best friend from 1st grade until the end of elementary school, when she decided she was cooler than I and abandoned me to fend for myself while she became one of the 'popular' girls. This was a process, not an instantaneous goodbye, so there was a time when I was still attending sleepovers at her house but becoming increasingly aware that my presence wasn't desired at them. And that's where things were when I heard about crushes. (As an aside, this is also where I heard about periods, butterfly hairclips, and Bonne Bell lip gloss.)
Crushes, according to elementary school girls of the 90's, are the boys that you like a lot and want to kiss and let touch you. I was confused by that explanation, and I told Alejandra I didn't think I had had any crushes yet. What followed was an examination of every boy in our class with crush potential for me, but none stuck. The pressure to have a crush like the other girls, though, continued after the first evening to become a sickness, the boy-craziness of preteen girls. Until I had a crush, I would not be like them.
So Carlos became my acceptable crush, and my first boyfriend. Carlos, who I knew from playing computer games together on the school computers, who was kind and quiet and had beautifully soft tan skin and dark brown eyes that I did actually like to look at. Who agreed to be my boyfriend when I asked him, and went to see the Road to El Dorado with me at the movies- my first 'date', chaperoned by my Dad, who drove. When he unceremoniously dumped me during our 6th grade Safety Patrol field trip to DC, I remember feeling a bit sad to lose our friendship along with it.
Now, I don't think he was really my first crush. Years later, armed with the knowledge that crushes can be on boys and girls alike, I realized my first crush had been for Alejandra the whole time. The way my heart sped up when she held my hand crossing the street, the way the perfect shape of her lips is still etched into my memory, those are the things you remember about a crush. She had tan skin and deep, expressive brown eyes too, and maybe that's why I could be attracted to those same things in Carlos, features so unlike my own but that they both shared. But he didn't have her little breasts that were beginning to need a sports bra, that I couldn't stop staring at when we changed into swimsuits together. He didn't have her gold stud earrings that I wasn't allowed to have yet, that sparkled when she shook her head at me. He was my first boyfriend, but she was my first obsession.
And maybe that's the real reason our friendship didn't work out. Maybe Alej, who did ultimately finish her rejection of me with the cruelty that only preteen girls can have, didn't know how to express yet that she didn't like how I stared at her. Maybe that was the only way she could react to a female friend who had become that tongue-tied and awkward around her, or maybe her parents (who were religious) made that decision for her. These are events of nearly two decades ago, who can say?
Whatever caused it, her rejection hurt me much more deeply than Carlos' did. That hurt festered into a distrust of female friends that lingered much too long, which became a fear of relationships with women in general. I'm happy to report that that fear is long gone, but for a time it colored my friendships and romances alike, and you'll notice it in some future stories before it's gone.
As the author, writing this now, this is the first time I would have an 'It Gets Better' type conversation with my younger self. I'd like to tell her: you will enjoy relationships with everyone, not just one gender. And you'll remember Alejandra, not with anger at what she put you through, but with fondness for the things she taught you and the way she made you feel.
And anyways, she friended me on facebook a couple years ago.
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