first and last mistakes

I don't fall for guys very easily. Don't believe me? I could name the guys I've liked--all of them, ever--in short, rapid succession starting from the sixth grade to the present and be finished before you finished reading this sentence. That's INCLUDING all the guys on the "quiz" I passed to my friend Miriam during church when I was 14. See, Miriam didn't like anyone in our youth group which seemed IMPOSSIBLE to me because I liked THREE guys. So I generously decided that she could have one of my three to like, all she had to was take a multiple-choice quiz akin to something I may have read in Seventeen magazine. So, there were those three and about twice that many since.

***

I've liked him for two years. Each continuing year I like him, he gets older and I get older and soon I will be in high school at the same time as him and then maybe he will love me back! Or maybe I'll keep signing his name after mine! My parents go out of town, so I get to spend the weekend at his house. His sister, my best friend, would be devastated to know that I consider it his house and not hers, but I brush these guilty thoughts away. One day in the future when we're all related we'll laugh about this. She'll be happy for us.

At the end of the long three day weekend, I sneak a note into his tennis shoes by the back door. We've spent afternoons watching TV. He's controlled the remote the whole time, been a total asshole to his sister, and made jokes that I laugh at even though I shouldn't. He doesn't do any of this for my benefit. I am a child to him and I have no idea. So the note takes a familiar tone. I thank him for a great weekend. I tell him I'm so happy we're friends. I fold it in half, in half, and half again so that it fits in his shoe. I'm nervous to deliver it, but not ashamed.

***

Her: I don't really think I can even describe all the ways in which I love him. Every time I try, I cut myself off with more gushing.

Me: Yeah, that's about right.

Her: It's just I LOVE HIM. Seriously, oh my god, you don't understand.

Me: No, I do. Remember David Cook?

It's been a particularly dry spell. My heart got broken (years ago) and ever since then, I've had significant trouble meeting someone I like enough to like, let alone date. My stupid boundaries and my awesome friends are both obvious reasons for this. So, I turned to celebrities. David Cook took a little while to grow on me, but by the time he was in the top seven American Idol contestants, I was reading everything there was to know about him on the internet and swooning and everything he said or did.

He would come on screen and I would turn to Carolyn and exhale, "I love him." I really did. I really felt a deep, emotional connection and I really thought that I could be in a relationship with him. The love faded when I had to quit reading the David Cook Fan Livejournal because it wasn't a positive use of time. And I thought I could write about it now at laugh at myself, but rethinking it all through and reremembering all those things I read about him, all those Facebook pictures people had mined of him, all those moments I thought I might find love again don't seem so crazy. I guess that's embarassing: I've only ever liked or loved ten guys and one of them was on American Idol.

***

The first and latest men I've loved nicely represent a whole love history of embarrassment and failure. You're either a douchebag, on TV, don't know I exist, out of my league, only go for girls who sing, work with me, live far away, or come with a serious case of dysfunction. But aren't you glad to know that you're one of a select few? You have something that I find inexplicably attractive even though I shouldn't, and that is very rare.