The Led Zeppelin Shirt that Stopped a Heart
Everyone seems to have a first love story, some are comical, others romantic, most leave behind emotional pain the likes of which makes you want to rip your own still-beating heart out of your ribcage and smash it on the concrete with a ten pound sledge hammer just so that you can make the pain stop. What makes my first love story interesting is that I wasn't able to tell her how I felt when we inhabited the same space. Nope. It would take a 1 am phone call years later for the truth to come out. Every time I tried to confess my love for Sarah (not her real name, of course) it felt like someone shoved an entire bag of marshmallows in my mouth, rendering 16-year-old me completely mute while simultaneously allowing just a little bit of drool to escape the imperfect seal formed by the marshmallow's plastic bag and my paralyzed lips. Ultimately, I guess it took the last bit of dust of my adolescence to finally settle for me to come fully and completely clean to Sarah as an adult.
It was the first day of sophomore year and I sitting in my Algebra II class. Thanks to the teacher's mandatory alphabetical seating chart and possessing a last name starting with, "U" I was just where I wanted to be, at the back of the room in the far-right corner where I could sit unobserved. Sitting there waiting for class to start while breathing in the smell of pencil shavings, possible asbestos fibers, and teenage angst I was somewhat underwhelmed with sophomore year to that point.
Then she walked in the door wearing tight jeans, a Led Zeppelin t-shirt, and that mushroom cloud of bangs that girls drained an entire can of hairspray to create in the early nineties. She was everything I dreamed of in a girl at that point. I watched her approach the seating chart, and once her assigned seat was identified, SHE MADE HER WAY TOWARDS ME! Turns out, her last name started with a, "T" so she sat right in front of me. She didn't look familiar so she was either new or a freshman, either way, I was thrilled. So, Sarah sat down, turned to me and said, "How ya doin! Cool Megadeth shirt." After those six words I knew that I would happily swallow a sword wrapped in barbed wire and lubricated with sulfuric acid to see her smile and the light that danced in her brown eyes whenever she was happy.
"Wow." This girl is fucking perfect," I thought. I was right as the days passed, Sarah and I became friends, and pretty much ignored the teacher in Algebra II (I still got an A thank you very much). Sarah was a freshman, loved metal, and hated all the things I hated, which was pretty much every aspect of high school and our vapid, Vanilla Ice loving, and approaching maturation, middle-class maggot classmates. Later, I introduced her to my two closest friends, and she was absorbed immediately. Although Doug (not his real name) immediately put her in his sights for the next girl to test the tolerances of the springs in the backseat of his car, Doug picked up on my vibe and backed off like any good friend would.
Well, Sarah and I rarely had classes together after Algebra, but we talked on the phone, hung out with Doug and our other friend, Jared (once again not his real name) whenever we could, and went through the diarrhea cramp-like throes of high school together. Now, Doug and Jared were aware of my feelings for Sarah and regularly told me I should make a move. In here lies the problem. I was a buck-toothed, physically disabled, pimple faced, greasy haired loser who's single mom was content to live on the dole. I couldn't afford to take her anywhere, didn't have a car, and in terms of physical attractiveness I rated myself somewhere between the Elephant Man and Quasimodo. Fuck, at least Quasimodo had a cool bachelor pad of his own near Notre Dame's bell tower. As far as I was concerned, I had ZERO to offer the angel in blue jeans and Converse All-Stars.
By the time I was a senior, I had watched Sarah go through a couple of boyfriends, but still, I couldn't bring myself to say anything. Finally, Doug's girlfriend, Melanie (not her real name and who later became his wife from what I've heard) had grown tired of seeing my puppy dog eyes and hearing my unrequited love filled sighs. So, as a friend of Sarah and mine she was (DOM-DOM-DOM) going to tell Sarah how I felt. I begged her to remain silent and promised I'd try to tell her. I lucked out because Melanie foolishly didn't require a timeline and I was quick to write mental fine print that read, "I will tell Sarah how I feel...Someday." Besides, I really had tried a couple of times and on each attempt the cat not only got my tongue, but it managed to snag my brain as well because my feeling revealing attempts made me look like I was a post-operative lobotomy patient.
High school ended and I remained silent. I was moving to Florida for college (BIGGEST FUCKING MISTAKE EVER). Sarah had to finish high school and had a serious boyfriend by then. Well, neither of us could afford long distance phone charges, but stamps were cheap, so we regularly wrote letters. Sarah would finish high school and move to Oregon with her boyfriend. Still, I held the torch for her and would regularly wail along to Nazareth's, Love Hurts every time it was on the radio. God, I was pathetic!
Eventually, I moved back to California and Sarah broke up with her boyfriend, but stayed in Oregon. Then one night around 1:00 am I received a phone call. It was Sarah and she was hammered, three sheets to the wind, she'd tied one on, and got herself well and truly blitzed. Of course, I was happy to hear from her and realizing that she was inebriated, I wanted to make sure that she was okay. Up to that point the letters had continued, but hearing someone's voice after a couple of years is amazing. So, we talked for hours. Sarah was feeling nostalgic so a lot of the conversation centered on high school.
Now, I'm not sure how it happened, maybe it was the fact that I was exhausted and on the phone for 3 hours, but eventually during that call I told Sarah that I had been crazy about her for years and was too shy and full of self-hatred to say anything. I wasn't really sure if she'd heard me, but we got off the phone shortly after that.
A couple of w
of anxiety filled weeks would pass and I received a letter from Sarah. I actually threw up and couldn't open it for hours. Maybe she hadn't heard or it got lost in the tequila haze. I stared at that envelope wondering if she had heard my confession and if I had killed a friendship by telling her. When I finally gathered the courage to open the letter, Sarah simply asked why had I never said anything. She didn't admit one way or another how she felt, but I could tell that she was shocked. My response back was apologetic and I attempted to explain how unworthy I felt for anyone or anything. So, I never felt that admitting my feelings would lead to anything good. I asked that she forgive me for making things weird and that I knew that things were what they were.
Sarah wrote me back and we never mentioned my confession again. Eventually, I would fall into a very dark place and mental illness would take the reigns of my life, leading me towards the cliff of self-obliteration at full speed. Sarah would move again, this time to Iowa. Our letters would continue, not as frequently, but we still wrote. Sarah met a great guy who was a high school teacher and they married and had 2 kiddos. After a few years and a FUCK LOAD OF MEDICATION and THERAPY I would get better, meet a great girl, get married, and bring our three little demon-spawn (and fourth little imp via CPS and family court) into the world.
The letters have since stopped coming or going. Such is life. We get stuck in our own little orbits and stop looking outward. I think fondly of Sarah and I have to credit her for being my friend. She, Doug, Jared, and Melanie made me feel something strange. They made me feel like I mattered somehow to someone. I think that this carried me through the darkness and is a big a huge part of me still being here. To my friends, wherever they are, and whatever they're doing, let me just say for the record that, "Our other classmates probably still suck, Vanilla Ice has been replaced by Taylor Swift (an even blander flavor of vanilla), and I'm still FUCKING PISSED we couldn't get tickets to see Megadeth."