This is a story about how Tony and I came to dating – it’s not all pretty.
It was my junior year of high school and I was dating the first love of my life or my first long term boyfriend at the time. I was 16 years-old and sure he was the one even though we had only dated for about a year (like, forever in the life of a teenager) and he had already started at a college about 2 hours away. We were going to be long distance and it was going to work.
On the first day of school, in my second to last period in the day – drama – I walked in and sat down at the first desk I saw. Then, this beautiful boy walked in the door. He was a senior. He was very tall, slender build, with dark brown, almost black hair with the perfect amount of curl that hung just below his ears. He had the darkest, thick eyebrows that perfectly accentuated his deep set, brilliant green eyes. My very first and immediate thought was “He’s one of those guys who is so attractive, he won’t even look twice at me”. So, my first action was to protect myself against sure rejection and play it cool. He was automatically placed on my “he’s too good for me” list and was stricken from my mind as a date-worthy possibility. Oh yeah, and also there was my boyfriend, and we were going to be together forever.
I noticed his necklace right away. It looked like a handmade craft beaded necklace and I opened with “I like your necklace.” He said “thanks” and that started our friendship. The third in our group was a fun girl in the ROTC and we had a ball together. Tony and I would always partner up for projects and skits and I quickly discovered his terrible stammering issue. We were one time reading children’s books as an exercise and it took him so long to get through it, it was almost painful, but the longer we knew each other and the more exercises we did, the smoother his speech became. I wouldn’t find out until later that it was because he was nervous around me and that made it so much worse.
At the same time that our friendship was budding and growing without me feeling the slightest clue that ever dating him might be an option, I had my own drama going on in the field of romance. My long distance boyfriend was feeling more and more long distant even though we talked all the time on AIM and he came to visit when he could. I had also joined the cross country team and had started hanging out with the team. I met a guy on the team, broke up with my boyfriend and dated the runner for a very brief period.
I really don’t remember much about my relationship with the new guy. It was very short, and he was very pushy about being physical when I wasn’t really there, myself. I remember one time in particular, he was saying goodbye to me in my garage and we went to kiss goodbye and he basically slowly tackled me to the garage floor so he was laying on top of me while he sloppily kissed me. I was caught off guard to say the least and now I was covered in dirt and being slobbered on. I eventually got up, literally dusted myself off and said goodbye.
The homecoming dance was coming up and my friendship with Tony was growing, but I was still blind to the gift dropped in my lap. I was going to the dance with Mr. Pushy, but still wanted my good friend, Tony to come as well. He was very shy and getting him to go to a social function like this was going to take some effort. One of my other best good friends at the time, did not have a date to go to the dance so I matched her and Tony up to go to the dance with the rest of our group of friends. We had a big group of drama/artsy friends who were all going together to homecoming. We were anything but popular, but ignored that and had a fantastic time anyway. We danced, we laughed, we paid no attention to the homecoming crowning or dancing. I don’t even remember seeing that happen.
For the next few weeks, I was super happy for my friend and Tony. They went out on dates to the movies, went out for hot chocolate, seemed to be a budding relationship and I couldn’t be happier that two of my best friends were hitting it off so well. She was a great friend for me. I never really had very close friends in highschool, but as far as friends went, she was pretty special. She was just as silly and random as I was and made me laugh so hard all the time. We got into trouble writing notes back and forth in English class and one time, the teacher was discussing Moby Dick while she was completely preoccupied with one of the notes I had written her. The teacher noticed her being distracted and called her out and asked “do you have any thoughts on Moby Dick?”. She thought for only a half second and then blurted out “Moby Dick is Jesus!!” to which we all giggled, but the teacher was notably impressed and prodded her to continue. She went on and rattled off some parallels between the two figures and everyone in the class was impressed with her on-the-spot thinking.
Then, along came my high school field trip. I was still dating Mr Pushy and took a class trip to Italy. There we all went dancing at a local discotech in Florence. I was able to find a very tight, very small gold sparkly top (that was also very itchy and uncomfortable) to go with a tight black mini skirt that I borrowed from my friend. Our group of highschoolers went and danced and there were a few local guys at the discotech very excited about all the enthusiastic young girls dancing in their bar. These guys were very forward with us and were dancing all over us. It was then that a guy in our group came over and danced with me to separate the older men from dancing with us. We danced for awhile and then we all walked back to the hotel in the dark with the streets barely lit and it was then he grabbed my hand. I was still only 16 and it meant the world to me.
The rest of the Italy trip, we rode next to each other on the bus and talked a little. I was introduced to heavy metal music and tried very hard to like it, but I think I was growing too boring for him. We kept our closeness secret and didn’t show anyone that we were talking or holding hands and I was hopeful, even though I still had an eager kisser boyfriend waiting for me at home.
The trip ended and I went back to school the next day. I was very excitedly telling all my friends about the trip and all the awesome things we did. Mr Pushy had been on a big, exciting camping trip with his family and, truth be told, I didn’t give him the attention a boyfriend deserves at the time. I also wasn’t sure how to deal with the exciting, new possible relationship I thought had budded in Italy, so I just ignored him, which wasn’t really fair to him. Later that day, I received a very angry note from him (no texting back then, folded paper note) telling me how horrible of a girlfriend I am and cussing me out. So, that ended that relationship.
I thought that I would have a relationship with Mr. Italy next, but I would find out much later from Tony that I was involved in a love triangle. Apparently, I was interested in Mr Italy, Mr. Italy was interested in another girl, other girl was interested in Tony, and Tony was interested in me.
I had started to feel like Tony might have some interest in me as we went along. We would be sitting in the audience, watching other performers in drama class and I would notice that he would mimic the postures I was doing while sitting. At first I thought “uh oh, I’m going to have to start being careful because I’ve got this guy’s attention and my intentions are not the same”. We grew closer and closer, he was slowly becoming my most anticipated friend to see in the day. Then the camping trip came up where a group of my friends all went to the mountains with my mom as a chaperone.
We had a blast, we hiked, the boys threw a LOT of sticks in the river, we played games, watched TV and hiked some more. Then, one night, we were all in the living room, watching TV and Tony and I were passing paper back and forth, drawing funny little cartoons trying to make each other laugh, when I decided to take advantage of the silly mood and wrote him “I like you, do you like me, circle yes or no”. He took awhile and then handed it back and had written “maybe” then crossed it out and checked “yes”. It was such a juvenile moment, yet was so exciting for me as well.
We talked about it more the next day and decided we both liked each other and would see where it would go. We had a blast listening to music on the way home, then reality hit. I had asked about his dating my friend on our trip and he told me they were not dating, that they had just gone out as friends. The next week, MF came up to me and gave me a letter and asked me to proofread it. It was a letter she had written to Tony about how much she cared for him. I was completely thrown off. I didn’t know how to handle this. She had no idea that Tony and I had talked about dating and I didn’t know how to direct her on this one. I didn’t want to be the one to tell her Tony did not think they had been dating, that was for Tony, but I didn’t want to get her hopes up either. So, I read her letter, directed her to make a few changes, then I went and told Tony that he was going to have to deal with this.
He did. She found out we were planning on dating and we were no longer friends. I had mixed emotions at this point. On one hand, I was ignoring the basic laws of friendship and dating her “ex” even though, according to him, they were never dating, but even then, she was still very interested in him. On the other hand, I really liked him and I was being selfish. So, I lost my silly, fun friend.
We’re friends again, facebook friends anyway. I still feel guilty when I think about it.
I found out later that, while I had been juggling guys back and forth since meeting him, Tony had had a crush on me since meeting me.
