it was all about a boy

Get a hot chocolate and settle in for a silly autumn story.

There's something undeniably nostalgic about September, when one can't help but become steeped in memories of years gone by. It represents a change in seasons, a time to take inventory, to reap what you have harvested, to buckle down and prepare for the cold months ahead. Against a crisp azure fall sky, the trees change into golden and russet hued robes then strip before us, standing naked in the face of the coming storms while we bundle ourselves in cozy turtlenecks and layers of fleece.


Growing up, fall meant my mother (the Orange Fairy) buying us school supplies and stiff new pants and uncomfortable ugly running shoes, spending hours sharpening the entire box of pencil crayons, and scrolling your name on every binder, scribbler and duotang in the neatest possible printing. It meant eating soup and toast with your hands still reeking of binder paper and wax crayons. It meant starting swimming lessons again, and music - flute with the sexy rock star flute teacher with great hair and too-tight pants for me, piano with the bearded man who wore patches on the elbows of his tweed blazers and smelled of coffee and mothballs for my sister - and preparing to pass notes with all the friends you had missed over the summer. It always carried the hint of a new beginning, a fresh new chapter, and every year I'd look back at the previous year, vow to not make the same social faux pas, and just. be. cool. Every September, I'd blindly think, "THIS will be the year my whole life changes..." I would be sporty, popular, smart, funny. In short, I'd be invincible.


As an adult, I still find myself in a reflective mood in Autumn, looking back, to look forward. This year, a strange twist of fate that has reunited me with some bosom buddies from back in the day has awakened some latent memories from my troubled teenage years. Many of them I've chosen to erase because they are simply too painful to relive, but with them I took the good memories, the silly memories, the memories of those few precious friends who were the lifeline I clung to as I struggled to survive that pivotal phase of my teens.

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It was late autumn, probably November, and I was 15. A girlfriend's parents had gone out of town for the weekend, and I was attending my first real live, "My parents are gone for the weekend let's have a party" party. I remember spending hours trying to decide what to wear, because there might be boys there, boys I could snuggle with in the coming cold of the winter months, a boy to call my own, to hold hands with between classes and neck with against my locker... I packed my swimsuit and a towel for the hot tub, carefully applied my signature red lipstick and smoothed my hair down into a long ponytail at the nape of my neck. While my head swam with visions of being seduced by ~insert name of some cute popular boy who would yank me from my pathetic existence and catapult me into social invincibility~ I tucked into my cream coloured turtleneck, inserted the velcro shoulder pads, pulled on my opaque tights and floral-print shorts, then slipped on my flats to head out into the brisk night air. (Stop giggling - I looked stylish and it was TOTALLY a practical outfit for a snowy late autumn gathering...)

I rode the bus there, nervous and excited at the same time, and got lost finding the house. I was cold and on the verge of tears when I heard giggling and music. I followed the noise and entered the house, the front porch blocked by smokers, the front entry littered with mountains of shoes, the hallways crawling with couples groping each other with reckless unsupervised by parents abandon. I didn't belong there, and I knew it, and in my paranoid teenage mind where I was completely transparent, I knew other people must have known it, too. For all my careful preparation and romantic fantasies and practiced bravery, I said a few hellos then made a beeline for the bathroom, put on my swimsuit, and went out in the gentle snowfall to slide into the abandoned hot tub where someone had left a cassette tape of Milli Vanilli playing. A few people came, and went, and I sat there playing aloof as best as I could so no one would see me trembling in all my awkward misfit glory.

When I was sufficiently pruned and everyone else was sufficiently pickled, I ventured back inside. Several people had left, or passed out, and so I started tidying up a bit, stepping over bodies to pick up bottles and cups, putting dishes back into the kitchen. Imagine my surprise when the door opened and in walked a boy. Not just any boy, but THE boy, the one I'd been silently crushing on for fives, nay, TENS of days already. He had great hair. He smelled good. He wore Levis. He was perfect... ~swoon~ He arrived with some other guy who was faceless and insignificant in his presence. There I was, eye makeup streaked down my face, lipstick worn off, hair all wet and scraggly, with an armful of empties. "Uh, hi..." was all I could muster before scurrying back to the kitchen and cursing myself for being such a dork.

I hid out until Cute Boy and his Faceless Buddy had cleared out of the front entry, then promptly headed out to the front porch to smoke as many cigarettes as it took to stay as far away from Cute Boy as possible. I stayed outside, shivering, for a very long time. I had no smokes left, and cute boy was showing no signs of making an exit anytime soon, so I figured it wasn't too late - transit was still running - I could still catch a bus. I'd pack up and go home. Decision made.

I opened the door to see Cute Boy standing there, a cigarette dangling from his lips. "Got a light?" he said. "Uh - yeah - sure... here..." I lit his smoke. "Want one?" he asked, scrunching up the side of his face where the smoke was curling into his eye. Filterless Camels. I choked on a chunk of tobacco that I'd sucked into my throat, he thumped me on the back and laughed, I recovered, we made small talk. My heart was soaring. He touched me. He was talking to me. My stomach was doing flipflops. We finished smoking, and I followed him back into the house and figured I'd better go check my make-up, and pick the camel-shit flavoured tobacco flakes from my teeth.

I found him several minutes later, talking to the house party girl. HPG didn't even KNOW him. How dare she? There they stood next to the stack of pop cases, making a date. A DATE. To go for a walk. Sometime in the coming week. How could she? Didn't she know it was against the Girl Code to accept dates with boys your friends were crushing on? How could he? Wasn't it obvious I'd cut off my limbs for him? Heartbroken, full of rage, I gathered my stuff and resigned myself to walking home if that's what it took. I bumped into Cute Boy on my way out. "Got a light, Hope?" He remembered my name. "Smoke?" he offered again. I gladly accepted the camel-shit flavoured smoke. I melted. House Party Girl was still the devil incarnate, but Cute Boy was forgiven.

I was dressed, packed, on my way out, didn't want to seem desperate by turning around and following him back in for a second time, and in parting I said in a half-joking hey you're my buddy you're my pal (but I wasn't joking at all) sort of way, "Well, if you get bored with HPG and want a real girlfriend, you know my name." Instantly beet red and cursing myself, I turned on my heel and left, walking out to the road at lightening speed, grateful to see the beacon of public transit headlights heading towards me. I went home and reminded myself that I was a social retard, that I was out of my league, that it wasn't HPG's fault Cute Boy liked her and not me. I beat myself up for being an idiot with a big mouth. I made myself feel guilty for being mad at HPG. I cried. I went to school on Monday and turned a blind eye to the hand-holding and kissing I witnessed, and through all the heartache played cool about their short-lived and ill-fated romance.

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HPG dumped him after just a few dates, if I recall correctly, and he never did seek me out, the bastard. I wasn't really worried about him much by that point - I had other bigger things going on. Little did I know that yes, that was the year my whole life would change. Within a few weeks of that party, I was living in my own apartment, estranged from my mother and sister, distanced from my friends, worrying more about making rent than making out, and wondering how, exactly, I was going to survive to see next month let alone next September. I was living in poverty, in fear, feeling naked and vulnerable and ostracized from my peers. Convinced I was unworthy of friendship, I withdrew and hid further and further inside myself. I no longer wanted to be invincible - I wanted to be invisible, and eventually ended up changing schools. I effectively disappeared, and finished off my high school career with only a handful of memories, good, bad, or other.


This September, and the last 4 Septembers since moving into this house, my family and I shop for school supplies, label them all ever so neatly, then harvest the apples from our trees and bake pan after pan after pan of hot apple crisp. I hope these are the memories they carry with them of autumn, especially once they become teenagers, so that when the awkwardness of being a teenager passes the fond memory of fresh homemade apple crisp carries a strong enough odour to kill off how much being a kid stinks sometimes.

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Prompted by a picture on Facebook featuring HPG, pointed out to me by one of the gaggle of girls I've reconnected with, she and I were reminiscing about that particular party the other day. I had all but forgotten about it. The first thing I thought of was my flute case. As a 'hip' classical flute player, I modeled my flute case after that of the aforementioned rock star classical flute teacher's (he was very sexy and very cool - the only reason I actually kept taking lessons long after my skills had peaked and my interest in playing had dissipated...) by decorating it with sticker art and paint splotches.


I think my splotches might actually be fingernail polish but whatever...

For years it has sat collecting layers of dust on the bookshelf beside my ostrich egg and a bowl of Florida sand, relatively untouched except when Christmas or boredom prompt it, and I never really paid any attention to the presence of those stickers. They had lost their meaning long ago. Having their meaning refreshed to me has brought back all those bittersweet emotions - the rush of youthful lust, the pain of disillusionment, the brief moments of unbridled joy, the enduring embarrassment of being a self-made pariah - and has made me feel as naked as the trees along my front street, for though I may not ever know what Faceless Buddy's name was, I now remember Cute Boy's name.


I suppose on some level I've always secretly hoped he'd led a horrible life, because in my mind he was a player, a jerk, a real loser. There is no pain like unrequited love, you see... But, my friend has spoken with him since, and says no, he isn't married to an obese controlling woman who has his balls clutched mercilessly in her icy fists. Too bad. ~smirk~ Actually, she assures me he was always a nice guy, and is still a nice guy (pretty much how I remember him) and if by some chance you read this Tyler, I hope a) you have forgotten that night and b) that you have a great sense of humour about how stupid we all were as kids.