you think you know someone when you have his cock in your mouth
But you’re probably wrong.
In what some would describe as classic firstborn form, my teenage years were well-stocked with clandestine pregnancy tests, women’s health books, condoms and other articles of contraception, Just In Case. Their acquisition implied that I would, at some point, have need of them, and that alone was exciting.
In fact, I didn’t have need of them until I was seventeen or so, but I was 15 when the eventual necessity of having such tools available actually dawned on me. Until then, while biking to Planned Parenthood to redeem free-condom coupons was new, forbidden and exciting, it was an exercise. The condoms got rolled onto fingers for demonstrations that i knew how to use one, got tied off as party balloons, got passed off to friends acquainted with a cock that needed clothing.
I was 15 when I met someone I keep referring to as my first boyfriend, although now that I think on it he was probably more like the third. He was the first boyfriend to whom I gave backrubs with ulterior motives, the first boyfriend I saw naked, the first boyfriend who cared about what I wanted to be when I grew up.
I know that six years can make a pretty high-index nostalgic lens, but this is how I remember: we were stupid, besotted; in love more with our ability to discuss sex and fumble around it than we were with each other. He had an almost-girlfriend in Germany; we all wrote each other very earnestly and honestly and continued the running, the fooling around in basements and closets, the clandestine discussions of what we Really Planned to do with our lives. It was very sincere, very naive, very fifteen. We were trying very hard, and I think it was rather sweet.
This is what I remember: he was the first boyfriend with whom I actually connected; the first who was more than filler for the boyfriend-shaped emptiness I thought my teenage heart had. I think of him blonde and naked in the sideways glow of an incandescent desk lamp; a pretty flattering light for anyone. I think of that in him which I loved, which is safe, because he’s dead.
I remember him as I knew him–excited, innocent, blossoming–because what person he became in those six years, I don’t know. I only know the newspaper article, and that he shot two other people before he killed himself, and that I hope that by remembering that which I loved about him I keep it alive.