Well, this entry will be hard to write. It’s the tale of my very first severe crush, which happened my senior year of High School. It firmly cemented my Outsider status in my mind, exposed my vulnerable emotions which were crushed completely, and on top of all that, makes me look even more pathetic.
First, the prologue. Andrea was an attractive Sophomore or Junior (forgot which) while I was a Senior. She was “2nd in Command” of the Volleyball Team (whose captain was Carrie, I told about my interest in her in Episode 2). Like I said before, I have had extremely unrealistic crushes my entire life, and probably would have one again if I was shown interest by anyone attractive. Anyway, she was popular – the Volleyball Clique was the “in” place to be at my rural Christian school, and she was near the top of the chain.
Back then I was hanging out with Bill a lot, and while visiting him at his trailer home one night we had a long conversation. He revealed to me a bit of an infatuation with Andrea, nearly pining over her, and admitted to me that he would give anything for her to return his interest. He described at length her positive qualities: appearance, upbeat attitude, athleticism. I think we went over it and over it for several hours. I didn’t understand it at the time, and had never paid her much attention, but he must have planted a seed in my mind because I found myself mulling over what he said more and more. (This was the second time a crush was germinated due to someone else, the first time was Sarah in Episode 1.)
While my interest in her was growing, Andrea began to be somewhat friendly with me, talking with me during breaks and greeting me warmly when she met me. As a reclusive nerd I interpreted this basic politeness as potential interest – after all, she would speak to me! And in an agreeable matter, without teasing! (She was probably friendly to me only because I was Darron’s closest friend.) She wasn’t really an outstanding girl in any way, but my interest developed into a full-blown obsession.
I can’t really describe the process or what drove me in this direction; I don’t really remember the details and I don’t think the reasons made much sense. In any case, my obsession resulted in hundreds of pages of material about her being written in a rather lengthy journal I kept at the time (it dated back to 1987; I had copied entries from paper journals into a Word document). I wondered about her, marvelled at her, hoped I could win her, all sorts of things; questioning her motivations, I examined every act in minute detail, along with discussions of my other friends and acquaintances at the school.
Predictably, Andrea had a crush on the “2nd in command” of the Basketball Team (under Darron, my friend). George was a thin, tall, athletic boy with dirty blond hair, blue eyes, and a perpetually rebellious and sarcastic attitude. He ate terribly: Fruit Loops for breakfast, cheese sandwiches for lunch, never any vegetables, yet he never gained any weight, like many teenagers. He and Darron hung out almost as much as Darron and I did, except their friendship centered around crude humor and jokes at others’ expense. On top of all this, he had an on-again off-again relationship with Andrea, he was always breaking things off and starting them up again. I thought, if anything, I was a much better choice than he was.
One day at school Bill found a series of private notes that had been ripped up and thrown in the trash, apparently written between Carrie and Andrea. He knew Andrea had written some of them, so he meticulously fitted the scraps back together with cellophane tape. In addition to being filled with profanities, they alluded to a mysterious event to take place on Halloween night which seemed to be some kind of intimate interlude between Andrea and George. Bill told me about this, and while he seemed upset with it because the liaison wasn’t happening with him, I took it as an extremely disastrous possibility. At the time I was still ingrained with the notion that any and all physical contact outside of marriage was the worst sin imaginable, and I couldn’t fathom a teenager willingly engaging in it.
I began worrying and fretting over it continually, hoping it wouldn’t happen, disbelief that it could — never did I wish it was me instead. Finally I could speculate about it no more — I confronted her on a school trip about the note and asked her if the possibility was true. She laughed and played it off, but I think it was likely something did happen since the gossip mill really started to churn at that point. This prompted a rift between Bill and I though — because he told me to never mention the note to Andrea. Apparently one of the teachers had found it after Bill threw it away, and it got Andrea and Carrie in a lot of trouble due to the foul language. Bill rightly believed that Andrea blamed him for this.
Her virtue once again assured, my obsession with her grew even further. I began to refer to myself as Don Quixote and she as Dulcinea in my journals, since I had a suspicion my crush was an impossible fantasy. I talked about her for hours with all my closest friends. I dreamed about making calls to the local Oldies station (the closest thing to rock available in our primarily Baptist town) and calling in requests for her of laughably sentimental songs like “Cherish Is The Word” and “Just My Imagination.” In my Journals, I developed the idea that if I did something incredibly romantic, she could not deny the depth of my love and would fall for me based simply on that. (I hadn’t realized yet that obsession is creepy when you’re unattractive and desirable when you are, nor that the most desirable person to most people is the one hardest to get.)
Then I developed a plan. I would purchase a dozen roses (very expensive) and send them to her anonymously with a beautiful letter describing my love, explaining that if she was interested I would announce my identity at a later date. It was incredibly verbose and (in my estimation at the time) quite poetic. I went on at length about my undying love for her, even my need for her — about how much I thought about her, wrote about her, and couldn’t sleep because of her. I told her that I knew nothing would ever happen between us, but it was a beautiful dream of mine that she would one day give me a chance. I hesitated over the letter for days, afraid to go through with my plan because of the likelihood of rejection. Eventually I took the plunge and did it.
The flowers arrived on a Tuesday. Andrea was flabbergasted. She began to wonder who it was; and of course, hope that it was George. George’s brother Luther was asked if he wrote it, and he humorously stated that he couldn’t even understand half of it, much less write it. (Then he grabbed his crotch and grunted.) Because the letter had such a flowery vocabulary its author should have been obvious to everyone, but Darron was the only one to instantly recognize who its author was (he had even read my Journals at one time). He confronted me about it and I sheepishly admitted to writing the letter, despite my plan to allow Andrea to ruminate over it for a time. I heard later that once she found out who had written it, she went to the girls’ bathroom and wept. I liked to think it was because of the beauty of a love that would forever be unrequited, or sorrow that it had not been her love interest, but probably it was due to sheer embarrassment.
Utterly defeated, I sunk into a pit of shame and worthlessness. I didn’t talk to any of my friends for a time. I had signed the letter “Lance” and even teachers began calling me by that name in order to ridicule me. It provoked a lot of discussion among the classmates, since it came out of nowhere and was so dramatic. I mourned in my journal entries for days. The only thing fortunate about my crushes is this: although they are deep and overwhelming they are extremely short-lived. By the time I graduated I had lost all interest in her, although the damage from rejection shaped all my future encounters with women. The few times I showed interest in any it was always with deep hesitance and made known through a third party.
I found out later that my brother tried an identical trick with a girl he crushed on, with identical results.