How to Crush Without Being Crushed

A long time ago, when I was just a wee lad, not even cognizant of what a crush was, the seeds of my longest lasting crush were planted.

There were a few people I could always be found with back then. As seems to always be the case in my life, a couple of them were girls. One of them moved away in fifth grade. Her name was (and probably still is) Mercedes.

On and off, ever since, I’ve found myself dipping into massive crush mode when I think about her.

Wait. That’s not entirely true. See, I haven’t seen or heard from her since fifth grade. And I most certainly do not find myself crushing on the 11 year old her that I last actually remember. (Partially because that’s just creepy and partially because I can’t think about the pre-teen her without slipping into the pre-teen me mindset–which leaves her, mostly, just a cool friend.)

No, what I crush on is the totally imaginary her that I’ve created in my mind. And, believe me, over the years I’ve come up with a few different versions.

Each and every one of those versions, is someone completely different. And yet, still completely her. There are core traits that carry through, no matter once. Her fiery temper. Her down to earth nature. Her innate creativity. All things I remember clearly from way back when.

What changes in my imaginary versions are how those things are expressed.

Maybe, I’d think, she grew up to be some sort of wild artist. Living a bohemian life thanks to having relatives to visit frequently in Europe (her mother was from Spain, her father was from Germany–the arguments in their house took place in three languages at once… it was frightening). I see her with wild hair and a devil-may-care grin, equally at home in high society or back-alley pubs. Living commission to commission and enjoying every minute of it.

Or perhaps, I’d imagine, she caught the science bug and dug into chemistry. Her brown eyes (that narrow so severely when she’s angry) sparkling behind a pair of glasses (so many of us in that class ended up with glasses). She’d be directing her passion toward some greater understanding of how things work, the creation of something that would make life better. She was never about destruction growing up, why should that change?

Then I think, what if that move (to Florida, of all places) didn’t do her all that well. And I image her as a disaffected gothy punk–all jet black hair and dark eye makeup. Her creative nature could have turned a bit dark with problems at school and arguments with her family. There would, of course, be tattoos. Vivid and macabre. Perhaps with a touch of nostalgia–an oddly colored striped cat in battle armor, some swords and skeletons. In this alternative version, she would, of course, be the singer in a band.

There’s more that could be–some more wild, some less–but I crush on them all when they cross my mind. And with each iteration, I learn more about myself. I learn more about what it is that I find attractive.

It’s not so much about the expression. It’s about the root, the underlying motivation for the expression.

That’s something that took me a long time to learn. It didn’t happen until long after I’d realized the amazing breadth of my crushes in general. I wrote it off for ages as me just being strange. But it wasn’t. It was me, unknowingly, being perceptive. It was me seeing through the mess of pretenses and finding that spark that resonated with what was inside of me.

And that’s what we can all find by looking at the relationships we get into and those we fantasize about. That insight into ourselves, culled from the commonalities in ourselves and the objects of our affections (be they real people or hypothetical constructs).

As I come down from the heights of yet another bout of crushing on the now near-mythical Mercedes, I wonder, somberly and honestly, what she’s really doing these days.

Sometimes, I like to think maybe she thinks similar things of me.

Then I’m right back to crushing all over again.

This was taken many, many years ago during a play my class did for Christmas. I was a toy soldier, Ross (in the middle) was a mouse, Mercedes was in the audience.

Tags: fantasy

Such a vision of loveliness on such a gray and dreary day.

She got on the Metro with a small group of others at the GMU stop and sat near the door. From behind the plexiglass divider, across the clear expanse of carpet, I could see her clearly.

She was just slightly shorter than me in her subtle, dark flats. A smile blue dress–the color of a darkening summer sky–with small white buttons down the front was topped with a darker (though no more flashy) long sleeved coat.

Her sharp brown eyes flashed intently beneath her straight, not too thick eyebrows (which had me thinking, vaguely. of Brooke Shields). Her hair dipped below her shoulders and was thick. Not overdone but nicely rich adn flowing–hiding her ears and framing her well-cut (though not quite sharp) jawline.

The smoother feminine muscles of her legs told tales of much walking–perhaps more intense exercise, jogging, some light biking. They remained crossed at the knee for the entire ride, her left foot keeping time with the rattle and bounce of the train on the tracks.

She sat there, across from me, reading. Not a book or a newspaper but class notes of some sort. The well-spaced handwriting filling the fonts and backs of a small stack of loose papers, interspersed here and there with red notes and some highlights.

Intently, she read those words. Absently twirling an errant strand of hair. Gently running her hand along her chin and neck. curling her tapered and unadorned fingers beneath her chin and frowning slightly at a particular page. Then, a smile and a silent laugh at another.

She wore no jewelry except for a thin, white coral beaded bracelet an a subtly patterned dark metallic women’s watch. Both were on her right wrist. no necklaces or rings. Perhaps, beneath that shine of hair, there were earrings, but I doubt it.

Every now and then her eyes would dart up in my direction. Could she tell, even through my dark glasses and tilted away from her head that I was watching her intermittently? Or was she only seein gthe reflections in the glass that separated us? Or was she looking nowhere as Metro riders often do, lost in her own thoughts about what she was reading?

She was not without distinctive favor in her fashion. While her clothing was solid in color and moderately conservative in cut, the strap on the messenger bag she carried boasted a striking 70’s style swirling striped print. And tied on that bag, sneaking out from beneath her arm was a cream and brown scarf, caying out “Look! I can be Bohemian if given the chance!”

And so I rode for the better part of an hour, daring glimpses at the vision across the divide. Careful not to stare too intently, lest i feel like more of a letch than I probably am. Hoping, of so slightly, that those glances and smiles were truly directed at me. Wishing a bit that what she was seeing through the glass was something other than what I see when I look in the mirror or at most pictures. (We are our own worst critics, are we not?)

The train rolled in to the Vienna station and, as she gathered her bag while making a cell call, that wild strap pulled on the edge of her dress, loosing that alwaysprecarious top button, dropping the neckline another two inches.

Daring? Obscene? Inappropriate? No. But, in this case, the epitome of sexy–of potential promise and chances of ecstasy. A glimpse (because that is all I would allow myself) of the clear inner curve of her breasts and the ver so slight appearance of the front connecting fabric of her bra. That little fabric–stark in its paleness against her healthy, tanned skin–lingerd in my mind as I averted my eyes (something that two of the other men around me, leering little boy smirks on their faces, did not do).

The things that we find sexy–that really turns us on–are often so subtle that we forget what they really are. The curve of the neck as it meets the shoulder. The gentle absent trailing of a finger across her chin. The fierce burst of connection that flashes in her eyes. That one hint of undergarment, visible for only a moment, yet always there…

She seemed friendly enough. At any point during the ride, I could have approached her and struck up a conversation.

But I didn’t.

The fantasy of her–a stuent, dedicated to learning, yet yearning to just run away and live, to be somone else, to experiece and explore–was perfect for me right then. Why would I want to shatter it with a reality that could have left us both trapped and uncomfortable on that train? Why spoil perfection on a humid and cloudy August-in-October day?

As I walked along the station platform, I made a decision. If, when we reached the upper level, she and I went in the same direction to catch our respective rides, would speak to her. Safe, away from the confines of the train. Easy escape routes available for us both. I know how I can come across. I know people sometimes like to be able to get away. I know sometimes I need to hide around a corner after opening my fool mouth.

My heart quickened as I watched her–now out of the corner of my eye–as she stepped off the escalator. She went left and my heart dropped as I turned right.

I doubt I will ever see her again and, if I do, I will probably not recognize her. Nor she me.

[The above was written–by hand in an actual paper journal–in the 40 or so minutes I spent waiting for my ride to show up at the Metro station, on my way to a friend’s wedding far, far away this past weekend. If nothing else, it was a good way to start a road trip.]

Tags: fantasy

It usually got cooler there quite a bit sooner up in rural New York than it does around here, so old memories are triggered at times they don’t actually correspond to. Heck, by the time October rolled around, we were often already well acquainted with our heavier jackets.

That odd temporal shift of memories crops up at odd times. Lately, when I catch just the right breeze and see the sun setting, I remember many a night spent with friends up North. This is one of those memories…

It was the end of summer just before my sophomore year in high school. As usual, I was hanging out with my cousin and her friends in the little community that we lived in. When I hung out back then, it was usually either with them or with my buddy T. It was a lazy late summer night, the slight chill of fall was just barely creeping in. The sun was still setting late enough to spend a lot of time wandering around before it was too dark to see.

And when it became too dark to see, well, that’s when the real fun always started.

On this particular night, that fun didn’t involved drinks or drugs–a sad rarity in this crowd. No, on this particular night we were up to something much more my speed.

Someone, most likely Mike (one of the local boys who would very soon after end up on my cousin’s parentally imposed “Black List”–making my job as an alibi even more important), suggested we play a game of manhunt. Being young and bored, we all readily agreed.

For anyone who doesn’t know, manhunt is basically a glorified version of “hide and seek” with a dash of “capture the flag” thrown in. You split up into two teams. One team hides, the other seeks. Some other variations include home-base rules similar to capture the flag, but we weren’t that organized.

There weren’t a lot of us, but we were already split kind of evenly along gender lines. There were me, Mike, Jason and Dan on the guy side (that was only half of what the group would eventually be… and all but me would end up in trouble at some point in the future) on the guys’ side. On the girls’ team were my cousin, Jodi, Jody and Marcella (as time went on, more names would get added to that list, too… though at any given time half of them wouldn’t be speaking to the other half). We sent the girls out to hide first.

Now, I grew up in a very rural small hamlet of a small town nestled comfortably in the woods. My particular hamlet was, long ago, a private gated community. The gates were gone long before I was born and any exclusivity had gone soon after them. There were groups of houses close together, but there were also overgrown vacant lots and long swaths of genuine forest that had yet to be developed. In order to be “found” you not only had to be spotted, you had to be tagged. For our game of manhunt, we had set the boundaries to a moderate sized area that included a good mix of these different terrain types. The good news was that since it was the end of summer, most of the seasonal residents had already gotten on their way south for the impending winter. This made their yards fair game for us.

It seems that back then I spent a lot of time hiding with this group. Especially after my cousin was forbidden to be around most of them. See, these were the “bad boys” of my little piece of woods. They were the stoners, the drunks, the general juvenile delinquents. They were also members of a couple of families with reputations stretching back at least to my parents’ generation–maybe further. In a small town, when your family has a reputation, be it good or bad, you’re pigeonholed from the day you start school until you either graduate or break the mold and make a name for yourself. This generally seemed to apply more to guys than girls, though I can think of my parents giving me a strange look when I mentioned the last name of female friends–but that only happened twice, and they weren’t even from my hunk of woods.

In fact, most of the girls that were ever part of that group were imports of some sort. They either came from outside of our hunk of woods or had just moved there. My cousin fell into the latter group, as did Jodi and Jody. Marcella, on the other hand, was local. She lived right down the road and around the corner from on the other side of the woods from where were hiding and seeking that night. I was pretty good friends with her older brother (who would later go on to turn down a film gig with Disney in favor of finishing high school and later become a broke, gay, cabaret actor), so I had known her for a few years. We’d all ride our bikes together. Come to think of it, she was the one who stopped short in front of me once, causing me to run into her, throwing me backward off my bike and bouncing my head on the pavement something good (who needs helmets? Not me…).

Somewhere along the way, though, Marcella went from being the not-quite-annoying little sister to a pretty cool young woman. And at some point that summer, probably during those long nights we all hung out together, I got a bit enamored with her. By the time this game of manhunt rolled around, I was in full-out crush mode. I clearly remember being very happy that she came out that night. I remember how the light of the moon added silver highlights to her dark brown hair. How her slight accent carried across the cooling air, sometimes mingling with the chirps of the crickets and frogs into a natural symphony of indescribably beauty. I remember how the sweater she wore that night felt when I touched her arm, convincing her to stick around for the game.

Nothing, of course, would ever come of that crush. I was quite happy when she stopped hanging out with the group. I like to think that kept her from getting sucked in to the muck and mire with some of the others.

The game was on. The girls were hidden and we were hunting for them. It was dark, but I’ve always been at home in the dark. I can see in the dark better than many other people, or at least I could back then (kind of funny when you take into account that what everyone else was eventually smoking is supposed to increase night vision…). My best catch that night was a double. Slinking around the corner of a house, sticking to the bushes and deep shadows, I heard people talking a little down the hill, in the middle of the yard. I circled around, confirming that it was, indeed, two of the girls hunkered down behind the one bush in the middle of an open yard. At one point, they had almost seen me–I had accidentally rattled a bush as I passed by it. When I came up behind them, they were still discussing if they had seen anything or not. As I tapped them both on the shoulder at the same time, I told them “You really have to be quieter.” They jumped straight up and almost screamed.

After the women were rounded up, it was they guys turn to hide. We scattered and found our places. I set myself up in a small clump of trees, just across from my uncle’s house (which we were using as a starting point). Mike would later tell about how he shimmied up onto a neighbor’s roof and nearly fell off when he tried to move from one section to another–right before he was spotted and tagged. Dan had gotten himself underneath a car or boat that had been battened down for the season–he was found and tagged, too, but not without a chase through a briar patch. Jason, I’m not sure where he hid, but he was chased through the same briar patch Dan was. Me? They never found me. Even with all of them looking. I’m just glad I was hiding close enough to hear them call off the game. It was satisfying. Though not quite as much as the time I hid on a bench, in plain sight, with a bright light shining down right over my head–that was priceless. I think I even waved at some of the “hunters” when they walked by.

That was a good night. Probably one of the overall best I ever spent with that group. Definitely one of the most sober, too. I don’t think there was any alcohol or weed consumed by anyone that entire day. It may have been the last day like that. All my other memories of that crew, especially once a few other people were added, all involve them in a drug and alcohol induced haze. They weren’t fun drunks, either. That would have been entertaining. As it was, it was just sad and depressing.

But that night. That one night. That was a good night.

Tags: friends

Above all else, self control is the key to making a Grown Up Crush happen.

Without self control, without the ability to follow the rules, there is little to be gained from a crush that can’t be gained just as easily (and painfully) as from jumping into a relationship.

The rules to be followed can go well beyond the basic rules of crushes. You can take any rules you like and practice your self control by making yourself follow them. Like a muscle, willpower gets stronger the more you work it.

Start with little things–waiting an extra ten minutes before tearing into dessert, putting off picking up that new DVD until the second week it’s out–things that don’t really matter in the scheme of things. If you’re a chronic dater, work up to spending some time single. If you’re shy, work up to starting a conversation with someone new.

What’s important is that you learn where your weaknesses are, self-control-wise, and work on them. Get used to a more strict routine, force yourself to pay attention to what you do, how you do it and how it makes you feel.

By creating your own rules to live by–and sticking to them–you gain not just a deeper amount of self-knowledge but also a higher level of self control.

Both of those benefit anyone working on Grown Up Crushes.

It’s not easy to move into the “Grown Up Crush Zone” when having just a plain old crush is fun and exciting. But if you are aware of how you react and are able to assert control over yourself–if you are able to step up and play by the rules of the Grown Up Crush–you’ll be able to take full advantage of everything it has to offer.

Of course, if you’re not careful, you can become trapped by your own arbitrary rules. Never be afraid to discard a rule you’ve created if it becomes too much of a hindrance–or if you find yourself using your rules as an excuse to totally isolate yourself from the rest of your life.

Rules are there to give us boundaries and perspective. If they begin to confine and cloud, they have lost their usefulness as tools and should be discarded.

Random bits from longer discourses running through my head.

I remember the thought of her more fondly than the reality. From a distance, she was amazing. From a distance, she was all in my imagination. Reality? Not so good. At least I was smart (or lucky) enough to realize it quickly…

There was once a time when I wanted nothing more than to run my fingers gently along your skin. Listening for the quickening of your breath. Waiting for the inevitable tensing… and the relaxing. Watching the hairs on the back of your neck or your arms stand at attention and then quiver beneath my breath. Some days I still want that. Some days it’s still you I want it from…

Old lovers can, indeed, be good friends. Good friends can, indeed, be lovers. Sometimes it’s a question of circumstance, others a question of timing. Mine? Always a bit off…

There is a distinct dread that accompanies the prospect of getting into a romantic relationship. Will she meet my expectations? (Probably… I don’t have a lot.) Will I meet hers? (Ah! Now that’s where the dread enters!)…

People are amazed that I’ve been single for almost nine years. It was the first few that were most difficult, when I was still fresh from a long relationship. There’s nothing quite as hollow as those first few months without someone there. Especially if you’d only been apart from them, at most, a month or so over the previous three years. After the first year or so–especially with the slim pickings I was surrounded by–it gets a lot easier. After year five, those pangs of “want” only come back during special occasions. Really, it’s quite easy at this point…

“Easy” isn’t always “the right thing.” This holds true no matter the situation. Some of the greatest satisfaction–and reward–I’ve received has been from forgoing the “sure thing” and working up to the point where I tripped over the unexpected, hard-to-attain. Ask some and they’d swear I did the impossible once or twice. I don’t think I did. I’m just patient…

Lemons, lemonade, whatever life gives you and what you do with it, sometimes you still get some in a cut and it burns like a sonofabitch…

Unhappiness is normal in any relationship. Constant unhappiness is not. Feelings of fear are a dead on sign you should not be there–even if it’s fear of what you may do to them…

I learned long ago to be careful what I wish for. The Universe has a twisted sense of humor (not unlike the genies that showed up in Twilight Zone episodes or wishes granted by odd shriveled simian appendages). Oh, you’ll get what you ask for all right… and a whole lot more…

If all you think of is “her” then there’s a problem. There’s also a problem if you don’t think of her at all. I’ve been in both places. Neither is fun or easy to get out of…

Crushes can teach you a lot about yourself. So can relationships. Thing is, you have to want to learn and be willing to put the effort in to make either of those classes work for you. Without taking the chance of self-awareness, you’ll be happy, but dull…

What you want and what you need are often very different things that aren’t always compatible. Learn which is which and choose wisely which you focus on…

Being head over heels (in general) is almost like being head over heels (in love). Things keep spinning in odd directions, you find yourself thinking and doing strange things and, before you know it, people are looking at you funny…

Friendship is the most pure and common type of Love. We so seldom recognize it as such because of all the baggage the term “love” brings with it. I blame our language. Other languages have more elegant distinctions than just “I like her” and “I like like her”…

“Like” is a funny term…

So is “auto-erotic asphyxiation.” But I blame that one episode of the X Files for the chuckle I get from that one…

Sometimes, the best person for you is right there in front of you. Sometimes, neither of you realize that. (But everyone else around you most certainly does. Eventually.)…

Related to that last one: We always miss within ourselves what is most obvious to us in other people. Think about that when you’re watching other people.

Tags: introspection