Hal O'Brien

Here is your truth... Please tell us how you knew you were in love for the very first time. What were the circumstances that made ya finally cross that line and say to yourself... hey this ones a keeper.

Hrm. Well. Gosh.

The first woman I remember being in love with was back in seventh grade. Her name was Janet Miller. Somewhat horsey, even allowing for the sticks-out-at-all-angles nature of the age, but I thought she was cute. And funny. And smart -- we were tracked together in all kinds of "gifted" programs. Trouble was...

...trouble was, I was who I was. Which at that time meant I was taller than most kids, skinny as a rail, redheaded, unwilling to hide the fact I was smart, wore glasses thick enough for nuclear shielding, and had a boy soprano voice. I suppose if I was gay and black as well, I'd have been *perfect* for being the most despised kid in school, but somehow I managed anyway.

But, for all that, I was used to it. I didn't like it at all, but I knew what was going on, and knew what to expect on a day-to-day basis.

Janet didn't.

So we'd only been a very tentative item for, what, a week? week and a half? when she ran, crying, into the girl's room, and refused to come out. She'd just kind of crumpled from the teasing. Took the vice-principal to talk her down.

What it meant was that I was then put into a double-bind. I wanted to be with girls. But if I did anything about it, I'd hurt them the same way I saw Janet hurt. And I have enough empathy that I didn't want that.

I don't know, for sure, just how accurate that dilemma Was. But it made my teenage years even more of a hell than most folks', I imagine -- though that may be pure ego again. {shrug}

*^*^

Later that year was Kim Hall. The names are different, but this is what I once wrote about Kim, myself, and my best friend Mike (there's some repetition, but there you go):

It reminded me of a time, back in seventh grade. It was perhaps my first school dance. I was tall and gawky, I still had a boy soprano voice--I was way too smart, and not wise enough to hide it very well. I had a very hard crush back then on a girl. Sarah Alston her name was. She was also tall for her age, and stuck out at odd angles--but I found that endearing. She had tanned, smooth skin. A pixieish face that would light up in one of her smiles. And as far as I could tell, listening to her in class, she seemed to be bright. Her fatal embarrassment--every seventh grader has one--was her teeth, which were slightly bucked. Enough to make that the target of our classmates.

Anyway, cut to the night of the dance. Picture me, then, in a seventies plaid shirt, corduroy pants too short on my ankles by about two inches, glasses thick enough to serve as shielding at Three Mile Island, with those seventies red mock-turtle-shell plastic frames. Big clunky black dress shoes imported from Czechoslovakia, that happenin' showcase of the height of fashion.

Sigh.

And I watch Sarah all night. Sarah dances with lots of the guys--although in retrospect, I seem to recall the glint in her eyes being more terror than anything else. We were all so afraid of each other back then.

And I try to screw up my courage to ask her to dance.

But for me, there was so much more on the line. Because I loved her--or so I thought at the time. My tiny little seventh grade heart was just going pitter pat. And I knew . . . Well, I knew that everyone hated me--save for a very small circle of friends.

So, here I was, contemplating asking this achingly beautiful creature to dance with me--and I knew I didn't deserve it. And if I couldn't convince myself, how could I convince her?

So I just kind of crumpled, in what I thought was a very quiet way. I went off to a corner of the room, folded my arms, closed my eyes very tightly, and just sat there still as a stone. Listening to "Boogie Nights".

After a time, my best friend, Gabriel Goodman--who fifteen years later would be my best man at my wedding--noticed me. He came softly over--though I could hear his footsteps from miles away, listening to every creak of the wooden gym floor--and asked what was wrong. I wouldn't answer. I just stayed near catatonic--No words spoken, no sights seen, just listening, and feeling like my consciousness was deep down a well.

Gabe knew me then--and now, even though we haven't spoken for a long time--better than anyone else in the world. Gabe knew about how I felt about Sarah. I figure he went off and talked to her. Other kids noticed me, gathered in a circle around me, and made jeering, profane wisecracks.

Then I hear in my ear Gabe's voice saying, "Johnny, there's somebody here who wants to ask you something . . ."

And then I hear Sarah's voice in my other ear . . . "Johnny, would you like to dance with me?"

If this was a Hollywood screenplay, I would have flashed open my eyes, embraced her, and done a tango with her on the gym floor, right out of True Lies. We'd've gotten married, had a passel of kids . . .

If this was a mystery novel, and I was a fictional PI, it never would have happened--Somehow, Chandler's characters, and Dash's, and McDonald . . . They all seem to have a history that stretches back all the way to last week . . .

But being a flesh-and-blood real man, even though I'd eventually gotten to live my power fantasy . . .

Well, I was still a thirty-mumble former stockbroker, in a gallery loft, hands scrunched up tightly against my eyes, dwelling in my childhood memories of when everything was handed to me on a silver platter--and I was so desperately sure I didn't deserve it that I just sat there, frozen and immobile . . .

*^*^*

I'm not a stockbroker, that's just part of the novel.

Hm.

Part of it is, I can't really say what I love about women, in a very specific sense like that. The women I love usually kind of sneak up on me, so there's no one real moment where I can draw a line and say, "From this point forward, and not before..."

Except, maybe, one time...

Senior year in high school. Which was a prep school, Midland, on a 2800 acre ranch and 80 students.

Sometimes, as a treat, we'd get that chance to go in a group together to the theatre at the community college in Santa Maria. It's a famous program there -- Powers Boothe and Robin Williams both went there.

So.

It's the bus ride after the play. Must've been February or March or so. Late night, for us. Full moon.

And one girl, Eliza, was just a row or two in front of me on the bus. Slumped to one side, trying to sleep. I watched the moonlight reflected in her hair; and thought about how happy she'd seemed that night, watching the play; and thought about all the other times I'd seen her, my whole career at Midland, because even though she was a sophomore (I think) she was also a faculty brat...

It's not the looks first, or hardly ever. I have to know someone, know something of what they think, know something of their tastes, something about what they find funny...

I don't know. It's a whole gestalt, and not any one thing. And it never turns off -- or at least, it hasn't for me, so far. They're all in my heart, somehow. I think love is a skill, something you get better at over time. I don't think it's a fixed reservoir -- "If you love her, then you must not fully love me!" Feh. Perhaps for some. Not for me.

Anyway.

More than you ever wanted to know, right? :)