5/23/01: My First Love
Today I want to tell you the story of my first love, which, now that I look back on it, was a hopeless tangle of lies, misunderstanding, delusions, and general mismanagement.
My first love was an older man.
He would say to me, "Loretta, I am so much older than you."
And I would say, "No, you're not, Brian."
"Yes, I am." He seemed proud of this fact.
And I would insist: "But we're both five, Brian."
"No, you were born in August and I was born in April so I'm older than you."
And this argument, with minor changes, continued for the life of our relationship.
I guess it was inevitable that I would fall in love with him. He lived across the street from me when I lived with my grandmother, and we were much thrown together. Oh, the wild capriciousness of fate! -- He was the only other child in walking distance. That is, except for Howie, but Howie didn't count. Brian and I used to tell him that we heard his mother calling, so that he'd go home.
Howie's mother told me that it wasn't nice to say that someone's mother was calling when she wasn't. I was miffed that she was implying that I had lied. To me, it wasn't really a lie, because it was something I wanted to be true -- I wanted to be alone with Brian.
Brian had a charm and a flair. He also had an adventurous life that left me a little confused. He would tell me stories about the time he was ringmaster in the circus or how he could understand what the animals said, and something about it was unsettling to me. I didn't understand how Brian could only talk to the birds when no one else was around; it didn't jive with my logic. And ringmaster of the circus? I thought about my Fischer Price man, the little plastic man with no arms and no legs, who was accessorized to be a circus ringmaster. I imagined Brian -- freckled, somewhat grimy -- dressed like my little ringmaster man: tuxedoed, monocled, mustachioed, limbless. It didn't seem likely somehow.
One day I came to understand it this way: Brian was exaggerating. That was my word for it when the things Brian said had nothing to do with the truth. So I thought I would exaggerate, too. When Brian told me that he could breathe underwater, I said, "Yeah? Well, sometimes, I can fly." This was an exaggeration, because I could only fly very, very rarely, and at uncertain intervals, most specifically, when I was asleep. But it didn't seem like a lie to me, at the time. So it was very hurtful when Brian tilted his head to the side and said: "Sure."
I forgave him these small sins, though. I adored him, and we had a lot of things to do, no time to be angry. We played on our swingsets -- his place or mine, it didn't matter since we had matching sets: trapeze, swing, monkey bars. One day I was out with him in grandma's backyard, and I realized that my undershirt was untucked. I don't think English has a word to describe my utter humiliation at realizing this. I couldn't tuck it back in with him watching, so I told him that my Cabbage Patch Doll was sick and I had to go put her to bed. This seemed a perfectly reasonable excuse. I ran inside, tucked my shirt in, and went back out. And he was gone.
The next day his mother told me that it wasn't nice to say that your doll was sick as an excuse not to play. I wanted to tell her that it wasn't that kind of excuse. It was an exaggeration or something, and I wouldn't apologize. But later on I changed my mind and wanted to say I was sorry and that I hadn't wanted him to go home. So I went to his house and rang the doorbell. No one answered, but the car was there, so I just kept ringing. I rang the doorbell one hundred times. I counted.
Later on he said he couldn't answer the door because his mom was in the shower.
That is my clearest memory of my love affair with Brian Theus. I never kissed him or anything. And then he moved to Missouri.