I don’t remember what I was like in high school. When I close my eyes and think back I see a much smaller version of myself. So small that I imagine myself drowning in my bed while I streamed shows on my ThinkPad waiting for someone to ask me about myself. If someone finally did I would’ve just rolled my eyes and turned my head to let them know I didn’t bother myself with my own feelings.
It’s hard to write about who I was in the first person because I don’t feel like I was real. I wouldn’t make eye contact with people in the hallways out of fear of rejection and had no interests besides ennui. I had three friends and maybe what seemed like more but when I discovered my own interests I had none.
THEN
I once slept with a guy who called me mom. Ok not really, but he told me he did in a dream. It was March break and he invited me over to his house on Snapchat after sending me a video of him cumming in his toilet. I spent 45 minutes navigating the bus system in the suburbs before I arrived at his place. We had quick and lousy sex for the second time in my life. That’s when I learned that men like to suck on nipples like a baby and I have to pretend that I feel something. We were 16. The next week he showed up to school holding hands with another girl in our class.
His name was Daniel. He had tan white skin, dirty blonde hair, a unibrow he lasered off in the eighth grade, and a summer job at the golf club where guys with Porsches would tip him with $50 bills. He was the type of guy who prided himself on his bravado. He told teachers to kill themselves and then would find their daughters on Instagram to seduce them. The principal would have him sit in her office at lunch so that she could laugh at his jokes. A middle child to two sisters, he used his golf club money to support his parents. We all found that endearing. When he would pass by me I’d take a second to inhale his Old Spice aura like a drug. I knew I was in too deep when I looked at the friends he would dry hump in the locker room with covetous eyes.
I never told any of my friends what happened between Dan and I because it didn’t matter. He was the most loathed guy in our grade but also the most loved. He would ask for nudes from every girl and would receive them. He had two phones for them: one for his Snapchat and the other for him to take pictures in secret. He kept them in a folder on his iPod and would sit in the back of ethics class to show all his friends. I would sit near them and pretend not to hear. Those boys were my friends too. They’d laugh at my attraction to him. Two years later they told me that one night they set up chairs in a circle facing away from each other and masturbated together. But they’re not gay.
We had a Snapchat streak because I sent him my morning eggs, cream cheese and jam on toast, peanut butter and bananas, or just plain eggs and butter. Over 612 days my mom never made me cereal or pancakes on weekdays. Our streak was my pride and joy. I sent him other things too like my dog, me as a dog, or my friends as dogs. Anything to keep that little flame. I guarded it like it was my deepest secret. I would stare at him all day in class waiting for him to look at me and when he did I’d go to the bathroom to pee and mark the context and time stamp in my notes app. He would harass me on Snap after school for nudes and told me to quit staring at him in class. He told me he knew he was my first even though I told him otherwise. He would like and immediately unlike my Instagram posts. He would beg for my attention and I would give it to him. He would use it against me when I’d complain. He saw right through me but he was a shadow in my world. This had been going on for four years before that.
I don’t remember the first time I saw him but I remember how I felt. Hot in the face and tight in my body. I couldn’t keep my eyes off him even if I tried. I’d run out of school to catch the same bus as him, roll up my skirt like all the other girls, and make a big deal about how annoying he was. Each eye roll became more and more natural as high school went on but my crush on him never waned. He dictated every direction my eyes moved in and every voice in my head. It was the type of crush that kept me full for weeks on end, snacking on his attention and messages.
My best friends Mikayla and Zara were annoyed at my incessant crush on Dan. Mikayla and Zara were also close friends with him. They’d study after school together but didn’t pressure him on my matter no matter how much I begged them to. They both knew all the other girls he’d slept with. How when Julia became attractive in 11th grade he invited her to hang out and they did anal in the park on Sunday night. Or how he tried his hand at both of them but they knew better than to give in. To them, I was just another story.
I can’t pinpoint what exactly I wanted from him. It was a mixture of attention, sex, and satisfaction, but mostly acknowledgement. I didn’t care for him as much as I cared about the attention that came from him and everyone around him. I had to compensate for some other attention missing from my life. How was I supposed to move on with my life after four years if the man who wanted me in my phone didn’t let me around him in real life?
Male attention is a funny thing. Boys in high school are always too busy hating girls and we’re busy hating each other too. Is that bad? Is that sad? I’m not sure that I really care because I only knew female friendship as a competition. Even Mikayla and Zara always held their heads up high around me when I complained about the same guy. Mikayla would throw parties in her basement and beg everyone to come shopping with her downtown just so we could hang out with the guys. Zara would tell me not to spend so much time thinking about them while she sat on their laps and asked them to braid her hair. Was it really that bad?
One Saturday night I was invited to a party. One of those high school parties you see 16-year-olds long for on Twitter. The ones in the basement of a McMansion that has oak cabinets and walls with a yellow glow. The people at this party weren’t my usual friends but I had Zara to guide me. I made it a goal to move on from Dan that night with the edibles I bought from him.
My only real male friend Luke showed up to the party with a plastic bag full of leftover donuts from his shift at Tim Hortons. He asked me why I would associate myself with guys like Dan but I was too busy licking the maple glaze off the bag to answer his question. It tasted sweet like carelessness, a distraction I was too familiar with. I could tell he didn’t want me to respond anyway. Everything between me and the boys changed once they found out I slept with Dan. They only liked hearing his stories not living them.
NOW
I once slept with a guy who wanted me too much. He was five months younger than me and thought of love and relationships with a brazen assurance. He believed in something more than me that I didn’t care to know about.
This guy was very different than anyone else I’ve known. Borderline cheugy, had no online presence and saw me as someone to lick his wounds. I couldn’t stand him. If you saw us you’d think we looked good together. It’s hard to reject people when they give you what you ask for. It’s only when you’re put in this place that you understand why someone had to string you along. It makes having your heart broken seem like an easy thing to get over. That way you know better than to stick around for it.
When will I stop writing about the men that rule my life? Male attention is fierce, water is wet, and the sky is blue. I’m not asking for pity or complaining about my problems but stating my reality of young friendships. You have to be beaten down to see the humanity in some men. You have to know better before you can trust them. If you let yourself be vulnerable with the wrong person once it’s over for you for the rest of time. That’s why no one in high school wants you and why you don’t want yourself. That’s why people tell you to do better but you don’t listen. Is there another to learn all this without getting your hair pulled?
This is how I choose to remember my time. I can look back and feel stupid about everything and wish me and my friends spent our time getting to know each other without boys around. I can say that I didn’t want any of it to happen. I can say that I don’t remember what I was like. I can say all that until I convince myself that everyone feels the same. It’s ok that I’m the only one who thinks about it. I’ve been left on delivered for seven years, waiting for them to come and meet me.