"Do you remember when... Kelly, do you remember when... When I thought that it was cool but I figured wrong?"
It wasn't the way that she looked at me that enticed me. It was the way she looked at everyone. There was a challenge in her eyes that said she wouldn't back down from anything. It was there when she looked at everyone except him. That's how I knew she wasn't really interested in him.
He was a tall lanky fellow with a dirty demeanor and a bushy moustache that flaunted his desire to look older but really, it just made him look dirty. She had invited him out as a date of sorts and I couldn't understand why. I still don't understand why. I don't understand how pretty women end up with schmoes all the time. But whatever, this wasn't the mustache schmoe's night. I was a bit younger then, stepping over boundaries even more so than I do now. I wasn't entirely trashed but the details of the night are still hazy. I remember when I pushed the kid into the street for some reason or another and laughing about it as we headed to the basement of that last bar we stopped in. I remember someone ordering a round of shots and I remember being the first to finish. I may have been wrong but after I won that mind-eraser-race, it really did seem right. I was the champ and this bushy mustached jerk was not going to keep her from me.
I remember blocking him, somehow, from being able to sit next to her. Then I remember methodically starting quarrels with the fellow and being downright rude about the whole matter. I can be damn stubborn sometimes when I drink, I can be damn stubborn when I'm sober too, so everyone's pleas for me to be more polite were futile and eventually the schmoe got up and left before any of us. That was the night me and her clicked, at least I thought we did.
The next time I saw her was after a show of mine, and she probably won't even remember this. Afterwards I had come into the audience and was talking with people about the performance. She was standing next to her friend with a navy blue pea-coat and a fluffy scarf. She was talking to some other members of the cast and I remember feeling my heart race a bit when I thought that I might be able to talk to her again. I went backstage and retrieved the rest of my items and hurried back up to try to catch her before she left but I was too late. I rode the train back to Long Island alone that night and listened to the man in the subway play the Godfather theme with an instrument that I had never seen before. I placed a dollar into his hat and continued to watch him play through the train windows as my hour and a half journey home began.
"Do you remember when... Kelly, do you remember when... When I thought that it was cool but I figured wrong?"
It would be a year or so before I saw her again. This time she was breaking some boy at the party's heart, which the reasons remained unknown. The boy left early, depressed and holding his stomach and I considered doing the same. I was a little out of place because everyone seemed to know everyone else and all I knew was about three of the girls. Although she was one of them and the chance to be near her seemed slim as she flitted about focusing her attentions on the band that happened to be hanging out with us that night. I would have picked up and left with the lovesick boy if it hadn't been for Chris Malucci who showed up out of nowhere.
I had gone to elementary school with Chris and hadn't seen him in about 15 years. He had just met one of the girls and had showed up at her request. I don't think I ever liked the kid but he was grouped loosely into the "friends" category from that time. I never liked him because he cheated at ghosts in the graveyard and wouldn't fess up to it. And then when I punched him in the head he went and told his mother and his mother threatened me. But that wasn't the only reason why i didn't like Chris Malucci. Chris Malucci was smarter than me and in every one of my classes. He knew all the correct grammar and all the answers to all the math questions and he wasn't shy about it. He liked to flaunt his intellect at every opportunity and I was just waiting for the scumbag to present an opportunity for me to clock him.
But all that was 15 years ago or so and just the fact that I was seeing someone from my childhood in the Bronx was enough to make me stick around the party to see what would happen. Chris caught me up on everything that happened in the past 15 years at P.S.119 and then he and his buddy took off. We all sat in a semi-circle and listened to the band play all their songs acoustically. She seemed so interested in the band the whole night and I sat back and watched as her admiration for them grew and any chance of finding any attention from those eyes were slim. I knew it wasn't my time. I slept across the hall from her that night and wondered if she was thinking about me.
A pool party in Long island would be my next opportunity. I showed up late, after she had already been in the pool and the party was beginning to wind down. The only person that would go into the pool with me was the hosts brother who shared the deck doing cannonballs into the pool with me. I borrowed a towel to dry off with and ate two burgers at the table while waiting for my shorts to dry before putting my shirt back on. I remember being at the butt of many of the jokes but that wasn’t why I felt uneasy. My plot to get close to her was the only thing that mattered at that time but in the end all plans were abandoned because of our trip to the beach.
It was a beautiful night, a little chilly, but the sky was perfect and the waves were sublime. We went in a group of two cars. I sat in the back of hers while she and her sister sat in front. She pretended to let me choose the CD to play but in the end we ended up listening to something like Alanis Morsette, or Tori Amos and I remember thinking that if it was anyone else I would have thrown a fit but I was just happy I wasn’t thrown into one of the other cars. We all took turns jumping off of a huge sand mound into the smaller mound of sand that was directly beside it. The way her hair flowed at the beach that day and the pitch of her childish giggle told me that the beach was her home. I had never seen her be more at happy than that day when the wind tossed her hair awakened spirits, previously unknown to me, in her. A race in the lumpy sand left me with a torn hamstring that right preventing running free on the beach with her that night but what I saw there would linger through my days until the next time we would meet.
"Do you remember when... Kelly, do you remember when... When you thought that it was cool but you figured wrong?"
Although the thought of her always existed somewhere in the back of my mind as it does now, the next time our paths would cross would be years later, after I enlisted in the military, went through basic training and finished AIT. It was about a year ago that I found myself driving across the country to make a home in Denver. It was about two months later when she arrived at the gate of the base with her sister and her sister's friend. She was doing something that I had always wanted and I was jealous. She was touring the country driving up and down the different states and staying in the places that interested them, sometimes camping, sometimes in a hotel or at a friends, whatever felt right. I was one of the stops along the way. For the first time in the years that we had known each other, she would be meeting me on my turf. And it couldn’t have been at a worse time.
For the first time in years I had a girlfriend. I didn’t realize she was my girlfriend at the time but months later she would inform me of such. It’s weird how those things work. The lines seem so fine at times when there isn’t any clarification of the terms. The night we went out without the girlfriend, I had a chance to get close to her and I told her how I felt. Like a volcano erupting the words that had been dormant for so long oozed all over the club that night and we danced in the molten lava but the
could-have-beens would still be accrued because the next day, the “girlfriend” would accompany us on our trip to Glenwood Springs and spoil any chances of what should have been.
And so, I stand here now with less than a week’s time from our next meeting and wondering where we will stand.
*Note: Lyrics taken form a song called Kelly by The
Movielife
It wasn't the way that she looked at me that enticed me. It was the way she looked at everyone. There was a challenge in her eyes that said she wouldn't back down from anything. It was there when she looked at everyone except him. That's how I knew she wasn't really interested in him.
He was a tall lanky fellow with a dirty demeanor and a bushy moustache that flaunted his desire to look older but really, it just made him look dirty. She had invited him out as a date of sorts and I couldn't understand why. I still don't understand why. I don't understand how pretty women end up with schmoes all the time. But whatever, this wasn't the mustache schmoe's night. I was a bit younger then, stepping over boundaries even more so than I do now. I wasn't entirely trashed but the details of the night are still hazy. I remember when I pushed the kid into the street for some reason or another and laughing about it as we headed to the basement of that last bar we stopped in. I remember someone ordering a round of shots and I remember being the first to finish. I may have been wrong but after I won that mind-eraser-race, it really did seem right. I was the champ and this bushy mustached jerk was not going to keep her from me.
I remember blocking him, somehow, from being able to sit next to her. Then I remember methodically starting quarrels with the fellow and being downright rude about the whole matter. I can be damn stubborn sometimes when I drink, I can be damn stubborn when I'm sober too, so everyone's pleas for me to be more polite were futile and eventually the schmoe got up and left before any of us. That was the night me and her clicked, at least I thought we did.
The next time I saw her was after a show of mine, and she probably won't even remember this. Afterwards I had come into the audience and was talking with people about the performance. She was standing next to her friend with a navy blue pea-coat and a fluffy scarf. She was talking to some other members of the cast and I remember feeling my heart race a bit when I thought that I might be able to talk to her again. I went backstage and retrieved the rest of my items and hurried back up to try to catch her before she left but I was too late. I rode the train back to Long Island alone that night and listened to the man in the subway play the Godfather theme with an instrument that I had never seen before. I placed a dollar into his hat and continued to watch him play through the train windows as my hour and a half journey home began.
"Do you remember when... Kelly, do you remember when... When I thought that it was cool but I figured wrong?"
It would be a year or so before I saw her again. This time she was breaking some boy at the party's heart, which the reasons remained unknown. The boy left early, depressed and holding his stomach and I considered doing the same. I was a little out of place because everyone seemed to know everyone else and all I knew was about three of the girls. Although she was one of them and the chance to be near her seemed slim as she flitted about focusing her attentions on the band that happened to be hanging out with us that night. I would have picked up and left with the lovesick boy if it hadn't been for Chris Malucci who showed up out of nowhere.
I had gone to elementary school with Chris and hadn't seen him in about 15 years. He had just met one of the girls and had showed up at her request. I don't think I ever liked the kid but he was grouped loosely into the "friends" category from that time. I never liked him because he cheated at ghosts in the graveyard and wouldn't fess up to it. And then when I punched him in the head he went and told his mother and his mother threatened me. But that wasn't the only reason why i didn't like Chris Malucci. Chris Malucci was smarter than me and in every one of my classes. He knew all the correct grammar and all the answers to all the math questions and he wasn't shy about it. He liked to flaunt his intellect at every opportunity and I was just waiting for the scumbag to present an opportunity for me to clock him.
But all that was 15 years ago or so and just the fact that I was seeing someone from my childhood in the Bronx was enough to make me stick around the party to see what would happen. Chris caught me up on everything that happened in the past 15 years at P.S.119 and then he and his buddy took off. We all sat in a semi-circle and listened to the band play all their songs acoustically. She seemed so interested in the band the whole night and I sat back and watched as her admiration for them grew and any chance of finding any attention from those eyes were slim. I knew it wasn't my time. I slept across the hall from her that night and wondered if she was thinking about me.
A pool party in Long island would be my next opportunity. I showed up late, after she had already been in the pool and the party was beginning to wind down. The only person that would go into the pool with me was the hosts brother who shared the deck doing cannonballs into the pool with me. I borrowed a towel to dry off with and ate two burgers at the table while waiting for my shorts to dry before putting my shirt back on. I remember being at the butt of many of the jokes but that wasn’t why I felt uneasy. My plot to get close to her was the only thing that mattered at that time but in the end all plans were abandoned because of our trip to the beach.
It was a beautiful night, a little chilly, but the sky was perfect and the waves were sublime. We went in a group of two cars. I sat in the back of hers while she and her sister sat in front. She pretended to let me choose the CD to play but in the end we ended up listening to something like Alanis Morsette, or Tori Amos and I remember thinking that if it was anyone else I would have thrown a fit but I was just happy I wasn’t thrown into one of the other cars. We all took turns jumping off of a huge sand mound into the smaller mound of sand that was directly beside it. The way her hair flowed at the beach that day and the pitch of her childish giggle told me that the beach was her home. I had never seen her be more at happy than that day when the wind tossed her hair awakened spirits, previously unknown to me, in her. A race in the lumpy sand left me with a torn hamstring that right preventing running free on the beach with her that night but what I saw there would linger through my days until the next time we would meet.
"Do you remember when... Kelly, do you remember when... When you thought that it was cool but you figured wrong?"
Although the thought of her always existed somewhere in the back of my mind as it does now, the next time our paths would cross would be years later, after I enlisted in the military, went through basic training and finished AIT. It was about a year ago that I found myself driving across the country to make a home in Denver. It was about two months later when she arrived at the gate of the base with her sister and her sister's friend. She was doing something that I had always wanted and I was jealous. She was touring the country driving up and down the different states and staying in the places that interested them, sometimes camping, sometimes in a hotel or at a friends, whatever felt right. I was one of the stops along the way. For the first time in the years that we had known each other, she would be meeting me on my turf. And it couldn’t have been at a worse time.
For the first time in years I had a girlfriend. I didn’t realize she was my girlfriend at the time but months later she would inform me of such. It’s weird how those things work. The lines seem so fine at times when there isn’t any clarification of the terms. The night we went out without the girlfriend, I had a chance to get close to her and I told her how I felt. Like a volcano erupting the words that had been dormant for so long oozed all over the club that night and we danced in the molten lava but the
could-have-beens would still be accrued because the next day, the “girlfriend” would accompany us on our trip to Glenwood Springs and spoil any chances of what should have been.
And so, I stand here now with less than a week’s time from our next meeting and wondering where we will stand.
*Note: Lyrics taken form a song called Kelly by The
Movielife
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