His name..? I forget. If I ever knew. Infatuation has no need for silly pleasantries.
aIt was a Sunday afternoon when my best friend and I decided to hang out at Rosebank mall. No boys to meet, no movies to watch, no real money to spend... After dawdling indifferently in clothing shops, slouching on steps stuffing movie popcorn into our mouths and slurping on a skinny with wings cappucino freezo from Seattle Coffee Shop (I felt adult when I bought coffee there, adult and COOL) we were at a bit of a loss. The entire day seemed a bit of a failure. We were unstimulated, we were bored, we were teen-aged. The last option was to go to Look & Listen, the cd shop of the moment and... Well no, that was the whole plan.
aAnyway, so we looked. And then we brought our cds up to the counter to listen. Now, please note that my music taste far surpassed my impressionable (definition POP: 'easily influenced because of a lack of critical ability') teenage ears. By this time I was already serenading myself with the likes of... the likes of... I don't know what I'm more worried about; that the only bands that come to mind are The Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys, or that I will actually remember what I was listening to at this stage and it will be even more embarrassing... Matchbox 20! That was one. And Our Lady Peace, another! Ah, the angst, the beauty, the shrill lead singer.
aYes. So I brought up an Our Lady Peace album to the counter, ready to subtly blow my nubile mind, when... Nice. Bloke. I thought. Doesn't matter what he looked like really, that wasn't the point. And I couldn't really describe him other than, really nice looking. He was just attractive. To me. And sort of un-South African, while being completely South African at the same time. He had a crudely fashioned white sticker stuck to the side of his face. "What's that?" "I'm Nelly!" (He was very, very white.)
aIt was a Sunday afternoon when my best friend and I decided to hang out at Rosebank mall. No boys to meet, no movies to watch, no real money to spend... After dawdling indifferently in clothing shops, slouching on steps stuffing movie popcorn into our mouths and slurping on a skinny with wings cappucino freezo from Seattle Coffee Shop (I felt adult when I bought coffee there, adult and COOL) we were at a bit of a loss. The entire day seemed a bit of a failure. We were unstimulated, we were bored, we were teen-aged. The last option was to go to Look & Listen, the cd shop of the moment and... Well no, that was the whole plan.
aAnyway, so we looked. And then we brought our cds up to the counter to listen. Now, please note that my music taste far surpassed my impressionable (definition POP: 'easily influenced because of a lack of critical ability') teenage ears. By this time I was already serenading myself with the likes of... the likes of... I don't know what I'm more worried about; that the only bands that come to mind are The Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys, or that I will actually remember what I was listening to at this stage and it will be even more embarrassing... Matchbox 20! That was one. And Our Lady Peace, another! Ah, the angst, the beauty, the shrill lead singer.
aYes. So I brought up an Our Lady Peace album to the counter, ready to subtly blow my nubile mind, when... Nice. Bloke. I thought. Doesn't matter what he looked like really, that wasn't the point. And I couldn't really describe him other than, really nice looking. He was just attractive. To me. And sort of un-South African, while being completely South African at the same time. He had a crudely fashioned white sticker stuck to the side of his face. "What's that?" "I'm Nelly!" (He was very, very white.)
I was instantly hooked.
a"Oh, Our Lady Peace. Do you know that this one song is about the guitarist's father who got cancer blah blah blah..." (This fact was to be retold about 5 times in the upcoming week.) He liked my music. He had made me laugh 3.5 times in 2 minutes. And he had a sticker on his face clearly satirizing a hip-hop artist that I thought was a fool. I immediately began picturing us at the movies holding hands. (Naivete: check.) It only got better when I asked him for other music suggestions (I just may already have had all the albums I asked for) and we spoke about... Well, I can't do the conversation any justice due to my brittle memory. I just know that I laughed for about 15 straight minutes.
And then my Mom came to pick us up.
a
For that next week I was besotted. I convinced my brother to take me to Rosebank the next Sunday for a 'bonding session'. I dressed nice. I remember the little flutterings in my chest when I saw that he was working again. I feigned nonchalance. I watched him from a distance, his face fading in and out behind cd racks and cardboard cut-outs. Him. Him. Him. Just being every sort of person I could ever want. I brought up another cd to the counter, trembling with nerves and excitement and the all-too-real fear that he may look at me with no recognition. I could stand indifference, even dislike. But that he may look at me as if for the first time, with the blankness of no recollection... I couldn't handle it. But he saw me and smiled. And I smiled. And I talked. And he talked. And I laughed (oh how I laughed!). And I pictured us at an amusement park sharing an ice cream (I was an imaginative kid).
a
"I'm here with my brother. We do this all the time. Sort of a Sibling Sunday." Was what I was saying when my brother walked up to us with a smirk and dropped in, "Oh, so it's you who she's dragged me here to see." ... ... ... ...
This precise moment was when I decided not to ever let my brother in on secrets in the car ride over to anywhere.
a
After an evening (of Counting Crows and the like) that would have been satisfying only to my unseasoned mind, I bid adieu, flushed with love and filled with deranged fantasies of how this could only move forward.
a
I returned in two Sundays time (I think I was in a play or something), only to find his co-worker friend at the counter. (Side Bar: His friend, in his own right, was very cool, and probably, looking back, who I would be attracted to now.) Disappointedly placing my cd down on the counter, I asked where -blank- was. And with each word tearing my overblown infatuation into pieces he told me that he had quit and wasn't working there anymore. ... Deadening. Was how I would describe it. I damned bad timing and rued how yet another very possible prospect of love just... wasn't. I listened sadly to my shitty for as long as I thought I needed to, to get away with seeming as if that was what I was actually there to do, before I walked out, and out.
a
He stayed with me a couple of weeks. I kept hoping I would run into him on a roof at a house party in the middle of town or something, both escaping from the chaos of people, champagne in hand and hair whipping in the summer wind (romantic comedies fucked me up good, I get it). But I didn't. Obviously.
And so I forgot. As you do.
... A detail that I almost neglected to remember: When his friend told me he wasn't working there anymore he added, "He doesn't need the money anyway, he gets enough from his father." I remember furrowing my brow at this and not knowing how to respond. I didn't, and still don't, know if this friend was being uncomplimentary or jealous or simply honest. I blocked out this one sentence until about three minutes before I thought I was finished writing this. Maybe because I just didn't remember. Or maybe because I hated how it bent my perfectly formed image out of shape. I couldn't risk a chip in the already crumbling amphora of my infatuation. My like was fickle, my love even more so.
I'm afraid it still is.
