First Love Twice

 

I started Poudre High School in ninety-eighty-nine.  Pronounced Poo-der, Powder in French, named after the Poudre River, which flowed through our town.  Our colors were river blue and white, and all the lockers were painted Poudre blue.

Sophomore and Junior lockers were located downstairs, opposite the wall with the painted mural of the Beatles and their words, ‘Let it be, let it be.  Shared and divided in half, juniors on the top and sophomores on the bottom.  Senior lockers were on the first floor.

Carrie and I shared a bottom locker, mid-hallway, right next to the Science and Math rooms.  One day after third period my heart stopped.  “Who is that?”  I said to Carrie. “O-o-o-h, Conrad Hall, he’s a junior, he’s friends with Rob my ex. You’ve never seen him before,” she asked.  No, I had never seen handsome like this before.  He was tall and grand; he didn’t look like the other high school boys.  His blonde wispy hair and blue crystal eyes.  I had never seen such beauty in my life.  I was sixteen, and it was love at first sight.

After a fourteen-hour plane ride we left the airport and stopped to sit down at a café overlooking the Spanish Mediterranean.  I hadn’t returned to Spain since I studied in Sevilla when I was in college and twenty-one. Twenty-one years later I was back again.

She sauntered up to the table, eyes looking down as she walked, shoulders shrugged, she sat down in front of me.  “This is Violeta,” I was introduced. “Hi, I like your hair,” were the first words from my mouth.  Her hair was short, platinum blonde and unmistakably bold.  She sat in her chair, her hands folded together, arms resting on her splayed legs.  She looked up, ever so slightly, her head still tilted down, she whispered, “I like her shoes, pants and her ring.” “What did you say?” I couldn’t hear her.  “Ahh,” with a slight uncomfortable tone, “She likes your shoes, your pants and your ring,” her girlfriend repeated to me.  I didn’t know it then, but looking back, it was love at first sight.

After I saw Conrad that day in the hall, I was transfixed, transformed, and transpired.  I couldn’t get him off my mind, I couldn’t get him out of my body, he was incessantly there.  The next day after third period, standing at my locker I waited to see if he would walk by again.  There he was, coming down the hall in his pegged at the bottom, light blue Levi’s, his wrestling shoes and a Scorpions t-shirt.  I couldn’t turn away.  I stared directly at him. Then, in what felt like slow motion, our eyes locked, and explosions exploded.  It’s as if the red sea had parted, and I found myself falling into another dimension.  My body was fixed, and I could no longer speak. What’s my locker combination?  What class do I have next?  Where am I again?  I have no idea.

Violeta and I became fast friends.  She was shy and sweet and awkward and lovely.  On the second night, left on our own, she shared intimacies of orgasm’s not easily achieved, we ate tapas and drank cava, and I listened with ease.  As the time flew, and a text came in, she suddenly said, “We better get going, she’s going to be upset we’re so late.”

Outside on the cobble stones, she spoke of the history of Palma, the tiendas we passed, she recounted stories hidden in the dark and narrow, as the almost full moon shown down.  “Up here is the Esbaluard Museu,” she pointed, “Come and see.”  She led me up the hill closer to the moon.  I could see all the way to the sea, behind the wall set in stone, and palm trees that lined the street we came in on when I arrived.  It looked like a dream.

Then suddenly I said, “Uh, oh!  I have to pee.  I’m sorry, I can’t hold it.”  Frantically looking around, “I’m going to go behind this tree, please don’t judge me,” I said with surprising comfort.  “It’s ok,” she laughed with a friendly smile. Then from behind the tree, with emotional and literal relief, I pulled my pants up, we both had a chuckle, and off we went, the moon at our backs.

We arrived at the house and rang the bell, as the door opened, I reached for my back pocket and no phone to be found.  I suddenly realized it must have fallen out when I desperately needed to pee.  Without hesitation, we left like the wind and walked as fast as we could.  I raced to the tree where I had been and right as I saw my phone laying in the grass, the sprinklers shot on.  I sprung to grab my phone, then leapt with joy, in my usual fashion, by the hair of my chinny chin, chin. “Thank you God my phone, thank you God, thank God my phone.  Just in time, can you believe it?” I squealed.  As the last word left my lips, I threw my arm around her and kissed her mouth.  As if it was the most natural thing to do.

In all our adrenalin we skipped back down the hill arm over arm.  The feeling of her lips kept turning over and over in my head.  Her lips.  Her lips are so soft I thought.  Her lips I repeated.  They felt different.  Her lips against mine.  I couldn’t escape it.  I couldn’t shake this feeling.

Every day after third period I waited to stare into Conrad’s eyes.  And every day after third period he was there to lift his head and stare back into mine.  It was the best part of my day, my breakfast lunch and dinner.  Same time, same place, heart beats skipping in a pool of desire.

Weeks turned into months, and our looks into gazes, stronger and stronger the attraction grew.  I started to stare into his eyes from between my thighs, how much more can I take, how much longer can this go on?

Violeta and I flew back on the same plane to Los Angeles.  She had come to be with someone else, but the signs were everywhere.  Our texts had become longer and more frequent, sharing thoughts and poetry, interludes and feelings of joy and giddiness, in this ever so unexpected experience.

Magnets who couldn’t be pulled apart we used to say.  After dinner one evening at Bar Marmont, in a room from the main area, sitting in the corner of the banquet, we sat so close to one another, any closer we would have been breast to breast.  I had worn my electric red vintage Halston dress, with high slits on either side, so high the dress itself would just fall right between my legs.  I liked my legs shown, I wanted her to look, I wanted her to stare.  Like bullets into my brain, threading in and out, I couldn’t stop wanting her to want me.

On another evening we went to see the latest Woody Allen playing at the Vista in Los Feliz.  Again, I wanted to be close to her.  I sat as close as I could, and if it weren’t for the arm rest between us, I would have climbed right into her lap.

Next door at the Dresden we talked for hours.  In misty bubbles intwined with sea stars and comets, like Dali’s melting clocks, she was forever etched in my mind.

At closing time, we slowly slid from our booth, walked out onto the sidewalk and said our goodbyes.  My eyes didn’t leave her as her head turned to see if I was still there.  She smiled out of the corner of her mouth and I watched her walk away.

“Did you hear the news, a friend exclaimed, “Conrad and Celeste broke up.”  Is it true, his girlfriend of two years, is it really over?  I had never been more ecstatic to hear such news.  He’s free, he’s free to be with me I screamed inside.

Our high school basketball team was playing a game away that weekend, against a much bigger school at the Pro Arena where the Denver Nuggets played.  All the cool kids were driving down to watch.

The night was turning out to be a bust, it was snowing, the crowd was small and the excitement dim, the game was halfway over, and just when we were thinking of leaving, I saw him.  He was walking down the stairs in the bleachers not far from where we were.  And he was alone.  Alone with seven of his friends, but alone without a girlfriend.

His friend Tony walked over to our section and said to me, “Hey we’ve got my brother’s van and a keg in the back, we’re going to the Pink Floyd Laser show after this, we’ve got room for one more, you should come.”  Hardly able to contain myself, YES, YES, YES in all capitals, YES.  In actuality I said, “Yah sure sounds like fun.”  I immediately turned to Beth and said, “Don’t hate me, but I’m leaving you and going to the Pink Floyd laser show with Tony and Conrad and their crew.”  She wasn’t thrilled I was leaving her, but she knew how I felt about Conrad and she begrudgingly obliged me with a, “You owe me one.”

After weeks of feelings I had never had before, I was beginning to think I couldn’t turn them off.  I tried.  I really tried.  I even had an out loud, talking to myself.  Standing in the kitchen, repeating over and over again, you can’t do this, this isn’t right, this isn’t happening. Hoping in repeating these words, they would somehow stick and become true.  But it was happening.  Something else was happening, and in a big way.  I didn’t have agency over it any longer.  I was overwhelmed in emotion, overtaken by forces beyond my control.  My body knew before my brain, it was jumping into the unknown whether I wanted it to or not.

I texted her I had an extra ticket to see Sufjan Stevens at the Hollywood Bowl and hoped she could come.  I recalled my last night in Mallorca as she leaned against the bar, her head tilted as it usually did, smiling with her eyes, she said to me, “You know, after my dad met you, he said he would have married you in another life.  My uncle too.”  Flirtatious smiles exchanged, I was completely taken back, I didn’t know what to say.  I blushed, “That’s very sweet, sweet of you to say, now go sit next to your girlfriend.”

I’ve never forgotten the energy in her presence nor what she said to me on that night, or how it has forever affected me.  It was true, what I felt with her dad.  A bond was created.  He didn’t speak English I didn’t speak Spanish, yet something unspoken was shared between us, and I thought to myself, wow, this man knows me, this man can see me.

I jumped in the van, took a beer from the keg and off we went to the Pink Floyd Laser show.  I was a giddy teenage girl finally having the chance to see what laid behind all those long gazes for all these long months.

We piled out of the van into the wintery cold, slightly buzzed on cheap beer, and purchased our tickets for the show.  Trying to play it cool, I stood in line and waited for the theater doors to open.  Conrad brushed up beside me and took my hand.  He took my hand like we had been boyfriend and girlfriend for eternity.  A rush of love poured over my body as I tried to keep myself from jumping into the stars.  The doors opened, we sat in the already leaned chairs and waited for the lights to darken and the lasers to start.  We held hands stronger than mountains.  Our hands spoke to our hearts and our eyes to our souls.  I don’t remember much of the show, just the pulse of our palms to the lights of the music.  My cardinal quest in first love.

I had Violeta meet me at a hotel bar close to the Hollywood Bowl.  She had arrived before us and across the room I saw her.  White t-shirt, black jeans, pretty face, she looked to find me, our eyes met, and something was felt between us.  We walked to the venue and as we strolled inside, like a moth to a flame she rested her arm on my shoulder and I took her hand.  She said to me, “I’m your Mallorquin souvenir.”  And I replied, “Yes, yes you are my Mallorquin souvenir.”

We sat in our seats, noshed on sushi her favorite, and poured glasses of red wine as the show began to start.  It felt like we had been together forever.  The ease of it, as if each thread was being stitched into the next.

Midway through the show my friends left to tend to their new baby and we were on our own.  The wine was low and as we walked to the concessions, with my hand in her back pocket holding her close I said, “There’s something here, I can’t deny it.  There’s something here.”  The words just fell out and she replied, “I know, I feel it too, I know you feel it, we both feel it.”  “What are we going to do?”  “I don’t know,” she said.  We ordered another bottle of red wine and kept repeating the same lines over to each other, while recounting all the signs that had shown up for us and how we came to be there.

We walked back to our seats and sat down, pulled the blanket over us and clutched our hands.  I hadn’t felt this way in years, a rushing verve grew inside of me, erotic and exotic, like rocket ships launching into space.  I could no longer hear the music.

The concert ended, we shuffled out onto the street and made our way back to the place where we had started.  A drunk man who could barely walk was falling in front of us and she stepped to his side to help him cross the street.  We made sure for him to find his friends and then carried on.

Standing in front of the hotel bar I said I would call her a cab.  We stood among the high frequency of concert dwellers and waited.  Her cab drove up and before she got in, she turned to me and kissed me.  Pressed her open lips onto mine and kissed my tongue.  She tasted of mint.

Our second kiss.  My first love.