Years ago, in the summer after my 8th grade year, one of my few and precious friends, Carmye, invited me to go with her to camp in the San Bernardino mountains. It was a 2-week church camp, which, she assured me, would not try to convert me to Christianity, but would rather afford me the opportunity to sing and make crafts with other kids my age and get away from my parents for 14 days. My parents, not wanting to deal with the scene if they didn't, allowed me to go. And, while they were worried, I'm sure, that I would come back a changed young woman, I'm sure they had not bargained on the type of change that would occur in their soon-to-be high schooler on her first pubescent sleep-away trip.

I have never understood time and how it speeds up or slows down, depending on the emotion in the air. Two weeks today seems like nothing. Then, it was a lifetime.

In the mountains, the air was crisp, the cabins were rustic, and the boys were everywhere. While Carmye was busy trying to reconcile with her last-summer's boyfriend, two days into our stay my eyes could not be scraped off a cross-country runner from Huntsville, Texas named Chris. He was tall and lean, with dark hair and olive-y skin and the iciest blue eyes. Since most of the kids were from the Los Angeles area, Chris's drawl was exotic, not backwater. His stare was innocently deep, and his words were honest because he didn't know any better.

I don't know how it all happened, but at some point it was clear that our interest was mututal, and what ensued was a very Tiger Beat-esque week of butterflies in the stomach, trading clothes three times a day with Carmye, twice as many showers as usual, and the discovery that, while it may look cool to those who have never done it, walking arm in arm with someone is way more cumbersome and uncomfortable than the image is worth.

We held hands most of the time, instead. I worried so much of the time about what I should do next that I was never aware of what idiocy I was committing at the time. I had a good voice and impressed him when we sang every night around a literal campfire. He was funny, and made me laugh constantly. We bolted from every mandatory activity we had to meet up and hold hands and act awkward around each other. And while we didn't kiss until the very last moment of the very last day, every moment we spent together was insanely intimate. He was the first boy who talked to me who wasn't interested in my helping him get a better grade in the class or a better part in the play. He was interested in me. He thought I was pretty. He wanted to be with me even when there were other, fun things to do. Even when his guy friends were around. Even when my friends were there, and they were all prettier than I was. He wanted to be with me.

Even if it was just for a week.

A week after we returned from camp, I returned home to find the light blinking on the answering machines. I played the message a hundred times. It had to have been a hundred times. "Aw, I hate machines! Why'd you have to go and have a machine? I never know what to say on them things. It's Chris. I'm callin' ya. Damn, machines! I dunno what else to say, really. I guess I missed ya. I hope you can call me so I don't have to talk to this machine anymore." Click.

Back then it wasn't kosher to just dial up Texas and talk for however long I wanted. I had to get special permission for ten minutes. And I did. And he was there. And we talked for ten minutes. It was a stunted, awkward conversation. We didn't know what to say to each other. What was there to say? See you soon? No, we wouldn't. Talk to you later? We wouldn't. How was your day? Sullen and lonely. There was nothing to look forward or back to. Except the realization that what we had was going to have to suffice for the rest of our lives. There would be no return to the mountains for either of us, nor would there be some junior-high long distance relationship. He would always just be what I had at church camp one summer.

I don't think of him much these years later. Just once in a while, when I hear the name of the town, Huntsville, or see someone on the street with his distinctive coloring. Those icey blue eyes just don't leave a girl, you know. But that year in school I thought about him all the time. I told all my new friends about him. I wrote about him in my little diary. I pined away at nights, wishing I'd had more time with him, or that I'd never met him at all. I wondered what his house in Huntsville looked like. What dinner was like around his kitchen table. What kind of phone he used. What his closet looked like. If he walked or drove to school. If he wondered about my town. If he had a white fence in front of his house. I remember once wondering what color the walls of his room were. And being tempted to call him just to ask him. This was months after camp, when I was sure he had forgotten me and that his parents would be furious that some crazy California girl was calling in the middle of the night.

And then there is the occasional night, like tonight, when I have to wonder whatever happened to him. To the boy whose hand meant more than his lips. To the boy who introduced me to the concept that a touch on the cheek can be felt in the groin. And in the backs of the knees. That a hand and a look can mean life or death. From the boy who came from the town where Texans meet their death.

And of course, I'll never know and am probably better off just filling in details in my imagination. And when I do, I like to think that he's out running on some rural Texas road, gathering his head before going to work. Maybe he has a dog who runs with him. And a big brown leather chair that he sinks into when he gets home. With the paper and a cup of coffee. He takes care of himself, and he works hard. At whatever job, it doesn't matter. He is bright, and a bit mysterious, with only a handfull of good friends who sometimes don't hear from him for weeks on end. He keeps a journal and writes with a stiff, skinny hand. The letters are small and smushed together. He sleeps fitfully, unless someone is there by his side. And once in a while, at the bar with a pal, he thinks back to the first time he ever felt a girl's touch make him weak in the knees. And the thought conjures up Pollack Pines and log cabins and fireside songs. And instead of describing the girl he says, "You know, walking arm in arm with a girl is way harder than it looks."

Wherever he is, I am thinking of him tonight.

Posted by twids at 10:34 pm