Passing Glances

“Passing Glances”

One hundred and Thirty-five Pounds

        I credit myself to being somewhat of a hopeless romantic. In this stage of my life, I hadn’t had much experience in the field, but I just knew I had it in me. Ever since I was a young boy, I’ve always had this unspoken yearning for what I liked to call “romantic triumph”.  I was always fascinated by the heroes of movies that risked everything to gain the love of the princess.  After a long and arduous battle, they would just embrace in the pure joy that they were okay. This belief struck a chord in my heart, and I would daydream about it constantly. Even when I was in kindergarten, I would think of a girl that I liked, and picture those stories and implant us in them. It helped me get by.

        In my freshman year of high school, I met a girl named Maria. Maria was never the prom queen, she was never the valedictorian, and she was never, by any means, a dominant of the unforgiving social hierarchy of high school, but for some strange and unexplainable reason, to me she was perfection. From the moment that I first caught a glimpse of her, I was eternally hypnotized by her unspoken and unseen beauty.

She had curly blonde locks that brushed against the tops of her shoulders. Her nose was narrow and slightly hooked upwards, and it would scrunch slightly when she smiled. Her skin was soft and fair, like the sweeping fog on a chilly and damp Sunday morning. Her face was chiseled slender and narrow, but the most appealing and compelling features of her were her eyes. Two perfect orbs that seemed to function as portals to the sea.  They wouldn’t be anything special if they were simply just blue, no; it was much more than that. They had a myriad of blues and greens mixed in, which gave an extremely piercing effect. Streaks of bluish-white shot through them like the foam of waves crashing against a rocky shore.  

Contrary to the stalker-like description I’ve been able to give of her, for the majority of high school, Maria and I had been somewhat friends. We would occasionally be assigned in the same group during class, or she would ask me for help on her homework, but unfortunately we were never much more than acquaintances. I’d consider myself to be an extremely shy person who normally enjoys keeping quiet, so I’d never usually made much of an effort to extend that friendship.

See, this justified my overwhelming astonishment when, on one fateful day of my senior year, I found the words “Wanna go on a date with me?” croak from my mouth, and then an even greater astonishment when the request was accepted with a “yeah sure” on her part. Luckily, before I was able to tear up and shout “THERE IS A GOD!” in triumph, the final bell rang, and I made my way home to prepare for my big night.

Once home, I must’ve stared in the mirror for a good two hours dissecting every trait and characteristic of my physical self, all the while analyzing the question “Wanna go on a date with me?” and what exactly it entails. When I finally decided that I looked about as good as I could possibly look in this lifetime, I went to my older brother Nick’s room to ask him if I could borrow the Firebird for the night, but before I could even ask he threw me the keys muttering: “don’t fuck this up, buttmunch.”--Such lovely words of motivation, in my opinion.

So I left the house and hopped in the car, feeling that teenage feeling of freedom and invincibility right up until I ignited the mighty firebird and realized I undoubtedly had no idea how to drive stick. 45 minutes later, I stalled into Maria’s driveway and she got in. We exchanged uncomfortable smiles, and she then asked me the question that I’d loved to have the answer to as much as she did: “where are we going?” a nice awkward silence ensued for the next two minutes until finally I responded with a vague confidence. “Where ever the wind takes us.” She chuckled three times, snorted once, laughed once more, and then called me a “dingus”.

I believe it was in that moment that my cells began to morph and multiply to fit hers.

As we drove along, she glanced over at me and asked: “Wanna play a game?” I smirked: “yeah sure, what’d you have in mind?” I looked over quickly, trying not to get too distracted from the road, but she looked as if she was formulating some grand idea, like a brilliant game master. “Okay so this is how it works” she started, “I’m going to fire questions at you that start with ‘what’, and you have to answer them as quickly as you can. If it takes you more than 5 seconds to answer the question, then you lose, and if I either ask a question that doesn’t start with ‘what’, or can’t think of another question then I lose; I call it ‘the question game’”

“Hm, sounds like fun...let’s do it,” I retorted “you ready?” “Always am” she smirked.  

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Red. Next.”

“What’s your favorite book?”

“For Whom The Bell Tolls, Hemingway.”

“What’s your favorite TV show?”

“I Love Lucy. no shame, no shame.”

“Oh man, could not agree more. Okay. What would you do if you had a million dollars?”

“Well, I could say something profound and pretentious like ‘stop world hunger’ or ‘lift my painting career off the ground’ but in all honesty I’d probably put most of it in a savings account for college and use the rest to help out my folks.”

“Wow! Looks like we got a dreamer on our hands!”

The atmosphere in the car was beginning to become more and more comfortable. Her soft voice was putting me in a sort of lullaby trance, and I was turning down roads left and right, almost involuntarily.  We were laughing a great deal, and I was feeling content with not only the situation, but also my surprising ability to handle it casually.

“Okay well, what would you do with one ultimate wish?”

“That’s easy-I’d wish for an infinite amount of wishes. Come on, is that the best you’ve got?!”

We laughed for a few seconds, but then the tone slowly died down. I could feel her face slowly slipping from a beaming smile to an indifferent stare out the window. After a short idle, she quietly spoke once again:

“What do you think of when no one is around to listen?”

Wow. Although I consider myself an extremely shy person, when someone gets me going, I usually cannot stop talking, but this girl, with one soft-spoken sentence, rendered me unequivocally speechless. “I-uh...” 1 – 2 – 3. “Um…” 4 – 5. “HA! Looks like I win!” she exclaimed. I had absolutely nothing that I could say back to her, it felt as if she’d reached down my throat and ripped out my vocal cords.

But before things could get awkward, she asked me once again: “seriously, where exactly are we going? It’s starting to get dark.” She was right- the dusk was starting to set in, taking the safe light-filled world, and replacing it with a mysterious and dark one. Right as I was about to answer her with an unfortunate “not sure” I looked to my left and saw the most beautiful scene my eyes ever had the pleasure of gazing upon.

I shifted the car into a slower gear, and began to pull over into a dirt curb. Maria looked at me quizzically, for in her eyes I had just pulled over on a dark and empty road, so she was somewhat worried about what I was doing (with good reason), but I just turned the car off without saying a word, and stepped outside. Without hesitation, I walked over to her side, and opened her door. The look on her face was nine-parts confusion, and one-part fear, but I just smiled at her and insisted that she come with me.

I held out my hand and she snaked her fingers in between mine.  Her look of confusion quickly went away when she looked to her left, and joined me in awe.

        We seemed to magically travel from our boring and bland suburban town to what seemed to be something straight out of a painting. Behind a short stone wall that ran for a long stretch in both directions sloped lush hills of hay and wheat that swayed next to each other and looked like crashing waves as the gentle wind moved them in every which direction. Far in the distance, a small pond was surrounded by these fields and sported a shimmering reflection of the slowly rising moon on its belly. Behind the stone wall, the crashing ocean of crops, and the small pond stood a row of tall trees towering over everything. They were proud in their old age, and their leaves had turned dark shades of orange, red, and yellow because of the peacefully crippling autumn. What attracted our amazement the most, though, was the sunset that was taking place over the horizon.  

        Maria clasped my hand tighter, and dragged me forward. She climbed atop the stone wall, and I followed her lead. “This is incredible,” she said while staring straight ahead “yeah I know, you’re welcome,” I said jokingly. “No I mean it, this is unbelievable,” she looked at me now with a look of earnest on her face. “Why’s that?” I asked her, puzzlingly. She turned her head again, and looked across the landscape, “amidst this utterly boring and life deprived town, we just stumbled across something so beautiful and so void of human interference. I feel as though we’re the first humans to see this.”

        “ I mean, just look at THAT!” she pointed her finger eagerly at the gradually falling sun. “The way the colors of the slowly dying trees and the reds and yellows and oranges of the twilight sky melt into each other like they’re blotches of paint mixing together, it’s nothing short of inspiring.” I looked at her now, shocked by her articulation. “Those mounds of hay look to me like the corpses of giant dead spiders,” she went on, “and just the thought that something so beautiful as this happens everyday, and we just so happened to stumble upon it, this really feels like we hit a gold mine. I don’t know, just the way the field slopes downwards and the trees tower over everything just makes me so…so overwhelmed with beauty.” I was mesmerized by her words, but I was equally worrying about the issue of her body slowly getting closer to mine, and what I should do about it.

        Her sweet monologue gave me enough inspiration and courage to put my arm around her shoulder, and she accepted this gesture by resting her head on me. We watched the beautiful event in front of us carry along. I could literally feel my heart pounding violently in my chest as I envisioned in my head the exact same move I would make over and over. I would lightly grab her chin with my left hand, and bring her face to mine, and kiss her ever so slightly, and I would make sure to look her in the eyes when we stopped kissing. Needless to say that fantasy continued to stay a fantasy, as I simply couldn’t get the nerve to actually do it. Though I was almost paralyzed with fear and anxiety, I couldn’t stand the thought of wasting a precious moment like this, so I took a deep breath and mentally prepared myself.

        Some say the greatest thrill in a man’s life is the exhilarating fear of making your move. Though you only travel inches, it feels endless and vulnerable. As we stood on the Stone wall, Maria was able to attest to this as she lifted her own head and reached her lips to mine in one swift motion. I was equal parts relieved and embarrassed that Maria had done it for me, but that slowly faded away as the majority of my brain shut off and the only things that mattered in my life were the rhythm of our mouths moving in tandem and my hand holding her firmly close to me. Even though we had only known each other on a personal level for about a day, Maria had the ability to convince me she really cared about me without even saying a word. The softness of her lips and the warmth of her embrace had an infectious effect on me that I would never soon forget.

        We stopped kissing and she smiled at me. Her eyes slightly shut because her grin was so great, yet the glimmer in her eyes made me smile a great and goofy smile that I couldn’t even begin to control. I jumped off the stone wall, and helped her down. “It’s pretty late, I think it’s time to head home,” she decided.

        I dropped her off at her house, and she looked back at me right before she shut the passenger door. “I had a really nice time, thanks.” I smiled a nodded my head.

        When I got home, Nick was sitting on the couch watching TV. “Did ya get some, dick-wash?” (I’ll always be in awe at his ability to ceaselessly create degrading names for me.) “No, but I found something better.”

I walked into my room with a romantic triumph still tingling on my lips.  

To Be Continued...