2000-08-04 | 05:09:39

so, k-boy.

my first kiss. my first boyfriend. my first "i love you." my first everything-but-actual-intercourse sex. (i'll explain that last one later. although, i guess it's self-explanatory, huh?)

he was a nice guy. a smart guy. several years older than me. a lawyer in a downtown firm who had a shot at partner. red-haired. pale. dorky. kinda funny. polite. sweet. just enough culture to make him likable as opposed to george w. bush-like. my mom loved him. a conservative, shy lawyer! why, she couldn't have picked a better boy for me if she mail-ordered one special delivery from j. crew.

as a thankful antidote to his polo-by-ralph-lauren stodginess, he spoke french and wrote poetry. i still remember this line: "hello, sadness...my lover..." (hey, it sounds better in french).

since he was the first guy i had made it past two dates with, he obviously had something going on in my eyes. but i had absolutely no attraction for him. i couldn't figure out if it was mostly due to my total fear of guys and relationships, his george w. bush-ness, or a combination of the two. it was a combination of the two. even though i later became attracted to him, the chemistry was never really strong between us.

i remember i made him feel like crap when he put his arm around my shoulder on a trip to the zoo. probably our second date. i stood stockstill and stiff under his semi-embrace. he told me later that i had bruised his ego severely. i didn't know what to do. i was like frozen caveman dater. his affectionate ways confused me...i was frightened by modern romance.

i remember him walking me to my car one misty night. my windshield was cloudy with moist dirt. as i sat in my driver's seat, he wiped down the glass for me with paper towel and windex. i remember peering up from the driver's seat at his rendition of "wipe on, wipe off" and thinking..."damn. he's a really nice guy. why don't i like him?"

somehow we struggled through the first few dates. he, dealing with my insensitive lack of attraction for him. me, dealing with actually sticking with something and not running into my shy cave again.

we dated for three and a half years.

i figured he was going to be the one i married. i mean, everything was pretty comfortable and felt like what i thought a relationship was supposed to feel like. common interests, no fighting, a couple of laughs. i was a bit bummed that he was to be the only man i'd ever date, but i loved him enough to be content with that.

ah, sure. there were signs of non-eden-ness. for instance, the first time we said the "L" word. i knew i was ready to say it, but as it was my first time ever, wanted to make it special. i thought it might take him a bit by surprise since i had been so ambivalent about him in the early stages. he later told me he knew i was going to say it. he had seen the transition in how i looked at him. i always thought that was kind of sweet. he had seen the love seep into my eyes. and by the time i was ready to say it, i really did feel it.

so, here's me. deciding to make it special and dramatically romantic. his favorite movie was the black and white french number, "a man and a woman." if you aren't familiar, it's the story of an affair between a dashing race car driver (ha! that was kinda punny) and a beautiful woman with movie star sunglasses (if i remember right). and a theme song you've probably heard over 70,000 times in elevator/grocery store/on-hold muzak. daaa, daa, da... dadadadada dadadadada... da, da, daaaa... dadadadada dadadadada.

ANYWAY (i do go on, don't i?), there is a scene in the movie where the lovers are at odds. he is in monaco, i believe, at a race. she is in paris, i believe. they have had a misunderstanding... a lover's spat. of course, they still are pining one for the other, but are too self-righteous to give in. he wins a huge race and she sends him a telegram saying, "bravo! i love you." he gets the message, tears up, immediately drops everything and races cross-country and into her arms. tres romantique, no? oui.

i had rented the video because i knew it was his favorite flick. (you know, kinda like me checking the wyatt earp book out from the elementary school library because my crush, richard, had read it.} i do this thing where i try to "get into the head" of the person i like by experiencing their favorite things. kinda like an anthropogist studying a newly discovered amazon tribe. and then adopting their custom of sticking a bone through the nose. kinda like that.

i wanted to replicate the telegram scene for my little litigator. after calling western union, i found out that telegrams had kinda fallen out of favor due to the advent of the fax, but that they could send him some kind of express letter on yellow paper that should do the trick. so i was off to the races. "bravo! i love you," i told the confused operator. then i awaited my man bursting through my door.

and waited. and waited. um, k-boy didn't get the clue. he didn't drop everything and rush into my arms. pretty silly of me to expect him to, of course. but i felt like the right guy for me would have been just romantic and impetuous enough to complete the script's plot. ok, or maybe just acknowledge the letter with more than hesistating confusion? oh, he thanked me for sending it. over the phone. said it had surprised him. he had opened it in front of the receptionist and was taken aback. taken aback... rushing back into arms. nah, not what you'd hope for in a pronouncement of love scenario.

a week or so after the telegram, my friend k-girl got married. it was a really sweet ceremony in the garden of a grand old house. that night, as we sat in the semi-dark on his sofa, k-boy picked a fight with me. witness wedding... instigate argument. this was no coincidence, my friend. oh, no.

did i mention k-boy was a commitment phobic? even though he stuck around all those years, the "m" word chilled him to the core. a child of divorce, he was gravely afraid of anything smacking of the tender trap. in the course of our argument, he said, "did you mean what you said in the telegram?" i replied in the affirmative. his response? "well, i love you, too, but...." i love you, too, but. the first time you hear your significant other part lips to say the "love" word, you don't want to hear it shortly followed by "but." "i love you, too, but..." began his statement to the jury about what was wrong with "us."

ok, so he did have a bit of evidence against me in the bedroom. i was raised to save myself for marriage. i was holding onto that with both hands and crossed knees. partly due to religious conditioning, partly due to fear, partly due to everything women learned in the 50s, i was not "going all the way" with him. i mean, we did everything else but, and it was nice, but no actual hot dog in the donut scenarios, if you get my inference. (i feel like joey from "friends" all of a sudden.)

needless to say, k-boy was a bit frustrated about this. it was a sore point throughout our relationship and one of the main reasons he broke up with me all those years later. i never broke down. i never gave in! actually, it wasn't a huge temptation. that whole lack-of-chemistry thing made it pretty easy for me to keep my hands off of him, as cold as that may sound. i was looking forward to doing it, but only after we had registered for china.

despite the "but," we made amends and kept dating. but the "but" echoed in my head. something ain't quite right about that boy, i thought.

at the three-year point in our relationship, k-boy began to feel the "i'll soon be expected to make her an offer she can't refuse and propose" pressure. i wasn't in any rush to wear a compressed piece of coal on my finger. i have my own fears of the white dress.

our break-up took place on a sunday morning. as i sat on my little rattan loveseat, bawling my eyes out, he read the paper at a table across the room. can you say asshole? can you say indicative of intimacy issues? can you say why did you spend three and a half years with such a george w. bush?

a few years later, due to a christmas card exchange with my mom in which he wrote, "if nictate is still single, give her a hug for me," i sent another letter to k-boy. by u.s. mail, not western union. i asked if he wanted to catch up as pen pals and compare what had gone on in our romantic lives since our break-up, if that wasn't too oprah-esque for him.

he wrote back telling me that it had been two and a half years after our break-up before he had dated again. he then described in detail who he had seen since, down to eye color and mentions of one gal's ph.D. in eye diseases.

he said that it had always killed him that we'd go see some movie with hot monkey love between two idiots and then have to come home and not be able to share a small-screen adaptation. he said if it wasn't for my hoochie hang-up, we could have had enough love for two lifetimes. *cue violins*

ok, in retrospect, i understand the ridiculousness of it all. but i was a sheltered, baby corn cob of a girl. he was amazingly patient with me, but my virgin clench did give him a great escape hatch from our relationship. he needed that.

so he finishes the excerpt on our lack of coitus with this closing statement: "sexual intimacy is one of the most beautiful things two people can share. i hope you have adopted more contemporary values."

this, and having to have read his girlfriends' resumes, pissed me off to no end. don't condescend to me, man!

so i wrote back to share my dating-since-you-dumped-me stories. enclosed in the letter was a little dagger for him to plunge into his heart. i'm evil i tell you. (i mean a figurative dagger, of course. the u.s. postal service would have never let a david bowie knife in a no. 10 envelope slip through. ahaha! i just called that knife "david bowie" instead of just "bowie" accidently. ahahaha! i'm leaving it.)

a blunt paraphrase of my signed-sealed-and-delivered wrenching revelation?

"as a matter of fact, i did adopt more contemporary values. exhibit a: it was two months after we broke up. exhibit b: it was with someone you knew."

i know how to pack a punch, don't i? shonuff. i didn't hear from k-boy for awhile. no doubt! he told me later in another christmas card that my revelation had really "kicked his butt." ah, mission accomplished. i'm evil. i told you so. but c'mon! he asked for it, ya gotta admit.

the last time i heard from him was this past year at eggnog time. i had sent him a card written in all lowercase letters (like i do here!). he wrote back that he was sorry that capital letters had been outlawed in the city of los angeles. *rimshot* ok, it was kinda funny.

the rest of his response read like a soupy sales monologue. humor as a defense mechanism. you know, george w. bush is big on defense, too.

well, i'm not gonna send any more navidad cheer k-boy's way. as rick springfield says, "the point is rather moot." as the french say, "faaaanee!"

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