The girl before boys

The beautiful and brilliant Elly, with whom I endured the humiliations and degradations of graduate school, said to me recently, “Write more about you - regardless of boys. Write about you before boys.” And then, that very day, Blue Eyes pointed out that don’t come off particularly well in my blog, and that, in fact, most of my posts make me look like a complete ass.

I mulled. I meditated. What on earth would I talk about if boys and jackassery were off the menu? This would be a very sad, lonely blog, my friends. I would, in fact, have very little to say. As it is, I already hold back on the sordid details to retain the few shreds of dignity that cling to my poor, degraded soul.

Before boys, there was girls school. There was soccer - a mob of terrifyingly strong, spirited girls eating pasta. There were endless hours painting in the art room among mounds of rotting turnips and wilting bok choi. There was the worship of my teachers, and the single-minded drive to please them. There was humor and intellectual vigor – girls with minds that boiled. There was the absence and promise of boys - loneliness and yearning and heady crushes on fantasy boyfriends from the crosstown bus.

Though I was convinced throughout my adolescence that I was without any allure whatsoever, I am now grateful that not a single boy approached me or showed any interest in my looks or what I had to say. I am grateful for those years when my life was replete with intellectual, artistic and athletic pursuits, and when my adventures were with my closest and dearest girlfriends. I am grateful for a time when the wonderful, tangled mess of love and sex and heartbreak were all still ahead of me. I’d like to say that I was a late bloomer, but the reality is that there were several reasons why I didn’t kiss a boy until I was nineteen or have sex until I was twenty.

Reasons why no boys found me particularly attractive:

- Had not “fully realized my beauty”
- Refused to make eye contact or speak to members of the opposite sex
- Sarcasm that peeled the paint off storefronts
- Double set of braces for greater part of adolescence
- Victorian parents referred to all boys within 15 mile radius as potential “gentlemen callers”
- Laughable fake ID inherited from tiny blonde from Arizona
- Too fat from eating copious amounts of Domino’s pizza for lack of anything better to do
- Because too fat with shitty ID, hung out at lesbian bars and listened to Sarah McLaughlin, Ani DeFranco and other highly suspect indie artists
- Studied on Friday nights. And Saturday nights. And most other nights.

Fortunately, I went to a university for the socially maladjusted, so I fit right in. When boys finally entered the picture, the landscape changed. Life seemed fuller, more challenging, less spartan. I discovered new uses for my body and my heart. I tried on different boys to see which ones fit. First, there was an Estonian basketball player with BO so formidable that breaking up seemed the only solution. Then there was canoeing at night with a cellist, arguing with a Republican teetotaler, chasing a budding novelist, and playing Barbie and Ken with the senior class president. It was all love in the minor leagues.

When I left school, I moved to Cairo and shared my first real job and my first taste of adventure with a curly-haired Maltese boy. Years later, I fell flat on my back in love with Dermonster, a British doctor with a love of sputum, and followed him across an ocean, breaking both of our hearts in the process. Then there was in-and-out, back-and-forth and up-and-down with the complex and alluring Fauxhawk, an interlude with a sweet Kiwi, and finally, a heart-pounding, gut-churning, soul-searching affair with Blue Eyes, a lovely French boy who awakened my imagination in Ethiopia. I thought each one might fit. Finding a fit was harder than it seemed.

Somewhere, in all of the excitement, in all of the rapturous joy and the miserable heartache, I lost touch with the artsy, sporty, nerdy, funny girl who ignored boys and thought the world was her oyster. Where did she go? If she ever came back, I’d wrap my arms around her and never let go. I’d tell her that I missed her, buy her a beer, and give her one hell of a fake ID.

Images: Sophie Toulouse