The first Idol
We begin to walk past what should be familiar sights, but in the dark, and on a night of such moment, I recognize nothing. That is… until I hear her voice. Andrea and her parents are following just feet behind us. My younger brother trips over a step. I despise him with my entire soul. She doesn’t seem to notice, or to impute his failings to me despite our near relation. I hold the door open. My mother thanks me with a half-tone of surprise which, I trust, instantly exposes my sham gallantry for what it is. I cannot escape the suspicion that in the short time it took us to move from the van into the school, I have fallen, like one of Milton’s angels, to the furthest recesses of the pit in Andrea’s esteem. She smiles as she enters through the door – I am confident that no door has ever been restrained by such a superfluity of force – and is heard to say, “Hi John!” I ascend all at once from Inferno to Purgatorio to Paradiso. I respond in monosyllables - though, apparently, to some effect, as she graces me with a smile and proceeds accompanied to the cafeteria-made-banquet-hall.
She wears a strapless white dress with black polka dots - I wish she wouldn’t bare her shoulders, what if Kyle Schwimmer sees? - black flats, a red handbag, and a puzzling mix of blush and eye-shadow, the effect of which might have proven comical to an elder member of her own sex, but which appeared to me the very incarnation of beauty. A half hour passes during which I’m ushered to a seat onstage by Mrs. Frampton, the cafeteria grows steadily more full, and my bowels become a butterfly house. Finally, it is my turn to speak. I address my peers, their parents, our faculty and administration, make some general remarks about the progress of the year. In short, I read the entirety of my two-minute speech which had passed successively beneath the careful scrutiny first of my father, then of Mrs. Frampton, then of the assistant principal. But I am not done. Unfolding from my shirt pocket another sheet of college-ruled paper, scrutinized by none but myself, I begin.
…
I am catatonic. The few claps which do follow serve only to foreground the vacuum I’ve made of this middle school cafeteria. I’m shushed down the steps by Mrs. Frampton to the empty seat between my father and younger brother. The assistant principal clears his throat and continues as though I’d never said a word. I don’t dare meet my mother’s eyes. Shuffling ensues as the guests are released to the buffet table. My parents think it best that we excuse ourselves. The sole glimpse I catch of Andrea is of her staring directly down, neither white nor red, but somehow both, entirely, simultaneously – with a parent’s hand on each of her shoulders.
We drive home in silence – at least as far as dialogue goes: the radio insists on playing, and I wonder why every single song seems a mockery of the events of the last hour. It would be true to say that I spend the evening in agony. It would be equally true to say that I was very nearly buoyant. It was like one of my track meets: an agonizing affair so long as it continued, and even immediately after the race was run, but it just felt so good to have it over with.
I spend time in front of a book, though not quite reading; in front of my television, though not quite watching; and finally, I turn to the family computer. Dare I? She wouldn’t…? I log in to AOL Instant Messenger and there, carved in black pixels is AndreaaaT93. Petrified, mortified, ossified: like some antediluvian fish buried beneath the waves of judgment and become stone, I undergo internal decomposition in a moment. I move to log off when a window appears:
AndreaaaT93: I love you too. :)
She moved to Colorado that summer; her father received orders to a new base. …
It’s the Spring of 2023. I’ve not seen her since. I’ve loved others, or at least said I did. Still I can’t help but wonder how much happier the world might be if we all married the first girl we fell in love with. Has my love ever since been so disinterested? I used to wish that a bear would burst into the halls of our school, so that I’d have something to behead, something to lay at her feet. I wanted to become a soldier, just so I could perish carrying a small portrait of her in my breast pocket. I plundered songs and movie scenes for lines to express, if only to myself, what I could not but feel. It was idolatrous, but, perhaps, not without meaning. Why was I so soon enthralled? Why, in 7th grade, looking for a dragon to slay, a princess to save?
It will be observed that the contents of my panegyric have been excised from the narrative. The reader may rest assured that Andrea was wooed with all the accumulated prowess an eleven year old may be justly expected to muster. I invoked Shakespeare, Noah Webster; several verses of Stevie Nicks’ “Landslide” and more than one Coldplay song were flagrantly plagiarized; in short: I declared my love to her in no uncertain terms. Kyle Schwimmer teased me ferociously until the end of the year. But then, Kyle Schwimmer was never, if only for a brief moment, loved by Andrea Taylor.
