There will come a time in your life when you will meet a boy who will claim you his possession whether you like it or not. Talking about possession, he will either be conscious or unconscious about this alleged claiming of the whole of you, and you will either be happy or sad about it. When the time comes in your life that you will meet this boy, this boy that will define the totality of your teenage years, up to your twenties, and up to your thirties, and forties, and somehow, if you manage to outlive the future generations’ ephemeral life spans — you will come to the realization that you will be taken hostage by a boy you have met fifty or sixty years back.
You will meet him in high school, or in your first few months at college. You will keep it a secret to your parents, but you will somehow find yourself talking about this boy with your closest friends, to the point that they get sick of it, and you will get pretty pissed off, because you can’t see how they can never take interest about him. You will try to think of a thousand reasons to come up and talk to him. Once you hit the gates of your school, or your university, the first thought that comes to mind goes along the lines where must he be hanging, or something. There will be other boys who will profess their undying infatuation — or love, that four-letter word you still don’t fully comprehend — to you, and you will not care about them because you feel as if you are meant to be with this boy. He will have distinct features that will be one of the many thought-up reasons you will think of whenever you are asked why you feel magnetized about this boy: he has green eyes, I like the stubble along his chin to his sideburns, he dresses like a hippie trash bag but still pulls it off really well, he’s a figure-skater, he likes pretty obscure bands, et cetera. You will feel your heart burning in odd delight whenever you see him looking at you, and you will feel electricity down your spine when he waves hello to you by the hallways, or by a chance meeting at the mall, or by a wasted weekend boozefest. You and him will finally, in succeeding opportune acquaintanceship moments, get each other’s numbers, and SMS and call each other like there’s no tomorrow. And then you will watch romantic comedy flicks with the boy that you will tell yourself is the story of my life, or to some extent related to that. You will go to underground gigs with this boy, who loves the indie music scene, and you will love all of it, too.
The boy will take you to parking lots and boy night-outs and you will forcibly drink with them, and forcibly acquaint yourself with these deemed no-brainers, and wonder why the boy will never go shopping with you and your friends. You will be irked by the taste of alcohol, and you will ask for cocktails, say, sex on the beach, or a rhum cola, and the boy will tell you over and over that beer is still the good way to go. You will inhale secondhand smoke until you get fed up and ask the boy to teach you how to huff and puff nicotine down your throat to your lungs, and you will at first own thoughts of hesitation, but you will like how it feels, and so you carry on. The very reason why you will buy your first pack of cigarettes is that it somehow reminds you of the boy’s taste, that time when you guys first kissed, under the halo of streetlights, one wasted woozy giddy school night, in the influence of beer and a passed-up joint — you will be kissed by the boy you will call your first love.
The boy will be your first love. He will also be your first experience in relationships. Days will pass, and you will not want to let go from his embrace, and he will get annoyed because of you. Months will pass, and you will not want to let go from a 24/7 surveillance over him, and he will get upset with you. Years will pass, and you will not want to let him go out with other girls, and he will get sick of you.
It will be a topsy-turvy roller-coaster-ish one hell of a ride, your relationship, and throughout the course of all of it, you will break up and make up for about an infinite number of times. You will also cry for about an infinite number of times, as well. One by one, your best friends from high school will get tired of your conversations because it will always be about either your heartbreak about the boy, or your unending natural high (which also is of effect of the boy). People will come and go in your life as you age and mature, as you lose your viginity and have your first STD scare, and yet you will still cling to the boy as if the universal truth doesn’t exist in your own make-believe made-up world. There will come a time that you will get tired of the boy, too, as he will be with you just the same — and you will meet other boys, and kiss other boys, and have sex with other boys — but you will always find yourself going back to him.
This will be true as you blow the eighteen candles on your grand birthday celebration as a debutante, until you have your photo taken with your college diploma, until you have your first job interview in some premiere company, until you get your own apartment and decide to share a room with a stranger because you failed to budget and thought that you will never pay the bills on time.
The boy will cross your mind for about a hundred to a thousand times after months of your final break-up, that break-up that made you want to kill yourself, that made you want to wish you could sleep forever and never wake up, that made you need your friends back (even the ones you lost along the way), that made you messed up in all the possible ways there are. But you will be absorbed by your adulthood, and you will be busy, and you will have overtime duties to accomplish, and you will lose a lot of hours of sleep, and you will lose your friends again because you will never find time for them anymore, and you will meet a couple of boys in your office, or in the fastfood chain you frequent during lunch breaks, or in the coffee shop you fancy when you have your time off.
And at these moments when you suddenly open yourself up to a different boy, you will think of the boy and your neatly tied-up memory, perfected with every detail, at the back of your head, and you will remember dates and the make-out sessions and a hundred heartbreak lapses — and you will find yourself brushing away all those memories, and try focusing on this new and altogether different boy. But you will still find traces of the boy — your first kiss, your first love, the boy you lost your virginity to — with all these new boys (or men, as you prefer to call them once you hit the age-twenty-group). He has green eyes like the boy did, but it doesn’t suit his skin color; his stubble is a bit off with his facial features, the boy looked best with that kind of stubble; he tries so hard to pull off the cool hippie look, unlike the boy, who pulls it off without even trying; he also skates, but not as good as the boy — I should know; his musical taste is a mess … I wish the boy and I could lecture him about his life choices; et cetera.
You will find yourself not finding anyone better than the boy because you never once forgot about all his imperfections that filled up his perfection in your perspective, and so he was the perfect boy in your life and everyone else was just a passerby, a one-night-stand-er, a fleeting fling, a boring old geezer.
But then you will realize that you have to compromise between being in love with the boy all your life, and being in love with yourself a little more. So, you marry a rich dude and have two or three kids, and you will force yourself to feel content until you do, and you will live a normal average life until you hit your late thirties, your mid-crisis-filled forties, and your I’m-so-fat-and-ugly fifties.
And you will still think about the boy, and think how messed up and crazy and interesting your life will be if he stayed — and at some point, both of you will pass by each other in the busy streets unawares, be at a diner sitting back to back which will leave you two clueless about each other’s presence, or lots of something elses. And somehow, you will forget how he looks, forget what his favorite band was, forget his most re-watched film of all-time, forget the taste of his lips, forget the lines you so masterfully mastered on his palms, the sound he makes when he is about to orgasm, your pet names for each other, everything.
But you will never forget how he made you feel, how just holding his hand could make your day (and your whole week), and how he made you feel fireworks explosions inside your gut whenever he carries you on his back when you already feel tired, and how his kisses cured you better than any Advil or Paracetamol whenever you felt bad, and how your stomach churned in twisted ways whenever he wasn’t around, and how you cried endlessly when you saw him leave you without remorse, and how you felt that desperate longing for his touch when he had to leave town with his family for a whole week, and how he managed to tear you up with bliss when he ran to your house to bring you your favorite food when you were sick, and how the feel of his lips against your skin felt like a million tiny lovebugs crawling all over inside you, making you feel good, making you feel loved.
And this boy, the boy you will remember all your life, will leave at some point in your life, but he will never for once leave your mind, leave your heart, leave the bags of memories you so carefully preserved.
And the truth is, you will love this boy all your life, you will love this boy for the rest of your life.
