Relationship Prologue

            When I was very young I saw my first breast and I was hooked. I knew from that moment on that I would likely be enjoying breasts for the rest of my life. Fast forward a few years and to the barber shop and my first exposure to an Adult Themed magazine. No, not Playboy, the other one. Yeah, that one. While shocking as that magazine was, I was still on the hook for the fairer sex. A history of being in love with women while simultaneously not understanding them one bit. It’s quite the mystery but one I’m fully vested.

            In grammar school I was infatuated with a little blonde girl and I dreamed and wished the innocent fantasies that an eight or nine year old would; living in the woods with her away from our families, having some sort of Swiss Family Robinson home complete with native animals to do our bidding. How hard could that have been?

            In eighth grade I had my first kiss with a different blonde girl on a fire escape at a haunted house. I never saw her again and I still don’t remember her name. I find that very tragic but she set the tone for every other meaningful kiss in my life. Kisses that, as I entered high school, would flow like pubescent gasoline over everything flammable.

            There were make out sessions with the theater girls at every party it seemed and the first set of breasts I ever got to touch with any encouragement and confidence. I dated girls briefly and some are still friends to this day. We didn’t have that deep emotional attachment but still enjoy each other now. Then there were the first real lusty relationships on parent’s couches, groping and kissing and teasing through underwear. Until my first High school girlfriend of any significance; who was bat-shit crazy. After trying to break up with her for the third or fourth time she dumped a Slurpee on my head and scratched my face under my right eye. It was a painful break up. Not really because of the scratch but what I had gone through just to make her my girlfriend in the first place. I sacrificed my friendship with my two best friends over this girl and in the end I wound up with nothing. But I was optimistic in my adolescent depression that things sucked now, but they would get better. They just had to.

            I soon met a young woman who would become the model of the kind of woman I would always want in my life. She was smart, witty, fun, and sexy and she thought I was pretty neat. She was the first girl I ever really was in love with. It was more than mere infatuation or liking someone a whole lot. We laughed together and wrote together and read together. We listened to music and smoked cigarettes. We danced. We cuddled. We tried secret coughing codes when far apart to tell each other of our love. I loved her and when she dumped me on Valentine’s Day I was crushed. I crawled into a hole and didn’t emerge from it for two or three years.

            By then college had started and I was back to schoolboy crushes on a Swedish girl and a waif-like redhead. The Swede didn’t like me in that way and the Redhead was an alcoholic with deep emotional issues who later accused me of a horrible act of which I would never do in a hundred billion years. (I’ll leave the mystery open.) An act so hateful that I gave up a nickname I had for 11 years so I could bury her accusation in the past. Again I was sent into a depressed and chaotic singlehood.

            College didn’t last long and I took up residence at two bars in the city. One bar was for observing the very make up of relationships as couples would come into the bar and the mysteries of how these two people could get along were explored. The second bar was for fun and the encouragement of strong male figures to pursue women with more confidence. In this second bar I met the second love of my life and she was the combination of the first kiss blonde and the relationship definer of high school.

            Our relationship was turbulent at times but we had real love for each other and it seemed like we would likely be together forever. However two people can only hurt each other for so long before the wounds get too deep to heal and the love, so earnestly and honestly professed, becomes a wedge of contention. That relationship died on a cross in the sun and hurt more deeply than any other in my life. Parts of me still miss her every single day.

            I returned to a state of perpetual pining and several more years passed until I felt I might be ready to meet someone special again. Since then, the pickings have been slim. I’ve met some very wonderful women but didn’t get that spark. I’ve met some women that professed their desire for me that encouraged my heart to beat for them, only for them to break that heart with their youthful indiscretions.

            Some women I tried too hard with, some I didn’t try hard enough. Some woman just didn’t like me, some women were liars. Some women were just flirts, some women were stones. Some women were careless with my feelings, some women didn’t have any feelings. Some women didn’t know who I was, some women didn’t take the time to find out.  Some women abused my heart, some women were abused by mine.

            In all, my relationship history is rather tortured with passions diluted and expectations too high for their own good. I don’t know what will happen next. I don’t know if I will ever meet the right woman who’ll want to nurture a relationship with me. Will I meet a nice woman that accepts my relationship prologue and thinks that will have made me into someone she can appreciate and even love? Will I see in her all the parts that I now know I need?

I hope so. This is getting ridiculous.