A good place to get lost

I’ve been thinking of a boy lately.

This boy had blond hair, blue eyes, a smattering of Irish freckles and mischief. There was a restlessness in him, but I didn’t have words for that at the time. We were 13—restlessness was part of the package. There was melancholy in this boy too, but I didn’t see that then, not at all, because I was too preoccupied with what he thought or did not think about me.

Rewind: When we were in third grade, this boy and I, I broke my knee. It was Georg M’s fault, but that’s another story. I was excused from school and had to keep my leg up on pillows at home and miss all the Thanksgiving festivities in the classroom.

Someone delivered a pile of crayon-scribble cards from my classmates. In the pile, there was a card to me from this boy. Dear Jen i am so sorry you hurt your knee. i like you and care about you a lot. i hope your knee feels better. i love you. He had signed his name, and colored a big purple heart for me.

Somewhere, I have this card. Still.

Fast-forward: The boy and I are 13 again, in eighth grade, eager to get our lives in gear and out of our Catholic grade school. It was Halloween 1983, and I was going trick-or-treating as a Valley Girl with a group of kids I knew. What I didn’t know is that the boy lived in their neighborhood, or that we’d be crossing paths that night. But there he was. He liked my short skirt and high heels, he liked the wild hair, he liked the makeup. The makeup! This was not the Jenn who sat behind him in class every day.

Something happened. Eggs thrown? Neighbors yelling? I only recall that this boy took my hand and said, “Come on. Come with me.”

We ran. Just the two of us. His hand was soft, surprisingly vulnerable. I knew nothing of boys’ hands except memories of my brother’s young hands. This was something else. Thirteen. On the verge of…well…I did not know yet, but I was looking forward to finding out.

We cut through a row of Philly backyards. We slowed. We stopped.

He faced me, holding my hands in his. Behind him, I could see a dogwood tree, lights in back bedroom windows, a glowing moon, stars.

“This seems like a good place to get lost,” said the boy, with a lazy grin. He had used this line before, and it was going to work again. Yes, it was.

He pulled me gently to him and kissed me.

I had not yet been kissed before. I often think it was the perfect first kiss: unexpected, outdoors, someone I adored but considered unattainable, Halloween, the smell of woodsmoke.

It was wet, open-mouthed, curious, soft. In my heels, we were eye-to-eye. His eyes and skin shone golden in the yellow lamplights.

I pulled away. Sheer nervousness. “I guess we should find the others,” I said.

He shrugged. “I guess so.”

He held my hand as we wandered back to the others’ turf. I remember the thrill when he did not let go, the delight as others noticed but said nothing. This beautiful boy was with me. I was a Valley Girl with blue eyeshadow and a blue-eyed boy. Life was good.

We parted ways. Would we go see movies? Would we go rollerskating? Would he write me love letters? The anticipation was too great to sleep that night. I had been KISSED. I had just had my FIRST KISS.

The next day, I took my seat behind the boy’s empty chair. Ten minutes later, he skidded into our classroom and into his seat, without saying a word to me.

Oh, I thought. So this is how it goes.

He pretended not to know me that year. I had the good sense at the time to be angry rather than sad. Soon I found a nice public-school drummer boy who wore anarchy T-shirts and who couldn’t smell due to a biking accident. About as cool as you could get.

In the back of my head, though, I figured I’d eventually run into the boy. And then I’d tease him for his kiss-and-run approach.

But I won’t. I can’t.

He’s found a good place to get lost, I just found out. So good, he can’t be found. He died of a cocaine overdose in May 2000.

Where was he? What was he thinking that day?

I would say, Thanks for that lovely first kiss. I don’t know if you knew it was my first. But I think of you every Halloween night.

I would say, Maybe you were looking for beauty, elusive beauty, the feeling that something mattered.

If you were here I would tell you: You mattered.

Beautifully.