Expert Hands

He was the first guy I slept with after puberty. Don’t get the wrong idea, it took me almost ten years to go from A to B, and then I literally slept with him. All our clothes on. Two single beds in my dorm room pushed together. I might have kicked my socks off in the night. Other than my toes though, there was no nudity, and he wasn’t into feet.

We were adorably earnest that year. Two freshman students full of zeal for everything the world had to offer. Never mind we were living in the smallest of small towns on the east coast. The opportunities seemed limitless. We spent nights at the campus theatre. We spent weekends in my drafty dorm room, planning to take over the world one creative project at a time. We dreamed of improv troupes and wrote shitty first drafts of angsty one act plays.

It took another two years for me to actually sleep with him. There were mitigating circumstances, I didn’t spend two years pining my way into his bed. It was a summer like a novel. Long days apart while I worked in another town. Late nights trying to keep quiet so we didn’t wake his parents or my flatmate.

We made more plans. We named my memoir (a work in progress). We drove all night to see Shakespeare at dawn. We made sushi in a town where fish was historically only eaten by poor people. We ignored the reality that I was staying and he was moving a timezone away to study theater. We ignored that I was top of my class, a science nerd, and he hadn’t completed a single year of university, and thought theater was going to be his saving grace. It seemed poetic.

He left. I wept, staring forlornly out the train window like warbride. We tried to keep in touch, but that’s not how the story goes. The internet kept us abreast of each other. He moved around some more, living a bohemian life with jobs he said he hated. I moved to the big city and started a career I didn’t plan to stick with, but did. He moved some more. I met someone else. So did he. We got matching cats, but that was an accident.

He stopped moving, went home. I don’t know how he felt about that. I just remember his 18-year-old self trying so hard not to be from that place anymore. I saw him once on his long drive back across the country. Brought my new boyfriend, reminisced about old days. He kept driving. I went home with my new love to our life. I’m content, and Facebook says he is too.

This morning, I saw his name in a theater review. A mysterious character, a risk of cliche, but in his expert hands there were depths to explore. That’s what the review said. I hope he reads it and believes it. My 19-year-old self is so proud for him. One of us made that dream happen after all.

My memoir is still unfinished.