The 40-Year Fib
Did a secret ever eat at you till you couldn’t take it anymore? This is mine.
I was very awkward at 17 but JB, a busboy in the restaurant where I worked, had me beat. A greasy-haired oddball with a loud, strange voice, a serious case of acne and too-short knit pants, JB stood out.
I was never given much freedom — an older sibling lived on the wild side and apparently the remedy for that is to confine the younger sister and accuse her of things like smoking and having sex, though when I’d have had the opportunity I can’t imagine.
Perhaps it seemed to JB that our mutual awkwardness made us a good match. For whatever reason, he became fixated on me.
JB would come by the hostess stand and say hello, tell me I was pretty, talk about his life, ask about mine. This was all new to me and I had no clue how to handle it. Kids are like kites, you let them go a little at a time or they’re lost when they break free. I was a bit of a lost kite.
One day JB started asking me out. I said no but he kept on because I wasn’t firm. He asked if I had a boyfriend. I told the truth — no — but said he and I could only be friends. Honesty about the boyfriend was a big mistake. If only I could go back and help my younger self, poor bewildered thing.
Every day he asked, naming various restaurants and asking if I liked that kind of food. He was pitiful, really, and that didn’t help because I knew about not fitting in. There was no attraction but I felt sorry for him and he flustered me with his weird demeanor and loud attention.
He begged. “Please, just go out with me once and I’ll leave you alone.” He was beginning to wear me down because his hanging around the hostess stand was attracting attention from the waitresses. “Oooh! JB really likes you!”
The day he broke me started out like any other. He came over to the cash register and asked if I had heard a song by Atlanta Rhythm Section called “So Into You”. I had, of course. “I listen to it a lot and think of you,” he said and then crooned in his high, strange voice, “I am so into you, I can’t think of nothin’ else!”
He then informed me he’d made up a dance to go with it and had spent hours working on it. Would I like to see it? “Um, not here.” “No, it’s fine. . .” And…
