Flashback: September 19, 1997

The special heart pendant I kept (Photo by me)

Exactly 15 years ago to this day, I gave my grandmother and parents some lame excuse for going out in the early evening, got on my bike, and sneaked off to a park in our São Paulo neighborhood. Expecting me there was a blondish, hazel-eyed classmate of mine, also 13 years old and from the same neighborhood, who had long before decided he loved me and told everyone about it. He spammed me with romantic greeting cards. He sent me flowers and a stuffed kitty for my birthday. Even my parents and their friends knew and teased me. I tried to play it cool and told them I didn’t like him back. In truth, I was not used to the kind of attention I was getting from him. I was usually the one crushing and not being liked back – already a seasoned hopeless romantic (from age 5), with a gradually developing penchant for the unattainable, fickleness in my affections, and admirable resilience in the face of rejection. Perhaps that romantic precociousness was simply due to my nature. Perhaps it was influenced by the hormones raging too soon among my classmates. Perhaps it had to do with the present-from-birth social pressure to pair up, palpable in relatives’ self-satisfied comments about unfortunate 30-year-old “spinsters” and things such as “Festa Junina,” a traditional party held each June in Brazil where a mock wedding takes place between little boys and girls complete with bridal gowns.

As I entered the park that evening in 1997, my heart was pounding so hard I felt sick to my stomach (and it wasn’t even my mock wedding night). The boy was very nice and patient with me – I think he noticed I was shaking – and tried to calm me down. I pulled away from his embrace a couple of times. He gave me a gold heart pendant and I accidentally dropped it on the ground from my nervous grasp, fumbling around until I retrieved it. I actually reciprocated the boy’s feelings, but for many months had resisted his requests to slow-dance with me at classmates’ parties and kiss me. The thought of “dating” someone (not just imagining and writing poems about it) embarrassed me, and at the same time I got an ego boost from the boy’s persistence and some satisfaction out of leaving him hanging. (Even at 13 I had my heartless bitch moments.) The kids in school were annoying, sometimes cruel. They repeatedly teased me and asked me how I could dare to reject such a boy. He was a lot more popular than I was – me, the nerd, the butt of everyone’s jokes; him, the boy at least three girls in school, and others from outside, wanted to kiss. But my nerdiness is precisely what got him to like me (and even admire me, he would tell me years later). He turned all those girls down to wait for me, but at some point he got tired and ended up kissing some girl he didn’t like. I found out and was livid. That, and the fact I would be leaving Brazil in a week to live in the United States, convinced me to finally meet up with him alone in the park (previously, I would drag my little brother or friends along and knock on his door when I wanted to see him). It was now or never. Also, I wouldn’t have to bear the jeering of kids at school if we were caught walking around holding hands. They wouldn’t get a chance to see us together.

   

So our kiss finally came, under a tree – my first real kiss, but not his because he had kissed that random chick (either way, ours was the first kiss with meaning for both of us). Today I can still taste that first kiss, minty and soft, and experience tells me it was actually really good. The heart pendant he gave me somehow survived about 20 moves (I kid you not!) to different houses and apartments, went through nine cities, five countries, buried among trinkets from a dozen relationships and decades of family hand-me-downs. Our friendship and at least affection for each other, if not a sort of fascination, also survived somehow. Perhaps it was because our relationship was never tainted by the strife of an actual romantic relationship – no fights, breakups or sex. I wrote poems and a song for him. We saw each other again twice in 15 years, but not since 2001, and never kissed again. At times, but often not at the same time, I or he expected a lot from the other and ended up disappointed. We would make plans to meet up again almost whenever we talked (mostly on the Internet, but occasionally running up the phone bill to hysterical-parent levels), but something or someone always got in the way. When he went to the United States to study for a year, in a city I could easily have flown to, we were both in relationships – though, again, not at the same time – and with his overly jealous girlfriend and my demanding newspaper internship schedule, we could not manage to see each other, let alone talk regularly. Coupled with other circumstances, this turned into not talking at all for about four years at some point. After I got my first full-time newspaper job, he found my byline and my e-mail on the Internet, and we restarted what he once referred to as our “never-ending conversation.” The other day I told him that if we ever end up together in this life, we should definitely make our story into a book.

Recently I discovered this song by The Shins (video and lyrics below), the words of which (down to “the charm on the chain” the vocalist sings of giving to his muse) came to remind me a lot of my story with the hazel-eyed boy from São Paulo – one of the few constants in my life, despite the great physical distance and divergent paths (e.g. he lives in the same house he did growing up; I never lived in one house for more than three years). Here’s to the next 15 years, my dear... whatever changes, curveballs and missed opportunities, we will always have that evening in the park.

"SIMPLE SONG," THE SHINS

Well, this is just a simple song,

To say what you done.

I told you 'bout all those fears,

And away they did run.

You sure must be strong,

And you feel like an ocean being warmed by the sun.

When I was just nine years old,

I swear that I dreamt,

Your face on a football field,

And a kiss that I kept,

Under my vest.

Apart from everything,

But the heart in my chest.

Chorus:

I know that things can really get rough,

When you go it alone.

Don't go thinking you gotta be tough,

And play like a stone.

Could be there's nothing else in our lives so critical,

As this little home.

My life in an upturned boat,

Marooned on a cliff.

You brought me a great big flood,

And you gave me a lift.

Girl, what a gift.

Will you tell me with your tongue,

And your breath was in my lungs,

And we float up through the rift.

Chorus:

I know that things can really get rough,

When you go it alone.

Don't go thinking you gotta be tough,

And play like a stone.

Could be there's nothing else in our lives so critical,

As this little home.

Well, this would be a simple song,

To say what you done.

I told you 'bout all those fears,

And away they did run.

You sure must be strong,

When you feel like an ocean being warmed by the sun.

Remember walking a mile to your house,

Aglow in the dark?

I made a fumbling play for your heart,

And the act struck a spark.

You wore a charm on the chain that I stole,

Special for you.

Love's such a delicate thing that we do,

With nothing to prove,

Which I never knew.