teenage love
insp.
They say teenage love burns out fast.
It’s like a firework. It whizzes up into the sky – up and up and up and up, and it explodes, and the colors start falling onto the ground like little fireflies whose colors got messed up somewhere down the line. And then those fireflies fall to the ground, and they die as they fall, and as they die, the fun part fades – the color and the bang and whatever those crazy kids fell in love with when they started out.
When I was a teenager, I never thought that was true. I mean, sure, I was going to have little flits of relationships – I would date some people I didn’t really like and those would be the Fireworks. The kinds that whizzed away, out of my reach, and into the sky, and then they’d explode and drizzle down and the colors would be beautiful but they would be gone far too quickly to be savored. I would have my own personal show of them. A bunch of them just going up, and then disappearing. But I was convinced that I would find someone better than that. Someone I’d end up settling with. I’d kiss their lips and taste lightening, hold their hand and have it feel right, talk and feel like the words I say click into place with theirs. I felt like I’d find The One in high school, like a lot of kids do. And you know what? I wasn’t wrong.
In the beginning of my junior year of high school, I started listening to the radio. I mean, I always did, but never the smaller stations – the ones on the AM setting that you never actually tune into because they’re always about dumb old sports games or the weather – the weather now, in this moment, as if you couldn’t just look outside and see it – or other boring old stuff like that, punctuated by bad service and fuzzy phases where everything the person’s saying is drowned out by static, white noise.
But anyway, I started listening to the AM radio – because all the FM stations were songs I’d heard so many times that I was just sick of the beat, or stations that were too fuzzy to even understand the lyrics of – and kept on phasing through the stations. I was sitting outside of my house, I remember, just sitting there in my old, rinky-dink car and soaking in the sunset on the horizon, waiting until my old man called me in for dinner. We were barbequing that night. I remember the smell of the smoke coming from the back yard. The connection to radio stations was always bad on AM. I remember my grandma used to listen to it. She’d usually find one of the local stations; those were always clearer, crisper. I don’t know why she put the time into it, though. They always talked about – well, y’know.
I kept turning the dial. Voices flitted in and out of the coverage. Well – sunny – Bob – did you – I know – have you ever – ha-ha – y’know, that fake radio laugh that always sounds more uncomfortable than anything – and then we – so I was in class today and I swear to God I was so freaked out. The teacher called on me and I was like a deer in the headlights. I stopped. Who was this guy? The voice came out of the speakers clean and crisp, as if they were talking right next to me. It kind of sucks that I’m so quiet in school. I could probably do so much better if I could, like…talk. My brow furrowed; I ran a hand through my hair, thinking. Whoever this guy was – he had to be from around here, and he sounded my age, so he must’ve been in my high school. But I didn’t recognize the voice. I knew almost everybody at school, so who could it possibly be that I didn’t know him? Uh…yeah. I’m running out of stuff to say. I’m gonna open up the line for callers. The number is the same as the station number, or – it should be.
I called in. I asked. His voice got flustered; I could hear him swallow hard, take in a bit of a hitched breath. Then he bailed on me. Ended the call. Picked up someone else.
The air of mystery kept me listening for the next few weeks, just trying to figure out who it could be. And to put a long story short, I figured it out. His name was Alfred; Alfred Jones. And it turned out I did know him. We sat next to each other in language arts. He never talked in class is all.
I confronted to him about it. And by then, I’d developed some – uh, feelings for him. So I figured I’d knock two birds out with one stone, and it worked out in my favor.
We were a cliché.
I would come to his house after school. Sit in on his radio shows. I’d have him sit on my lap, and every so often I’d whine about kisses, in a big, childish groan, flash him some puppy eyes, and Alfred would get all flustered, push his glasses up the bridge of his thin nose with a squeak, which was so gloriously out of character from his radio persona, his tan skin slowly heating up, and I’d laugh while he’d apologize for me. The radio show slowly got more popular. I think people liked to hear people being happy. People loved our relationship, the dynamic we had. Sometimes I’d get tired and crash at his place, and for once, the radio shows would be a relative normality while I’d sleep on his bed and he’d keep talking on and on about space, or grades, or schools, or occasionally he’d think I’d fallen asleep and start talking about me. I didn’t really care what it was he talked about. I liked the sound of his voice. I liked him. I loved him. He felt like – he felt like The One.
That year was also the year I started writing poetry.
It started about Alfred. About how wonderful he was. About little things we did together. The way he’d laugh behind his hand. How his shoulders bounced when he did that. How it felt to have him in my arms, stay over at his house on the weekends and say good-morning to his parents, who strangely enough never seemed to mind my piercings on my eyebrows or the one that looped along my lip. They never even seemed to comment when I turned eighteen and came in with a tattoo of blackbirds stretching across my torso – the first one I’d ever gotten – to show Alfred. And they were totally cool with us going on tons of dates. I’d see a sunset and text him about it, pick him up and drive him over to the lake so we could watch it and point out constellations once the sky fell darker. We’d go on movie dates and see horrible romantic comedies just to point out the plot-holes and bad acting, but I think we secretly both liked them.
We were cliché and I loved every minute of it.
I loved seeing him in school and having to restrain myself from assaulting him in affection, because he didn’t want anybody to know who he was, and if I flaunted our relationship, the dynamic between us, people would be able to put two and two together about his identity. I loved leaving gentle little kisses on his forehead when he fell asleep after radio shows. I loved kissing him, and feeling light lightening, electricity, was bouncing between our lips. I loved the feeling of his hand in mine, like two fitting pieces from totally different puzzles. I loved the feeling of talking to him after school, and feeling like he understood everything I was saying, or everything I wasn’t saying. I loved him. And he loved me back. He never failed to remind me of that. He reminded me before school over text, and during school through passed notes in shared classes, and after class when we met up at his house, and after the radio show and during the radio show and before the radio show and during dinner at his place and breakfast at my place and every time he felt it. When I kissed him, he’d kiss back, no matter what he was doing before that point. When I talked to him, he heard me and he listened. When I asked him for help in one of my classes, he wouldn’t groan or tell me just to go to the teacher. When I told him I loved being with him, he would give me one of those “you-said-that-just-five-minutes-ago-you-know” faces and then echo my words and slip his hand into mine.
But – but anyway, I started writing poetry about him that year. And it being about him turned into being about simple pleasures – holding a warm cup of tea, the satisfaction of I love you, sunsets, sunrises, the way the stars look when the night is clear, the taste of crisp air in the winter – and it being about simple pleasures turned into being about big things, and it being about big things turned into it being about…everything. I wrote about Alfred. I wrote about the argument my parents and I had the night after I got the tattoo. I wrote about the day after that. I wrote about everything I could find the muse to write about.
And then one night, just before the start of senior year, I decided I would try to sing. I would join chorus. I always wanted to, and there was nothing really stopping me.
So I did.
I was one of the only guys in chorus, and more than that, I was the guy in chorus with gages and eyebrow piercings and a tattoo that ran down my back and one that laced along my arms. I looked so out of place among everybody else. They had so much of a different style than I did. But I didn’t care too much about it. It was fun and people said I had a great voice.
My poetry turned into songs.
My songs turned into songs with instruments I didn’t know how to play.
And that turned into a band.
I met Francis and Gilbert in the band room at our school. People went there a lot to record things – amateur artists would sit in the soundproof rooms and take fuzzy recordings that sounded a lot like the music that played on AM radio. Francis showed up there one day, while I was waiting to record, with a guitar, and Gil followed close behind him, drumsticks in hand. And you know how it happened? I just walked the fuck up and asked them if they wanted to be in a band. And they said yes. How boring of a story is that? I walked up and asked them to be in the band. I didn’t know them. We weren’t good friends. Francis was just some guy with a guitar and a really indie looking beard and Gilbert was just a dude who looked like he could probably play drums well. And I probably was just that one kid with a heavy British accent and tattoos they’d seen go into the chorus room.
Turned out we worked really well together. Francis was annoying as fuck at first, but he turned out to be really chill. He just liked to show off, was all. He was a romantic. He liked to talk about romantic things. The things I’d write about in my songs. And Gilbert – Gilbert turned out to be a party animal, just the way he looked, with that ever-present bedhead and the wild, confident look in his eyes, and the way his little brother contrasted with his carefree personality. They were both annoying as fuck, but I got used to them, and after I got used to them, they turned into friends. Good friends. And all because I walked up and asked them – just asked them, the lamest story ever – to be in a band.
Naturally, I got more and more into my band. We met for practice every week. I’d try and bring new lyrics every time. We’d have jam sessions just trying to figure out melodies and drum parts. Francis taught me bass, since he’d learned it a while back but liked normal guitar more, and I started making parts for that, too. We spent so much time figuring things out that I sometimes missed my weekly movie dates with Alfred. He told me he didn’t mind. But when he said that, he said it in his quiet voice. The voice he used around teachers and people he didn’t know, but had to talk to, so he’d force it out even though it felt like sandpaper sliding along his throat. I didn’t notice at the time; just kissed his lips and told him I’d try not to miss it the next week. And I didn’t notice it happening, but every time I said that, that kiss would taste less and less electric, and his lips would smile less at the corners. Movie Mondays slowly faded away.
And then I stopped coming to his radio shows. I’d listen to them, though. And then dates got less frequent. I was so preoccupied, but looking back on it I probably hurt him. I probably left him feeling sad at night, trying to sleep while I was laughing with the guys and putting together song lyrics and living more than I ever had before. When I talked to him, I talked about the band. I told him about songs. He listened to me like he always did, but I guess I never really listened to him long enough to realize that when he responded he responded empty, and the smile he smiled was for me but not with me, and when he laughed he sounded forced, and there was a certain sadness in his eyes when I said that again I wouldn’t be able to hang out that week.
I messed up and I didn’t know it until later on.
Later on was the end of high school.
I don’t know why he held on so long. Except maybe I do. Maybe that’s why I held onto him. Maybe that’s why I kept holding his hand even when I was drifting away. Maybe that’s why I didn’t stop telling him I wouldn’t be able to make that date that day and just say I didn’t have the time to see him anymore. Maybe it was love.
I graduated and I ended up getting caught up by a recording company. My band did, I mean. People were actually listening to us. We could go on a tour. I was eighteen and I was hanging out with my weird, stranger-friends making songs about everything and songs about nothing and for some reason people wanted to listen to that. People were fans. I was so excited. I called Alfred that night and told him I might be going big. I might end up not going to college – I was thinking of going back to England instead, and making tours there. I would have trouble paying bills at first but I always wanted to go back home, and to home home, not just the home I had with my parents. I told him I would try to call him and we could make this work and even though it would get difficult we could still stay together because how could we ever not stay together, you’re amazing and I’m amazing and I love-
You need to choose.
That’s what he said to me, in a small, but forceful voice that sounded hard and sharp and edged, and over the phone I swear to god I could still hear him gripping the chest of his shirt and forcing himself to annunciate correctly. I asked for clarification – what?
You need to choose. You either stay with the band or you stay with me.
Pause. Radio silence.
Arthur, I can’t take this anymore. I miss the fuck out of you and then I finally get to talk to you and it’s always about the band. We did this and we did that. We wrote this new song and this new beat and this new that and I’m tired of it, Arthur. I miss you and I feel like you don’t miss me anymore.
I hung up on him.
Six months later, my band and I got on the next plane to London, England.
By then, I was still not over Alfred.
I’d written five break-up songs about him and singing them still made my chest hurt. But going to England would make things better. I was sure of it. I would be on a separate continent from Alfred. I’d be living on my own, with my band members, and singing my heart out and playing concerts for fans and making a name for myself and my music.
People like to say that all high school relationships are quick. They’re fireworks. And, well, they’re not really that wrong. That’s how a lot of mine were. They were over quick and afterward you didn’t have anything to mourn over; the explosion was fiery and angry and beautiful and you could move onto the next one without any regret. But then, there are other ones. The Ones. They’re not like Fireworks, because they burn longer and harder and you want to have them forever, and you think you’ll have them forever. Their colors get burned into your mind, so deep you’ll never forget them. And they don’t end quick, either. They end slow, fading from your memory like a dream or maybe a nightmare. And then afterward you never forget them. You just regret them. You want to go back and change things. They turn into song lyrics – song lyrics that turn into your best-selling song and the one you play at concerts; the songs that people always say sound so sad, like I still felt the same as when I wrote them.
They say teenage love burns out fast. And they’re wrong.
I held Alfred’s hand tighter than anyone else’s. I loved him more than anyone in the world. For those two years of my life, I was in heaven. I was without him sometimes; I had my space. But some of my happiest days were spent with him, and some of his happiest days were spent with me. We were a cliché and I loved our little clichés, our little nose kisses and the way we sounded on AM radio, the way he felt in my arms and the way his lips sent little sparks across mine. But things got difficult, and we started drifting and I didn’t notice, and he kept trying to hold on, pull me back to him.
There was no Firework.
There was no perfect ending. There was no curtain closing on a Shakespeare tale. There was no blow-out argument. There was no epic final scene. We didn’t end with a satisfying bang, crackle, snap, pop. There were no falling, wacked-up fireflies. That would be much too simple – much too cliché, much too romance-novel, much too convenient. Sometimes, people don’t get a perfect ending. There was no antagonist. There was no anger. There was no furious boyfriend with a loud, lionesque voice. It wasn’t like in the movies; it wasn’t like they said. We faded out like AM radio in a moving car – stories cut off mid-sentence, weather reports punctuated by another person’s clipping voice.
And one day, we both let go.
