According to my mom, my first boyfriend was a kid from preschool named Josh. I have no recollection of Josh and few memories of preschool in general, other than the time a classmate caused a commotion during snack time by choking on a raisin. (The teacher leapt into action and Regan was fine by the time our reading circle commenced.) What earned Josh the ‘boyfriend’ designation? To this day, I’m unsure. As best I can tell, I was a girl, he was a boy, and we made it through playtime without throwing things at each other, which our mothers misinterpreted as a budding romance.
Josh’s family moved away before kindergarten, which was just as well because that’s where I developed a crush on a classmate named Erin, not that I recognized it as such. I was only vaguely aware of homosexuality then, mostly via the AIDS crisis and an aunt’s hairdresser buddy, and later due to Leon from Roseanne and Harvey Fierstein’s guest spot on Cheers. But I sure took umbrage when Keith, a glue-eater who wasn’t trusted with scissors, announced his crush on Erin. I’d been to Keith’s house — our mothers were friends — and had seen him in his Underoos, inhaling bowls of Cookie Crisp. It was a spectacle unworthy of Erin.
Next came first grade, where our desks were arranged in pods of four. I was one of two girls, and the other girl, Jamie, was immediately sweet on Justin, who reciprocated her feelings. This left Dan, the other boy in our pod, looking like a girlfriendless chump, and he would copy Justin’s actions in a lazy attempt to woo me. If Justin drew a picture for Jamie, Dan drew one for me. On one scandalous occasion, Justin kissed Jamie on the cheek, prompting Dan to kiss my cheek, which didn’t exactly set my world on fire.
For parts of first, second, third and fourth grades, I was chronically absent as gastroenterologists struggled to control my inflammatory bowel disease. My appearance changed frequently: I’d lose weight during flares and pack on the pounds during lengthy rounds of high-dose Prednisone. I had several major surgeries that permanently disfigured my body and didn’t expect anyone to have a crush on me then or for many years thereafter.
My quasi-heterosexuality’s last hurrah began in fifth grade, with a boy we’ll call Dave. We sat near each other in homeroom and he was much neater and cleaner than other boys, especially his hands. (Yes, I know it is laughable that even as a make-believe straight girl, that was the first thing I noticed.) He had an oddball sense of humor and we exchanged our favorite FoxTrot jokes and David Letterman top-ten lists. In gym class, during a dance unit, we paired up when we needed opposite-sex partners and mocked “Achy Breaky Heart” while attempting to avoid line dancing.
Dave was still around in middle school and remained presentable as his friends grew slovenly. We served on the school newspaper together, eventually working as co-editors. When he had his tonsils removed, I loaned him my Gameboy; he didn’t mind that the only game I owned was Paperboy. He occasionally called my house, always giving my mother an alias even though we had CallerID. Sometimes he posed as Keith, the glue-eater, who hadn’t changed much since kindergarten. Our classmates thought Dave and I were destined for coupledom, but we had other ideas.
Throughout middle school I looked for something, anything, I could find physically attractive about him. The only thing I genuinely appreciated was that he kept his hair carefully trimmed, especially near his neck and ears, where other boys were often shaggy. He was cute by guy standards, but that was part of the problem. When I closed my eyes, I never saw him — I saw luminous actresses from black and white films, or Sade, or the models from George Michael’s “Freedom! ‘90” video. Bafflingly, I made it all the way to 14 before realizing what that meant, and later I wondered if he wasn’t in the same boat.
There was anticipation in some quarters that Dave and I would finally do something by the end of eighth grade. We did not. He gave me a Garfield Valentine that year but blacked out the long note he’d written in it. He asked if I might be interested in attending the school dance, but he seemed as ambivalent as I felt. We finally agreed to meet there with friends — casually, no dressing-up — but he called a night or two before to say his cousin was coming to visit. I didn’t try to warm his cold feet; I was relieved to be off the hook.
When our freshman year of high school started, we didn’t pick up where we left off. We had no classes together and I’d finally figured out that I was gay, officially leaving Dave the man (well, boy) that got away. By sophomore year arthritis kept me out of school for long stretches and I started hanging out with Nick, a straight guy who was fine with my sexuality and just wanted to talk about books, movies and music. My younger sisters began to speculate that Nick and I were an item, so I came out to them, news they found very exciting, if implausible at first.
The kindergartener kept confusing the word “lesbian” with “alien,” and earnestly explained to our parents that it was OK for me to hang out in my room with Nick because I was an alien. She wasn’t entirely wrong — prior to coming out, saddled with unwanted expectations of heterosexuality, I often felt like an extraterrestrial around any straight guy who might be interested in me. Once I was out, everything changed. And I was soon to meet the young man who’d (platonically) capture my heart like no other, and who remains my closest friend almost 25 years later, but that’s a story for another day.