Light My Fire

I have to tell him how I feel. And tonight is my last chance.

It’s gotten to the point where I don’t care whether he likes me back or if rejection is the only thing coming my way. We are moving out. Come tomorrow we won’t be living next door to each other anymore. It’s too late for serious us. I just need to know if what I have been sensing this whole time is real.

All of these feelings flushed in right from the very beginning. The week before senior year, I was walking around my front lawn after I’d just finished unpacking. I kicked off my flimsy flip-flops and began pacing barefoot on the cool grass wearing only a loose white v-neck and faded Levi’s. I wiped the few drops of sweat from my brow and took out my pack of Parliaments. I needed a cigarette to help me relax after my grueling moving-in. But September in Chicago is notoriously windy, and my lighter, like most things I owned at the time, was cheap and unreliable. I kept flicking it, cupped my hands around the flame and tried to keep it going long enough to cause some serious damage to my unlit Parliament, much to no avail.

I was starting to get frustrated when I noticed a boy plopping down the steps of the porch next door and slowly heading towards my direction. He was wearing a pair of forest green shorts and a white t-shirt similar to mine except wrinkled and with grass stains, as if he’d been doing cartwheels or wrestling on the grass. His dark brown wavy hair swayed in the wind and from his dry pink lips dangled a lit Parliament. It took me a second to recognize him.

“Hey there, I’m Boy in Color, your neighbor apparently,” he said looking at me and then glancing at my house. I shared a front lawn with the boy who had taken my breath away the minute I had first laid eyes on him at that party not so long ago. And exactly like before, the world went grey as he glowed in multicolor. Being next to me got me in some sort of visual trance.

“Hi,” I said staring straight into his juvenile eyes as he continued to approach me cutting through the grass. “You got a lighter? Mine’s a piece of shit.”

“Here, let me show you a trick,” he said taking my lighter from my hands. “Put the cigarette in your mouth, and pull your collar over it to block it from the wind.” I was skeptical and pictured my white shirt engulfing in flames, but I followed his instructions. “And now light it from underneath,” he said and reached under my shirt, gently gracing my happy trail as he made his way upwards with my lighter in his hand. It tickled, and the sensation stretched from my belly to my back and down my spine.

He got the lighter up to my chest and lit my heart on the very first try.

And in the nine months that followed, our entire senior year, the flame between us continued to flicker in the wind, never dying down. During our late night conversations sitting on the rackety bench on his porch, our knees touching while we waited for the sun to come up, I’d lean on him slightly and feel him applying pressure back on me; while watching cheesy scary movies on rainy Sunday afternoons, he’d turn to me with and flash me a soft smile whenever I made a clever comment no one else understood; or after the brief, silly friend fights we’d get into for pretending not to care, we’d hug as a sign of peacemaking, but our hugs always lingered as a sign of something else.

During all of this, I made sure to guard our flame while he kept fanning it. Because whenever we’d undergo a cold front, it’d only take a longing look, a tender touch or a few words to bring us right back to the warm sentiment I felt we shared.

And now on the last night I’ll be seeing him before we both jet off into opposite sides of the country, and I can’t believe I never got close enough to confess how I feel. I have been so afraid of getting burned, thinking that in this fire, a friend is the worse thing to lose.

But I have to know if this is real. Because I feel like I’m burning, and if Boy in Color can’t save me, he has to let me cool.

I have to tell him how I feel. And tonight is my last chance. I think again as I walk out my front door, light a Parliament under my collar and make my

way to the sports bar our entire senior class will be at on our last night of college.

[To be continued…]

Love at First Color Sight

“C’mon, come with me,” my roommate implores in an almost whiny voice while leaning over me. I turn over, keep my eyes shut, mumble for her to leave me alone and pull my covers over my head. Not getting the immediate reaction she was hoping for, my little Badgerista begins shaking my shoulders. She’s always such an unrelentess force when it comes to getting what she wants. “C’mon, c’mon,” she goes on. Her voice is particularly annoying to me, while I lay caught between naptime and real time. “You know it’s gonna be fun.”

Is Badgerista trying to guilt trip me now? Actually, I know it’s going to be no fun. A bunch of pretentious college kids thinking it’s appropriate to act stupid because they’re wasted? No thanks. But she has been excited about this party for days, ever since she got the Facebook invite and noticed that her crush had RSVP’d “Maybe.” This blasé response gave Badgerista enough motivation to get all dolled up on a Friday night and drag her tired, groggy best friend with her by whatever means possible.

It’s been a while since I’ve gone to a college party. The past six months have been spent in Madrid, far, far away from fraternities, keg stands and beer pong. And ever since I’ve been back, I’ve been in this funky mood. Like Madrid was maybe too much for me to process in such a short time. And it doesn’t help that all I do with my free time is sleep.

“It would be nice to go out and have a drink,” I sit up and say, rubbing my eyes and scratching my head.

“Yes! I promise it’ll be a blast,” Badgerista says all giddy as she skips out of my room and into the restroom.

“So if I had said ‘no,’ you would have just gone without me?” I ask loud enough so she can hear me. I’m surprised at how awake I am. Her giddy must be contagious.

“Oh no! I knew I would convince you,” she says walking back into my room with a blow dryer in her hand. She is wearing a pair of navy blue skinny jeans topped with an embroided maroon blouse. It’ll be fun to be her wingman tonight and help her out in the boy department.

“And shower! There might be cute guys there tonight.” After all, she always looks out for me.

As we arrive to the front door of the apartment where much revelry is to be expected, I see a thin girl with dangling earrings standing in front of a table with a money box. Cover?

“It’s a fundraiser!” Thin girl shouts over Kanye West’s “Gold Digger” blasting inside. I look back at Badgerista and give her this look to make sure she understands that she owes me. “College feminists are putting on The Vagina Monologues,” thin girl continues as if trying to convince us of the worthy cause. I hold up my index finger indicating the need for one sec, turn around, grab Badgerista and move us out the way so that we can discuss.

“Are you sure this is the party?” I ask still holding on to her shoulders. “I think it’s a lesbian party…”

“Yeah, yeah, this is it! C’mon! Where’s your sense of adventure?” Badgerista spits a little, and I reconsider having taken those shots of vodka before stepping out of our apartment. Badgerista seems super eager to mingle with the vaginas… but at least her boy crush will be easy to spot. So on we go to the feminist, theater, lesbian party. And I think, “Didn’t really need that shower.”

The small apartment has an unused chimney adorned with blue twinkle lights and the wooden floor is sticky with spilt beer. It’s crowded and hot in the living room, even though it’s February in Chicago and the windows are wide open. The body heat is stronger than the weather.

Much to my surprise, it’s not really a feminist/theater/lesbian party. From first impression, it looks like quite the assorted crowd. Later I find out that much of the social diversity that night can be attributed to the fact that one of the most popular actresses in school had just been cast in The Vagina Monologues, and she had used all of her party prowess to make the fundraiser a huge success.

Badgerista and I walk towards the kitchen after tossing down our coats. She keeps an eye out for her crush while I keep an eye out for the free alcohol. After we pour ourselves a red cup of jungle juice each, Badgerista has to use the ladies room because her bladder doesn’t know the concept of patience. I head out the back door to the alley so I can smoke a cigarette.

The smokers’ circle in the alley is being entertained by no other than “The Drunkest Girl at the Party,” whom I, of course, have the privilege of knowing personally. We lived in the same dorm, right next to each other, freshman year. She doesn’t come off as your typical feminist per se, but she is producing the show.

“Hey! You’re here!” She shouts in my general direction.

“Yup…” I say, unwilling to match her enthusiasm. “Anyone got a light?”

“Oh here you go,” she lights my parliament. “So what have you been up to? Haven’t seen you in ages.”

“Just got back from Madrid…”

“Oh yeah! So was it everything you ever imagined and so much more? Are you going to do that whole ‘coming back from study abroad’ speech about how being in that foreign country for, like, half a year totally changed your life?” She says so mockingly that I almost take her seriously.

But all I can be when it comes to Madrid is earnest, so I say, “Yeah, actually. It did.”

“I love reading all those stupid study abroad blogs,” she ignores my genuine response and goes back to the mock show. “You think you’re the only person that’s ever gone to a different country and had culture shock? And it’s culture shock about the dumbest things, like, ‘Oh, you can order beer at McDonalds?’ Fucking get over it!” She shuts up for a minute, perhaps afraid that she might come off bitter if she keeps going. I happen to know that just earlier in the school year, her plans to study abroad in Prague had been scrapped due to a dismal GPA. “Did you start a blog while in Madrid?” She asks in a more serious tone.

“No… but I did write a lot. I started a journal. I know, it sounds cheesy… but some of the things, I just had to write down,” I notice that the circle begins to lose interest in what I have to say. So I stop. I save my best stories for an attentive audience. I stomp out my cigarette and walk back inside. I make my way through the crowd of people mingling in the kitchen, refill my jungle juice and go back to the living room looking for Badgerista. She’s probably still waiting in line to use the restroom. It’s almost midnight, and the dance party has already gotten started. The tipsy underclassmen grind and groove in the dark, moving in slow and out of order patterns as if submerged in water. The blue twinkle lights shine on.

Through all the commotion, I notice a boy swimming in his own world towards the back of the room. The boy with a face like an indie singer. A face I’ve never seen before: thin pink lips, wavy brown hair and bushy eyebrows above eyes the color of dark chocolate melting under a heat lamp. He is dancing with his girl friends completely unaware of his allure. Wearing Bermuda shorts, a sky blue thrift shop tee and tan sandals, he’s not at all concerned with concept of matching. I like his spectrum. His wrists are wrapped halfway up his forearms in a disharmony of hues. A heavy metal watch on one wrist, a thick black leather wristband on the other, mingled with orange, lime green and plum rubber bracelets and thin threads and loose bands from summer camps gone by. Around his glistening forehead, a cherry-colored bandana soaks up the light sweat caused by him bobbling and bouncing to the beat. The rest of the room suddenly turns black and white, while he is sharp in Technicolor. And I vividly remember thinking in that moment, “That’s the boy I should be with.”

“Ah, isn’t he super cute?” Badgerista asks interrupting my daydream and joining in on the adoration brigade.

“I think he might be…”

“Gay! Yeah, a girl waiting behind me in line for the restroom told me. Right before she headed out the door to try to pee in the front yard.”

“Wow, you had quite the adventure…” I say handing over my cup of jungle juice offering for her to take a sip. “So what’s this guy’s story?”

“He just transferred from some school in North Carolina,” she says after drinking from my cup and handing it back to me. “According to the girl, he’s kind of shy, doesn’t but gets really silly when he drinks. And he has all the girls here swooning over him tonight. He doesn’t have many guy friends. You should go talk to him.”

“To a complete stranger? And what am I going to say to exactly?”

“Isn’t that what you do to guys in Boystown? Figure it out!” She says implying I should have more game.

“Haha, don’t pretend like you know what I do in Boystown. Besides, this is different. Completely different.”

Right at that moment, “The Drunkest Girl at the Party” stumbles in to the living room, turns off the speakers and slurs in a loud voice, “Ok guys! Party’s over! Cops are here! Everyone out through the back. Come on. It’s over.”

Badgerista and I grab our coats from the pile that’s accumulated by the chimney and make our way out.

I didn’t get to talk to the Boy in Color that night. And after weeks of not seeing him around, I gave up. But my memory of him that night never faded.

It wasn’t until the beginning of my senior year, when I was moving in to my new student house on the off-campus party block, that I saw him again. Moving in next door.