Essay #1: I want a childhood love

I want a childhood love.  I want the shyness and the unobstructed affection given by one eight year old to another.

At lunch time we sit at opposite ends of the lunch room.  I watch you and your friends speak earnestly about dolls, like adults standing around the water cooler giving stock advice.  Malibu Barbie doesn’t come with the car.  You have to get it separately.  They even said in the commercial.  I watch your hair drop over you face as you and your friends all pull out your Tamagochis and coo and purr and care for your electronic pets.  Oh no!  Mine is hungry!  Here, let me feed you.  I sip my juice box and eat my rye and cheese sandwich.

We meet in the playground after lunch as we wait our turn for the tire swing.  I watch you, in your pink corduroy floral print pants, fidget and kick crushed stones.  I pretend I didn’t ever want to go on the swing and saunter off toward the hopscotch court so that I could watch you smile, watch your long dark hair streak past me.  I ask if you’d like an Around-the-World.  You give me a quizzical look so I say Here let me show you and I take hold of the tire and start running as fast as I can around its perimeter.  I tug you towards me, faster, turn faster, swing you round and round, my arm getting tired, my legs stumbling over the loose stones, you yell Stop it’s not funny!  But the y in funny turns to a shriek of delight and you stand up on the tire and grip the rusted chains that hold the tire to the swing’s frame.  You will be a gymnast or an acrobat or a stuntwoman some day.

At recess we play Red Rover.  You are lined up on the other side, with all of the cool kids.  I am lined up on my side.  I am at the end of the line.  I am holding the hand of the class clown.   His hand is always moist and clammy, ideal for making armpit farts.  He makes the best armpit farts; I begrudge him his armpit farts.  Red rover, red rover, we yell, and we call your friend Lizzy over.  Lizzy has red hair and translucent skin and freckles on her nose.  She also suffers from really bad breath.  She likes to talk to me while repeatedly removing and replacing her yellow retainer, a retainer for which we’ve had to scour the rubbish bin, which probably explains the bad breath.  Lizzy runs towards us, towards me and the class clown and jumps at our clasped hands.  Our moistened grip does not hold and Lizzy breaks through.  The class clown glares at me with accusation.  Then we call your name.  You giggle and I see your eyes focus on the spot between me and the class clown, but they drift to me for a moment.  You set off; pigtails thrash from your girlish glee, your arms flail and you are laughing, shrieking like that time on the tire swing.  I feel your wind before you hit.  I hold the clown’s slippery palm so tightly he cries out in pain and I can feel his brittle metacarpals grinding against each other.  I brace myself and you launch your gymnast body between us – gently, so gently.  I feel your hand grip my arm through my thick woolen sweater and I wish I were not wearing a sweater, not wearing any clothes. You smile.  Your braces glimmer in the early afternoon sun.  You take your place beside me, on the open end.  I am no longer at the end and I send gratitude through my fingers, through your fingers and you know that I am thankful. 

Your hand is so cool and dry.  I wish I could hold it forever.

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Alex is a Creative Writing MFA student at Antioch Universtiy Los Angeles and a Canadian expat living in San Francisco.  He writes nonfiction, fiction, and poetry.  He sometimes shares his musings and meanderings on his blog.