Snapshots of aromantic childhood love

I am thirteen years old, confident in my close friendship of two years, and suddenly appreciating it in a new light. I bound around the downstairs circuit of my house, thinking, I love her! I love her!

“Romance” doesn’t cross my mind; a “crush” is something intense and oppressive and apparently visually-motivated that I’ve never known and don’t care to know. 

I don’t want to kiss your lips. I don’t want anything in particular. I love you, and it’s really that simple.

Our friend group is already big on hugs. You kiss us on the cheek, sometimes while wearing black lipstick. It’s adorable. On the last day of ninth grade, before heading downtown with everyone else to get soft-serve ice cream and explore the underground tunnel that spans several blocks, I rush out to meet you at the school gate. I don’t remember the words we exchange. But you kiss my cheek, as I knew you would, and I happily return the gesture. 

As I turn to leave, you call my name. “You know,” you say, “you’re the first person who’s ever kissed me back.”

Our future feels as bright and as boundless as the summer days ahead.

Do you ever get tired of it? The predictable moment when we’re together in one of our rooms, sitting on the bed, and I fall sideways against you and drag you down to horizontal so we can properly cuddle?

There are times when you show me just how much you enjoy it. Once on a late Sunday afternoon, when I really need to get out of your bed and call my parents to pick me up, you wrap all your limbs around me to keep me in this pocket of private warmth for a few minutes longer. How can I resist?

Another time, in my bed, you momentarily roll over on top of me. I gaze up at you, and we start to laugh as we separate. What would that have meant; what could we have possibly done? I desire the broad touch of your clothed body, at most the expansion of your chest and stomach with breath in a close hug. But not the taste of your mouth, and certainly no form of sexual contact, and I think you feel the same.

I’ve seen my other friend make out with her boyfriend up close—in the middle of a game of Clue, while I patiently waited for her to take her turn—and it looks and sounds pretty damn gross. Not for me.

I am so lucky to have a best friend who speaks the same language of innocent touch.

We continue the tradition that brought us together in sixth-grade P.E. class: walking around a grassy field, talking about everything. Any park in town will do. At one point you decide we should have an official name for ourselves when engaged in this occupation. “The wandering…” Nothing jumps to mind.

“Something,” I finish. “The Wandering Somethings.”

You laugh, and the next time I look at your DeviantArt profile, you’ve change your title to The Wandering Something.

I think I’m slick, because I have a secret coded writing system and use it to decorate my fogged-up bathroom mirror after a shower. My mom takes one look at the topmost string and asks, “Does that say ‘I love you A___’?” 

“No,” I say, feigning amusement at her misconception.

I come up with a second iteration of my alphabet that is much more difficult to read.

We are sixteen, and you have a girlfriend who lives in the same town as your mother. Our close friend H___ has met her. I’d like to meet her sometime, but I’ve never been to your other home and probably never will. (I never will.) 

I like hearing about your girlfriend. I hope she enjoys hugging you and holding your hand as much as I do. Supposedly she kisses you on the lips; I’m glad you get to experience such a range of affectionate gestures from all the different people who love you. 

One morning, you and H___ join our group inside the lobby of the school library. “Do you want to make a t.A.T.u. video?” you ask one friend, then me.

I consider agreeing as a matter of principle, because it’s you; but I’m hung up on the fact that it sounds like “tattoo.” “What does that mean?” I say instead.

You have apparently just discovered this Russian band that sings about their lesbian angst. Over the next couple of days, I explore their discography on my own time. 

I feel ridiculous for even thinking this, but I can’t help dwelling on how you might have jokingly draped yourself around me if I’d just taken the leap and said “yes” without asking for clarification.

You wear multiple rings and sometimes play around with them, pretending to propose marriage to people. You’ve even done this with me before, but for whatever reason, today we carry on the bit and start planning a fake wedding. We resolve to find emerald-green suits at the thrift store and rope in our friends to be the cameraman, the ring bearer, the “proctor” (the word “officiant” eludes us). We discuss how best to hyphenate our last names.

(Mind-boggling to recall that lesbian marriages weren’t even legal in California at the time…) 

It gets to the point that I almost think it’s going to happen. The fake wedding, that is. But of course it’s still just a joke, and fades away into obscurity.

You and H___ visit me at my part-time job at a used bookstore near your neighborhood. As I show you around the shelves and displays, you settle your chin on my shoulder from behind and wrap your arms around my waist. I’m overjoyed by this public show of affection and decide that I want to receive surprise hugs just like this one for the rest of my life.

We sit in the shade of the library building, senior year. H___ used to sit with us too but now prefers to spend every lunch period with her boyfriend, somewhere on the opposite end of campus.

Her loss. You invite me to lay my head in your lap and rest for a minute. Perhaps you stroke my hair.

A teacher walks by. “Don’t get too comfortable,” she tells us. Wryly, but not unkindly.

Does she think we’d be tempted to do more if we were in private right now? If so, she’s wrong. I am seventeen years old, and if sexual or romantic urges were ever going to strike me, they would have by now. 

To be honest, though, this isn’t the most comfortable position—I’m still lying mostly on concrete.

You dislike having large breasts. I can sympathize; mine are modest, but I wouldn’t mind if they weren’t there at all. (Less than ten years later, I get my wish.)

You had waist-length hair when I met you. Shoulder-length a year later. Throughout high school, it’s short and spiky, dyed different colors. It’s a good look.

My dad once referred to your general fashion sense—which at the time consisted of checkered Hot Topic skinny jeans, a long black coat, combat boots, and fanciful eyeliner designs across your right temple and cheekbone—as clownish, and I felt offended on your behalf.

You tell me that when you go to college (unspoken: when you’ve cut ties with everyone here; when even the two of us no longer know each other), you may identify as genderqueer. Perhaps you’ll start going by R___, an abbreviation of your middle name.

I don’t know if that ever happened. I hate to think that when I think about you now, I impose an old falsehood onto a changed person, force your evolving image back inside a shed skin.

In the months following my mastectomy—six years after our final embrace—I want to tell you about it. My body feels right, and perhaps you’d like to feel this way too? I email you on your birthday but, for some reason, decide to omit that news for the moment. 

Maybe if I’d left it in, you would have responded. Or do you no longer use that account? Is it tied to a name that no longer fits?

I always trusted you and you alone to read my stories. I printed out each new chapter on double-sided sheets with half-inch margins and attached a cover page with a long, rambling introduction in purple ink. Addressed to you, signed with love. I would nervously deposit the packet in your hands, hide my face, and run away to class with my heart pounding.

They weren’t any good. But you saw the stories for what they were, tokens in a ritual of trust, and gushed over them all the same.

You drew art of my characters!

Perhaps the first half-decent piece of fiction I ever wrote was a one-shot character study elaborating on a dramatic, pivotal scene from your comic.

Even after we had parted for good, I sometimes daydreamed about publishing a novel and writing the dedication to you. You would find out about the book eventually, after searching for my name. You would see that I was still thinking about you, after all these years, and reach out to me once more.

I can’t remember if I had yet turned 18 the last time we were together in person. 

In adulthood, I dream about you infrequently, but still often enough that it hurts. In these unfettered imaginings, our touch is just as innocent as it was half a lifetime ago. My memory of you invites me back into your arms—without preamble, and without fail.