A Selected History Of My Unrequited Loves
By Eveleen Kay
The boy in yellow – 1997-1998
The boy in yellow was in my kindergarten class but he was totally in love with my friend Kimberly (that bitch!) they even had a mock marriage behind the sand pit so that’s how you know it was a pretty heavy-duty romance. Despite the obvious impediment to our love, he was so adorable! I loved his blonde curls, and he always had the best lunch to trade and not to mention my favourite quirk: he drank from the same yellow cup and wore the same yellow shirt every Tuesday. Such a dreamboat! What a catch! So understandably I did the only rational thing that a girl can do, I pushed him out of a tree. Which resulted in a broken arm. Obviously this is not the best way to go about getting some hot 5-on-5-year-old action, and I do not recommend this as a seduction technique. When asked why I did it by my adult superiors, instead of confessing my undying love for my young Romeo, I instead replied, “I hate the colour yellow.” And to this day, I have an unnerving repulsion for the colour.
The boy in who danced to JLo – 2000-ish
I used to do dancing classes. Not ballet but dancing classes with jazz fingers and sparkly costumes and choreographed routines to JLo songs, that kind of dance class. It was about as classy as Lindsay Lohan mid-cocaine comedown. Anyway, as you can imagine, there aren’t many suitable gentlemen callers in that environment, plus, I went to an all-girls school so I fell fast and hard due to, you know, OMG BOYZ. Seeing him do that dance to Backstreet Boys made me swoon, and swoon hard. Soon it was a full-blown crush, I can’t remember his name but I remember it was super 90s like, “Jett” or “Kyle” or something along those lines. In time the gradual realization that I was too tall, awkward and uncoordinated for any kind of rhythmic movement struck me and I quit dancing and gave up what could have been my 1TRU LUV or whatever.
The boy on the bike – 2005
This boy rode his bike through the neighborhood every day, down my street and probably to the park or the bike ramp. I don’t know. He was a beautiful mystery to me and still is. All I remember is his fully sik BMX and his school uniform riding past every day 4:10pm on the dot bathed in a golden hazed sunlight. Sometimes he had a body board with him, which is like, totally edgy, right?! Also, I’m pretty sure his eyes were hazel and he wore a shell necklace. Anyway, I was a fugly 13-year-old so I’m pretty sure that even if I had actually had a conversation with my bicycle-bound suitor I’m sure nothing would have eventuated.
The Twin – 2007
One of my friends in grade 9 was going out with this boy and they were TOTALLY hot and heavy, if you know what I mean…and by that I mean she even had hickeys! How vogue, how chic, how openly rebellious! As our sex ed teacher pointedly told us one HPE lesson, “Hickeys are like screaming that you’re sexually active.” And I totally wanted to be in on the action. Turns out my friend’s boyfriend had an identical twin brother, which was perfect because that meant that my relationship was going to be identical because that’s logic right? Wrong. It means that even though you have a desperate crush people who are competing for his love are going to say totally mean things about you and go out with him instead of you and you’re going to be totally jealous but eventually be relieved because he turned out to be a total dick with a mum like the one from Mean Girls.
The boy with the ballroom dancing – 2008-2009
My all girls’ school had ballroom dancing classes so that we could be socialized or something. I went. I danced. I developed a crush on one of the boys there, which developed into a weird courtship that lasted over a year. He came to my Halloween party and put his arm around me, which was pretty much an engagement ring, obvs. And then, like, 7 months later after a bonding session at a party we went on a first date and he was all like “So everyone keeps talking about you and me, how about it?” and I totally thought we were in love or something dumb that 15-year-olds sometimes think. I was so happy that I practically skipped off after our date. BUT NO, WE WERE APPARENTLY NOT IN LOVE AT ALL. After our date popular opinion changed on whether I was a suitable candidate for his affections and many, many nasty things were said about me at my brothers’ school and probably my school. I don’t know what exactly was said and I have never known the full extent because my friends are nice people who didn’t want to break my heart and I’ve always wondered why this boy who seemed so in to me all of a sudden stopped talking to me. Needless to say, I was a 16-year-old girl and my confidence was absolutely shattered and now I have this inherent fear of rejection that affects every single relationship I even attempt to engage in.
The boy in the apartment – 2010-2011
You know that Lana Del Rey lyric (Shut up, you do. Don’t lie.) where she’s all “You walk in to the room, you know you make my eyes hurt.” That’s what this one was like, he walked in to the room and I was just floored, it was like being punched in the stomach. He was so intensely beautiful, it was like he was a line drawing, he moved with such grace and yet he was unassuming and shy. I was attracted to everything about him, from his hair to his toes (I even hate feet so that was like, a big deal). He, however, liked my friend who liked someone else but still acted as though she liked both of them and it was just a mess and totally sucked for pretty much everyone involved. His crush on the other girl, did, however, allow us time to become friends and he just became even more and more fantastic and I was even more and more infatuated. He probably knew because next to everyone else had figured it out but I never said anything because in case you haven’t guessed already I’m a huge fucking coward when it comes to matters of the heart. I took him shopping for her Christmas present, I comforted him after she ended it, I kept my feelings to myself.