Theme Park Metaphors For Love
By Anonymous
At 18, my first boyfriend also was my first real sexual relationship. Beause I had dated 3 girls, but turns out that wasn’t my thing, and I never did anything with them. The first girl, I think I kissed her a total of two times in the four months we dated. She became one of my best friends, and we drunkenly madeout freshman year of college – thereby doing more when I was gay then we ever did when we were dating. Irony to the max.
But yes my first boyfriend was my first makeout, my first blowjob, my first love, and of course my first heartbreak. We started dating after super-heatedly making out in the dark corner of a Laser Quest maze at an overnighter (basically you constantly play laser tag from midnight to 6am). Somewhere around 4am we started getting cuddly on the benches outside and by the last game in the maze we were full on fondling. Love ensues.
We had known each other since about 7th grade – but we really became friends when he came out to me – he was a sophomore and I was a junior. So there was history. We knew each other well. Which is why I think the jumping to sudden love was so…sudden.
But that relationship was a straight up Tower of Terror. Not a roller coaster. Like we were up as high as legally possible and then the bottom just fell out beneath us. Not once but twice. See, after he broke up with me the first time after the Tower of Terror (literally, we got off the Tower of Terror ride in Disney world and broke up, I’m not trying to extend the metaphor), two weeks later he came back. We hooked up after my Senior Prom at a sleepover we were both at. And I let him back.
After prom we were right back up to the top of the tower (now I’m extending the metaphor). Then there was high school graduation, grad parties, that flush of insane “WE R YOUNG”-ness that comes in that summer between high school and college. Think back to that time. Nothing mattered. You had no work to worry about. There was a mild mix of anxiety-anticipation: who knew what college would be like but who the fuck cared right now. Drink boxed wine your already-in-college theatre buddies bought for you on a breezy June night. Makeout on the swings in the park at dusk. Throw yourself into that summer. Burn or fuel your feelings in the fires in your bandmate’s backyard.
And then at the end of July the bottom fell out again. “I think we’re better as friends.”
I saved the text from him: “I was just thinking about how perfect this is, I always want to be with you” until March of the following year.
Those highs man. Those moments at the top of the tower. Fucking glorious.
And then they were all tainted by the end of it. We didn’t stay friends. I regret not trying to maintain a better friendship with him. But honestly. Any friendship I maintained would have been like stabbing myself in the hand repeatedly.
What killed me was how FINE he was after it. It was like I had meant nothing to him. He didn’t seem sad, upset, anything. That’s always what it is, right, we want to know the other person is suffering, because that validates all the time we spend dwelling sobbing sleeping dying. Of course, who knows what happened to him in private. I guess outside of my house I also appeared rather chipper (purposefully). I’m not one to let the general public know that emotions other than frustration, stress, and happiness can affect me. I mean who wants the world to see you being a hot emotion-vomity mess all over the place. But I’ll never forget when I was alone in my house and I just put my head down on my desk and sobbed for a good fifteen minutes. Loudly. Uncontrolled.
I have never done that in my life any time previous to or after that moment.
Did I see the drop coming? Of course. Like when you’re waiting on the Tower of Terror going up the elevator, you know you’ve committed to a terrifying fall at some point and it’s scary as hell. I saw the doors open. The ride was coming out to the edge. The drop? No matter how many times you ride, you never know when it’s going to be.