Awwwwww. Oh wait, that is crazy. Why did you keep this a secret from everyone?

The tale is actually a long and boring story. As I grew up I developed maybe three small temporary crushes on girls at my elementary school- once my friend DM mentioned that he was interested in the same student I was (a new girl who had only been there for a week) and my interest in her evaporated instantly. I've noticed throughout my life that this factor seems to be the immediate kiss of death, any past interest of a friend permanently knocking any female out of bounds totally and permanently, they become in my eyes sexless facsimiles of their former selves (if I ever knew them as single people at all), much in the way I don't think of my male friends as objects of the passions. The psychological mechanisms are puzzling from an evolutionary perspective where some theorists posit close group living and serial monogamy were the norms, but on another level it may reflect a strong preference for TOTAL conflict avoidance, or perhaps a romantic notion of lasting love and fated pairings that has subconsciously subsumed itself into my netherconsciousness. Anyhow, that is something of an explanatory tangent.

As I joined middle school I still had never been on a date, never kissed a girl, held hands, etc. or even really spent much time with someone of the opposite gender in a non-antagonist context. The females growing up around me were annoying- they tended to carry around pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio from the film "Titanic" and act like despicable social divas (spend some time with a fifth grader or watch the film "Mean Girls", that sort of thing...). My strict upbringing gave me no chance to interact with anyone of my own age generally (a fact of life when you live with megalomaniacs), which is why I tended to read a lot.

Middle school seemed strange to me because in a single day everyone from across the disparate city had been brought together, Gertrude Fellows Elementary was a self-contained microcosm, but suddenly all of my previous allies abandoned their former identities entirely and I was left on a "team" [academic division] knowing barely anyone at all! I became shy and hung around with three guys- most people had no idea who I was, and tended to call me "MM", the name of one of the friends I followed around and discussed life with.

This reality continued on until the opportunity came for the annual eighth grade ski trip to Mt. Kato in Minnesota, a kid from a summer camp I had attended named Miles had seriously broken his leg in a previous year, but I weighed the pros and cons and decided to go anyway because the ability to traverse vertical snow quickly could be an advantage later in life. On the bunny hill I was completely terrible in fact! The "V-shape" one was supposed to form for some reason did not seem to slow me down at all, I continued coasting into a linked chain separator at the bottom of the track... deciding after a few more tries to hang out in the chalet and watch with amusement as others wrecked themselves repeatedly flying down the black diamonds or tumbling in flurries of limbs into park benches, trees, and the walls of buildings. I drank two small cups of hot chocolate over the course of several hours and cheerily discussed chaos and likely apocalypse with the same three friends I spoke to every day.

As night fell the chalet became extremely crowded as my classmates grew weary and cold, wanting to compare stories with one another and get food. I walked out onto the balcony to watch the few remaining dedicated out on the mountain. There was a full moon and the air was sharp, the trees off to the sides illuminated with lights as the snow machines gracefully churned out small sweeps of icy fog beneath a sky full of stars. It was eerily beautiful. People came out and went back in to survey the scene for a few moments, I didn't really feel like chatting with anyone and made little small talk. Then a girl came out onto the balcony and stood silently next to me for a few minutes. I had seen this girl in the halls around the school before but had never spoken to her or learned her name... yet in this frame, time froze completely. Later watching "Big Fish" with Ewan MacGregor knocking away the popcorn I had to smile knowingly- for my heart seemed to leap through my chest, it was though I had suddenly been hit with lighting. My senses alighted, everything became brighter and sharper, I could seemingly taste the molecules in the air, feel the softness of my gloves against my fingers in incredible detail, I could hear my own heartbeat, and underneath it the strains of a most wonderful string melody, softly playing against a song I had heard for the first time just a month ago: "Pink Moon" by Nick Drake. The entire universe seemed to bend over at the waist to look down at me and say "HELLO WILL". All of a sudden, for the first and only time in my life, I was totally and completely in love.