It Didn't Feel

I had always imagined that I would lose my virginity to Joe Camarota. I wasn’t particularly attracted to him, nor was he particularly attractive. But, we had a history that went back to age twelve. He had been my first kiss- an unwelcome attack-style kiss that occurred in a movie theatre in the eighth grade. He had given me my first butterflies, and when I was thirteen I told him I loved him. When I was thirteen, I was sure that I meant it.

He had been infatuated with Annie Carl since the day we had met. He idolized her in his mind and made her untouchable. Then one day, when we were seventeen or so, Joe told me that most of the Annie obsession had been phony, and that he had in fact been in love with me since that kiss in the movie theatre years earlier. When I started dating a guy named Matt a few months later, Joe started dating Rose Hardy, who he fell deeply in love with.

Joe and Rose’s relationship was a deep one, filled with love and support; worries and promises. Throughout their relationship, Joe and I continued to spend a lot of time together. We shared a lot together; I knew all about his relationship with Rose and he was well-versed on my life, too. Even though we were clearly involved with other people in those years, Joe and I treated each other like we were something special. We were, I guess.

It was the summer before Joe started at Boston College that his and Rose’s relationship ended. I was just returning from living in Orlando, FL for six months, and by the time I returned to New York that May, their relationship had pretty much deteriorated.

That summer, Joe and I started spending even more time together than we had before. Somewhere in me, I decided to realize that summer that maybe there was a reason that Joe and I had meant so much together over the years. Maybe we were going to be one of those perfect romances, where you boast about how you were best friends all along and you always knew you would end up together. If it all came to pass, it would totally be the my-life version of “if you ever go searching for your heart’s desire, never look further than your own back yard”. We would be that couple.

We continued talking once we got to school, and it was obvious to me that we were both thinking the same thing. So, in October of that year, I boarded a train to visit Joe in Boston. For the only time up to that point and after it, I took the trip expecting that a relationship would grow out of a moment I had planned in my head.

I met him in some building – I don’t remember which one. He was sitting on a bench, looking more tired than I’d ever seen him. He waved when he saw me; he didn’t look whelmed at all – not excited at least. Maybe relieved. He brought me back to his dorm and introduced me to his roommates, and we made plans with them to visit Quincy Market that night. It wasn’t until they had left the room that he said as though trying to convince himself and me, “I really am glad you’re here.”

I didn’t feel unwelcome, by any means, but I also didn’t feel special. All signs surrounding this relationship pointed to it being the perfect picture Hollywood romance kid. Best friends for years, and then they realize that all they ever needed was each other: it had perfect written all over it. And yet in those stories – the ones that our new found love was sitting amongst – the guy sees the girl’s unbelievable beauty when she walks through the door. He is enraptured, captivated, and his eyes glimmer with what we call sparkle but is really tears.

There was no sparkle in Joe’s eyes – or mine for that matter. He didn’t see beauty when I walked through the door. He saw familiarity; he saw comfort; he may have even saw love in some form – but he didn’t see beauty. Not the kind of beauty we see when we’re in love.

They say love is blind and I believe it. When one loves – truly loves – all of the bruises, deformities, and oddities of a person that make them what they are becomes beauty in its purest form.

I had built this visit – and this love – up in my mind so much that I assumed that Joe and I found that kind of beauty in each other. The truth was that we didn’t, and yet we both seemed to feel so much like we should. And we weren’t quite ready to admit that we didn’t.

We laid down in bed together to go to sleep that night having spent ample time alone, and yet having only held hands once. As I lay in the dark, I thought about how I had come to Boston with big plans in mind. I couldn’t let the trip end without somehow acknowledging the implication that we were “secretly in love”.

Words seemed awkward any way I arranged or rearranged them in my mind, and so through the dark, somewhere my lips found his and kissed them. He kissed me back. We began making out and between our kisses I could sense that we had both known this was coming and yet I don’t know if either one of us wanted it.

I let him touch me – through my shorts. Part of me wanted it and yet so much more of me knew I didn’t. it felt wrong and bad and weird and yet I had spent so long assuming that even more than that would happen. I didn’t touch him. I was afraid, and we were kissing each other like strangers. I don’t know how it ended or why we decided to stop, but it went no further than that, and I spent the rest of that sleepless night laying in bed uncomfortably, wishing what little had happened hadn’t.

My train was fairly early the next morning, but I left much earlier than necessary to get to it. I didn’t want to be there anymore – I felt wrong and confused. I knew that this wasn’t the way it was supposed to be, I knew that clearly I had made a mistake when realizing that Joe and I were destined to be together. We said bye to each other as though relieved we wouldn’t have to spend the day together, and I boarded the train knowing that I would probably not be back to visit Joe again any time soon.

Three days later, Joe called me. We spent fifteen minutes or so making awkward small talk, dodging the subject that we knew we had to eventually discuss. Finally, he said it: “About last weekend…”

“Yeah, we should probably…” I was glad he had brought it up.

“I called Rose to ask her what I should do. She said I should talk to you.”

That was all he really needed to say. He had called his ex-girlfriend, the one that I knew he wasn’t quite over yet, to ask her for advice about the girl he had made out with in his bed. He had called Rose to let her know that he could, in fact, find someone after her. And he had called me, because what he had needed to do had been accomplished, and a relationship simply was not going to occur between he and I.

While I was in Boston, Joe’s roommate, Keith, had said to me “You know, he talks about you all the time. He acts like he’s not over Rose yet, but he talks about you all the time. He’s really glad you’re here.” I told thanks, but in the somewhere in the back of my mind I think I had already realized what I would know for sure a few days later: Joe loved the idea of me, Joe didn’t love me. I was a diversion from his relationship with Rose, and a good sentimental one at that, but when it came down to it – Joe needed me to prove to himself that he could survive without her.

The thing was, he couldn’t. Not quite yet.