Introducing Zach

Ah, yes, the last of the high school boyfriend blogs has come.  As horrible as I am at staying friends with the horde1 of exes, Zach not only befriended me on the 'Space, but he initiated a follow up phone call, which was pretty amicable.  I mean, after 14 years, if you can't be friendly, then, well...  then you're probably a lot like me.  Needless to say, I have been racking my brain trying to think of the perfect anecdote to share about my first major boyfriend.  On to the blog.

My junior year, Zach was a new student from Georgia.  He played soccer.  He drove a red pickup truck.  He somehow found himself lunching with my crowd rather than the super-cool soccer peeps.  The first time I remember really hanging out with Zach was at my stepdad's 40th birthday party2.  He was dressed as the jock.  After all of my friends left for the night, and the party was winding down, Zach and I found ourselves alone on the back deck, trusted with the task of emptying the keg.  If we had been really boring teenagers, we would have guzzled a ton of suds and let our raging hormones take over, but we didn't.  We just chatted, laughed nervously, and that was that. 

That same month, I was performing in Kiss Me Kate in theater, and I was singing Led Zeppelin's "Going to California" in guitar class.  Zach came to one night of the musical, and I think we went out for coffee afterward.  What I didn't realize until he reminded me later in our relationship, is that he wore a purple shirt because it was my fave color, and he fast forwarded his Led Zeppelin tape to the exact moment Robert Plant sings, "To find a queen without a king, they say she plays guitar and cries and sings," so that when we got in the truck, that is the first thing we would hear.

I was not the typical soccer player's girlfriend, and I was painfully aware of that.  The girls' and boys' teams were on this upper eschelon of cool that I could never achieve with my handpainted guitar case, geeky choir get-up, and inexhaustible mental database of Monkees repertoire.  I fantasized that jocks were born with the psychic ability to predict where the wild parties were held, innate fashion sense, and enough charm to talk their papers up from a B- to a solid A3.  This cool deficiency deemed that our relationship was to be short-lived.  Alas, we had some good times together, and in addition to teaching me some important lessons in life, he was truly kind on many occasions.  I don't know if, to this day, he gives himself enough credit for being a nice guy.  I have seen it, though. 

1. Okay, maybe not a horde, but definitely enough to form a basketball team.2. See "Introducing Aaron"3.I was never privy to a single wild party in high school, wore jean jackets way past their expiration date, and was so fearful of my teachers that I would take whatever grade they gave me, no questions asked.