the smooth licks of carlos

Hot-damn people. What’s happening with this week? I haven’t been this distracted from writing since my last year of college, trying to worm my way through those last classes so I could escape from academia. I need to write, I gotsta write… here I go! Hold me back!

In the seventh grade I met Kyle. We were best friends in no time, my bond with him eclipsing those of my other friends almost immediately. He became the closest of my friends in the middle school crew. Not long after I started hanging out with Kyle, I developed a huge crush on his little sister. I mean, it was only natural. She was awesome, fun, cute, and ultimately accessible. I had “liked” girls before, but this was different. You know that first girl you were ever completely infatuated with? That was Kyle’s sister. My first “love.”

At first, I think it was a one-sided thing. I would flirt as best I could without making a big deal about it so Kyle could notice. However, as the years passed – it became something more serious. Eventually, we were sneaking around – sitting on either side of Kyle while we played Leisure Suit Larry on his mom’s computer, all the while holding hands right behind his back. It became the most exhilarating thing in the world.

Sometime in 8th grade, Kyle moved across town. I would still spend the night at his house often, and I would use those times equally to hang with my best friend – and flirt with his sister. Around this time, she and I had started passing notes in school. I don’t know how it happened, but we had to be super-secretive about it. The whole note-writing phase of our courtship was right around the time that the boys and I had cracked the Astro code, and having taught the code to Kyle’s sister – we added an extra layer of security to our clandestine missives by encoding them.

I’ll never forget trying to pass these secret notes to each other between classes, slipping them in locker slits, dropping them on the ground in view of each other, and plain being sly while exchanging them with Kyle right there. I would read each note with such attention, savoring each and every word. If there was ever a boy so painfully in love, it was me. We kept writing notes, and I kept spending the night, and things started getting worse. Kyle was starting to notice things.

One night, we had gone over to Kyle’s grandmother’s house – which was walking-close to his place. I was spending the night that night, and Kyle, his sister, and I were all walking back from his grandmother’s. At some point in the walk, she managed to slip me a note she’d written sometime that day. I remember barely being able to contain myself, I wanted to read it right then and there. As soon as we got back to the house, I went to the bathroom and took the note with me. I could read code like it was plain english by this point – and what I read made my heart race and head swim.

“I can tell you this now, I love you.”

She loved me? Holy crap! My heart must have been going a mile a minute. I can remember hurriedly writing a note in response the very next morning. Kyle had left me alone in his room while he mowed the lawn, and I broke out paper and pencil to confess my reciprocal pining to his sister. Santana’s “Samba Pa Ti” was on the stereo, the window was open, and I wrote a love letter to my best friend’s little sister to the hum of a lawnmower and the smooth licks of Carlos. After we had confessed our undying love for each other, we just had to keep our “relationship” a secret from the world.

What a great year or so. I remember holding hands on the couch in the dark, watching the “Lost Boys” while Kyle busied himself flirting with a friend of his sister’s who was also spending the night. In honesty, we had the best arrangement ever. Kyle got all his sister’s friends, and I got to keep busy with his sister. This hormone-filled middle school boy’s utopia was short lived though, and it was all do to one fateful double-sleepover night. The castle came tumbling down the morning Kyle’s mom walked into his room to find her daughter and I sharing a blanket on the floor while her son lay in bed under the covers with her daughter’s sleepover guest. What an awkward over-pancake discussion that breakfast was. In the end, we nearly lost simultaneous sleepover privileges – but it was worth it.

Not long after, Kyle asked me point-blank if I liked his sister. He said it was no big deal, and that every friend he ever had always ended up liking her. I wanted to be different, so I lied to him. I didn’t want to be “using” him for her, and I wasn’t. Anyway, before I knew it – his sister was “dating” some dude. I never got so much as a breakup note or a “goodbye.” Just found out one day that she was dating this dude in her grade. Crushed, I eventually grew out of my gradeschool puppy-love – but not without some amazing memories of hidden car-ride hand-holding, the smell of her wet hair in the morning, and my first-ever head-over-heels love.

This just in, this entry wins 1st place for use of hyphenated compound-words. Seriously, what’s up with that? Dave out.

Also written on this day...

• rains - 2019
• the right time to write - 2010
• wants & needs - 2008
• leaving the blog to rot - 2007