On Film

You know, I have so many stories...some crazy stories, funny ones, sexy or romantic ones.  Some are actually pretty boring but they are little moments that stick with me.  Do you like hearing about them?

Here's a story.  It's about my very first heartbreak.  

I was 12.  It was at summer band camp.  Yes...I know.  Let me explain! 

My parents are both music teachers, and my siblings and I grew up playing music.  Piano, trumpet, mellophone, and specializing in French horn. I was pretty fucking good at it, actually. My high school was like a white trash school in a farm town with no resources, no diversity, and no stringed instruments.  My mom encouraged me to do as many extra curricular music activities as possible, including the "youth symphony" she drove me to at a college every Sunday for FIVE HOURS lol. It was me, my loaner French horn, and a lot of homeschool prodigy-level kids. 

Anyways, the sleep-away summer band camp was hosted by the same college, and it was truly a meeting of nerds from all over the state. I almost never got outside my hometown, so it was really exciting for me to meet kids from other schools and cities.  We would sleep in the freshman dorm rooms with our band roommates, and spend the week rehearsing for a concert at the end of the week.

The first day I met Ben.  I was smitten.  He played the tuba and had dark hair and icy blue eyes, he was thin and was almost vampiricly pale. We chatted in between rehearsals about being in the gifted programs at school and fantasy books.  Together, we looked on in judgement as the other kids in the cafeteria at lunch put Pixie Stix in their Surge sodas (something known as Band-ade). I thought I was in love.  On the third day of camp we kissed.  It was my first kiss.

The fourth day of camp, our last night, we sat on the edge of the concrete fountain outside the dorm building and lamented our imminent fate.  We lived in towns 45 minutes away, and tomorrow we would not see each other - perhaps ever again.  If you don't know how old I am, you're about to find out.  This was before texting, before cell phones, before social media, and really just at the beginning of AIM instant messenger.  Basically, the contact options were limited to landline phone calls, dial up connections, or getting our moms to drive the 1.5 hour round trip for us to....make out?  Yeah, that wasn't going to happen.

Unspoken, we both knew this was it.  A storm was rolling in overhead, the campus lamp posts illuminating the underside of the low clouds with an eerie green cast.  Soft thunder rumbled, and lightning flashed in the distance.  As raindrops began to fall, Ben angrily threw his bottle of Mountain Dew on the ground in an act of silent rage. 

The next day we performed the final concert for all the parents who had come to retrieve us.  I won something called the Outstanding Band Camper award - the prize was free tuition for next summer - and I waved goodbye to Ben from the back window of my mom's station wagon as we pulled away.

I thought about Ben all year.  I slept with the t-shirt I last hugged him in wrapped around my pillow, desperately inhaling it every night until it no longer smelled like anything at all.

The next year I returned to band camp, now thirteen years old - a proper teenager, and in the full throws of awkward puberty.  Acne, braces, widening hips (but no ass) and no idea how to dress my body shape in the early 00's fashions.  Ben was there.  We made eye contact, but he did not wave or say hello.

I distracted myself and went about the orientation process of the first day, meeting a girl named Chelsea. We quickly realized we had a mutual friend in common, and got so excited we asked to switch rooms around so we could be bunkmates together.

That first night, Ben and I still had not yet spoken.  All tucked into bed with our Neutrogena acne spot cream laid thickly on, I lay on the top bunk and gazed at the ceiling as Chelsea recounted her day from the bottom bunk.

"Oh my god, guess who I made out with today?"

"Who?" I asked to the ceiling.

"Ben!  We made out in the stairwell, and it was like, so..."

Her voice faded into the distance as my ears became full with a hot, white numb buzzing sound.  My body froze as her muffled voice carried on with something about boxers shorts.  I'm pretty damn sure a single fat tear rolled dramatically down my acne scarred cheek.

I spent the entire week hearing nightly about the romantic excursions of my roommate and my love, and not once did I speak a word to her about the prior year.  Ben sheepishly avoided my gaze all week.  I decided to focus my thoughts on organizing my French Horn section to play Mendelssohn's Nocturne from A Midsummer Night's Dream as a quartet, conducting extra secret rehearsals during the scheduled free time.  

I survived the week.  As the parents applause died down at the end of our final day concert, I conducted my horn section to begin playing the Nocturne.  It was stunningly beautiful, and a total shock and surprise to the camp organizers.  Four stacked harmonies swung in a lilting lullaby.  A standing ovation ensued. I was given an honorary award as Outstanding Band Camper once again, although this was my final year and I would be too old to return next year.

Three years later, I was long past Ben and slowly figuring out how to dress myself (and leave my zits alone).  I was thriving in school, as well as in music and theater and art.  I made out with plenty of other boys.  I was on the school Academic Challenge team (because of course I was), and when the schedule showed we would be playing Strongsville - Ben's school - I chuckled to myself.

I saw Ben that day.  This time I did walk up and say hello.  After speaking with him a few moments, I realized he had developed a full on, pretty extreme stutter.  He was sweet, shy and nervous.  Our school won the match, and we parted ways once again.  This time forever.

I wish I remembered his last name to look him up.  I wonder if he's ever come across me and remembered?