Old Wounds

I'm one of those unfortunate people who get dumped the night before Valentine's Day. I have yet to find a new relationship that's worked out, and it's something I'm sensitive about. Last night, I was randomly browsing blogs. I select one with a silly Japanese name I've already forgotten. I chuckle at the petty drama and bad poems with strained-out couplets. This chick sure loves to post pictures of herself. In the next picture, suddenly her hair is up so ornately, she must have spent five hours getting it done. She wears an elegant dress in deep red. Prom pictures. Shit. The next one is a close-up of her corsage. What a sweet boyfriend she has; it matches her dress. I put my head down and remember the last time I wore a corsage:

Freshman year, I go to homecoming ( I was in public school last year. More on this later) with a guy who thinks I am his, forever and ever amen. I'll call him Wren. I met him during a play or something. I used to feel sorry for him, everybody always ridiculed him. For a while, I considered him my friend. Then I noticed he had passive-aggresive tendencies, would have psychotic breaks if he wasn't constantly sedated, got everything stuck in his braces, and on top of that, was a mouth breather. He doesn't get the hint. In fact, I've been told he's madly in love with me. It would be kind of cute, but one problem. He has severe Asperger's Syndrome. I have nothing against the disease or the people who have it. But he's borderline autistic. I don't need Prince Charming, but I don't know if I can do Ray Babbit. Already, as his friend, teachers ask me to calm him down. I'm not a therapy tool. I don't want to be his nurse. And I can't imagine kissing him. He looks like someone pulled the head of a cerebral palsy sufferer and screwed it onto his neck. He walks up to me and my best friend at the beginning of seventh period.
"Has anyone asked you to homecoming yet?" I know the look crossing my friend's face. It says, "A beer to anyone who can see where this is going."
"Uh...no..." I cling to the hope that it's just a casual question.
"Would you like to go with me?" My friend thinks to herself, "Bartender, beers all around!" My lips automatically form the phrase, "Oh shit," but I catch myself, and turn the word shit into a "sure". I add the best feminine little giggle I can muster. There's some taboo against saying no to a "special ed" kid. He asks on Thursday, so when he asks me the color of my dress, I tell him I don't know. The night before the dance, I pick out a midnight blue floor-length gown with silky scarf-type things hanging down the back. I'm horribly inept at telling the stylist how I want my hair to look, so I end up looking like Belle from Beauty and The Beast. I'm a few acne scars away from living under a bridge and scaring children, so I guess it would be Ugly and the Beast. He knocks on my door and tells me I look ravishing. I wish I could say the same. He's wearing a tweed suit, and a mothball falls out of it as he crosses the threshold. I pretend not to see it. We take a few pictures, then get into his mom's Taurus. We have to go back to his place. He forgot the corsage. The first thing that hits me is the stench. Imagine if Glade developed an air freshener in a fragrance called Ass. A cat scampers down the stairs. I say it's cute to be polite. He says, "One of five." Somehow I guessed. He pulls the corsage out of the refrigerator like it's a dead body in the morgue. It's one of those boring cream-colored ones, because they go with everything. It's wilting, and the edges of the petals are brown. I try to sound excited. "Ooh," I squeal, "I love baby's breath!" I berate myself in my head. How the hell can anyone feel any way at all about baby's breath? It's floral white noise. We eat dinner at this Japanese fast-casual place called Kokoro. We both like it and it embarrases me when men spend money on me. He grins at me with seaweed and wasabi all over his teeth. I pull my lower lip all the way back to my tonsils. This year, whoever's in charge of dances has perfected the ultimate cheesy theme. They have stretched beyond Tropical Paradise. They've even surpassed my Hollywood-themed 6th grade continuation. It's Medieval Castle. Then, I see someone familiar. It makes me sick with longing. I'll call him Chance, and he's with a girl I'll call Piper. Chance and I are kind of in the same boat. Piper is his version of Wren. There is nothing wrong with Piper except for the fact that she's morbidly obese and socially inept. Chance and I tried to date in middle school, but when Piper found out, she pushed me down the stairs. We stare at each other. We've had so many intellectual debates that seem like they should end with a makeout session. We're here with people we hate. I sit up and tell Wren I'm going to call my mom to tell her we got there in one piece. I whip out my umbilical cordless in a shadowy corner and hope to hell that Chance has his turned on. My phone doesn't technically have text messaging, so it costs me ten cents per letter to send a text message. Ignoring that fact, I frantically press in, "Take me." It will be the best sixy cents I ever spent. I watch him look quizically at his vibrating pocket. He throws his arms around Piper and winks at me over her unaware shoulder. I hear him ask her if she'd like a Coke. Of course she would. He creeps over to me, and we head for the men's room. We lock the door to the disabled stall. If anybody in a wheelchair has to take a shit, it will have to wait. Tears pool in my eyes and I jump up and thrust my tongue so far down his throat I almost lick his heart. I never thought my first kiss would be so close to a urinal, but life is full of surprises. We tongue-bang for a few minutes and he unzips my dress and strokes my bare back. I have to come up for air eventually. We pull away from each other. I shake a little. He says, "That was....so....I can't describe...just...wow." I blush. "But you know how Piper is," he says. "We'll never speak of this again." As I try to sneak out of the bathroom without being seen, my corsage falls off the wristband into my hand. I walk back into the crowd, saying, "Oh, drat! My corsage seems to have broken." I do my best to sound upset, but I must have never had to be upset in a play before. A sophomore and her senior boyfriend take a long enough break from deep throating each other to shoot me looks that say, "You're not fooling anyone, toots." Wren has fallen asleep on a couch, with his mouth hanging open. I look out the upstairs window and wonder how far it is to the street below.

I bounced back from Chance pretty quickly. My friend introduced me to an Irish boy with long hair. I am a sucker for long hair on boys. I kept him a secret from my parents. He left me the night before Valentine's Day, muttering something about self-respect. The next day, he gave me a basket of stupid Valentine's Day stuff like teddy bears and chocolate. So I won't feel left out, says the accompanying card. But Valentine's Day isn't about the stupid shit you buy from Hallmark. It's about knowing someone loves you. Unnamed Lucky Prom Girl's blog stretches back to Valentine's Day. Her boyfriend was impossibly cute that day, according to her. He took her to this Italian place with candles on the tables made of candy hearts, and baked her a heart shaped cake. There's a picture of them cupping their hands around the candle's flame. They look nervous, in a good way. I try to remember what it like to hold hands, and can't. I see my old, dead body on the floor of a one-story house, with a garage with those creepy windows on the doors. A cat with a matted coat rips a sheet of skin off my face, exposing my skull. My bland corsage is a shrivelled brown mess presesed into a photo album with Precious Moments characters on the cover. I snap back to the present. Her corsage has black roses in it. I cry until I throw up in the sink.