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The first girl I ever publicly claimed to be attracted to was Kelly Steele and, although my motives for making such a claim were warped, she was more than worthy of sorry attraction. I was in the eighth grade and she was a freshman and generally accepted to be the most beautiful person on the planet Earth. I put on a show of infatuation at school that was both amusing and sad and, mostly, a carefully and cleverly designed ploy of mine to avoid any awkward moments with any other girls in the entire school. It may sound contrived, but I was deathly afraid of having a consenting relationship with a female who was as equally attracted to me as I was to her. This is why Kelly Steele was my picture perfect playmate: there was no chance that she would ever speak to me and any other girl who might desire a chance would know that Kelly Steele was my one true love and wouldn’t bother trying. It relieved a lot of my adolescent angst and provided many humorous anecdotes for me to share with my so-called friends.

It was, in a word, genius, and though it all came about without much foresight or planning or manipulation on my part, I used it to the best of my advantage. It began when my friend Christopher was hesitating to ask a out a girl that he actually liked and, we suspected, liked him in return. I told him, one afternoon during assembly when I felt the need to make up for my general shortcomings as a friend, that if he asked her out I would ask out Kelly Steele. In retrospect, this was not a particularly fair tradeoff and I certainly got the tough end of the bargain but, in the moment, I wasn’t thinking that far ahead and, lo and behold, it worked. He asked her out, they went out (if only for a brief time), and then my turn came on the spinning wheel of fortune to approach a woman and confess my feelings for her and to enquire as to whether or not she felt the same.

Initially this was horrifying and terrible and thought to be the end of my career as a student, but an amazing thing happened: other people heard about it and soon word got around and it was known: Damon liked Kelly Steele. Other students began looking at me a little differently and murmuring to each other in the hall and they passed Twinkies back and forth: that’s the guy who likes Kelly Steele. If anyone had ever said at anytime prior that I liked any girl but Kelly Steele I would have denied it vehemently and been terribly embarrassed; but with her, it was different. I embraced the notion. Instead of refuting this rumor, I accepted it and, whenever possible, did my best to encourage it. If I was bored, I would stand in the window and, in order to avoid conversation with anyone in my peer-group, which was what I tried to do most every day, I would put forth a good effort for watching her depart from her SUV in the morning. If I wanted to sit alone at lunch time, I mentioned that I was on the look out for my darling. I was given peace and quiet and no one hassled me about having a girlfriend or being a homosexual. It was brilliant.

This initial euphoria lasted until the moment came when I actually had to ask Kelly Steele out and I did — over the telephone. I may or may not have really liked her (infatuation is a funny thing), but she was the most beautiful person on the planet Earth, and talking with her face to face was frightening beyond all imaginings. On the few instances I had passed her in the hall my knees became weak and I found that I had lost my grasp on the English language and the art of conversation. Our love worked better at a tacit distance. So I called her. And here is what I said:

“Hello. Kelly Steele: will you go out with me?”

What she said was:

“I don’t really know you well enough to go out with you.”

I said:

“Okay. Bye.”

And I hung up.

If I had really wanted to go out with her and was tenacious I like to think I could have gotten at least one date. Her choice of men was not as otherworldly as should have been expected. I could have worked the: well, you don’t know me now but we have all the time in the world to get to know one another and all starts with a little date, a little movie, a little visit to the mall where we can walk by stores and I can make clever commentary that will set me apart from the other boys who only want to get in your pants whereas I am different and really care about you and your family — especially your sister. That sort of nonsense. But, of course, I didn’t really want to go out with her at all and I was relieved when she politely declined. If she had said yes I would have fainted and could never have gone to school again or, probably, left the house. As it was: I had asked her, she had said no, I could continue pining for her and my fate was sealed: I wouldn’t have to go out with anyone for the entire time I was in the eighth grade. Genius!

What it came down to, even in the eighth grade, was that I didn’t want to break up with anyone ever for any reason. There were people who liked me, sure, and I could have had a chance. Once, and only once, a girl asked me to dance and she touched my hand and she was beautiful and quirky and funny and I liked her but I said no. I realized, even then, that anything in the universe that can be created can also be destroyed. Any relationship, even one on the dance floor, had to end eventually. And at that time in my life not being in a relationship was better than the thought of having to end a relationship and still, to this day, my greatest fear at the beginning of any relationship is having to end it.

And from this we can understand the simplest of universal truths, which is that moments here on earth are fleeting and fast passing us by. So quickly, here and then gone. Don’t let love to ever be like that.

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