Neither one of us is particularly religious, but his parents are, and my best friend Holly is. So it was pretty miraculous in the first place that I found myself at the Oviedo Baptist Church that evening, but even more divine: this angelic boy bent over an acoustic guitar...
John was playing something derivative of the time - Pearl Jam, I think. Holly introduced us, and when his smokey green eyes shyly lifted to meet my skeptical blue, I experienced a feeling I'd never felt before... and I was instantly smitten. We shook hands and mumbled "hellos," but he held my hand a little longer in his guitar-string-calloused grip. His hands were rough, but gentle as they held mine like someone would hold a bird. He held my hand like he was holding something valuable, and a delicious shudder ran the length of my spine, landing in my brain and lodging there.
Smitten, Smitten Kitten. Oh yes I was indeed. As it turns out, so was he! I'd been curious about other boys at my school in my past, but never beyond rampant gossipy speculation with my female friends about "who likes who," etc. With John, though, there seemed to be a palpable realness to an intangible connection.
We spent most of the service delighting in catching the other one sneaking glances, and each time I'd bust him, he'd turn crimson and hang his head until his mop of sandy blonde covered his eyes and all I could see was a sheepish grin. Oh, he was cute.
And after church, after his band performed, (spladoosh,) Holly and I were leaving when I heard the soft shuffle of corderouy pants hustling up behind us. I spun around to find myself a breath away from John, who pressed a sweaty-palmed piece of paper into my hands.
Two words from him: "Call me?"
A verbal waterfall from me: "Oh yeah, sure, OK. I'll do that. I will call you. On the phone. With this."
I don't remember the ride home. Or really, much of anything after that, except how patient Holly must've been as I surely obsessed about when to call and what to say when I did. Working up the nerve. Whatever I said on the phone must've gone well because John invited me over to his parent's house. They lived so close to me, but just on the border of the next county over, which is why we never shared a school.
When I arrived, I parked on the street in front of his house because his driveway was full of boxes. He came out and introduced me to his parents, who politely shook my hand and called me "dear."
John's parents didn't allow him to "date," so we just went for a walk around his neighborhood. We had SO MUCH IN COMMON: we were both white middle-class American teenagers. We BOTH LIKED MUSIC. We BOTH ATE FOOD. Clearly, this was my soul mate - and then my soul mate dropped a bomb on me.
"So I'm moving to Michigan," he says. "Like, tomorrow."
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Hm. Well, that explains the driveway full of boxes. Dammit.
Not to be deterred, I suggested we pen-pal it. After all, I told him. I was going to be a hot-shot writer someday, so I'd enjoy keeping in touch with letters. Kind of chronicle our love affair until we found a way to be together.
Shockingly, he agreed - after all, he was going to be a hot-shot guitarist someday. Surely, they'd have a van or travel trailer of some kind. I could get a laptop and write from there while the band toured the country.
A laptop? I already had a laptop. So basically we were halfway there.
He moved, just like he said, to Farmington, MI. When that first letter arrived in my mailbox I was over-the-moon excited. He DID write. He DID love me. And even though it was riddled with all the misspellings and grammar errors one could imagine from the product of Florida public education, I delighted in every syllable of his oddly block-printed handwriting. I was thrilled to hear about his new surroundings, and visualized everything in lurid detail. The woods near his home. The snow piled up on the red brick walls of his new school.
John hated Michigan. He was just starting his Senior year of High School, and had a hard time making new friends or finding other musicians to play with. I tried to keep my letters cheerful and full of sunshine, but no amount of positivity of affection from me seemed to make a difference.
I obsess in Lisa Frank proportions.
As his letters got shorter and more impersonal, I could sense him slipping away.
I asked my father, who was an airline pilot, if he would help me visit John to cheer him up. After some parental discussions between his folks and mine, in an unprecedented act of adventurousness, my dad agreed! We'd go to Michigan for the weekend! True love conquers all!
John had mailed me a plastic purple bead necklace, and told me he had a matching one. This was the first gift I'd ever recieved from a boy, and certainly the first jewelry I'd ever been given. I wore them every day until the string smelled like my marching-band-practice sweat.
Then I hung them from the rear-view mirror in my car, and every turn I took, every speedbump, they'd rattle and I'd feel that shiver resonate in kind, right up my spine. I was in love.
I'm pretty sure if I'd kept a journal at the time, it would've been riddled with heart-shaped doodles of "Mrs. Jack Avery" and her husband-to-be. I mean, surely the stars had aligned to introduce us before it was too late. Surely the Universe had conspired to nurture our young love with the letters and calls. MY DAD WAS ENCOURAGING THIS RELATIONSHIP SO IT HAD TO BE THE ONLY CORRECT PATH.
Never mind the fact that really, I was the only one writing at this point; that wasn't the point. The point was:
I would go to Michigan and get my first kiss.
After a short flight and a short drive, (but still plenty of time to allow my stomach to completely tie itself into knots,) my father and I arrived in Farmington. We followed my hand-written directions carefully through the snowy countryside to John's neighborhood, which looked nothing like I'd imagined. There were none of the flourishes I'd pictured, no "Michigan Farm House" charm. Just standard track houses on a normal street.
The "forest" near John's house, where he'd go for melodramatic angst-ridden teenage walks of solitude, was kind of just a square or two of semi-undeveloped land. But it was fine - it didn't matter - we were together!
I rushed up to his door, not sure what to expect, but when he and his mom opened it together, there was no swell of music. No cartoon birds appeared, and a very awkward hug ensued between us as our parents met in person for the first (spoiler alert: and last) time.
Didn't matter. I was here. He was here. We were in love. And I was gonna get that kiss god dammit. I was 16. It was OWED me.
After some polite small talk, Dad left for an hour or so to go scout out a hotel for the evening.
That gave me and John some time to warm up. Sort of. I'd been standing around in his mother's living room, not sure what to do with my hands. I hadn't even removed my coat. I was so nervous. Had I done something wrong? Was something wrong? Hadn't he asked me to come?
John suggested a walk, much like the one we'd taken the only other time we'd been alone together. A walk in the woods. A walk in the snowy woods. Trying to still my racing heart, I rebuttoned the coat I'd yet to take off. It was 40 degrees outside. I think I was sweating anyway.
We went for that walk, and I kept expecting that at any moment he'd give me... something. A kiss, an honest moment. Where was all that chemistry we'd both felt at the church? He really didn't even make eye contact.
After we reached some arbitrary half-way point known only to him, we turned around and headed back towards his house.
I think he tried to hold my hand, but we both had mittens on so who the fuck knows.
I could've unbuttoned that jacket for him. I was so hot from my own nervous energy, my blood, my brain, that spot in my brain which had been ignited when he first touched my hand, was on fire. I wanted so desperately to show him that I'd kept his beads, and removed them from their shrine on my car to travel North with me, as proof of my love. I could've shown him, I guess. But something told me he didn't care.
Back at his house, he took me for a quick tour of the town. There really was no town, so he basically just drove me to his school and back. All that nervous chatter faded on the drive back to his house. The bricks weren't even red, they were brown. Why had I imagined them as red? An iconic setting from his letters, in which I envisioned my love ardently penning letters was just a brownish wall about 4 feet high. With a handfull of tired grey snow clustered around the bottom. The naked, thin woods, the non-town, the grey, grey, grey everywhere and the deafening silence from John kind of piled up. We all went out to dinner that night. Our parents took pictures of us. We are standing 3 feet apart in the pictures.
The next morning, my dad and I went back to Florida.
Bleh. Just, bleh.
I sent a thank-you card. I sent a letter. I included copies of the picture my dad took of us. John's hands are folded so far behind his back he looks armless. Just a guy with empty short sleeves, staring stoically into the lens like some soldier in a daguerreo-type.
A little while passes, I've heard nothing. I write him again and ask if he has a girlfriend and hold my breath for a week until my response arrives.
"I am, in fact, seeing someone," he writes. "Lady Depression is her name. I am courting Despair."
I had, at the time, zero comprehension of what that meant. My own Dark Lady would set up camp with me in the years to come, but at 16, I couldn't possibly fathom what that meant. I just liked that he wrote like a cheesy balladeer. I liked that he wrote. I mean, what even WAS depression? Pff. Things would work out.
...Things didn't work out.
After two months went by with no more letters, I retired those beads off my mirror permanently and stuffed them away into some dark corner of a jewelry chest. It wasn't until nineteen years later that I'd see his face again, via the great public crystal scrying bowl known as Face Book.
Stay tuned for Part 2, in which we learn what ever happened to John Avery...
