Dear Journal,
yay, yay, + a thousand more yays! I’m going out with Jon! ooo finally! At least I’m pretty sure i am. Jess said she asked him if he’d go out w/ me when he was leaving for school and he said, “Ya, hold that thought!” ??? so I dunno if she asked him out for me or w/e but i guess we are so yay! I talked to him on the phone tonight + I said I’m prob sleeping over on fri. He was like sweet and then he’s like “you thinking what I’m thinking?” and I just teased him a little but then I’m like t or d? he’s like o ya. OMG im so excited for fri! Mom said I could sleep over, she wanted to go to the science mueseum museum on fri. too. O jeez I was so nervous on the phone I was shakin. Can’t do that fri, just be cool! OK well Odie just shit on the floor + he really should go to the vet cuz he’s been weird so I’ll write maybe on Sunday. smooches!
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This scenario is an overprotected eighth grader’s wet dream. Hooking up with your best friend’s older brother? It’s the easiest play in the book, right up there with bagging the foreign exchange student your family’s hosted for the semester or seducing that life-long family friend over N64 while your parents are getting drunk on spiked eggnog upstairs. Hell, this shit is in my blood. My father is the four-years-older brother of my mom’s best childhood friend. They didn’t get together until he’d graduated from college, but regardless I’m hardwired to keep it in the family.
There was a scandal in Middleboro around this time that was basically the same deal. A girl a year older than me was rumored to have slept with her best friend’s older brother during a sleepover, and word got around fast. My dad would have never talked about that kind of thing with me, but my mom is on my level and absolutely loves gossip. We can’t help it. We fucking love the dramz. So of course I was always filled in about the titterings of the softball moms, and this was one of the most memorable tales I can remember from middle school. It was scary in one sense because I got it–I had a raging crush on and spoken mutual lust for my best friend’s older brother. How I ever thought in one trillion years he would want to call me his girlfriend (or would get away with it) when I was in eighth grade and he was a freshman in high school was pure hormone-induced idiocy, but I was down down down down DOWN. He was aggressive, and I fucking loved it. I was willing to subject myself to scandal to mack it with Jon.
Let’s go back to my family-oriented complex. I’ve talked to a ton of chicks since high school about the parallels between our parents’ relationships and our desires for our own futures, our tastes in men, and our general outlook on how things should be with dudes. I’ve found that, at least in our formative years, all girls base their wants on the traits of their fathers and aspects of their parents’ relationship. Sometimes this is great, like how I get instantly turned off by ungentlemanly behavior (seriously, if you want a second date you bet your ass you’re walking on the street side of the sidewalk). Other times this isn’t so great. I was blessed to go to both high school and college with an angelic young lady who became one of my closest friends post-Thayer. We instantly bonded over our romantic ideals which, although much different, were heavily influenced by the stories of our own families. While I came from a pair brought together by my mother’s friendship, she exists thanks to a wonderfully persistent college-athlete father and a class-act mother whose worlds collided at the school we both adore, Syracuse University; and this influence on our desires wasn’t all talk. While we were at school, she dated a handful of athletes seriously. I continued my quest for love and affection, but spent a considerable amount of energy convincing myself I was meant to be with one of twenty guys I’d known at least five years. Close family friends and brothers of BFFs were, obviously, the majority of my dream men. My parents’ divorce between freshman and sophomore year helped me model my love life after them, because, duh, that shit’s not gonna work, but I still keep the romantic sentiment whether I like it or not.
It’s something we just have to live with as girls. We’re complicated creatures. But we all are–you boys just don’t talk about it… incessantly… like we do. So call me crazy. But here’s my number. So call me, maybe? Or not. That was aggressive. Don’t listen to that song kids, hot girls should never have to approach a dude. This has been Allison’s public service announcement of the day. Two more entries coming at you before noon.
Allison's Private Journal 