Photo by margaretglin

Everyone has their Jordan Catalano. Mine was Kurt. I was in the 6th grade, he was in the 8th, but he had been held back a year, I think. We met at a youth group lock-in at church. He went to public school. I went to Catholic school. It was bad news.

That was the summer I wore wind shorts. Everyone wore wind shorts, except the girls who wore jean shorts, and I didn’t like those girls for reasons only sixth graders understand. One of them could put on perfect lip liner without using a mirror. I heard she hung out with Kurt, and I asked her about him. She said, “Ugh, you can have him.”

There were two lock-ins that summer. My best friend went with me to the first one and kept me out of trouble. I admired him from afar and wished he would talk to me. At the second one, my best friend wasn’t there. I made friends with this awkward girl who the jeans short girls didn’t seem to like. There was a dance, and I made out with Kurt while slow dancing right in front of the youth group leader. That night, while everyone was lying on the floor sleeping or surreptitiously fooling around under their sleeping bags, he tried to finger me. We were barely even covered, and I didn’t quite understand what he was doing, so I drew back.

In a bitter moment months later, I told my dad Kurt spent the whole night trying to get his hands in my pants — in reality, he’d spent maybe 20 minutes actually trying, microscopically inching along my leg to see how close his hands could get to my panties. It was bad enough I’d kissed him in front of everyone, and I knew my reputation was about to take a big hit, but if we got caught messing around on the floor at a church lock-in, I might as well die.

On the other hand, I really liked him. You have no idea how cute he was. What I knew about him was just a handful of dubious facts. His parents were divorced. He lived with his grandfather or an uncle. He was troubled. He had a bad reputation. He was probably just misunderstood. Of course. But after I pulled away from him, he didn’t talk to me for the rest of the night, didn’t ask for my phone number, and didn’t acknowledge me again until the day my dad nearly kicked his ass in the church parking lot.

We had a total of five conversations, including the one after choir practice the year we were in Christmas choir. We were standing outside the church waiting for rides home when he repeated some gossip he’d heard about me from someone I never met. I told him his friend was a liar and that he’d hurt me with the way he acted before. I don’t think he got it. We didn’t talk again for a long time. That year at Christmas Mass, he had a solo in “We Three Kings,” and his voice cracked badly. My older brother made fun of him on the car ride home, but I still liked him so I felt bad about it.

One day, after I’d stopped waiting for him to like me, maybe 8th or 9th grade, he called and asked me to be his girlfriend. I told him I needed to think about it, and he said, “Just don’t call your friends and ask them what you should do. Girls always do that, and I don’t wanna date someone like that.” Of course, I called my best friend, and together we determined that he was too much of a gamble and I could do better, even if he was really cute and I still sorta liked him.

In high school, I heard he had sex with a girl from my class in a movie theater. There were gory details I still won’t repeat. Once, they showed up at the house where my friends and I would hang out after school. I knew he was coming, and I made a point to be there for reasons only high school girls understand. When they arrived, he was uninteresting. He acted tough but was too out of place to be convincing. We nodded like old divorcees. She had on too much mascara. Her bangs were too heavy. She avoided eye contact and smiled weakly. That was the last day I wanted him.

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