He was a skater boy

I like to think of dating as making successive approximations toward my ideal partner. With each guy I date, I am able to find new qualities which I will seek or avoid in future partners. Each time I date a new person, I am closer to having found the right one. I have a better idea each time around of what characteristics I want, and of those, which are the most important. Ergo, my last boyfriend was closer to what I want than the one before him, who was closer than the one before him, and so on down the chain. Following this logic, boyfriend zero would be the one who is least like the person I would like to end up with.

It was spring of 1996, the year when the grunge era was coming to a close and the skater trend was in full swing. This was before the time when skaters had blue hair and were outcasts in high school. Before Avril Lavigne-ish girls wearing tank tops with ties. Before skaters became a elitist clique of the least elite people imaginable. No, this was the time when it was actually cool to wear over-sized elephant-esque clothing from Pacific Sunwear (yes, this was even before it became Pac-Sun).

I, however, was not cool. I did not wear baggy clothes from PS, or have hemp jewelry, a skateboard or a wallet on a chain. I was 12 years old, and had a mother who did not let me dress like a derelict. I wore clothes that were not especially trendy, and fit me well. This didn't bother me much though because, I was in all GT classes, and none of the other nerds in my classes were particularly cool either.

Well, you can imagine my surprise when the cool new skater kid who was the object of desire of every girl in the school started passing notes to me in home economics (this is totally like 2nd base or something). Boyfriend Zero was too cool for school. He was in remedial classes, yet thought he was smarter than everyone around him (which I guess may have been the case with the crowd he hung with), he had an entire wardrobe from PS, and he used new slang words which I to this day, can not figure out. His friends would skateboard to Taco Bell and buy a small soda, then get like 20 refills (what rebels), and he was allowed to watch MTV. He was unlike the nerds that I had been around before. He put his own coolness above having any sort of real goals. He didn't participate in sports or other after school activities like I did. His after school activities consisted of skateboarding, Taco Bell, and hanging out. He was totally righteous, dude!

Things progressed in the typical middle school fashion, and pretty soon, we were dating. This meant that we went to the mall with four other friends (who were dating each other too), held hands a few times, passed notes to each other, bragged about dating each other to everyone in school, and he gave me daffodils which he picked out of his neighbor's yard on the way to the bus stop (I still am not sure if I find this to be endearing enough to over-look the fact that he destroyed someone's meticulously groomed garden). We were the most enviable middle school couple of the time.

Of course, these things don't last forever, and we had our falling out a few weeks later when I did not want to kiss him. I wasn't one of those middle school sluts who ran around kissing people. I had morals, dammit! Things ended. So, I went back to my schoolwork, ballet and equestrian lessons. He moved on to the class whore, because, she was willing to make out with him (I heard that she ended up getting pregnant in high school) also, she had a brother who was two years older and a skater. Who wouldn't want an in with such an awesome dude? Unfortunately, my older sister was about as cool as I was, so I guess I never had that advantage. We didn't really have any mutual friends, as our collective group of friends broke up over our break-up (it was middle school). I saw him around school a little bit, but we didn't talk much. He moved away the next year and went to a different middle school. After that, I lost track of him entirely.

That is, until the miracle of the internet let me take one last look at him. I stumbled across (ok, I searched his name on Stalkerati and found) his MySpace page. First of all, who my age has a MySpace page? Totally righteous dudes, duh! The information on there was surprising to read because, well, it is not surprising at all. It was as if he had written it 10 years ago (perhaps his new school did not offer English classes). His picture showed him in all his skater glory. He is still in his Pac Sun clothes, hemp necklace, and Vans. He has no real hobbies worth mentioning, other than skateboarding and hanging out with his friends. He still has no drive to do the things which are important to people like me (like getting a job).

I guess the point of all this is that I wouldn't kiss Boyfriend Zero ten years ago, and I sure as hell wouldn't kiss him now.