The question I dreaded hearing most while in college was not, what are you majoring in, how are your classes, what do you think you’re going to do – it was “Do you have a boyfriend…” and then like someone letting an unclenched hand of dust blow into the wind, they’d follow it with an almost whispered “…yet?” and there the dust goes.

I would say no. No, I did not have a boyfriend. I was still congratulating myself for semi regularly making out with a boy. He wasn’t my boyfriend. He was the guy I only ever made out with. He went to a different college and I would go there with a friend to visit our mutual friend but mostly to see him, because making out with him was more fun than hanging out with my friend in the quad. Sorry. I knew he wasn’t my boyfriend but my relatives, strangely, seemed to really, really want me to tell them that I was in an exclusive intimate relationship with someone. It seemed to disappoint them when I told them I was not. What should I have said? “Well, Aunt Jo, no boyfriend yet, but I’m ‘hooking up’ with this boy at another college.” (I want to BAN the word “hook-up” from our vocabulary. But that’s another post.)

That I even got to the point where I was kissing a boy was pretty amazing to me. Did I assume that it meant we would soon wind up being boyfriend/girlfriend? Of course I did. Did we? Of course we didn’t. But it’s funny how life works. We’re friends now. But no, I didn’t have a boyfriend then. I didn’t have a boyfriend all through high school (again, girls’ school, I politely blame thee) and so why would I have one now? I don’t know how to speak French, so why is everyone expecting me to move to France?

It was such a weird time, experiencing all those new things at once. Before I left, my mom wanted to have “the talk” with me, particularly embarrassing because 1. Mom, hello, I know this stuff by now and 2. I HAD NO ONE TO DO THE LIVE ACTION VERSION OF “THE TALK” WITH. It’s like she was mocking me! Have no fear mom, really. I think I even cried.

Why? WHY? Why did everyone assume that because I was in my first year of college I had boyfriends under my belt and a serious one on the way? I too thought that high school and college would be a lot like the movies with Jennifer Love-Hewitt and Jamie Kennedy and that angry adorable Matthew Lillard, and I don’t even know who else, but none of that happened! The movies lied! And now it was my responsibility to either gently break the hearts of my family and friends and tell them that no, I was alone and mostly afraid of boys and that even kissing one was enough for me, the movies are wrong everyone, wrong! Or I could suck it up and pretend that they’re right and the movies are right and “Yeaaaaah we met at this crazy keg party but now things are really serious, who knows what could happen senior year!” The college I graduated from didn’t even have Greek life.

I had one real, actual, this guy would agree if I referred to him as my boyfriend, boyfriend while in college and that…that is a whole other post.

-Almie

Photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/20962143@N06/4823857390/in/photostream

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