Crushed

by tess

I’ve read that Crush is the New Black. Specifically, the social networking crush (i.e., “my old MySpace crush” or “that’s from her Twitter crush”). It’s a secure way to experience the short-lived intensity of a crush without exposing yourself, without making yourself vulnerable. So I’ve been thinking of the role various crushes have played in my life.

Because I can’t begin to name the countless hundreds of boys I crushed on throughout The Angsty Years (and because it makes me throw up in my mouth a little to think about any of them), I’ll dispense with the mundane infatuations and proceed to those that are less obvious and ultimately more meaningful.

Given the internet it must be far easier to become consumed by a crush on a celebrity. Now you can catalogue every fact about their lives and essentially stalk their every move. In the olden days, it was a little more esoteric. My first was Bobby Sherman. I had no interest in David Cassidy or Donny Osmond, the standard Tiger Beat crushes of the day. At 7-going-on-13, I kissed the picture on his album every night before bed, knowing he was thinking of me when he sang “Come into my world and leave your world behind” and I was packed and ready to go. Inexplicably my next crush was Michael Lee Aday. Yes, Meat Loaf. If you can’t figure out why then I can’t explain it to you; you either get it or you don’t. To round out this idiosyncratic triumvirate, my current celebri-crush is Richard Schiff. More accurately, I think the crush is on his character, Toby Ziegler, since I don’t actually know Mr. Schiff beyond his 146 brilliantly dark, brooding, intelligent, and occasionally petulant performances on The West Wing.

I’ve luxuriated in a number of author crushes. In college I fell in love with D.H. Lawrence and ardently defended every word, sentence, and paragraph of Women in Love to within an inch of my life. Anne Rice provided me with countless hours of entertainment and a succession of new loves via the early Chronicles, the Rampling fantasies, and her Roquelaure romps. Laurell K. Hamilton is inevitably compared to Rice because she has written for 16 years about vampires and sex. And sex with vampires. I’ll agree with the haters that the first ten Anita Blake books are her best; I gave up after Danse Macabre but reviews seem to indicate that she’s back on track. My new great love is Dani Shapiro. Her writing is sharp and insightful, specific yet subtle, spare but somehow full. Her heart bleeds on the page but from such a distance that her readers aren’t mired in sentimentality. She’s the must-read of the crew.

Unembarrassed, I’ll admit to three girl crushes. In 8th grade it was McKenna Grace. I told her once that I loved her. I didn’t mean I want you, I think I meant I want to be just like you and can we be best friends forever. I don’t know if it’s still true, but in the 70s the most derisive slur for a junior high school girl was “lezzie.” Especially at an all-girls school. Telling one of the most popular jocks in your class that you love her is a good way to earn that sobriquet and to become the class pariah. In college I fell hard for a beautiful actress named Sarah. Neither one of us was eloquent enough to effectively communicate our affection. Immature and embarrassed, we hid from one another until we both transferred. Sarah remains one of the great regrets of my life. Glamorous Wynn Balboa had semi-naturally blonde hair that she could sit on and looked great in leather pants. I didn’t lust after her but I envied her laissez faire attitude toward the men who groveled at her ankles. Sure, they all wanted her but they respected the hell out of her, too. She’d swan around the room secretly rotating vodka tonics with water until she drank the guys under the table. The first time she subdued The Dentist (who would later break her heart just as The Architect had) she tore his shirt off shooting buttons throughout his office, then couriered an expensive replacement the next day. At the time, I was dazzled by her sophistication. She owned herself as a woman in a way that I had never witnessed and I was deeply in awe of her.