JT

I forgot to write in my blog yesterday and I have totally been meaning to finally jump on the TBT (throwback Thursday meme  on Facebook. However, I don't have any of my photos handy anyway, so I can't show you how amazing I was in the 90s or how very very awkward my prepubescence years were--I had huge plastic glasses and a really bad bob haircut (think Little Lord Fauntleroy). I was also in the throes of making a political statement about hair spray and the ozone layer, so I had this super elaborate feathered cut that I could never keep in a style. Oh, and perms. I had a few terrible home perms. And then I used to do this thing when my hair was longer where I would braid it when it was wet and sleep with it like that so that in the morning, my hair would be wavy, like  a mermaid. Except it never quite worked out that way b/c I also got cuts like two times a year and so the ends were always dead and straw-like. So, I'd have this shimmery long waves ending in like singed hair.

For some reason, I've been thinking a lot about the guys I dated in my twenties and one in particular whose last name I can't recall. I found this great photo of him and me after much searching---remember photo albums, by the way? I miss them. Anyway, I don't know why I started thinking about him--maybe it's because I'm writing this other project about how when I was in my twenties and, let's be honest, thirties, I didn't spend a whole lot of time evaluating guys. I basically had three criteria to develop a crush on them--that they be attractive, that they have some kind of artistic interest (acting, music, writing) and that they have only a fleeting interest in me. The more ambivalent they were, the more interested I was. Abandonment and daddy issues, obviously.

So this guy was in one of my writing classes at DePaul and if I remember correctly, I think most of stories were about misunderstood guys who skulked around scribbling in their notebooks and being unable to connect with others. Or murder mysteries. I can't recall. His name was JT--maybe that's why I'm thinking of him, because of JP, the Bachelor. He smoked like someone who just took up the habit and was copying James Dean. He also might have popped up his the collar of his windbreaker a time or two.  The only other memory I have of him is one I can't share in detail here, because it's mortifying--for him, not me. But when that thing I can't mention happened, I sent him home in the cold without a change of clothes. Read between the lines. I remember laughing about it hysterically with my girlfriends later, but then also wondering why he never called me again. I guess maybe because he thought I was mean.

He also bears a striking resemblance to Fred Savage.

I wish I'd had a better sense then, in my twenties, of my own value or like a better meter for choosing guys who had something to offer instead of always wondering what they thought of me. Where is he now? Probably still living in Chicago. Maybe teaching. That dog in the photo is certainly dead, unfortunately. Maybe that's why I like dogs so much, because they are almost always interested, and friendly and into you, no matter what.