Knowing what Ben's "going through" (I hate that term) makes it a little harder, actually. It makes me think about...it makes me look at myself a little bit, too, when I think about what's happened between us in the past couple of days. I guess it's worth mentioning - we're in Kansas. Sweet. We've been on this cross-country road trip for the last...forever...and we're on our way home. I could probably write about six million entries about this trip, but I'm trying to focus on one thing. Just for...well...for your sake, Internet, and mine. But Ben and I had a moment involving changing out of bathing suits in a cramped hotel room. OK. We saw each other in our skinnies, by accident. He's taken it...a bit far. He's...God, he's being annoying, but I know what he's feeling...which is great and sucks at the same time because I just kinda wanna smack him around and say, "what the H are you thinking is going on here?" If I had no idea what was going in that noggin of his, I could just set him straight real quick and we'd just move the H on. But...why am I such an empathetic person? Ok, get off your high-horse, Margie. I guess I just wanna be mad, say, "you're being ridiculous," and just get over it. But...alas (), I can't. Because I've had this crush before. I mean...just cool it, Internet. Don't read into that last sentence. What I'm saying is, I've had that crush on an older person and I remember being just dumb enough to think, "I mean, maybe it could happen."

Alright. Stop it. I guess I have to state, clearly, for the record, how my situation was different so your mind doesn't start wandering, Internet. It has a tendency to do that, you know. But I don't judge you. I love you. You've been so great to me. Anyway. My disclaimer...and a brief intro into the crush that makes me think I have some inkling of an idea of what Ben is going through: My friend Courtney Richard¹ belonged to a country club. It wasn't one of those in the movies - it didn't have slaves working there, is what I mean - but it was more than the public pool. That's all I mean. She had a little number that you could write down and get Nutty Buddies and hot dogs at the snack bar. It's was nice, definitely, but not...swanky. I just want that clarification made. Sorry. I'm weird. Anyway, that year, Courtney and I were at that pool...Every. Single. Day. Seriously. The earth would have to stop spinning for us not to be there. We loved it when people called us "pool rats." We even thought about making t-shirts. (One more little sidebar: the dagger in my heart after my falling out with Courtney in ninth grade came when she made t-shirts with her new group of friends who called themselves the "Five Stars"...I hated those "Five Stars" shirts so much. Granted, looking back, they were pretty lame but I totally still wanted one at the time, for sure. Last sidebar. Focus, Margie.) So we were there all the time, at the pool, that summer. By mid-June, they were letting us jump in real quick during adult swim and by July Fourth, we were jumping off the high dive and catching tennis balls the life guards would throw from their thrones-slash-stands during adult swim. We became above the law. By Labor Day, we were hanging out in the lifeguard lounge being really sarcastic with the girl lifeguards (because that made us cool) and being even more sarcastic with the guys. We learned little tricks about the club like the combination to the freezer in the snack bar and where the secret, employee-only drink machines were stashed.

It was amazing. They loved us and we loved being loved by them. They were so cool and sassy and...awesome. Courtney had an older sister who actually hung out with these people during the school year and even though she was spending the summer in Vail at a horse-riding camp, they all knew who Courtney was and they really did take care of us. Looking back, things definitely could have gotten...weird. I mean, we idolized these girls and guys and, I guess, knowing now how terrible people actually can be, I guess we were in a position to be...corrupted in some horrible way. I don't even know what I mean by that, exactly, I just want to make clear that this set-up was, by and large, completely innocent. A dirty joke we didn't quite understand was the closest thing to R-rated things ever got (I guess there were a few cigarettes, but not until the end). We thought of these people as heroes, but they weren't even that much older than us. They were seventeen, which in and of itself warrants hero-status from a sixth grader, but nothing "adult" was anywhere near the radar, so just get that idea out of your head. It was like being accepted by the Court of the Pool Kingdom. They were the coolest thing going there. Tanner than everyone else. Cooler sunglasses than everyone else (Tortoise shell?!?). In better shape than everyone else. COOLER than everyone else. They were, no doubt about it, the bee's knees.

They were all first-world cool kids, but Courtney and I both had our favorites. Courtney loved how "totally popular" Eileen Maniche was with everyone. She had cooler-than-thou down cold, and Courtney loved that. Her favorite boy was Eileen's boyfriend, Kevin. They were the power couple she wanted to be a part of when she was older. I think, deep down, she was hoping they would run away together and take her with them as their cohort-slash-prot&eactue;gé. My focus was more...well, focused. Xan (pronounced Zan) Turner. Good Lord, Xan Turner.

He had a girlfriend already in college at Boulder and a twin sister, Sara ("Sara with no H and don't you forget it!") so he knew how girls really were. At the peak of my infatuation, I...I loved Xan Turner, intensely and with all my heart, for two solid weeks - from the Wednesday before the club's steeple chase 'til three days afterwards. He totally got me, I thought. And he let me hang out with him so I figured I got him too. We started really connecting when he and his girlfriend were in some fight about something - going down to Lake Havasu or something - and I listened to him vent and said "that sucks" whenever I deemed it appropriate. He smoked cigarettes but was so much cooler about it than the other boys that did because he knew he should be quitting and gave himself flack every time he lit up another one...like a grown up whose life was just too complicated at the moment to worry about quitting smoking...even though he knows he should.

"Gotta quit these things," he'd say. "But she just drives me up a wall sometimes."

"That sucks."

"Like it wouldn't drive her bats**t if I went down to Havasu with a bunch of people...a bunch of chicks she'd never met. Please."

"Please. That sucks."

"It does suck, Margie. I totally does."

I asked him for a cigarette. My first cigarette. An American Spirit Yellow. He said he didn't want to give me one but felt like he owed me one for all my listening. "Plus it'll get 'em outta my hands so I can finally start cutting back." He warned me not to get addicted to that cigarette I was coughing on and I told him I'd pinky swear on it (kinda broke that one, but it was totally worth it).

He was so mature and cool. To put it in current terms: he was a Clooney. George Clooney. Not like a young George Clooney. But the George Clooney you know now, but in the body of seventeen year old...in 1993. Yeah. Dreamy, I know. Believe me, I know.

So I became his Sancho Panza and I started being able to use his lingo without anyone around thinking it was weird. Things like saying "Saa" and wagging my finger when someone who just got reprimanded for running or diving where they weren't supposed to. "You know what you did," I'd say with confidence. "Park it." It was awesome. And it was all sanctioned and approved by my main man Xan.

Needless to say, I got drunk on a combination of coolness, acceptance and whatever happens to you when your heart pitter-patters a million times a second, all day long, all summer. The honeymoon was bound to end, and it did...badly. Not that badly, I mean...well, I'll get there.

You can probably say things started going south when 'Sleepless in Seattle' came out and I really wanted to go. As part of his beyond-his-years coolness, Xan appreciated the brilliance of 'When Harry Met Sally' - which had come out a few years earlier - very early on, when it was socially risky to do so among teenage peers. He quoted Harry's neurotic speeches and when some wannabe like Jeff Andrew (another lifeguard) said, "Xan, that movie's so gay," my hero never failed to find the perfect retort: "Your gay." Mean, but affective.

So when 'Sleepless' came out and was billed as, more or less, the next 'When Harry Met Sally,' I knew I had to strike.

That's right. I asked Xan Turner out on a date. It. Was. Terrible.

We were having our daily cigarette, which I was chasing with a strawberry fruit pop, when I brought it up. After staring at me for a little bit, he put his arm around me and laughed like you do when a kid asks something like, "where do baby storks come from?"

"Margene, come on," he said. "I mean...you're like my bud, you know?"

Those words entered my ears, rattled around in my brain, traveled down my spine, into my lungs where they created a cold, swirling feeling, before reaching my heart and breaking it into two distinct pieces. Those words were cold-blooded gangsters who didn't mind killing.

I put out my cigarette in my fruit pop, which I spiked onto the ground and left in a huff. I walked home and didn't go back to the pool for weeks. I was so sure we had something. Something. I knew it. I knew it me and Xan's "WE" would be different and might be hard to understand, but there was something. Right? There was something, damn it! I was so mad. At myself, mostly. And his stupid girlfriend who didn't know who she was dating and how lucky she was. Then I was mad at him for a while, too.

"You're like my bud, you know?"

Hell no, I didn't know. And that's what this long-winded nothing of a post is about, I guess. I was positive something was "there" that wasn't and never was (I've subsequently let Xan off the hook for this affection I thought was there). But I was so certain. I had good feelings about the whole thing, really. I thought he'd be a little surprised by my proposal of dinner at IP7² and a flick, but I thought he'd chuckle to himself and say, as if talking to himself and all the doubters, "you know what? Why not? Sure. Let's do it."

But that's not what happened. We were buds. I just didn't know it. Obviously, Ben's and my relationship is a heck of a lot more "deep" (read: complicated) than my stupid crush on a lifeguard one summer in the early 90's, but listening to Ben's sense of conviction, I was mad as all get out, but I could remember being so stupidly sure of something that didn't exist at all...just like he said he was. He's a (young) man so he's not gonna storm off like a girl would but I'm sure he is a little embarrassed and this defiance is a product of that. Where I ran off and exiled myself in shame, he has to stand by his incorrect assumption because, well, that's what men do sometimes. It's alright. I'm not as mad as I was earlier on, but he kept pushing me and I felt like I had to get harsh. But I do, in a way, know what he's going through. He reminded me of the first time I gambled with misguided feelings and got burned. I'm definitely not mad at him at this point. I was. But I think he'll work it out. Maybe he'll blog about someday...but I doubt it.

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¹Sixth grade best friend, out-right enemy by ninth grade and from then on?I hate school. Why does that stuff happen?
²Italian Pizzeria #7: there was an Italian family that owned this mini-chain of pizzerias in the area and instead of naming each one, they were/are just numbered...IP3 is my favorite for some reason, but they're all the same.