Nicole

I was a boy and she was becoming a woman. She was a couple of years older (I'm guessing)  than me. Our conversation has stayed with me for 30 years. The scene was the Cosmo (short for cosmopolitans) swim team picnic, which signaled the end of the season and the last time I'd see these people until school began again. I don't recall my exact age, but it was 10, 11, or 12. Her name was Nicole, and her words still echo in my soul.

I was busy running around, having fun, eating candy and being a boy. She grabbed me (literally) and took me aside. She said she knew I didn't want to hear it right now, but someday I would need to know this. She told me to be kind to girls' hearts, to not be like the other boys; don't play games with girls because that's how people get hurt. Here was a barely-a-woman telling this I-just-want-to-be-a-boy-forever how to be a man. I should have heard this from my brothers, should have seen it in my father, anyone but her. But I listened. I hated standing there, and repeatedly told her, "I don't care." And, I didn't. I just wanted to run around and eat candy. But, dammit, I listened.

I'm sure she forgot that moment soon after, but I never did. I tried to be the good man she was admonishing me to be. I didn't play with girls' hearts. I couldn't help that they got all gooey sometimes. I didn't lead them on, did I? I'm sorry if I did. I've strived to be upright with them. God knows I'm not perfect, but I've kept Nicole's words with me all these years because, you know what, she was right. I've seen so many men play with so many women's hearts. It's obscene. It's downright heartbreaking. She was smart. She knew, despite my reluctance, that I would be a man someday. And girls would throw themselves at me at a furious pace. I could have played the field. Sometimes, I think, I should have. That's what men do.

Nicole moved away, and I was vaguely aware she was gone. She moved to a university town about an hour away. I remember her, in her cheerleader outfit, saying hi to our visiting cross country team, of which I was a member. We were on a golf course hill overlooking her town.  She said hi to me, said my name, so I knew she remembered me. I remembered her, and for a split second, wondered if she recalled cornering me that summer evening years before.

Did she know that boy she cornered had a sensitive heart, that he could feel people across a room? That he often shut himself off because he felt too much, that oftentimes other people's problems became his own? That boy who became a man may not have needed to hear those words. Maybe he needed to hear that not everyone had a heart like his. Maybe he needed to be told that girls could sometimes fuck you up like you'd been to war, that you wouldn't even want to live anymore after they were done with you.

Maybe someone should have said what she said to me to the myriad girls I faced in the coming years. Are girls' hearts more precious than mine? Are my feelings any less valid? Oh, right, we're either the vile things fucking with girls or we just suck it up when they fuck us up. We get drunk and punch other guys, and then we're okay. Some of us may do that, but some of us just disappear.

I'm at the end of this pity party. My illusions have been shattered, and I've come to some severe conclusions. I can go on, not learning a thing from the past, or I can change myself. It's the only future for me. My heart, which I have to admit is the stupidest thing I've ever come across, (and I've watched Ryan Lochte on television) will never love again how it wants to love. My brain, which isn't much brighter, will have to look after it, as it can't be trusted to make its way in this world on its own. It may seem like a beautiful thing, to love with abandon, but the cost was everything I had.

So, Nicole, thank you for helping me see women properly. I don't know if anyone else would have done that. You are an amazing woman, I'm sure, and I hope you've found a man who treats you as you deserve. I wish you'd warned me of the evil that females can perpetrate, as they've made a living off of killing me. Life is a patient, if sometimes cruel, teacher. I learned the hard way I have something precious to give, too. We may think by loving so hard we're doing something for someone, but we're really just fucking ourselves up.

It's been an amazing thing to love so hard, but in the end, it was love that was hard on me. Every gift seems to have its downside. It was a gift to love the way I did, but the future won't look like the past. I've mended my own heart for the last time.