Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Old heartthrob at Legoland
I never became the real girlfriend
At Legoland, Brian smiled his old sardonic smile.
On my 12th anniversary, I ran into an old friend. Sitting on a low wall at Legoland waiting for three of my five children to emerge from an exhibit, I saw Brian walk past. He was pushing a stroller. He was walking with his wife Olivia and a little boy with a head full of soft, brown curls. Brian looked older, but I would have known him anywhere.
Half a lifetime ago, when I was in college, Brian was a medical student at UCSD. I met him at a party at a friend’s house in South Mission Beach. I liked him right away. Brian moved toward me on the dance floor and said he liked my shoes. He had a head full of soft, brown curls, deep-set brown eyes, and an air of intelligent mischief about him. I remember leaving the party to walk down to the beach with Brian. We talked and kissed. We drove to Denny’s and ate breakfast at three in the morning. He drove me back to my friend’s house, and we watched the winter sun rise over Mission Bay.
Not long after I met Brian, I found out he had a girlfriend. A real girlfriend named Olivia who was going to law school in Berkeley. They had been college sweethearts. They intended to stay together. I was disappointed, naturally. Brian was Jewish, which at the time seemed exotic and mysterious to me. I grew up in Mammoth, where everyone was a WASP or a redneck. He was as smart as anyone I’d ever met. He treated me like I was smart. We talked about books and music and movies. Brian had money, which I did not. For college graduation, his father, a doctor, had given him a brand-new silver Mazda RX7. I didn’t have a car. I rode the bus or walked to school, to my job, to my little apartment in Pacific Beach.
Early on in our relationship, when we had determined that I wasn’t willing to sleep with Brian without being his girlfriend, we decided to become friends. For the next two years, we were “friends.” We went to movies together. We went skiing together. We went out to eat. We shopped. We hung out together at many, many parties and danced and drank the way you can when you’re in your early 20s and you have no real responsibilities. Underneath our friendship ran a deep, strong current of sexual tension. I knew that Brian was mostly faithful to Olivia. But I couldn’t help but hope day after day after day that he would someday dump her and I would move from “auxiliary girlfriend” to “real girlfriend.”
The irony of this hope was not lost on me the many times Brian let me drive him to the airport so he could fly to Berkeley to spend the weekend with Olivia. He left the RX7 with me so I could pick him up on Sunday night. I remember driving alone in Brian’s car down toward La Jolla Shores late on a winter afternoon. The eucalyptus trees looked black against an orange sky and the deep blue water. I blasted “Missing You” by John Waite on the stereo and breathed deep Brian’s smell. I took the corners a little too fast.
Brian and I only slept together once — a drunken, awkward groping late in my senior year. I honestly don’t remember exactly what happened that night. We played pool at a bar in Leucadia until the place closed. We went back to Brian’s house on the beach in Del Mar. I do remember the horrible silence when he drove me to work the next morning. I knew nothing would change. I knew a single night’s indiscretion wouldn’t elevate me to real girlfriend status. But when someone told me later in the morning that a man was on the phone for me, my heart leapt. Maybe it was Brian. Maybe he would say he’d had a good time. “Anne,” an unfamiliar voice came over the line. “This is Professor G. The faculty in the history department has voted you the most outstanding student. You’ll be getting an award at graduation.”
I should have been ecstatic. Instead, I was disappointed.
Brian graduated from med school. He married Olivia. They live in Los Angeles. She’s a lawyer. I went to law school. I am happy to stay home with my kids.
At Legoland, Brian smiled his old sardonic smile. Olivia said, “You have five children?”
I wanted to say a lot of things. I wanted to tell Olivia, “I’m sorry I was so stupid and selfish. I should have respected your relationship more. I shouldn’t have spent so much time and energy trying to take him away from you.” I wanted to tell Brian, “I should have respected myself more and not settled for always playing second string.”
Instead I said, “This is Angela and Lucy and Johnny. Jack is over on the airplane ride with Rebecca and Ben.”
“What’s the age range?” Olivia asked. “My oldest is almost 11, and my baby just turned 3.”
“Wow.”
A few minutes later after a few more pleasantries, I hugged Brian good-bye. The sun was almost down, and the trees looked black against a pearl blue sky. I gathered Johnny and Lucy and Angela around me and headed off to find Jack.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Old heartthrob at Legoland
I never became the real girlfriend
Old heartthrob at Legoland
I never became the real girlfriend
At Legoland, Brian smiled his old sardonic smile.
On my 12th anniversary, I ran into an old friend. Sitting on a low wall at Legoland waiting for three of my five children to emerge from an exhibit, I saw Brian walk past. He was pushing a stroller. He was walking with his wife Olivia and a little boy with a head full of soft, brown curls. Brian looked older, but I would have known him anywhere.
Half a lifetime ago, when I was in college, Brian was a medical student at UCSD. I met him at a party at a friend’s house in South Mission Beach. I liked him right away. Brian moved toward me on the dance floor and said he liked my shoes. He had a head full of soft, brown curls, deep-set brown eyes, and an air of intelligent mischief about him. I remember leaving the party to walk down to the beach with Brian. We talked and kissed. We drove to Denny’s and ate breakfast at three in the morning. He drove me back to my friend’s house, and we watched the winter sun rise over Mission Bay.
Not long after I met Brian, I found out he had a girlfriend. A real girlfriend named Olivia who was going to law school in Berkeley. They had been college sweethearts. They intended to stay together. I was disappointed, naturally. Brian was Jewish, which at the time seemed exotic and mysterious to me. I grew up in Mammoth, where everyone was a WASP or a redneck. He was as smart as anyone I’d ever met. He treated me like I was smart. We talked about books and music and movies. Brian had money, which I did not. For college graduation, his father, a doctor, had given him a brand-new silver Mazda RX7. I didn’t have a car. I rode the bus or walked to school, to my job, to my little apartment in Pacific Beach.
Early on in our relationship, when we had determined that I wasn’t willing to sleep with Brian without being his girlfriend, we decided to become friends. For the next two years, we were “friends.” We went to movies together. We went skiing together. We went out to eat. We shopped. We hung out together at many, many parties and danced and drank the way you can when you’re in your early 20s and you have no real responsibilities. Underneath our friendship ran a deep, strong current of sexual tension. I knew that Brian was mostly faithful to Olivia. But I couldn’t help but hope day after day after day that he would someday dump her and I would move from “auxiliary girlfriend” to “real girlfriend.”
The irony of this hope was not lost on me the many times Brian let me drive him to the airport so he could fly to Berkeley to spend the weekend with Olivia. He left the RX7 with me so I could pick him up on Sunday night. I remember driving alone in Brian’s car down toward La Jolla Shores late on a winter afternoon. The eucalyptus trees looked black against an orange sky and the deep blue water. I blasted “Missing You” by John Waite on the stereo and breathed deep Brian’s smell. I took the corners a little too fast.
Brian and I only slept together once — a drunken, awkward groping late in my senior year. I honestly don’t remember exactly what happened that night. We played pool at a bar in Leucadia until the place closed. We went back to Brian’s house on the beach in Del Mar. I do remember the horrible silence when he drove me to work the next morning. I knew nothing would change. I knew a single night’s indiscretion wouldn’t elevate me to real girlfriend status. But when someone told me later in the morning that a man was on the phone for me, my heart leapt. Maybe it was Brian. Maybe he would say he’d had a good time. “Anne,” an unfamiliar voice came over the line. “This is Professor G. The faculty in the history department has voted you the most outstanding student. You’ll be getting an award at graduation.”
I should have been ecstatic. Instead, I was disappointed.
Brian graduated from med school. He married Olivia. They live in Los Angeles. She’s a lawyer. I went to law school. I am happy to stay home with my kids.
At Legoland, Brian smiled his old sardonic smile. Olivia said, “You have five children?”
I wanted to say a lot of things. I wanted to tell Olivia, “I’m sorry I was so stupid and selfish. I should have respected your relationship more. I shouldn’t have spent so much time and energy trying to take him away from you.” I wanted to tell Brian, “I should have respected myself more and not settled for always playing second string.”
Instead I said, “This is Angela and Lucy and Johnny. Jack is over on the airplane ride with Rebecca and Ben.”
“What’s the age range?” Olivia asked. “My oldest is almost 11, and my baby just turned 3.”
“Wow.”
A few minutes later after a few more pleasantries, I hugged Brian good-bye. The sun was almost down, and the trees looked black against a pearl blue sky. I gathered Johnny and Lucy and Angela around me and headed off to find Jack.
Comments