I’ve told you the tale of my high school boyfriend, my very fist love whom I met in PE class. What I haven’t told you is that I’d found romance in the gym a year before I met Chris. My sophomore year, I fell for Ralph, the prototype for all my future love interests that I now realize were nerds.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a nerd myself, sometimes preferring the companionship of a crossword and a Led Zeppelin album to more social and fashionable endeavors. I collected stamps in elementary school and wrote fan mail to the kid who played Wyatt in the movie Weird Science when I was 13. But I met Ralph in high school, when I was a little less forthright about my propensity towards geekness. Like any other high school in America, mine had a clear caste system – there were those who were cool, and those who were not. As someone who has spent a lifetime fluttering back and forth between being regarded as cool and not – and everything in between – I can now look back on those moments when my cool coefficient was a little low without feeling quite the same shame I did at the time.
Ralph and I started exchanging flirtations in gym class right around the time I returned from a ski trip in Iowa. Yes, it sounds impossible, but we really did ski in Iowa, although I’m not sure we were on real snow (and I’m definitely sure we weren’t on a real mountain.) I was a piss-poor skier (I was raised in Peoria, where was I going to practice?) and I did more falling than actual skiing during that trip. I returned to school with a souvenir scab from one of my wipeouts on my chin. Mortified, I expertly covered the goatee of dried blood with makeup, but anytime somebody would make me laugh the damn thing would crack and I’d start bleeding again. It was not a pleasant week, but it’s a testament to Ralph’s kindness that he flirted with me anyway. Well, either that or it’s a testament to his desire to find a prom date.
Ralph was sweet – the type of boy who would ask permission before he kissed me. I was looking for a little more action than that, but even though Ralph was a year my senior, he took things slowly. He was an old-fashioned boy, as witnessed by some of his favorite activities. He was the bass in a barbershop quartet, and he and his friend Eric would practice their songs during gym. I struggled to find it sexy that Ralph sounded like the Oakridge Boy who does the “Oom-papa-mama” part in Elvira, and was constantly balancing on the precipice between pride and embarrassment during his gym class performances. But what Ralph had going for him more than anything was that he was hot, so his nerdy nuances were easily overlooked. At least they were by me, and we started to see each other.
Ralph was a genuinely nice boy. He went to church with his parents and didn’t drink, smoke, or do anything bad. He was the school mascot for a stint and was even a Shriner. In case you’re not familiar with the Shrinerhood, perhaps this will help – they’re those old dudes wearing fezzes that usually throw candy to children at hometown parades. Actually, it seems like Ralph was awfully young to have been a real Shriner, but he had the bumper sticker on his car, so he was at least in the training class for the Future Shriners of America. The MO of the Shriner organization is decent enough – in addition to their quest for brotherly love they also raise money for children’s hospitals. Fine for a sixty year old man, but perhaps a bit premature for a sixteen year old. I didn’t tell my friends about it.
Ralph and I started dating in the spring, just in time for him to ask me to the prom. As a sophomore I was psyched to be going to the dance reserved for upper classman, and got myself a fluffy pink dress, satin pink shoes, and matching pink gloves for the occasion. Sure I was hanging out with the barbershop quartet crew and the cast of the upcoming spring musical instead of the jocks, but I enjoyed myself at the dance, and was really starting to like Ralph by the end of it.
A few weeks later our high school spring musical debuted, of which Ralph was a cast member. The production was South Pacific, and Ralph played a sailor. Any of my friends who had questioned Ralph’s cool factor were silenced as soon as the first notes of "Bally Ha’i" were sung – Ralph, shirtless in his sailor pants, with a fake tattoo on his chest, looked more like a rock star than a bow-tied barbershop bass. After the performance, while Ralph accepted congratulations from audience members, I too was receiving congratulations from my friends. “He’s cuuuute,” was the most common remark I recall. “Are you guys boyfriend and girlfriend or what?”
Although I was beginning to think we were, I was soon corrected. As I was leaving the school on the final night of the performance, Ralph asked to speak to me alone. In the moonlit night outside of the high school doors, I looked up into Ralph’s stage makeup-caked face and was delivered the news that he didn’t want to go out with me anymore. I’m struggling to remember exactly how he chose his words.
He could have said, “I’m sorry Gina, but it’s almost summer and with all of our upcoming barbershop gigs, I don’t have time for a relationship.” He also could have said, “Hey Gina, you’re a great girl and prom was fun and all, but I don’t want a girlfriend right now. See you in gym!” Truth is I can’t remember what he said, and as the adoring fans awaited him back inside the school doors, it didn’t matter what he said. What I heard was, “Things are different now that I’m a popular, shirtless star. This relationship stuff is really going to hold me back. I’m sure you understand.”
But I didn’t understand, and was confounded by the fact that my first nerd-pseudo-boyfriend had dumped me. I had risked any semblance of coolness I had by dating a Shriner, and now he was dumping me? Of course upon my return to school that week I responded to all inquiries about Ralph (“Hey, how are things with Ralph? He sure looked good in the musical,”) with a tale of mutual separation in which both parties agreed to take a break from each other as our busy summer schedules approached. Everyone bought it, even if I didn’t.
Since high school I’ve dumped and been dumped by several men, and I know now what I didn’t know then. You might never know why somebody dumps you. But when you’re in a relationship with someone and they stop liking you, there’s not a lot you can do about it. Fortunately for me there were only a few weeks left in the school year when Ralph delivered his parting words. Soon gym class was over and I no longer had to endure my prom-date-who-dumped-me jogging around the track while singing Camptown Ladies in a Barry White voice. Ralph was soon out of my mind, and apparently I was out of his, at least until a couple of years later when he called me out of the blue. I agreed to go to a movie with him, and was surprised to see that he was no longer into asking permission before making a move. In fact, I got the feeling that Ralph was looking for more than a prom date that time around. Not wanting to oblige what I believed to be a quest to get laid, or something close to it, I gradually stopped returning his calls.
His chances had been much better on the final night of South Pacific. Another thing I’ve learned since high school is that timing is everything.
