Metamorphosis

To a 14-year-old version of myself, he was the most beautiful thing in my world. Tight black turtlenecks, a pair of wire-framed glasses that perfectly matched the sophisticated scent of his cologne, and the deep accent he wore like no other. He was the smell of cold metal; chunky krings decorating his middle finger and both thumbs. He had funny thumbs – the funniest thing about him were his thumbs. Like an extreme version of a hitchhiker’s thumb reaching for something, something. His nails were always nicely manicured and his cuticles all correctly cut. 

I spent lots of time memorizing the outline of his hands – no doubt the size of my face or bigger. I traced the wrinkles on his tanned knuckles with my gaze and I noticed when they were red. A man with a quick temper. And no doubt a man with fist-sized holes branding his bedroom walls – probably hidden behind posters of obscure French films he’d drone on and on about. 

A slight yellow tinted the space between his fingers: he wore it like jewelry. He always smelled like cigarettes, he always claimed he’d quit someday, but someday evidently never came, and the scent never left his knitted sweaters. He wore a chunky bracelet on his left wrist that was too big – he always had to extend his arm to shake the silver from sticking to his palm. 

And his nose was the kind of nose that looks softly rounded from the front, with a sharp point on the side. He had the kind of nostrils that would flare when he was annoyed and flare when he smiled and flare when he was thinking too hard about something. I spent far too long studying the unique shape of his face and the smooth tone of his voice. I spend far too much time hyper-analyzing the way he walked and the way he held his shoulders up so straight. 

To a younger version of myself, his sheer sense of pretentiousness and spite at the world around him didn’t piss me off, but made me fall deeper into a fascination to see the world through his refined brown eyes. He quoted Dostoevsky and Freud, embellished his speech with SAT words I could never guess the meaning of, his “fuck the world” attitude always intriguing, never irritating. 

I attempted to mimic the dumb, weighted facade he put up. I read Shakespeare and wrote poetry. I claimed to have read The Metamorphosis. Infatuation with this … man forced my metamorphosis. The metamorphosis of my freshman year self – not into a gross insect, but close. I wore tight black turtlenecks and mixed-metal rings on every finger. I picked up a camera for the first time – and then never put one down. I wanted so badly to impress him with my artificial black-and-white vision of the world around me, and, when I did, it felt like nothing else. No comment or footnote or remark from any other person could have made me feel as mature or cosmopolitan as he did, when the words that in my mind translated to “I’m so proud of you, love” came out of his mouth.

I still smell his smell of stale cigarettes and cool metal brush past my flared nostrils in a crowd – and even when I hope he may be, he is not there. My heart still drops whenever I see a man with a buzzcut and glasses and a stupid strut of pride. And I wonder if it was really there at all. The depths of my adolescent feelings, the eroticism of his demeanor. I wonder if the version of the perfectly idiosyncratic, groomed appearance that so enthralled me was merely a totem for who I so badly wanted to be? 

I wanted to have a name that came with a reaction.

I wanted to dress like I belonged somewhere else or to someone else.

I wanted to be an artist, to write poetry and to act. 

And I wanted him. I needed him, in order for me to be myself.

I wonder how he succeeded so well at trapping me in this horrible and beautiful in-between. Or was it really just a freshman year crush? The deep intensity of my crush (I hate that word), my obsession, was so heart-wrenching and totally and simultaneously, wonderfully, an all-consuming butterfly farm living inside my kidneys. Hearing a thick British – maybe French – accent so convincingly recite the haunting lines of Dracula, I fell down a rabbit hole of limerence. Deeper and deeper. I don’t know how far I fell, but it was far enough that it made it incredibly hard to claw my way out. 

Something about an angry shirtless man from across the Pond made a heart race and the eyes grow wider and wider, until the only thing and every one thing they saw was him and only him. He played Dracula like the monster was second nature. I watched three of the same performances one night after the other. I was addicted to the way his costume fit his broad shoulders and the explicit, convincing way he played such a villain. In hindsight, he himself was a bit of a villain. Not in the sense of a man-turned-monster by the “damnation of God,” but as a boy-turned-man, turned against everyone else. 

His dismissive nature of solely addressing me as darling or sweetie was, in such moments, at that time, something to be drooled over. 

He held himself so highly above every other person he encountered that when the mere thought of him dangled above my head, he made it that much harder for me to grasp. In frustration, he’d disregard the group of girls eager to look up to the distinctive art he made, through scoffs and French curses under his breath. He’d bang his fist down on the old wooden table that sat next to the old picture wall and rack his brain as to why four girls new to the religion that filmmaking was to him couldn’t edit like Dede Allen or compose a shot like David Lynch. 

And most of all, but most of all, he knew that he could still be all of these things. He knew he could be brazen and tough and mean, and I’d still be sitting across the dining hall staring at his sweater’s anything-but-silent silhouette against the big glass windows. His voice through a set of slightly crooked teeth that I have never forgotten made me feel more woman than I am now. 

Call him a dick. Call him a knob. Call him whatever. The school sure did, and maybe they were right. But I didn’t care then and I don’t care now and I still haven’t completely clawed out of the rabbit hole of a freshman year crush.