the first heartbreak...

While cleaning out my basement yesterday, I came across this hilarious picture.

Yes, that is a 16 year old Evan in the picture. This would be about 1983....A couple years before I discovered 'breakdancing' and 'parachute pants'!

The tall girl in the picture with me was my first 'real girlfriend'. I was a good looking kid in general, and I never had a problem courting the young ladies. But, I was a lowly kitchen worker at the time: I washed dishes and cooked food while my older brother who I lived with ( in order to go to the School for Creative and Performing Arts) was a camp counselor at Fort Scott summer camps...

Shawn was a college freshman, a statuesque brunette that towered above me at 6 foot. She was 'model material', and the opportunity to bag a 'college girl' while still in high school and a virgin was quite a feat. Yet, somehow I managed to do just that.

Shawn worked as an equestrian counselor: I grew up around horses, and I can't stand them. Before the summer was over, she would take my virginity in a freezing barn late one night.

We continued to see each other most of the summer. With 2 weeks left to go, I saw her one evening walking to the barn with a tall, handsome guy, holding hands. I was devestated. I ran back to my cabin and weeped for hours.

The tall, handsome guy was Richard Stenger. He was one of my older brothers best friends. I hated him with a white hot intensity that still lingers today.

Years later, I would run across him in a late night Gay bar called 'Weekends'. It was where everybody went to score drugs. He approached me and said 'hello' and asked if I knew how to get him some drugs. I told him I could get him some LSD, I then went in the bathtroom and found a business card in my wallet. I cut 2 small squares off of it, then urinated on them. Then I dried it under the hand dryer, came out and charged this guy 20$ for his 'hits'. He put them in his mouth, and I left the bar. I never saw him again.

But, his little brother lives in town, and I see him occasionally, and I am quite fond of him. Wierd, huh? When my older brother comes calling, he always see's him!!

It's very strange that when I first saw this picture: I immediately recalled that heartbreak. I felt just as wounded yesterday as I felt so many years ago. I'm happily married with a baby boy, but sometimes when I hear certain songs, I can bring back that bittersweet pain, all over again.

Who knows where Shawn is today? She will never know the role she played in my life: she taught me a very valuble lesson, one that I desperately needed to be taught. You see, I was quite the 'heartbreak kid', I went through a lot of girlfriends, and I would dump them as quickly as I was dumped. I would continue to do this for years to come, but I did think about the girl's feelings when I would break up with them. I would still do it, but I would feel a little guilty...

Oh well.