ickis.com / Julene Horowitz

I’ve decided I’m going to try something new around here… introducing Time Travel Tuesday, a new way for me to regale you with the sometimes tragic (but usually just timeless) tales from the Big Book of Julene.

This song takes me back to being 19 and dating some young hoodlum motherfucker that I’ve mentioned sparingly on this blog. I know that even now, years after our break up, he holds this special place in his heart for me and I guess to an extent I do for him too. It’s nothing like the love we (thought we?) had during the zenith of our relationship, obviously.

I think everyone’s enjoyed that whole “being young and thinking just because you’ve been together a year means that maybe you’ll make it” thing at least once. While it’s a beautiful sensation, I don’t think I can really experience it now the way I did back then–not that I’d want to, because I remember the kinds of arguments that accompanied our puppy love. Our breakups were ugly and world shattering; we really had a knack for fucking each other up when we weren’t trying to convince each other to try something freaky I’d never want my mother to know about. Before we dated, I was seeing one of his best friend and he was dating a girl I knew. The night he dumped her I happened to be in the neighborhood, and while I went over to his house to tear him a new one that wasn’t really how the situation played itself out.

Sometimes I wonder if he qualifies as a feeder–I must’ve weighed 165 by the time we finally broke up for good. Really it was the best thing that could’ve happened: in less than two weeks a fight followed by a hospital visit, bail bondsman and drug charges all came into play. What can I say, I used to need something explosive in my life to distract me from the goal at hand: figuring out what the fuck I was going to do with my life.

…But this song doesn’t remind me of all the shitty times I’ve brought up. It makes me think about riding around in his maroon Chevy Cavalier with the windows down smoking Marlboro reds and smiling at each other. He had the prettiest blue eyes I’d ever seen, and something in them didn’t match the swagger his low-income upbringing had afforded him. He was a lot more intelligent than he liked to let on. He made me listen to Fabolous and I knew he secretly loved the Fall Out Boy CD I forced him to suffer through on occasion. The beauty of our puppy love was that we didn’t identify it as such. It was everything: we were everything, if only because of what we were to each other.

With spring here & summer just around the corner, there’s few things as enjoyable as remembering what it was like to be in love without hesitation. There will never be another love like that one, and I’m okay with that. Round two just never yields the same results, you know?

It’s funny to me that the types of guys most people would expect me to be into–tattooed, pierced or otherwise “alternative” (as much as I hate the term)–aren’t really my speed. I love them clean cut, presentable… simply put, give me a yuppie white boy any day and I’ll be pleased. While I wouldn’t say I have a particular age-group preference, I do admit having a severe weakness for babyface.

Once upon a time, I had a babyfaced boyfriend named Tim. Our relationship quickly fizzled into some weird sexually tense friendship, which has now faded in a half-hearted interest in each other’s exploits. I ran into Tim recently, out with his younger brother at a restaurant I frequent. Tim has always looked roughly 16 – he’s about 10 years older than that. He’s one of those guys I hear from on nights that will involve booze and (in his mind) a hopeful trip back to his place. I try not to revisit my roster too often, and since someone hadn’t been taking the hint lately I decided to see if I could agitate him enough not to call me.

Let me preface this by saying his now-slightly-older yet still delightfully younger brother is beginning looking like a well-oiled machine. I admit to blatantly trolling Tiny while talking to them at their table. I guess Tim took it personally that he busted me checking out his kid brother’s bulge, as I was informed we are “not on speaking terms”. Seriously, he was wearing a pair of jeans that allowed for a perfect outline of his goodies to be viewed by me without much effort. This is not my fault. (I was also really stoned at the time, which makes it harder to curb my naturally creepy tendencies.) It’s not like I actively pursued bringing home (NotSo)TinyTim, guys!

I’m betting at least another few months pass before I hear from Tim, though.