Glyceriiiiiiiine

In the weeks following the whole Amber debacle, I decided to sidle up to her friend Liz for some comfort. And by that, I mean initiate terrible, boring conversations since we were usually the first and last people on the school bus every day (first in the morning, last in the afternoon). This culminated in one of the weirdest non-relationships I've ever been a part of. She was white, skinny, and cute in the way little kids from frontier times always seem to have that apple-cheeked thing going on, even in black and white photos. I wanted to like her so much physically and emotionally, but mentally, this was a huge challenge.

Her favorite movie was Clueless. She once told me she watched it every weekend, and often wore a shirt that said "Adorably Clueless" on it, with the movie logo prominently featured right around her breasts. You can see how I fell in love with this girl so fast. She really liked Gavin Rossdale, which made her a Bush fan, I guess (I imagine for her these were identical mental processes [not so much an attack on women, but on teenage girl fandom]). So of course, I exploited her love of Bush and applied it toward kissing her.

Now, let me stop briefly and explain my fucked up, stifled, pathetic teenage existence. I was a junior in high school at age 15. All my classmates were about 2 years older than me and significantly more experienced in all realms of teenage life. I had NO CONCEPT of sex in high school. I mean, I had seen porn and whatnot, but the idea of having sex with a real girl from my real life seemed like the most improbable scenario in the world to me. With that type of mental framework, I didn't actively pursue sex when I pursued girls. I pursued HAVING A GIRLFRIEND as the ultimate aim. I was like a Mormon player, trying to hold hands with girls in the back of the bus and strutting to my doorstep after being dropped off.

Liz was a freshman, also 15, and gullible; that "Adorably Clueless" was not ironic in any sense of the word. That shirt really was MADE for her. It was all too easy to impress her with my guitar skills and some suave planning. My parents lived in a cul de sac neighborhood, and at the end of the day, the driver would actually drive to the front of my house (as opposed to the morning, when I'd have to walk about a block to get picked up). This required the bus to make a slow, wide turning maneuver to get out of the cul de sac, which gave me just enough time to spring my plan.

"Check it out, after I get off the bus, put your window down and listen. You're gonna hear something cool."

After stepping off the bus, I opened the garage door where my electric guitar and amp were set up, and proceeded to play the easy chords that comprise the Bush song "Glycerine," which I knew she loved. She gasped and then smiled at me from the window as the bus made its slow turn and drove off. And the rest, as they say, is history. But it wasn't. She had a boyfriend when I told her I liked her, so I was crushed and didn't talk to her for a while. Then, a mutual bus friend (these rides were like an HOUR long, a lot could happen on a given bus ride) informed me that she DID like me, and had broken up with her boyfriend, but thought I hated her because she spurned my initial advance.

After all that got sorted out, we got to the good stuff. The romantic and physical highlight of our relationship (to me, anyway) was a morning bus ride spent curled up in the back seat asleep and waking up to her apple-cheeked face centimeters away from mine. It didn't take much to make me happy. We were both kind of awkward with each other, which I took as a sign that she really liked me. We broke up within two weeks.

Long story short, I'm pretty sure two of my friends had sex with her by the time we graduated.