Daily Archives: January 11, 2010

“I ain’t a player, I just crush a lot.”

What rang true in 1997 still rings true today. It’s as if Big Punisher crawled into my head/heart space, and whittled my modus operandi down to a simple phrase played over a run-of-the-mill generic 90s beat. (Though I will be the first to admit that I wish the words came from a more attractive man, given my predilection for crushes. Go ahead – call me an asshole.)

I can trace my crush developing behavior to middle school, where my shyness coincided with four middle school transfers in three years. This unfortunate turn of events made sad, dorky love to my personality neurosis, creating an insurmountable distance between Crush du Jour and myself. I would punish myself, walking by Crush du Jour and get a thrill from the sinking stomach drop feeling, not so different from the feeling you get when you are on a wild and jerky amusement park ride. Or, Crush might have asked me some inane question about lunch or class and I would melt into a mumbling puddle of incomprehensibility.

I was, and still am, a sucker for that shit.

It may be somewhat alarming that I still continue this behavior. I think it’s healthy for me, because adult me develops crushes on people that I actually have an interaction with, rather than people I think I know, like 14 year old me. The nature of my crush has also changed – it has developed more into an admiration with a dash of lusty thoughts. They are never destructive to relationships, and they give me a blast of excitement in a normally predictable day.

I refuse to think I am alone in this tendency to crush a lot. So, come up and tell Auntie Serene a crush story, so I don’t feel like such an idiot.