things I felt like saying

I remember how I felt after seeing you, how it felt to go home and lie in that empty bed and wish you were there. I remember your particular smell, and how we had to contort our bodies to have sex in the back seat. There were lunches with friends after school and a few jaunts to St Augustine. We went to the beach once and wrote our names in the sand and then slept curled in your bed like snakes.
There was the smile/smirk that you always got whenever you saw me, and how you'd use your whole body to back me into the wall, just so you could say that there was never any space between us. If there were any two people that were bound to have their first time on a school bus, it was us . . . But I can't tell you how many times since I've fallen in love with you that I wish I would have waited to have my first time with you.
Once, I saw you skateboard. It was one of the first days of Lackawanna, and I was waiting for Mimi back at Wolfson and you rode all the way home on the bus just to ride back on your board. I can't describe how sexy you were to me at that moment, hat on your head, shirt all the way open to show the white undershirt, Dickies riding low like that was how they were meant to be worn.
Too many late night phone calls just because we couldn't bear to be even that much apart. It's lucky we didn't have cell phones, or we would have been on those 24/7, too.
The night we graduated was a Tuesday. I remember that because I was watching JAG while waiting for you to come pick me up. You went to the Rib Shack with your family. I don't remember what we did. You came and got me and we drove around. I was hoping for something more, but I can't tell you what that was. I think we had sex in the usual spot.
We've been apart a lot, haven't we? I've left you at the MEPS, knowing that you were heading off to basic and that I couldn't talk to you for God only knows how long (It was nearly a week or so until a letter came from the other side of the training "compound"). We met again at Sheppard and picked right up where we left off . . . And then we split up once more. You, California-bound. Me for home (horrible without you, btw), and then for the Land of the Rising Sun.
If I could do Yokota all over again, I would. In a heartbeat. No Joey, no Mark, no giving up on you. I would hop a C-130 to come back to you if I could. I'd confront you and do myself some justice.
Had I known that early 2005 was going to change so much, I would have stayed until the crew bus came, and I would have kissed you like you should have been kissed and maybe spent more time talking about things that should have been said earlier. The summer of that same year was awesome, though. I got to fall in love with you all over again.
Except maybe that's the trouble. I don't know that I've really reconciled early you with current you, and sometimes it messes with my head.
I miss irresponsible you.
But I love current you more than early me would have dreamed possible, so I guess it all works out in the end.

the boy

this picture is one of my favorite of him, and i didn't even take it. it was given to me by samantha, long after the fact. but this picture demonstrates what i love about the way he used to dress. i love him in a hat (even if it does say AMXS in big red letters), and i love him in one of those t-shirts and jeans and skate shoes. i miss that. i miss it more than i should admit, honestly.

from my pen-to-paper writings:
i miss you in jeans and white t-shirts. i mis your hats and skate shoes. i know that isn't your style anymore, and i'm ok with that, but you just looked so good . . . so at ease. there was also a certain familiarity in the way you acted and moved. i think that's what i miss the most. why, i couldn't tell you. maybe because of the sheer volume of memories that i made with the boy in the gray cargoes and worn out t-shirts. that isn't to say that i don't thoroughly enjoy the man that i married (as they are one and the same), but he takes some getting used to - still, after so long. he's so much more responsible. i know that he should be - he's an adult, after all, with a wife and a daughter and another on the way. he has bills and all of that stuff, but i miss when he was a little bit more reckless. reckless . . . i don't know if that's the word i'm looking for. maybe 'innocent' would work better.
part of it is probably because i missed out on the transformations of you from high school to airman to adult. i don't feel like i've changed at all, and that it's you who has re-engineered who you are, but i'm sure that's just life relative to me. i know that i have changed, i just don't see it because it's me.
i keep telling myself that this too shall pass and that how you dress now versus how you used to dress won't matter, but that seems like a long time in coming.