how I met my perfect musical match part 1

 Poor John.  He will be the "victim" of this post...

When I was 11 years old (barely), I was in the church folk group (praise band for all y'all protestants).  Suddenly this new guy showed up playing piano.  He had blonde hair and big glasses, but holy cow could he play.  Love at first sight.

Our friendship grew, even though he was 5-6 years older than I am.  As the girls in Catholic School grew crushes on celebrities, I had no idea what that meant, but I wanted to be normal.  So the only male close to my age that seemed like a person to spend lots of time with was John.  He played piano, I played flute, and music grew from there.

When I was in 9th grade I finally told him how I loved him, and it turned into my pestering where he finally had to tell my mother (also a member of said Folk Group) about it, and so that happened.  I apologized, and he said not to worry about it, just let's go on as friends.  So we did.

I'm still sorry for that, John.

I had a boyfriend in high school, who is actually quite the musical genius.  I'm tired of all the hooplah and hurrahs that my family does about him, and I'm tired of all the other drama, so I won't mention his name, though I wish him well.  But I remember writing in my diary about how I thought John's legs were more attractive than said boyfriend's were (I maintain that they were)...

But I knew better than to say anything to John after what all had happened when we were younger.  College rolled around, so I came back and played for masses during break.  As always, it was easy to play music with John; he was a responsive and sensitive accompanist.

On my breaks, we started to attend concerts, visit church bazaars, etc.  I fell in love with him all over again.  My mom once told me that every time I came to visit his eyes would light up.  Wrong thing to tell my poor little unrequited heart.

When John found out that my school was putting on a production of Cabaret and that I was in the pit, he came to visit.  Got up at ungodly hours so he could arrive in time for a Thursday morning 10:00 am performance.  My heart!

So, yeah, here he was, spending a couple nights in my tiny studio apartment (can you ever imagine paying $275 a month for more than a closet, even in 2002?).  I finally convinced him to take up a spot on the futon instead of sleeping in a chair.  So there we were, lying next to each other, and I finally mustered up the courage to say, "this might be an awkward question, but..." and then I talked romance.  The worst sentence I could imagine followed:

"That IS awkward.  I'm gay."

my heart broke into a million pieces.

...to be continued...