all growed up

I have a fulltime job. I earn enough money to pay for an apartment far far away from my parents. I don’t eat inappropriate amounts of candy. I have my own car and a license to drive it. I keep my cuticles clean. I pay taxes. I make my own doctor’s appointments. I drink alcohol occasionally at parties with people who also have fulltime jobs and similar or heftier financial independence. I can speak pseudo-intelligently on a myriad of useless topics. I wear Banana Republic. All in all, I feel pretty adulty.

This weekend, I was cleaning up some old boxes that had crept to the back of the closet. These are boxes that span the ages. My compartmentalized history filled with everything from elementary school book reports to last year’s Christmas cards. I rediscovered many goodies: letters from the people I left behind in Toronto, odd stones from the beach, a funny candle, the journal I kept in China, my organic chemistry modeling set (I once had the ability to make methane and I don’t mean after Mexican food), a bookmark that never felt the papery pinch of a novel’s spine and of course, a handful of photos that my mother didn’t take hostage for release in the album she always talks about putting together. It’s one thing to see baby pictures of yourself. You can’t relate to you at age 3 with the cowboy shirt and the one pant leg all weird and the Buster Brown shoes. You don’t remember that shirt thus you don’t remember the horror of having to wear it. It is another thing to see a photo you yourself took…at age 12…of the cutest boy in school…Adam Polesel.

Adam Polesel was a demi-god among geeks. He didn’t care about junior high conventions. He would walk, nay saunter, down the hall past the coat hooks and the cubby holes with the stride of a panther, in control and completely feral. He was 14 and selective. He possessed the wherewithall to only associate with the popular girls. Despite the way I have blossomed after 28 years, I was not a member of this subset back then. Back then, he was the unattainable. Back then, I didn’t know exactly what it was that I fantasized him doing with me, but whatever it was, it was probably naughty and would involve a couch and chewing gum.

I held him in my hand. Ooops, the photo I mean. I fell into the euphoria of that moment when I, 12 years old and awkward with my mother's camera in hand, walked up to Adam Polesel in the schoolyard and probably said something lame like "Can I take a picture of you?" I think my best friend Vera was with me for moral support, my wingman. I don't recall what he said but I snapped the picture and kept it. Oh, Adam Polesel, tall and lanky. Dark blond hair, cool blue eyes and SO badass. There he was in his red t-shirt that hung on his broad shoulders. His scrunched up face, his tongue stuck out at the camera. Oh, Adam Polesel, you dirty boy. Put that tongue back in your mouth and take mine with it.

This is not the first time I have stumbled face to face with him since the torrid photoshoot. When I moved to LA, I'm sure I packed him up. When I moved out of my parents' house, we met again. But something was different this time, this chance meeting. Adam Polesel looked familiar but not because he conjured a memory. He looks like someone I know. Brad Pitt? What is it about him? Who does he remin--

"Whatcha got there?" asks the boyfriend.

HOLY CRAP.

"Who's THAT guy?" he inquires.

Um...

I'm pretty sure pedophilia isn't legal in this state or any state for that matter...not even in a state of stunted maturity. Hi, my name is Katie and I'm 28 years old and I'm dating a boy in junior high. (Note: The boyfriend is old enough to vote and rent porn.) For all I've done; graduated from college, got the fulltime job, dated a handful of Asian boys, hung out at the Spelling mansion, I've curated my accomplishments with a discerning eye and I have found happiness with a spitting image of the junior high idol I could never get close to. Adam Faux-sel is finally mine. He stays over at my apartment, brings me juice and helps me frost cupcakes for a friend's birthday. I know that last bit may make a few of you ill, but get over it. The Adam Polesel as boyfriend revelation was quite disconcerting. Did I grow up at all? Did I change? Who was I then and who am I now? Maybe I was my truest self back when I knew nothing about the grown-up world. Or maybe I was harangued by the media long enough to only lust after the tall, blond haired, blue-eyed apex of silver screen sexuality. Or maybe attraction is hardwired into our genes and I was born to crave the Leonardo DiCaprios of the world. It IS called physical attraction, isn't it? Physical meaning unavoidable, inexplicable, NECESSARY. Regardless of what drove me into the arms of my prepubescent fixation's long lost twin, score one for playground validation.

They say you look to date people who remind you of your parent of the opposite sex. It is a relief to me that I'm not dating a balding Chinese man who can't explain football to save his life. Instead, I've got a Humbert Humbert complex. While I never got within two feet of Adam Polesel, my Dear Diary pinings have finally come to an end. I'm dating the cutest boy in school. He's tall and handsome and all-around dreamy. And he even has his own apartment with a huge couch for plenty of chewing gum hanky-panky.