dom

I did grow from fear. When my next door neighbor Dominic asked to hang out with 10-year-old me I was so excited, no matter what the circumstances. I thought he was so damn cute. He was a tall Italian boy in my brother’s grade, who was with people of that age almost always and even more often with his friends on the soccer team. But not that day. He wanted to go into the woods to do something while my brother was at basketball with me; just me.

I don’t remember what he wanted to do (unfortunately it wasn’t to take off our clothes, I'd remember that), but it did involve us going in the woods. I agree. As I walk next Dominic towards the woods, I thought about my fear embarrassing me in front of him and ruining our (potential) date. I hoped he'd grab me by my hand and walk me in. He'd walk me in and slay whatever I was afraid of like a knight. I imagined what i would miss if we didn't go into the woods. We reached the steps leading into the Bay View. He slaps me on the back hard enough to make me take my first step in a long time into that forest. My apprehension regarding the woods stayed at the entrance. However, with that slap came the HE TOUCHED ME ITS REALLY HAPPENING feeling. I was incredibly awkward since walking in the woods wasn't as getting him to like me anymore than he already did. Until I found a something. It was a big stick. It was a perfect sword. It was a perfect anything really. The deluxe stick every child wants when they see it. This finally gave us something to do in those woods:be Samurai. The holder of the stick ruled the dynasty with tyranny and one of us was there to defeat him. He thought it was so cool, so I gave it to him in hopes that he’d want to hang out with me again. And we did. We played on slip and slides, we biked, went to movies, played video games, stayed at each other's houses for dinner and go to each other's sports games. Until the summer ended abruptly. There was less stick time and more waving when his car drove by mine on our street. There was less dinner together and more school work that needed to be turned in.
When winter break came, school let out for a bit and I got to see him again. This also meant my brother would be with us. We decided to go sledding on the last night of winter break because I loved to and my brother had taken over the list of things to do with Dominic. Thanks to a little bit of sympathy from my brother, we went sledding. Thanks to some unexplainable twist of events in the conversation, my brother bet Dominic he wouldn't sled down the hill in only his underwear. I don't know what it was about that time, but seeing him in his underwear, in the woods, us laughing our asses off so hard, made me feel something. It made me realize something. Something like relief. I was happy in the place I once thought was the most sinister place on earth. I was more than happy, actually. It felt like love. The kind of love where you imagine yourself as husband and wife and build a house in the woods of your Midwestern hometown. For the rest of that year, I didn't think about what could be in wells or behind trees. I thought about

Towards the end of the year, he had to move. Before he left, he gave me back the strangely perfect stick and said don’t forget about me. I didn't tell him I had feelings for him. I didn't tell him about how I wanted to spend every night sledding together in our underwear, except afterwards, we'd go home to the same bed. I lied to myself and said I'd have another chance soon enough. A day after they moved out, the house was torn down. I didn't have time to walk in and get any closure from that all too familiar house. The fire department was there at sunrise and so was I. I watched from my yard just how much can be gone in a few hours. I was surprised how much wood went into making a house and how much dust came from planks of wood hitting each other. Once the house was fully dismantled I thought ‘now go back like you were.’ I knew it wouldn’t happen, but it was still a bit disappointing.  I still think about the butterflies I got from Dominic.