brightlotusmoon | a memory

When I was 13, I had my first boyfriend. His name was David Damar Baldwin Jr. His family, and my family, called him Damar. His friends called him Dave. His parents were divorced and his mother had remarried a white man named Bob. She called her son Damar, to distance herself from his father. Damar was over six feet tall and very skinny. He was soft-spoken, quiet, sweet, honest, gentle, compassionate, and loyal. He was eight months younger than me.
We first met when we were 11. His mother, Mary, and my mother were artists in the same gallery show. Damar and I saw each other from opposite sides of a statue garden in the back of the gallery.
Two years later, Mary, Damar, and Bob came to our house for Thanksgiving. I was wearing makeup, and a velvet green dress, and my hair was loose and shining over my shoulders. When I came downstairs everyone was in the living room. Damar looked at me with wide eyes, and he reached out and touched my hair letting strands run through his fingers. He said my hair was beautiful. Later, he said he smiled as he watched me eat and I got red lipstick on my fork.
We were in the basement apartment of my house, which had not yet been rented out to a tenant. We were sitting on the house, nervous, giving each other nervous pecks on the lips. He asked me to be his girlfriend.
Much later, we sat in the basement room of his house, on the bed in the back spare room. In the background, a tape was playing Sarah McLachlan's "Possession". That album had just come out. Damar and I reached for each other and kissed, long and hard, full tongue, powerfully. His lips were very full and very soft. Our hearts were pounding.
Over the months and years, we progressed to heavy petting, touching. He watched my breasts fill out and grow. We would wrestle on the couches in his basement. We never actuallally "dated," just hung out at his house a lot and fooled around. We were best friends. He cherished me. He said he saw my face everywhere. Even as we got older and became more like friends, we still held that bond. We were almost telepathic. We talked about ghosts and the paranormal. We believed in things. Damar had precognitive dreams. We decided that if we hadn't had sex with anyone else by the time we were 20, we'd have it with each other. If we were not married by the time we were 25, we'd marry each other.
We went to college -- I stayed in New York and went to Purchase, he went to Tennessee and played the saxophone. We saw each other during the summers, and we still kissed like that very first time; I always played "Possession" in my mind.
I talked with Damar on the phone just before Christmas of 1999. Damar had a girlfriend. Her name was Anna, he said, she looked like a blonde version of me. I had a boyfriend, who was almost as tall as Damar, named Adam. We were 20 years old. We were no longer virgins. Damar told me he was taking medication for severe headaches. He missed me. He loved life.
In January of 2000, I got a call from my mother, in my college dorm room. She was sobbing.
Damar was dead.
He died of a brain aneurysm.
We were 20 years old.
The shock, horror, rage, and disbelief were too overwhelming. For days, I imagined I saw him. I cried rivers. I didn't know what to do. He had died in his dorm room, asleep. His roommates had been away, for two days. The entire school held a huge memorial service. His nickname had been Sexual Chocolate. He had been so beloved by everyone.
I went to the memorial held at his house, that summer. His college friends were all there. I felt left out and alone. He was gone, what was I doing at his house.
We never told each other we loved each other. But we did.
It hurts.
When I saw the episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer called "The Body," I cried for Damar, and for a while I was strangely afraid of getting a brain aneurysm.
A few years later, Mary and Bob divorced. Things changed. Eventually, I married Adam. My life is amazing now.
But every time I hear anything by Sarah McLachlan, I remember those kisses.

(I dreamed about him last night. Memory never dies.)