Turtle Power

Whenever someone asks me about my dating history, I tell a small lie. "Have you ever had a boyfriend?" one might ask, to which I reply, "Of course! But only one..." I then trail off and gaze into the distance, hoping that my wistful look will make the questioner think the relationship was too passionate and painful to recollect. I suppose that technically, my response is true. I did have a boyfriend once, but I prefer not to divulge details like, "I was only 14" or "It lasted for two weeks." Or "We broke up because one time he got high, and I thought he looked like a turtle."

Jon Weiss was a babe. He was a lanky blond with brown eyes, and he went to the all-boys school across the street from my all-girls school. He was a freshman, but the senior boys loved him, and they all called him Lucius (yes, like Malfoy. Whatever, H.Potts). We were introduced through our mutual friend Bethany, the mastermind behind the setup, and things began moving in a sexy direction when we made out at a school dance. The next morning, he called me at Bethany's house and asked me to be his girlfriend, and I agreed. Jon was a man of few words, but he was very nice and pretty and had this aura about him that reminded me of Jordan Cataluno on My So-Called Life: quiet, thoughtful, potentially deep. It would not take long for me to discover that there was a reason for this: Jon smoked a lot of weed.

When I say a lot of weed, I mean that this 14-year-old bro was smoking before school, during school, during his freetime, possibly in his sleep. And under the influence of his senior friends, he had also tried an array of other drugs that could be credited with the development of his mysterious persona.

For the first week of our relationship, things were dreamy. We went on a group date to the movies and had 2-hour conversations on AIM. At this time, I was a member of the fine cast of our school play, and the seniors in the cast began teasing me about my boyfriend. (Rounds of "Christine and Jon, sittin' in a tree" were not uncommon.) I preferred the seniors to treat me like other freshmen, forgetting my name and generally acting as if I were invisible, but they refused. The weekend of our performances, we had a cast party on Saturday night, and Jon came. I was already feeling squirmish about him being there, with everyone watching with their judgy eyes. Oh, the pressure! Then Jon went off with the upper classmen and got ridiculously stoned. When he came back, he could barely open his eyes and he had this stupid grin on his face. We were all sitting around a bonfire, and our friend Bethany turned to him and said, "Weiss, you look like a turtle." My god, I thought. Those half-opened eyes, that dopey grin, the hunched shoulders and skinny neck poking out from the folds of an over-sized hoodie. The guy really did look like a turtle.

After that, I decided I really didn't want to date Jon. Every time I looked at him, I saw the turtle. So instead of telling him this straight out, I proceeded to ignore him for about a week, hiding from him on AIM, until finally, I sucked it up and sent him a nice e-mail explaining that I just wasn't ready for the commitment. Our relationship ended, but Jon and I remained friends, though things got complicated when he began hitting on my sister a few months later. And then when his parents forced him to go to rehab a few months after that. I like to think that I foresaw these events and that is why I broke it off so abruptly. But deep down, I will always know that the night around the campfire signaled the end. His stoned out appearance was the straw that broke the camel's back. Or perhaps, the turtle's.