Anatomy Of A Crush

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How do you even start talking about your crush?

Is there even a right place to start? Is it their name? How you first saw them? How you imagine living your lives together?

For me it started with the title of this radio story. I came up with it before anything else: "Anatomy of a Crush". For me it was going to be easy, simple, beautiful. I was going to break it down. I was going break my crush down.

"Test"

Piece by piece, what I was feeling about this guy and when.

"Okay I'm uh getting ready to go and I thought…I'm really, really feeling those butterflies, I uh…"

Put me under my own microscope.

But I'm telling you now it was a horrible, horrible idea.

I even had a plan, too. I was going to go up to him, interview him for a class project and we'd kick it from there. We had so much to talk about. He had so much to learn about me. Because at this point, he didn't even know I existed.

And that's how all crushes work for a while; they're silent, one-sided. You project what you want onto this person you hardly know and you love them for it. And it's not about who they are. It's about what you want in a relationship.

So, I was stupid. I listened to my editors and I headed out to talk to him, recorder in hand.

"Oh, unless that's him right there. Oh, I think it is, okay."

And I did. I talked to him.

"Wow, you're like an over-achiever!"
"I'm not."
"Yes you are."
"Uh."

And the meeting, the meeting was awesome.

When it was over, though, that's when the trouble started. I had been recording for days. I had two hours of audio, twenty pages of notes I'd transcribed, all talking about this one person: what it all felt like, how we all act at the time.

And my editors, every week I'd disappoint them. No story, no story, no story.

How could I write a story about something that hadn't ended, something that was changing hour by hour sometimes?

Well, this, folks, is why we've got the really sad piano music. It's over.

I stalked him for two weeks, got to know some of his friends and I eventually, after a lot of prodding from my friends, I, uh, I asked him out to lunch.

I'm sure by now you've guessed his answer and now I'm sitting on two hours of audio I never want to hear, twenty pages of notes I never want to read, and a story I never really want to tell.

I'm caught between great radio and this episode that I just really want to get past. I wish there was a happy ending, I really do. But I guess for all of us who haven't found that guy, I guess we have each other.