đź’ś LUST WORLD đź’ś A Small Dog, An Easy Crush
Minus afternoons at the mall and backyard parties, we’ve been in one long, stuck summer for months now. We’ve been lost in our own worlds since March. Even years past elementary-school age, late July’s sweaty, St. Augustine-grass ennui would lead me to pick up a Babysitters Club book. I’d have no choice! Young mind, vacation needed.
Crushes from the school year would congeal into shapeless forms, blurred by too many times staring out car windows and wondering. Your object of lust is barely the person they are, once you reach late summer. They’re now an amalgamation of things you absorbed during aimless, hot days—part them, part you, part ABC family drama, part roadside motor inn, part Smashing Pumpkins song on the commercial-rock radio station. Maybe even a Staind song if you’re really sitting with this crush!
This evolution, at first, crests into an exciting fever pitch of lust-filled plans you make in your mind. You think about them too much and in too many unexotic situations. The crush then assumes its worst, and perhaps final, form: a boring crush. Those daydreams just don’t hit the same, even once-imagined hypothetical plans don’t make the Starbucks drive-thru more electric. This QuaranTeen Summer has ebbed and flowed appropriately, and there’s been old lust and new lust. I found a poem I wrote at 14 for a TGI Fridays waiter I didn’t know, and I realized that, at 30, I’m not that different. It’s just that, these days, my crushes don’t go by their chain-establishment nicknames “TGI Fridays waiter” and “Gap Guy.”
Crushes are driving forces and, fortunately and unfortunately, can’t be too connected to your daily life or they lose their potential energy. They motivate one foot in front of the other when your days feel syrupy, on your carpet doing a YouTube workout video, and idling in drive-thrus. After a while, my crush dissipated bittersweetly and rightfully so. It’s not dead, but it did fade! You reach the point of aseptic analysis, figuring out what purpose that person was serving in your life. I don’t know the answer, but I did realize that some desires truly are simple. Sometimes a girl just wants a small dog and an easy crush.
Meet our new column: Lust World. Tell us your favorite, most je-ne-sais-quoi memory of a time you felt strong lust, maybe that was for a person, PEOPLE even, or a place. It can be an old memory or a new experience! Do you have 3 sentences or 500 words about it? A photo or illustration? You can be anonymous! Send your submissions to kelsey@veryfamousmagazine.com.Â
