A first crush is typically associated with childhood and innocence and, if you are lucky, possibly even culminating with a first kiss. A first crush can also be associated with someone you never wind up meeting, as in a crush on a singer or a TV or movie actor. A first love, on the other hand, is associated with all sorts of tingly feelings and putting a temporary hold on many of the facets of your life so as to set aside as much time as possible to spend with your first love. A first love feels like you are perpetually walking into the same warm room with the person who is the object of your infatuation. (And it is infatuation at the very beginning; a blind intoxicating desire to always be around your first love.) And every room you walk into is filled with the most interesting things, arranged in a decor that reinforces an abstract beauty that you have never seen before but now, having seen it, you begin to believe that you were always meant to see it. And if the room’s decor isn’t entirely what you expected—maybe there’s an ornate end table in the corner or a banal painting forced inside the boundaries of a garish frame on a wall—you can always bypass it by closing your eyes and kissing and undressing the person you are with and revisit the rooms and the house at a later time.
A first love also (usually) involves pain and tears and the solitary task of trying to figure out where it all went wrong when a breakup occurs. It can leave one yearning to revisit those warm rooms and remembering how that person’s skin felt, and how their lips were always so intense and exotic when your eyes were closed.
The breakup involving a first love involves recovery processes and coping mechanisms that exist on its own plane since these breakups usually involve teenagers, which is to say that the teenaged soul and the teenaged emotions are made up of combustible material that would normally be housed in reinforced chambers inside laboratories and require isotope gloves for anyone who wanted to examine them. Some kids turn to writing tortured poetry and journals that are so entirely free of irony that anyone else besides them would laugh without hesitation if it weren’t for the politeness that the situation demanded. Some kids befriend The Smiths, or goth or industrial music to get them through it. Some kids need to vent with rage to their friends and anyone who will listen about the injustices committed by their previously loving love. Some kids shake it off after a weekend of hanging out with their friends as they, their friends, remind them that everything will be okay and well, you know, it’s probably for the best anyway because if so-and-so can’t see how good you are then isn’t that their loss?
Corrie Weaver’s first crush was Justin Timberlake; her first love was Kenny.
Kenny was the nickname for Amber Kennison, a nickname that had stuck with her since the age of seven owing to her growing up with three brothers and no sisters, and excelling at sports—particularly basketball—at a young age. Guys and athletes of all stripes enjoy giving each other nicknames (or at the very least, calling others by their last name only) and since Amber was surrounded by guys and athletics from a young age there was little chance that she would be called simply “Amber” while she was growing up. So she became “Kenny” instead.
Reader, I know what you are thinking. A young girl, growing up in a male-driven house (and the youngest child to boot), enjoys and excels in athletics from a young age: Kenny was probably destined to be a lesbian, right? She probably looked butch and had a few phases of wearing short hair and walked with a gait that tried to emulate a guy’s stride. She probably was described as androgynous at some point in her life.
No.
Kenny Kennison looked like an up-and-coming young actress who won the part of playing an athletic girl in a movie. She possessed none of the characteristics that come to mind for most people if they were prompted to think about a girl who was a lesbian and was gifted athletically. She was not tall or lanky, or had any glaring disproportions that high school girls who excel in athletics seem to sometimes possess. She was 5′ 6″ and was blessed with a metabolism that caused numerous girls to curse her name and her being under their breaths. People (adult males) would probably use the phrase girl next door to describe her, especially after seeing her eyes and smile up close.
Kenny had a head of perfectly black hair that, when left straight, hovered just below her shoulder blades. Most of the time, though, it was pulled back in some fashion either as a ponytail or with the help of a clip or that chop stick/geisha-looking arrangement that randomly becomes popular for a few months. When she played basketball, as she did from sixth grade up through college, her hair was always pulled tightly back and her head adorned with a headband that matched the primary color of the jersey she was wearing. Her hair was a natural black, its color untouched by the cosmetic industry (which only caused more cursing amongst the other girls once they found out) and it always provided a dynamic contrast against her white face and the color of her uniform or general apparel.
From a scouting and technical perspective Kenny’s basketball game drove everyone crazy because every time someone thought they had her figured out—her own teammates, her coaches, the opposing players and coaches, fans in attendance—they realized, in many cases begrudgingly, that she couldn’t be categorized as a particular type of player. She was always disrupting and tearing apart people’s first impressions and desires to label her and make her conform to their own initial reads of her. In many ways, she was like a television interference signal personified: it is pointless to stare at it with any focus trying to find a pattern because there isn’t one. The first impression of Kenny from her teammates: she’s too pretty, she’s probably too soft. The first impression from her opponents: she’s too small, we’ll be able to blow right by her. The first impression from her coaches: she doesn’t create enough space for her shots, she relies on luck too much. The first impression from her opposing coaches: nothing to worry about with her, we need to focus on her taller teammates. (The first impression from many of the male parents and fans in attendance: “who is that girl wearing the #6 uniform? What I wouldn’t give to be back in high school again…”)
Kenny’s basketball game was naturally disarming; she wasn’t disarming in a premeditated sense, lulling you to sleep on purpose so that she could take advantage of your tired reflexes. She was the type of athlete whose game speed was not fully understood until you had to chase her around a court and challenge her shots and get by her when she was defending you. She defied statistics and became the epitome of intangibles and of possessing It. If she were a guy, local sportswriters would be writing articles disguised as love letters by the truckload praising the effortlessness of abilities and selflessness of leadership that all good high school legend-making requires. Instead, she was a girl.