He had a short-ish buzz cut for the whole of high school, dark brown hair that never grew so long that it would start to curl. I could only imagine how it would have looked longer, maybe curling around his ears or falling over his forehead. His eyes, deep brown and framed by long lashes, held a spark that always sent a shiver down my spine. His smile, a flash of white against teenage whiskers and a sharp nose, was almost unfairly handsome. It was 1992, a world away from today, and I was a high school boy terrified of being anything other than what society expected.
We saw each other every day for three years, sometimes more often than that. I usually sat behind him in class, a vantage point that offered a view of his neck. Many a time, I would wonder how it would feel to press my lips against that vulnerable spot, before banishing the thought away. I wasn’t gay, I told myself. These feelings, these thoughts, were just a phase. Besides, he was my friend, and over the course of the three years in high school, he became my best friend. So, definitely not falling for this guy.
Neither of us were particularly fond of the planned PE classes, the mandatory football and Finnish baseball games. I always thought he would be, he was, after all, a mountain biker. Instead, we’d sneak away to the rocks in the nearby woods, by the wilderness running tracks. Usually, after a good walk, we’d end up sitting side-by-side, talking about everything under the sun. We talked about music, movies, dreams, fears… everything except what might be simmering between us. Most of the times I thought of nothing but how comfortable it was sitting there with him. Maybe he felt the same, why else would the most handsome guy in the school be out there with me.
He loved Green Day, knew the lyrics to all their songs by heart. He’d hum them under his breath as we walked, or sing them out loud when he thought no one was listening. Me, being more musically inclined, had to tell him that his singing wasn’t exactly in par with Billie Jo Armstrong, but it didn’t stop him. I tried so hard to like them too, hoping it would bring me closer to him, but their music never quite resonated with me.
I never, ever, planned on falling in love with him. It wasn’t a conscious decision, not something I could pinpoint on a calendar. Or maybe I could… Maybe it happened on the first day of high school when he walked into the classroom, decided to sit in front of me, and—untypically in Finnish teenage guy society—introduced himself. Perhaps it was the way the sunlight caught the short hair on his head in the cafeteria, highlighting the sharp angles of his face. Or maybe it was the way he laughed, eyes crinkling at the corners, the way that he subtly went against the mainstream and had Green Day lyrics on his lips. Whatever the catalyst, my heart was lost to him. There I was, falling head over heels for him without even realising it.
I watched him from afar, my secret a treasure I kept close to my heart. I didn’t dare speak of my feelings, not even to my closest friends. Only my diary knew about this, and at one point, I felt so ashamed of having written about it that I cut the pages out and burned them. It was a different time, a time when the very idea of love between two boys felt like a dangerous, forbidden thing. Without the internet as we know it today, it was a lonely place for a teenage boy with these feelings. But it was enough to simply exist in the same space as him, to breathe the same air, to share those moments that we sat together on the rocks.
On the last day of school, the weight of my unspoken love became too much to bear. Our classroom was empty, silent. I had arrived early, my father had dropped me off so I didn’t need to take the bus, but as he needed to hurry to the office, I had time to kill. I listened to sounds from the hallways, wondering how fast the past years had gone. And then, he walked in, and in that moment, my knees buckled. I crashed onto a seat, finally able to breathe. I really thought I was having a heart attack. He asked me if I was okay, his brow furrowed with concern. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him, fearing he would simply vanish if I did. At that moment, I wanted to tell him, to pour out my heart and finally confess. But the words caught in my throat, trapped by a fear I couldn’t overcome. The realisation that I was gay, that I was in love with my classmate, and that it would be the last time I would see him, at least daily, was a life-altering moment.
I never did tell him, even when we saw each other after high school. But he remains my first love, the boy who taught me the meaning of longing and the bittersweet beauty of unrequited affection. The boy with the short dark brown hair and laughing bluish-grey eyes will forever hold a special place in my heart, a reminder of the innocence of youth, the weight of unspoken truths, and the power of a love that was never spoken but always felt. Even now, almost thirty years later, whenever I hear a Green Day song, I can still see him, his head bobbing to the music, a carefree smile on his face. It’s a bittersweet memory, a song of a love that never was, but it’s a song that will always be his.
If you read this, I hope you recognise yourself and will have that same cheeky smile and know that you were my first love.
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