Friday Night Conversation: First Crushes
Friday night, finally! Who wants espresso macchiato or a glass of a nice Ribera del Duero? Or something that’s not on the drug index? (do first crushes belong on that index?!)
…
Tonight’s topic originally sprung from an idea of Fitzfulke, who wondered who was the singer (mezzo, soprano, countertenor…) that made us realize “okay, I’m gay”.
In a more general approach, that led to the idea of “first crushes” – from the private ones (the cute blond boy next door in kindergarten… that is, until I saw the kindergarten teacher) to the celebrity crushes (in my cases, a certain soprano instead of New Kids On The Block).
Do you remember your first crush? Who was it?
Was there a crush that made you realize you’re gay (or straight, or bi, or *)?
If you’re into opera: which singer knocked you off your feet in a crush epiphany (if there is one. Or two. Or three)?
Was there a singer – opera or not – or a song that played an important role in figuring out how attraction works for you?
What’s the stupidest and probably also cutest thing you’ve ever done in relation to a crush?
Any current celebrity/movie/TV/sports/opera “crushes” or any of fond reminiscence (coughcertainstarshipcaptaincough)? Let’s hear it!
(If any of you prefers to have this discussion in private, just drop me a line at aniklachev [at] web [dot] de, and I’ll make the post password protected)
(coughstarshipcaptaincough…it’s contagious…)
dropping in quickly to say i LOVE this topic and have an INSANE weekend ahead so might not be able to join in right away.
(coughkiritekanawacoughgracekellycough…)
coughagreeonallthreecough
— I hope you made it through that insane weekend in one healthy, happy piece!
i would like a glass of red wine…to celebrate the topic
so…i will tell you about my first crush that made me realize i was gay
so…when i was in high school i switched classes, and there was a girl in my new class who was incredibly beautiful…once she asked me for a favor (i don’t even remember what was it…) and we started to talk…and we had a lot in common! so we started talking for hours and hours and hours on msn…and it was the best part of my day…i couldn’t wait to see her the next morning and kiss her on the chick and take her in my arms…i just wanted to be near her!! i wanted to smell her perfume, look into her beautiful eyes…breathe her…
slowly…i was falling for her. i never freaked out by the fact that she was a girl, it just felt so right!…i wanted to be close to her, but not as a friend…closer. i wanted to hold her like her lover…to give her all the love that has grown in my heart… we talked all the time about love and we shared the same opinions… i am the “love at first sight for eternity” type
i just wanted her to feel what i was feeling, because it was such a passion, love…everything interfered! and i have never felt this way before…
and i was thinking about love, passion and its strength and its destructiveness. and i wrote this…back in 2008
I would like to taste the wind, like I have tasted you. I would like to feel every taste in the world and all the different nuances which hide in between, like a craving look at all the colors of a burning sky, like I was drowning myself in the depth of your own green eyes…
I want to feel the scent of the wind and travel along its beautiful passages…I am listening to its sublime symphony …in winter. I am going to call it ‘Sound of winter, voice of darkness’. It sounds like a car…fighting the air. It sounds like a baby… taking his breath for the first time. It sounds like a silent cry of a wounded lover… it sounds like a revolution of the mind, finding the solution after so much time…it sounds like the beating of the heart, so unequal at every moment…it sounds like the passion which guides us through life, with all its falls and rises…It’s a life symphony.
Passion is everything. I wish I could say that something else really ruled the world…I’d really love to believe that. But in fact, it’s passion. Passion, an unbreakable word in every sense of its unreal existence. Passion could be temporary…making one being unrecognizable…to him and everybody else. A mind so different… It could be durable too, making one torture of his own little world in which he is trapped by this strange but profound emotion. How tempting it may be! Is it the right decision to resist it or to let yourself go…and be guided by the forces of your own tortured state of mind? I often wonder if it could be controlled by will. So far, I didn’t have the force to face it and resist it. I’ve always given all my life and my joy and my emotions, my mind and of course…my heart – ‘the organ of fire’. Passion… It could change your life. It could make you experience emotions like you never thought you’d ever would…and on the other side, find a little comfort in its loneliness, in its shelter, feeling protected, being yourself after so many years… It’s stunning…the awareness of your own passion towards somebody. It was given the greatest power… its destructiveness. Passion is fire. Passion is life. Passion is destruction.
…(to be continued)…
p.s. sorry for words that are not written in the best context…i am not english
I look forward to (to be continued)!
thank you very much!!! soon
wow. that was powerful, inesica. thanks for sharing.
thanks!!:)
Well, first crushes! Wouldn’t that be something exhilirating to talk about…? I wonder if “poppy loves” apply to the topic…
Let me organize my thoughts for a sec, and I’ll be back with my “confessions”… jajaja! Meanwhile, I’ll pour myself a glass of Ribera del Duero temparanillo…
…correction: “tempranillo grape”, not temparanillo… oopsss!
Ok, I’m back already! After one glass on wine, I’ve suddenly felt more fluent on tonight’s topic….
I decided to skip my “poppy loves”, because they were “too poppy” and, several times, also too deceiving. That leaves a number of “maybe crushes” out. However, I will have to admit that I have had two “first crushes” that deserve to be treated as such.
The first one, with the guy that made re-set my expectations about romance, passion and life. And, why not?, commitment. It was a “crush-at-first-sight-turned-into-love”, definitively! Physically and spiritually, he fulfilled what at that time, even though I wasn’t looking, I was willing to deal with. I learned a lot about myself through our relationship, and, somehow, demarked what my “go-for reasons” were going to be in future relationships after we’ve split. Profound (although a little rough on the edges, some may argue), sensible, gracious, genuine, warm, great comrade and colleague, great cook and great body! No further comments.
Now, my second “first crush” was, interestingly”, with a women. Although in some ways it was very different from my first “male” crush, I shall say that in many others it was also much more similar than what I could first realized (maybe that’s the reason why I crushed for them both). But this was a real and just a crush, because no (physical-romantic) relationship evolved from that first cross of sights and some conversations that were shared. But I shall say that the impact was so stunning that helped me a great deal to comprehend how does my “persona” is capable to “relate emotionally” with other personas (whether they are female or male). And this includes, of course, the sexual aspects of it.
Who knows with whom I’ll have my next crush (hopefully I will!), but certainly I cannot say that neither of the two that defined my personality as an emotional-sexual person has had the ability to enclose my sexual identity under any suffixed label, at the best simply as a “sexual person”, nothing else. I know, after interacting with you all in these FNC’s, that could sound a bit like an aberration, almost, but I don’t seem to be able to describe it any other way.
Enough for now, I’ll like to read what “you” have to share…
it’s interesting, isn’t it, how two crushes could lead to such different outcomes and yet both leave such a mark on our hearts?
not aberrant at all, LiSA. sounds like more of the varieties of the human experience of love to me, endlessly unique and lovely and resonant
never “aberrant” – just as two weeks ago, we tried to find a way to have different definitions of fluidity and labeling, all in their own right, united under a banner of mutual respect!
Even if there is nothing physical about a crush (I think it’s perfectly possible to crush on someone’s mind or wit), it is still a crush, with all the physical reactions in ourselves!
every crush has its own reasons (most of the time unexplainable), its own marks, its own force and weakness… and that’s all the beauty in it! if everything was the same, it wouldn’t have been interesting… especially when it’s about matters of the heart…:)
Sauternes here, for all those breathless sweetnesses. Inesica, what beautiful words and feelings you bring us, thank you so much. Let me count the names: Ewing in the DVD of Figaro, von Stade in the DVD of Cenerentola, von Otter in the DVD of Rosenkavalier, von Otter on the cover of the Minkowski Ariodante–that eye shadow! that armor!! Natalie Dessay as Zerbinetta, Susan Graham as the Composer, Deborah Polaski as Ariadne, together. The sound of Nathalie Stutzmann. The sound of Kathleen Ferrier. (Excuse me, I’ll be fine in a moment.) Joanna Russ, “On Strike Against God,” about discovering. Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Some Like It Hot (I was 12, I wanted to stay in that theatre the rest of my life). The world said, there is no choice, and every where art said Free, you are free! Make yourself up!
Anik, thanks for this. Among many other thanks.
“The world said, there is no choice, and every where art said Free, you are free! Make yourself up!” I loved that. Thanks!
Oh GOD yes, that Ariodante cover. It was the mixture or armor and eye shadow, I think.
The sound of Kathleen Ferrier, absolutely.
Shakespeare, half-forgotten… one queer production of As You Like It, I think that was the night I *knew*, with absolute physical certainty. No known actresses, two local ones, but I think that was THE moment that your original question referred to. I knew, despite not being ready to know and not wanting to know.
In opera, there was a longer shift in between the poles of “wanting to be like someone” and “being attracted to someone”, both for a long time unrecognized.
The voices of Fassbaender (Lied) and Troyanos (opera) when I was barely a teenager. Years later, also von Otter in the Rosenkavalier DVD, but that was already the “I recognize myself in a representation” stage.
Very early, the beauty of Kiri Te Kanawa, though I didn’t understand it.
On a side note, Some Like it Hot is probably still my absolutely favorite movie, followed closely by Victor/Victoria. Back when I first got caught up in these movies, I still couldn’t articulate why. In hindsight, I should have gotten a whole shipload of clues.
Thank you for everything you have written!! I don’t know much, but it’s sure i am going to look for all of this!!
thanks
I have a very busy weekend ahead but I will try and join in later on. (and yes… cough starshipcaptain…cough)
one crush i always remember was back when i was… can’t remember how old. growing up a catholic, mum would want nothing but an obedient young girl who attended church daily. that’s what i was, an ideal girl for mum. I woke up every morning at 5.30am to go to church and didn’t get home until 7.30am. why so late mum asked? i stayed behind to pray (there was praying session every morning, led by a bunch of old ladies.) But i didn’t tell mum i stayed 1/2 hr extra afterward to observe the two cute girls who were part of the volunteered church cleaning crew. the older one had long hair flowing down her slender body. her younger sister was more the tomboy type. I adored them both! so every morning, i hung out near the church bell watching them sweeping the church floor while chatting away with their peers. then they left, and i went home
.
” (with that big gentle smile on her face too), i totally freaked out “uhhhhh, uhmmmmm, uhhmmmmm…..” and zoomed past her. so then i was in front of her for a while, and decided to take a small detour to end up behind her 
. anyhow, i followed her on the bike for 1 hr (!) to find out where she lived (freaky eh). several years later, when i was already in the US, i thought i would go back to vietnam and asked her out. that never happened…
the craziest thing i’ve done relating to a crush? fast-forward to 8th grade. i was head-over-heel having a crush on my physics teacher. did my best in the class to get good grade to get her attention. i was also a star athlete (of a very very tiny school) so i got special permission to come and go as i pleased for practice. so i always made sure i _come_ in the middle of physics class whenever i had a chance. anyhow, it happened once that i saw her biking past my house on her way home. so everyday, i rushed home (running) after school, ran up to the balcony, and waited for her to pass by. then one day, for some crazy reason, i decided to hop on the bike and chase her down! except just when i was parallel with her (on the bike), she saw me: “HI td, where are you going?
both great stories, and totally warm my heart…. and for what it’s worth, i hope the metrics that define stalking are a little different in adulthood than 8th grade. now, had you sat outside her window watching her live her life or something, that i would have found a bit sketchy.
but in 8th grade, the bike detour is just plain cute, IMHO.
That is adorable!
It reminds me of my first big teacher crush (the kindergarten teacher not counting here), with real hormones, I must have been 13, and we had a school where the teachers were assigned as “guards” during break time in the different houses of the school, so that we couldn’t enter and wreck havoc there. The guard duty changed every year and darn if I hadn’t figured out within a week how many guards the poor woman had and where, and then I spent all the breaks in the school year waiting in front of classrooms I didn’t have to be in at all, just so that I could steal a few glances at her.
so cute!
i loved it!!!
isn’t it beautiful? and it stays inside forever…i have had a crush on a teacher too 
and i didn’t realize it was a crush only a couple of years later…i just knew i wanted to be close to her, that she could see me differently from the other classmates…i wanted to be noticed by her…and i didn’t realize why i felt this way…:) now i know 
and i completely relate to the craziness in that innocent, childish crush
“waiting in front of classrooms I didn’t have to be in at all, just so that I could steal a few glances at her”…yes…:) beautifully said!
Joyous first crush … waiting for hours at a freezing cold bus stop after school to catch a glimpse of the gorgeous prefect with the flaming red hair who played the piano like a dream.
Far less joyous, believe me, is any crush that comes upon you suddenly, quite out of the blue, when you are in (much!) later life and in a long-term, committed relationship. You don’t know how to handle it. It makes you feel foolish and out of control. It can be impossible to share with anyone, including your partner. It can be all-consuming, seemingly destructive, brings very little joy and much soul searching.
*wince* rough one, Eyesometric. good luck.
…and I don’t think we’re safe from it at any age (as a wise friend of then 70 years told me).
was it Tori Amos?
“the gorgeous prefect with the flaming red hair who played the piano like a dream.”
i hope everything went well…those situations must be really difficult…it reminds me of “the weakness in me” by Joan Armatrading…
hugs
I wasn’t aware of this musician Tori Amos … I’m obviously moving in the wrong musical circles! Courtesy of her website, I am now aware
I love this topic, but it’s a bit too real for me to put out there on the internets! I’ll just say, my first real crush on a woman changed my life, and I’ve had regrets about it for my entire life. I’d rather not tell the story, but one excruciating detail, which can be a pitfall in gay things, is that this woman looked so much like me, how could I ever forget her?
anik did offer the password-protect option for this page, if that would make you feel more comfortable about sharing? no pressure, though.
Thanks…it’s not privacy, so much as…I don’t know. If you know what I mean.
yep, i think i know what you mean.
I always fall in love with a woman’s words. From my first crush on my first grade teacher,who taught me how to write on ruled paper in neat lines, to my first adult (yet still mostly unacknowledged, at the time) crush on one of my first-year university instructors, who basically ravished my brain with her intellect and sassiness, to the first woman i really fell in love with, body mind and soul, who was learning how to speak her own truths for the first time…. and even in more recent history, falling for someone who took the time to write me describing the quality of early morning light falling from the window across her bed. I can’t really say why that moment grabbed me the way it did. I just know I’m a sucker for words.
Speaking about words… My first crush, crushed me with the words he used to say loud to others; my second, with the words she dedicated intimately to me… I love words, their words, although differently. But most importantly, I love the words that emerged from my own essence after meeting them…
Totally!!! Nicely said…
Oh my God, i agree completely!! I don’t think something else has the power words have
…it can change completely your vision of somebody…and i think that at the beginning it’s a sort of fascination for that other person…it touches the soul…and makes the soul tremble…and it’s the most beautiful earthquake of the heart…:)
“I love the words that emerged from my own essence after meeting them”. I never thought i could have those words…never. But they bring passion to one’s life…and they are never the same before and after…never.
This talk of using words is of interest to me. I found when I fell for someone words tumbled out of me, I could talk and write for hours, as the feelings waned so did my output, a strange phenominon?
not strange at all, I find it belongs very much together – some of the best poetry still happens due to Yvonne an due to crushes/unfulfilled love stories.
um, Yvonne? i must be missing something, no?
I did once have a huge crush on a woman named Yvonne, but that’s not what I meant to write. Hm. Freudian slip? I wrote a lot under her influence.
my very first crush – well, i already shared this on a different FNC – was sister helene, a nun, in the catholic kindergarten i went to. the more i think about it the more i am convinced that she was the first woman i fell “in crush” with because of her cooking abilities. never ever will i forget the desert she taught us to prepare
food and being served a homemade meal with love is almost a given for a crush-worthy atmosphere for me. but, most of all, i’m a visual person – meaning that i can’t help to be impressed by somebody who can paint a picture with words, as clearly as if i would be there. and it’s not about being eloquent or poetic and sometimes it’s not even words that impress me but just being a survivor or being excellent in something that i could never ever do myself. like sea kayaking. and this sea kayaking coach in the basque country was the first crush i admitted to myself i had on a woman. and that’s also why i agreed to go in a double sea kayak for speed training with her – well, you have to know that i’m afraid of the ocean because i can’t handle waves and here i was in this vehicle, trying to find my non-existing balance and it was torture, for both of us, not to be repeated, ever. but i had to of course top that and went on a wild water rafting with her, needless to say that we had to jump into the wild water to prove that we can handle it – guess who jumped first because if i had to wait and see all the others jump in i would have never dared to do it. i survived. but that was the last time i made an idiot out of myself. for her. but it was not the last crush i had
as for actresses i never thought i would want to be brad pitt but when i saw him with claire forlani i so wanted to be him. and i knew with certainty then that i want to be with a woman. and i realized what i wanted most – to look into those eyes, closely.
still, making me see something clearly in my mind without showing me a picture, just using words or just looking into a face that tells a story by itself, is what fascinates me most. i am sucker for a good life story where at the end of the tale i sit there speechless and overwhelmed by what people, and especially women, can make out their lives. and believe me, sister helene’s life story rocked
loved loved loved it!
“and i realized what i wanted most – to look into those eyes, closely.”…:) brilliant.
“still, making me see something clearly in my mind without showing me a picture, just using words or just looking into a face that tells a story by itself, is what fascinates me most. i am sucker for a good life story where at the end of the tale i sit there speechless and overwhelmed by what people, and especially women, can make out their lives.” i couldn’t agree more…
thanks, inesica
holding my breath for the continuation of your story…
“but that was the last time i made an idiot out of myself. for her. ” ROFL
well, you know, it’s good to laugh about yourself. somebody told me you should make a fool out of yourself at least once a day ‘coz it keeps you grounded and you don’t take yourself too seriously… maybe i should just make sure that’s it’s not always for the same person, and even more so when this person can’t laugh about it with me…
Decades after the fact, I realized that lying on the floor in kindergarten specifically so I could look up the skirt of the teacher must have been an early indication….!!! But crushes on singers began with Sills [wrong Fach, wrong sexuality, but her art was so warm and charming, she turned me into a fan of singing]. I quickly moved in the ‘right’ direction: the first time I saw/heard Fassbaender as Octavian, at the Met, in 1974; although I had hot flashes over Troyanos in Ariodante in Washington before she got to the Met in 1976 (same role, same costume — made taller, no doubt! — that Fassbaender had worn). No real hotties now (am i too old?), but I adore Joyce DiDonato and ALMOST anyone who can convincingly play a boy (“Diva/Divo”). Angelica Kirchschlager? “Ah! Rimembranza”, as Norma sings…
I just wanted to say to you all that every story here is amazing. I realize I am coming into this quite late but I was without a computer and so if there is still time I will come back and tell you all a little about my crushes and my first crush that still has a hold on me after five years!