Desireé Memoir

"June 14^th, 2002. The Graduation Dance. The last, and final night that all of us would ever be together again. ‘We’ll see each other come September,’ some said. For Desireé Tienturier and myself, however, it was somewhat of a final, final night, a conclusion of sorts for a remarkable three years of friendship. We were headed off toward different schools, different paths of life. Sure, we’d probably see each other occasionally. But we wouldn’t be able to see each other everyday. There’d be no talks about that big school dance the other night, or grumbling about the vicious keyboarding teacher, because, well, we just wouldn’t know. It wasn’t going to be the same; I think we both knew that, we just didn’t want to admit it.”

I first met Desireé Tienturier in the 6^th grade, in the school library, a place we would both return to to share many wonderful memories together. There she was, looking plain beautiful, and frantically trying to work out something on the computer. I don’t even remember what it was, but I stepped in and helped her with whatever the dilemma was. She looked at me, at this point in time a downward direction, and flashed a pure smile, overshadowed by her brilliant eyes. She thanked me and rushed away, leaving me to bask in pure ecstasy. Being the shallow person I was, I told myself that it was love at first sight, though I didn’t even know her beyond “Desireé.”

But as the weeks passed and our relationship grew, slowly and steadily, my eyes moved past her pretty face, and I realized that beneath the surface she was indeed a very intelligent and sensitive person, with a sense of humor and spirited personality that would be enough for two people. She was, in essence, an anti-me. I was trivial and shallow, and shy to the point of being mute with a severe fear of any social interaction. We were the most opposite types of people ever, and at a glance; a deep relationship between us seemed the most improbable thing in the world at the time. Somehow, we found a way past that, and discovered each other. It wasn’t instant chemistry, at least, not mutually, but after awhile, our friendship really began to blossom, and my life has never been the same since.

When I first met Desireé, she was the tall one. I was just a short, midget-sized kid. She had the most beautiful eyes, and was no stranger to makeup, though in my mind she never needed it. At times, she was a bit unconventional with her style, too. I’ll never forget the time when she streaked her hair blue, and she always had the most unique and lively outfit for our school spirit days (Coincidentally, she was also the school Spirit Advisor). As time passed, however, I grew taller and taller, and she took every opportunity to complain about her newfound shortness in contrast to mine.

“I was beginning to get worried. We were already half an hour into the dance. A slow song had come and gone, and Desireé was nowhere in sight. I thought I knew why. We had been in a huge argument for the past week. Truth be told, I wasn’t exactly sure what the problem was in the first place, and I was still a little annoyed that she wasn’t even telling me what was wrong. I then became a bit ashamed and guilty, that because of me she now had to miss out on this grand party, all of the fun, all of the friends and classmates, just because of me. For me, without Desireé it wasn’t a grand party, there was no fun to miss, and feeling awful for what I had done, I sulked down in a chair by the corner.”

Desireé has always had a very “strong” personality. She had courage, she had diligence, and if she ever met something she wanted, she was downright stubborn. She was always doing what seemed to me as impossible: During the student government elections, she stood up in front of the entire school and presented her speech, fluidly and flawlessly. She had a major role in our school play, and spent hours during school and off of her weekend rehearsing, practicing, and acting out her character to a brilliant performance. She even sang on stage, a feat I could never, ever in a million years imagine myself doing. Even with all of her extracurricular activities, she still somehow found the time and effort to do all of her schoolwork, maintaining a better standard than even I did. And, of course, above everything else, she remained a faithful friend who was always just around the corner when I needed comforting and support. Observing everything she did, all of her diligence and determination, and the seemingly fairy-tale life she had as a result, I aspired to be “just like Dez.” I wanted to have the diligence and patience to work as long as it took to finish something; to be able to speak in front of an audience, or to speak even 3 consecutive words to a girl without stuttering, for that matter. Above all, what I admired most about Desireé was her genuine care and passion for the things and people she loved. As I spent more and more time everyday with her, each moment was a constant reminder of the model kind of person I dreamt I could be, the type of person I actually could be, though at the time, I didn’t believe I could ever be as faultless as her.

“Then someone tapped my shoulder. I turned around, and it was her! I was so overjoyed that I could’ve kissed her on the spot. I settled for a hug, however, and as she put her arms around me and started readjusting my collar, she apologized for how she had been treating me the past week. She still didn’t tell me what the problem was, but I didn’t want to bog the night down obsessing over a little detail that didn’t matter anymore. So I accepted her apology. She went off with some of her other friends, and I sat down again in my chair, though much, much more cheerful this time around.”

Desireé had always had a smile on her face, a cheerful demeanor. Even at times when things were horribly wrong, she could always manage to ease the tension with a reassuring laugh from nowhere, and she always knew the right words to lift our heads out from the gloom. Looking up to her as a god, I positively believed she was always happy; and why not? She was well-loved throughout the school, and she had straight A’s in all her classes. Her life, to me, seemed perfect in all aspects. Then came the day we truly became friends, the one time I have ever seen her weak.

That day, she rushed into the library, where the “gang” and I were religiously playing our daily Dungeons & Dragons game, in which I, as usual, was the DM. She came to our table, sat down and just hid behind it, shaking, with tears streaming from her eyes. Much to the dismay of my friends, I ended our session early, and sat down beside her, and asked her what was wrong. At first she would only remain silent and cold, and I could tell she was trying to hold whatever it was inside, though it was distressingly apparent that everything was not “alright.” After I asked again, she gave in, and poured her heart out between painful sobs. I sat and listened, mystified by her depressing state. Once she had finished, still in a daze that she could possibly be so sad, I gave her woefully standard words of comfort and encouragement, which I still regret today that I hadn’t handled the situation more sensitively than I did. Despite the awfully bland help I thought I had provided, she looked much more relieved, more relaxed than before; and for the moment it was all that mattered – to see that smile on her face once again. She’s thanked me countless times for comforting her that lunch, but it was I, not her, that left the library in an infinitely happier state that day. Of course, it was the beginning of a grand friendship, but also, from that moment, I learned that I could be sensitive too; I could comfort and emotionally support people, and my genuine care would actually show. And then I began to think: if I could be like she was in this one aspect, what was stopping me from achieving the other qualities which she had, from being “just like Dez?” So armed with the knowledge that one day I could possibly be as great a person as she was, I made a promise to myself that I would, someday, be as ideal and successful a person as she. Ever since then, I have been striving to meet that goal, with her continual aid every step of the way.

Nobody’s perfect. I definitely knew that I wasn’t, and it was quite apparent to no one except for everyone that I was not the most popular, nor the most outgoing or confident guy in school. What set Desireé apart from all of my other friends was that she sincerely wanted to help me become a better person, to correct my flaws. It wasn’t that she bluntly approached me and began criticizing me about needing to improve on this and that; she would watch and listen to me, and then go out of her way, sometimes making personal sacrifices, just to try to help me, though I never directly asked. Once, in 6^th grade, during one of the school dances, she noticed me sitting alone on the bench by myself, so she came over and sat down by me, trying to convince me to go out on the dance floor. Being way, way too self-conscious and shy, and not having the slightest idea of how to dance in any case, I refused quite sternly, and she left me alone. The next dance came, however, and again I resorted to my usual spot on the bench. Again, she came over and attempted to get me to dance, but I couldn’t be persuaded. As the dance was winding down, however, she took a glance over at me again, still sitting alone on the bench, and became completely fed up with me. She stormed across the room, grabbed my hand, and pulled me out to the center of dance floor. The results, as you can imagine, were disastrous, but as horrible and embarrassed as I felt, I couldn’t even begin to fathom what she was going through: the most popular girl at school being seen dancing with the nerd-boy klutz. Still, she never let go, never just left me there; when I started shaking uncontrollably, she only laughed that oh-so-familiar laugh, and held me tighter. Of course, a single dance wasn’t going to all of a sudden convert me into a party animal, and as usual, I sat down on my usual spot on the bench the very next dance. She saw me, sitting there again. She approached me, sighed, and said, “Have I taught you nothing?” and took my hand, pulling me out to dance once again. She has done the same for every single dance since then, repeated those same words every time; never once has she just simply given up on me, something which she could have easily done at any point.

“The fast-pumping beat began to mellow, and couples started to come together. I looked on at all the couples dancing, and wandered around, generally headed away from the dance floor. I had taken the whole of two steps when someone grabbed my arm. ‘Have I taught you nothing?’’ Words that I have heard many times, though I still haven’t grown accustomed to them. She took me back to the dance floor, where amid a crowd of couples we danced as my hands slipped down to her waist, and she wrapped her arms around my neck.”

As she ran to me that day when we became true friends, I have done the same countless times, turning to her at every heartbreak, every rejection, and for advice every time a new crush came along. I will never forget all of the times she’s tried to bring my crush and me together. Though I’m sure, from the way I acted around girls and my past romantic history, she probably did not have much optimism for any chemistry to brew, and at certain times even disapproved of the girl I had my heart set on, she would always do anything she could to help me. Once, we went on a field trip to Great America. Pretty much everyone on the bus was talking about how they would be “scoping for guys/girls” and bragging of all the phone numbers they would get (well, just the guys, actually). I had no intention of doing so, because a) I didn’t really care for those kinds of things, and b) I wouldn’t have had any chance whatsoever anyway. However, I happened upon a “cute” girl that had caught my eye just as we were sitting. I casually mentioned her to Desireé, then spent the next ½ hour just gawking at the girl. Of course, this was just some random person that I didn’t even know, probably wasn’t going to see for the rest of my life, and was attracted to only in the manner of appearance, a recipe doomed to failure from the start. Still, for some reason, Desireé decided to “assist” me in meeting her. Being the type of shy person that I was, going up to a complete stranger and trying to meet her was the last thing on earth I would ever consider doing. I started to backtrack on what I had said before, but Desireé wouldn’t have any of it; she just turned her back to me, and walked straight toward that girl. I was left with no choice but to follow. As I started talking to the girl, which turned out to be way less difficult and scary a prospect as I had imagined, Desireé was right by my side, flirting with some random, creepy-looking guy that just happened to be sitting nearby so that I wouldn’t be alone. Once I had become semi-comfortable conversing with the girl, Desireé left, but the guy she had been talking to followed. Stalked, actually. Stalked her for almost the entire remainder of the field trip. Naturally, nothing came out of that conversation with the girl, and the rest of the day for Desireé pretty much consisted of avoiding that guy. However, at the end of the trip, as our class gathered up, it turned out that very few (or none, actually) of the boys had lived up to their claims. Later, I found out that Desireé had actually gone to gather up several of my classmates, and brought them all to spy on me as I was talking to the girl. Then, she went and told everyone of what had happened and all of a sudden I was the center of attention for the day; and this time not for crying over some rejection by a girl.

“Left, right, left, right. I still shuddered nervously, after all these years, and her soft breaths quivered my neck, but not like before. I was different now; we both were, but I most especially. I don’t think I could remotely be in the same place I am now if it wasn’t for her, without the confidence, the encouragement, the inspiration she gave to me. I was a bit taller than I was back then, and her, once she stepped down from her high-heels, a bit shorter. But my right leg still ached, and she still led, and that was all that mattered.”

After all the innumerable things she has done for me, and the few things I have done for her in return, and our steadily growing friendship, it was bound to happen, sometime or another. There is, after all, something irresistible about a girl who hates the fact that you have a huge crush on her so much that she would respond by spitting half a bag of popcorn seeds at you. To make a long story short, she admitted she had secretly had a crush on me too; there was lots of complicated drama, and nothing every came out of it. But the things I did and learned from my infatuation with that girl almost make up for the heartache. Before Desireé, the only other gift I had ever given to a girl was a crummy, yellow rose to another one of my best friends. Then, Dez came along, and I spent an entire week trying to find the perfect gift for her birthday. The next year, I fretted obsessantly about what kind of perfect-er present I could give her that her that would top even the year before. For an entire month, I could think of nothing, and I finally decided on a simple, homemade cake; from scratch, of course, none of that cake mix stuff. So I spent a whole week researching baking techniques and looking for a recipe, one late night shopping for ingredients (Thank goodness for 24-hour supermarkets). Then I made a practice cake in preparation, and set out to make the real thing on the morning of her birthday. Exhausting work, but all worth it, if only for an excuse to see her after a very long and lonely summer. Thanks to her, selecting and especially presenting gifts has become so much easier with experience, which has been invaluable in recent weeks. Additionally, I now possess the skills of cake-baking, adding to my arsenal of foods which I can cook, formerly consisting exclusively of omelets. Besides things that I have done for her, she has been the inspiration and sometimes the lone reason behind some of my greatest projects: my 66-page myth story, for example; part of my Dungeons and Dragons epic; and most profoundly, my ongoing Monti Bizzarro series. During the course of the creation of each, whenever I would run into “writer’s block” I would think of her for inspiration, and many times even use her for source material and characters. Without Desireé, I don’t think I could have possibly written as exemplary of a story or adventure as I did, and I definitely would not have been able to finish any of my projects in the time that I did.

If there was a single thing that I could not have thanked Desireé enough for helping me on, it had to be Monti Bizzarro, a series about the lives and adventures of my friends and me, set in a parody scene of a future version of our school. It started out as a short story in our school newspaper, but after the 2^nd episode, I knew of exactly THREE people in the entire school who had actually bothered to read it. Desireé was one of them. I had nearly considered canceling the entire story, especially when I couldn’t come up with any material for my 3^rd episode. I talked to Desireé, and she told me how much she had loved the story. So, with her help, I recrafted my horrible 3^rd episode, and came up with one of my favorite episodes in the entire series. She was my toughest critic, my most analytical adviser, though I guess out of a pool of 3 people that’s not saying much. Still, she kept encouraging me to continue writing, even when others called it “stupid” or didn’t even know that it existed at all in the first place. With the release of every new episode, she would always immediately seek me out after she had finished reading it, and tell me all of her thoughts and what she liked and didn’t like. And as this was a parody of our school and my friends, Desireé provided much of the source material that inspired many of the jokes and gags throughout the entire story. Entirely dependent on her support, and her support only, I was able to finish 23 brilliant, hilarious episodes, with 3 more so far in a new, upcoming series. I thank Desireé for being the sole driving force behind the creation of what I consider to be the greatest literary piece I have written thus far.

“The girls were all in tears. Crying, the most depressing emotions of thirty or so women, all letting the tears of their youth stream away. Us guys were supposed to be strong, though. Macho, impassive, and stone-cold. No tears for us; we were stuck with our childish immaturity forever. But I reached up and pinched myself, partly to relieve my nervous trembling, but mostly to make sure it all wasn’t a dream – or a nightmare. I wasn’t imagining it; this was the real thing, and I drew Desireé just a little closer. As the music ebbed away, a solitary tear tumbled down my cheek.”

I never became fully comfortable dancing or talking to a girl, and I don’t think I ever will, but after all the experiences I’ve been through, many times at Desireé’s direct expense, I have definitely mellowed. Sometimes I look back at the kind of person I was before Desireé, and I don’t believe how much I have changed. I’m no Super-man, not even a B-comic book sidekick. But coming from a reclusive, obnoxious, self-conscious 6^th grader who kept his maturity level from two grades ago, I’m a very far cry from what I was back then. I practically owe all the things I’ve accomplished, my diligence, my entire work ethic to her. All the big stories, all the poems, all the side projects; that’s not the work of Nathan Yan, it’s really the little piece of Desireé within me.

“I don’t see Desireé that much anymore. It’s been more than 4 months since the last time I’ve seen that face, heard that voice in person. We don’t talk that much either; I call her occasionally; she never does call me, and our conversations usually end with another call on the other line. I don’t blame anyone; since moving apart, we don’t have much in common anymore, not that there was a lot in the first place. I still think about her everyday, though, and I can only hope she does the same. I do all these things for her, the stories, the poems, this memoir, even, like she’s still with me somehow; in spirit, I guess. They’re all in hopes that somehow it’ll bring us back to how it was before. But they’re all still here. She hasn’t seen them yet, and I’m holding back, for some reason. Someday, when I’m ready, I’ll tell her, I’ll show her all of this. Someday, when I’m finally “just like Dez.”