Tonight, I am listening to punk music and remembering every boy I ever crushed on for knowing how to skate or play guitar or having long hair or long eyelashes or black nail polish and eye liner, Docs worn down to the nub, a shitty car with a back seat full of crap, a tape deck, a bunch of mixtapes with liner notes, a U2 t-shirt, a copy of A Confederacy of Dunces or Leaves of Grass, a subscription to MAD Magazine, punk zines, set lists from all ages shows, 7” that only came out in Japan, a worn copy of Rumours on vinyl, R.E.M.’s Green on CD. A journal.

There were a lot more of them than I am comfortable naming. I didn’t meet them all as boys, but I fell in love with the boys they once were.

There are men who were once these peculiar boys who didn’t quite fit in. They marched to the beat of their own drummer. And they were beautiful. They thought no one was watching. But there were always girls like me, too scared to approach, who just loved them from afar.

Think Lloyd Dobbler in Say Anything. I’d like to think Cameron Crowe is a combination of all those boys he created.

I can pretty much assure you no one ever saw me from afar and crushed on the girl that I was. I was more the crusher than the crushee. I don’t think anyone really gets me even today. It’s ok. I don’t even get me.

I just love unrequited love.

It’s a sign that I have hope tonight as I wind down for the night. You have to catch hope sometimes. Like a firefly in a jar. Just to verify that it even existed. And then you loosen the jar lid and allow it to flutter into the ether.