Boyfriend Application

This is an open letter to all those who wish to apply to be my boyfriend. Well-qualified applicants will be interviewed and chosen accordingly. I would like to offer a word of caution: this job isn’t just for any unemployed chump..

This job requires passion. Preparation for when you see me with no make-up and you still can’t keep your hands off of me. Like up too late just thinking about if I am thinking of you thinking about me type of passion. Where you are doodling my name, planning our future and telling your mom about me type of passion. Yearning to know my soul, my mind and my body, a passion that truly has gone out of fashion. If this passion you claim, then we can move on to step two, pay attention darling, we’ve got a lot of work to do:

What is your employment history?

• Because baby we can’t keep this part a mystery. I want to know the habits you formed on breaking girls’ hearts. If charming them into bed was your art. I want to be prepared for how you will treat me from the start.
• Like flowers just because you care and when you’re hanging with your friends you can say, “Yeah, that’s my baby over there.”
• Socially you should be able to manage on your own, kiss my cheek when you pass by or wink at me from across the room. I'm not going to manage your conversations with my relatives because you're shy.

Be my best friend.

Ask about my dreams and capture a cloud for me to float on.

Rope the moon closer to my window.

Recite old movie lines and overrated poetry.

Dream with me.

Appreciate the rain on warm sidewalks and squirrels carrying acorns.

Understand my caution.

Smile even when it hurts, because you care about those hurting more than you are.

Give people second chances and strive for sincerity.

Wake me up for the sunrise.

Travel with me.

Accept others regardless of what the world says about them.

Question the stars.

I want to see my father in you: fix my car, open jars, protect my innocence, love my family, make me laugh instead of cry and accept my sense of humor. I want to dance on your feet to Frank Sinatra when you kiss me on the eyelids. Listen to Johnny Cash and read Lord of the Rings by the firelight.

If you are inquiring about the pay for such a job, you are already unemployed. Love is unconditional. It’s not the exchange of worth or benefit. It’s the respect and admiration of our souls.

Please note: this is not a temporary position. I don’t just date around for “fun”. Don’t apply with the mind set of some day resigning. I always begin with the end in mind, so if you see an end already, don't begin. Losing faith in a person isn’t my idea of “fun”.

I would be a damn good girlfriend, but I am not going to give that away to just anyone.

I would:

be your best friend.

write down your dreams and mail you the moon.

watch your footballbaseballsoccergolfwrestling and whisper you poetry.

write your name in the stars.

warm your hands on the ski lifts.

admire your faults.

remind you of your gifts to the world.

console you with kisses.

stay up all night talking and waiting for the sunrise.

encourage, trust and forgive.

This isn't an urgent position I need to fill. I need someone who believes in love and it's ability to change the world. Someone who believes in humanity and our ability to do good. Someone who worships God, or at least knows they should.

With requirements running rampant, I wish to give you a word of hope:

Love overcomes imperfection

but you at least need to mail in your application.

All dressed up and no place to go.

I can only seem to muster up my tears when I get the privacy to dig out the most painful memories I own. I keep them in my closet and try them on when I can finally listen to my own music and dance alone in my dorm. They don’t fit quite as snug as they used to, loose and hard to keep close. But I dance around in them until my face is damp, then usually fold them up neatly and discreetly return them so no one will notice. Knowing that next time I try them on, they won’t fit quite right.

In the mirror, before I hid my memories back into my closet, I saw something different than I have before; a new little secret I was keeping from myself. The memories haven’t fit well for a while, but now they were torn and pieces are missing.

You are forgetting him.

I replay the quietest memory I have, hoping it is enough.

Charles Gibson finished telling me my bedtime story and I kissed my father on the forehead. The first time I can recall not doting on my dad before I went to bed. I went silently up the stairs until I heard my name. “Squitzoid,” he reminded, “I love you more than air.” His eyes glistened near the firelight, something about an 8-year-old in a nightgown made him emotional, “I love you too Daddy.”

Not enough to help me keep dancing. I dive back into my closet, frantically throwing aside useless items and tennis shoes. Trying on another memory, tightening my belt, turning up the volume, hoping it will get me by:

“Daddy I just don’t ever want you to go, I can’t have you leave,” my beat-red face cried. In desperation I curled up on his lap, aside his oozing pain, as I had so many times before, unable to accept the daunting future. With a few shrugs and pen tapping I noticed his handwriting, “ice cream” is what he wrote down. Unable to speak, walk, or think properly I was confused by his demand. “You can’t eat ice cream dad,” I remorsefully reminded him through my somber lips and ocean filled eyes. The pen tapping like morse-code, more urgent and important I was frustrated by his relentlessness when it became clear through a tap on shoulder. Ice cream for me. Ice cream to cure my tears. He had nothing more to offer when his body was failing him, but his heart continued to beat.

I keep layering the memories from my closet, accessorizing with old pictures and visions of a future he will never see. The necklace of advice I will never get when coming home from college, the shoes he won’t ever walk me down the aisle in, the hat of memories we will never be able to create.

All dressed up and no place to go.

So I take off the memories and prepare them for storage, for a night ahead when I am too weak to dance alone. I slip into my pajamas like the day my father died. When all I had was my nightgown and shrill cries of helplessness, curled into a woman-child on my aunt’s lap. Because I can’t walk around in memories like that, the colors clash and are not right for my skin tone. Sometimes those painful memories are all I want to wear.

But then I recall,

you had such a sense of style

and I will remember that when I look into my closet.