how to make love without a dick // hemmings

1. look both ways

Walking out of the ugly prison, otherwise known as school, on the last day of the year always gave me a sort of liberating sensation. Knowing I didn't have to go back for another three months was a blissful sensation. But knowing that when I came back in the fall I would be a senior and afterwards have to go to college, something I was absolutely one hundred and eighty five percent positive I was not ready for, was a terrifying sensation.

These three sensations, liberative, blissful, and terrorizing, could all be used to describe not only how I felt on the last day of my junior year, but also the first time I glanced at the small girl about to roller skate across the intersection.

Her pink hair was about shoulder length, and a bright yellow raincoat encompassed her petite figure. There was no way you could miss her, like a giant red stop sign hitting you smack dab in the middle of the face. She might have stood out like a sore thumb but something about her put me at ease.

Maybe it was the way she walked? No, that's not right her walk, which was actually a roll, resembled that of a baby deer walking for the first time. Wobbly but adorable. Whatever it was, I suddenly felt like everything was going to be okay. Sort of like going somewhere you went a lot as a kid, I felt at home watching this girl.

Although she was small in stature, which is usually not at all a hair raising feature, her fixed gaze and wild doe like eyes instilled a sense of fear in my body that urged me to stop staring at her. But alas, I could not. She was magnetic. I wasn't exactly in love per say, I don't believe in that love at first sight crap anyways. But I was definitely infatuated, even after only 43 seconds.

If I wasn't watching her like she was a fish out of water, she probably would of gotten hit by a car that day.

Lurching my body forward, forgetting the road safety rules I learned in elementary school, I grabbed her upper forearm pulling her out of the street as the car hurtled past us, obviously going way above the speed limit, which was only fifteen miles per hour. It was only two thirty in the afternoon and it was a school zone.

"You okay?" I asked her noticing her tiny fingers were clutching me forcefully and her breathing was labored.

"I didn't even see the car coming! Oh my god, I could have gotten hit! I could have died! Oh my god I can't die! There's still so much I want to do! So much I want to see! Like when Sea World free's the whales! Did you know that Sea World's Orcas only live around fifteen years, but one's in the wild live sometimes over a hundred? And I want to sky dive naked, oh my god what was I thinking?"

She babbled on like a brook. Man this girl could talk. I didn't say anything, not that even got the chance to. It was almost like watching a presidential debate with only one person. She brought up many good points on why she couldn't die young, including but not limited to: not having traveled anywhere outside of the city of New York, never trying Chinese take out, and wanting to see the first female president (because did you know that a political female leader would be a huge step forward for gender equality, and being a feminist demanded that she at least live to see that.) But there was one reason that really stood out in my head: Not having fallen in love yet.

I never really gave it much thought, I always thought I would finish high school, go to college, meet a nice girl, get my law degree, get married, have kids, and that would be that. But now, this tiny train-wreck has me thinking. How much would it suck if you died without ever falling in love? Like, it is a very likely thing, that could very possibly happen. Even to me! I mean people marry other people all the time and that doesn't necessarily mean they are in love. And then they die. Because dying is inevitable. (At least for now it is. I have high expectations for the future.) I've dated a few people before, but I don't think I was ever in love with them.

After going off on my own tangent for awhile she snapped me out of my own thoughts. Literally snapped. At me. Her fingers were clicking in front of my face repeatedly when I finally came out of my little reverie.

"Oh, uh sorry. What did you say? I started thinking about, um, something." I finally sputtered out. Yikes. What is wrong with me? I never stutter or hesitate, and I surely never sputter.

"I said thanks. You know you shouldn't tune people out like that. It's not very polite." she sassed. "I was to listening! It was just something you said, it caught my attention." I mumbled back. She responded by raising a single eyebrow in question. I felt like I was on trial.

"You said something about not being able to die because you had never fallen in love, and I just started thinking about how shitty it would be to die without falling in love at least once."

She looked at me nodding in agreement with what I said, taking a sip out of her water bottle before speaking, "Yeah it would. That's why it's on my list of things I need to do before I die. So thanks for not letting me die." She smiled at me, gave me a pat on the shoulder, and continued to skate down the sidewalk. This time she strayed a little further away from the street.