This one time at band camp...

I got inspired reading Evgenii Onegin in my Russian lit class (or, as us Americans call him, "Eugene.") It made me think about my first relationship built on strong, mutual attraction--which happened, ironically, right after my first relationship. I was fifteen and had just broken up with my first boyfriend, whom I had dated for six-plus months for lack of anything better to do. I went to this summer guitar camp in Connecticut (I'd like to think of it as a slightly cooler version of band camp). Out of the 150 or so attendees, about eighteen were girls. We were placed in a dorm at a remote end of the campus. As I soon found out, seventeen out of the eighteen were there to study classical guitar.
So there I was the first night, sitting alone in the dining hall because I talked about Metallica and they talked about Segovia, when I was approached by a scrawny guy in braces and an Operation Ivy T-shirt. He was adorable (I was fifteen, okay?) And he played bass.
We were a damn good match. My hair was recovering from being purple, his from some kind of blue and orange leopard-print scheme. He introduced me to the Dropkick Murphys; I extolled the virtues of the Living End. Together, we were unbeatable at making fun of the classical kids.
In true Russian literature form, nothing physical happened between us, but we spent the duration of the camp together. Mostly, we just talked. There was a lot of talk about how unfortunate it was that we lived in different states and could never be together in the long term. And about how unfortunate it was that Zach de la Rocha had left Rage Against The Machine. We had both been devastated.
We left the camp promising to write; we did so for a few months before we lost touch. I still have one of his letters, in which he wrote that anyone I went out with would be the luckiest person in the universe. It was accompanied by a picture of himself, flipping off the camera. Come to think of it, I have yet to receive a note from a guy to beat that one. I don't know how I should feel about that.