A crush in my back pocket

A year or two ago, I met a guy with whom I was immediately taken; we seemed to have a clear chemistry—not that physical chemistry that can be so much fun but rather something in our personalities that drew us, in a room full of people, to want it to be each other we were talking to. As it turned out, he had a girlfriend, but as we developed a friendship, I couldn't help letting that connection grow into the basis of a crush that I actually enjoyed having. I hadn't had one in years, and I was tickled by how much I liked this one. A friend scolded me, saying a crush on an unavailable guy was a bad idea; but it was just a crush, I said, and a crush is not real interest. Crushes are innocent; you don't expect them to go somewhere. Then what's the point, she asked? And I had to think about that one. But I think it's this: I like having occasional crushes because they are recognition of something that I cherish: that I have met someone who fits the bill. Whether I can be with him or not, that my kind of guy exists. Some people get frustrated by crushes, but I see them as special reminders that, in fact, all kinds of people can make me a little light on my feet.

A friend asked me earlier about my various dating interests of late. I covered the bases, ending with one that I don't usually mention. He is someone I see infrequently. Yet he is one of those people I want to be around when he's in the room. I even get stupidly nervous around him because there is just something he emits that draws me in. And I kind of like the infrequency with which I get to feel like a fourteen-year-old girl because of him, because there is, as my wise friend Ellen then commented, something wonderful about having a crush in your back pocket. I have to admit, the brilliance of that phrase made me consider whether there's more to my fondness for crushes than just their reminding me of what appealing people are out there. I think it's also that, when you nurse a crush over time, forgetting it and then re-conjuring it up, you get the repeated (if intermittent) excitement of wondering whether maybe this one will be the exception to the rule. Crushes are innocent; you don't expect them to go somewhere. But occasionally, maybe they do.