Boys I've loved, entry #5

I first met him when he went on a date with my friend Becky.  Sandy blond hair, hazel eyes, straight teeth, a timid but endearing smile…you’ve seen the kind before.  His name was Lance…like Lancelot.  Instead of a white steed he drove a 1940’s Rolls Royce. 

looked just like this...without the spoiler on top.

 By fate, I got lined up with him on a blind date and we went to a Harvest Party together.  We went on a hayride and I flirted my hardest because I wanted to date this boy.  He was smart, an artist, well-read, loved Italy as much as I did, and lived in a castle.  Anyone who knows me knows my passion for the medieval, Renaissance, and Elizabethan eras.  Most of all, I love TURRETS! 

Lance and I kissing in Becky's basement...at her sister's 12-year old birthday party.  Have I no shame?
Plus, it looks like Lance is wearing a priest's collar.  I don't look like a nun.

Lance lived in a Tudor-inspired mansion in the middle of treed acreage.  His grandfather was a very famous sculptor and his Dad was a plastic surgeon.  Consequently, the mansion had room to wander. Lance walked me around the grounds and there were sculptures hidden in all sorts of secret places.  It was twilight when he showed them to me and I felt like I had stepped into Narnia.  Then Lance showed me the turret that he had built stone by stone.  It was love. 

We dated for two or three magical months in the winter.  On Christmas Eve, we sat in the Great Room of the castle and traded gifts.  I can’t remember what he got me, but I had searched high and low for the perfect gift for him.  I found a signed copy of “The Agony and the Ecstasy” by Irving Stone.  It cost me a pretty penny on my waitress salary.  The book seemed to symbolize the whole feeling about Lance.  Like Michelangelo, he put his passion into everything.  That night we had one of the worst snowstorms in years.  He took me outside and we cross-country skied in the city streets. 

When he took me home in that giant old Rolls Royce, he got stuck in the snow outside my house.  We dug it out with shovels while the snow kept pouring down around us.  He kissed me goodnight and I watched that Rolls slink down the street.  I kept thinking everything was just too perfect about Lance.  He was too nice…too gentle…too agreeable.  He even spoke in a soft caring voice.  It just was too good to be true. 

It was.

The THIRD to last time I saw Lance, we were hanging out in my living room….I did not grow up in the Castle Great Room…more like the green carpet 70’s room with a pair of gold sofas and a velvet Don Quixote painting with the additional Boy Scout frame glued with macaroni and spray painted gold.  We were classy.  My Dad started wrestling with my little brother Sean.  We watched them roll around and play.  My Dad likes to play steamroller.  Sean was probably six-years old at the time.  Sean locked both his arms as my Dad steamrolled over him.  We heard a large CRACK!  Sean started screaming.  My Mom started screaming.  My Dad looked around like a guilty escapee.  He had broken both my brother’s wrists.  I turned to Lance and said, “Maybe you had better go home.”

I don’t recall going out with Lance again. I heard he went on a mission to Italy.

The LAST time I saw Lance was at my college graduation.  We walked toward each other in our black billowing robes and stovepipe hats.  He recognized me and came up and gave me a hug.  His tassel swung around his hazel eyes.  Just like Lance, he took off his cap in the presence of a lady.  Unfortunately, he told me he just got married. 

The SECOND to last time I saw Lance is an entire story in itself and worthy of an entire post.  It begins…”There I was watching the Palio horse race in Siena, Italy, when”……until next time.