My First Love by Rachel Remick

Photo by Cameron Behymer via Unsplash

Content warning: This essay mentions suicide.

The first boy I ever loved was Freddie Prinze. I was five years old when I first saw him on Chico and the Man. The feeling was quick, intense, and undeniable: I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to hold his hand. I wanted to know what he smelled like, how far I’d have to tilt my head back to look up at him if we were standing next to each other. I had no idea how old he was; just old is what I thought. In later years I would be surprised to discover Freddie was only nineteen when he got the role, just a boy. We were fourteen years apart. Not so bad. But back then I wasn’t thinking or caring about an age difference; I thought Freddie would look the way he did forever; how right I would turn out to be. Back then my plan was to get older and somehow catch up to him. I would meet him, we would fall madly in love and live in California, the end, happily ever after. I wrote about him in my diary. I made sure my mom, my dad, the entire family knew how much I loved Freddie. I discovered him, he was mine. They would clear the living room for me when it came time to watch Chico and the Man. Sometimes they watched with me, but I always got the best spot on the couch. My mom and sister would laugh along with me, and comment on how adorable Freddie was. Their approval was a sense of pride for me, as if I had introduced them to a world where Freddie existed, or even somehow forged its very creation.

My dad was quite proud of himself when, for my seventh birthday, he bought tickets to one of Freddie’s standup comedy shows at a now defunct live music and comedy venue called the Latin Casino. My reaction to the surprise was unexpected, even for me: I went hysterical, and refused to go. I cried, “Dad, please don’t make me go.” Understandably, dad was quite confused. He thought I loved Freddie. He thought I’d be so happy. I told him I was afraid. “Honey, what are you afraid of?” my dad asked. I told him I was afraid Freddie would leave the stage and come down into the audience and talk to me. Now as an adult I can still feel that little girl’s terror, even if I don’t quite understand where it came from. Was I afraid of being singled out, having the spotlight on me? Was I afraid of meeting him, shattering the image I had of him as my perfect husband of the future? Did I think I wouldn’t be able to handle it? Did my seven-year-old body really hold the wisdom of someone much older, someone who now watches the way girls pass out and cry and hop up and down for Harry Styles or BTS and just know that kind of emotion would be too crippling for her? What was it? 

I didn’t go. Dad and his best friend Skip went with Skip’s daughter Cara—my age, and also a fan of Freddie’s. I assume someone used my ticket. Maybe a girlfriend of dad’s; to this day I don’t know what happened to it. I never asked who got to sit in my Freddie Prinze seat, and dad never brought it up. Less than a year later Freddie would shoot himself in the head and die.

I was inconsolable when it happened. I had the chance to see Freddie in person and now not only was that an impossibility, but so was my California dream of happily ever after. Almost fifty years later, I cry not only for the seven-year-old who didn’t get to see an idol in the flesh, but for a deserted daughter who could have had a really awesome night with a dad she sometimes felt never really loved her. In a lifetime of precious moments shared exclusively with him, it would have ranked among the top four.

While recovering from my Freddie heartache, I was becoming aware of a boy in elementary school, having that moment where you distinguish a star crush from a real crush. Only this boy didn’t start out a crush. I guess I could say I never had a crush on him; I just liked him. And he liked me. We were friends, but I knew I felt more for him than I did other classmates. His name was Kurt Estes, and he was my first love.

Kurt was in my homeroom from 1st-3rd grade. We were among the smart kids, always in the “A” group. He was funny, I was funny. He was blonde, I was blonde. He was tall, I was taller than most girls my age. Everyone had a crush on Kurt, everyone liked Kurt, everyone wanted to be his friend, and many were. I was one of them. And when he gave me a Valentine’s Day card in fourth grade, I started telling my diary he was my boyfriend. I still have that card; it is one of my most cherished mementos.

Fourth grade also established itself as the year Kurt began slipping a little in his academic standing and was moved out of my homeroom. I actually cried to him how much I would miss him. He assured me he’d be just across the hallway and we’d see each other in the yard at lunch, but it wasn’t the same. We couldn’t be reading partners anymore, we couldn’t stand side by side at the chalk board and brush hands when no one was looking, we couldn’t look across the room at each other and smile or make each other laugh. Our friendship dropped off, just as I knew it would. And although by seventh grade I had moved on to crushing on John Albright of Philly teen dance show Dancin’ On Air, I still liked Kurt Estes.  

In eighth grade I started going on Dancin’ On Air myself. I always went with a group of girls and when I had to sit out the slow dances I would think of how nice it would be if I had a boy to dance with. Almost any boy in school would have gone on television had I asked, but the age for Dancin’ was fourteen. I was thirteen and afraid to ask if I could bring a boy with me for fear they’d ask his age. “Kurt’s fourteen,” a girl at school pointed out to me when I spoke of my dilemma. Yes, I knew Kurt was fourteen and many times I thought of asking him to go on the show with me. But I was afraid if I did he’d know I liked him. Forget that we were friends, forget that every girl liked him, forget that I so easily could have said, “Hey Kurt, want to go on Dancin’ On Air?” and he would have said yes. Forget it I did. I never asked him. 

What I did have the courage to do was ask was for him to dance with me at our eighth grade graduation dance. At that point, who cared what he thought? We were moving on to separate high schools, I’d probably never see him again, I’d learned my lesson about last chances. 

It was the last dance of the evening, and I raced up to him and asked him to dance. He said yes. Well, actually he said, “I’ve been waiting for you to ask me all night.” I pointed out he could have asked me, and he said, “I didn’t get the chance.” True. Every slow song someone snagged Kurt. I knew. I’d been watching all night, waiting to pounce. The song we danced to was DeBarge’s “All This Love.” I still get choked up and think of us dancing together when I hear it.

Throughout our high school years I would bump into Kurt at random places, even though we didn’t live in the same neighborhood. At the grocery store, the Wildwood boardwalk, the Cottman Avenue McDonald’s. Always he stopped to talk to me, hug me, tell me how good it was to see me. He was becoming more handsome with every passing day and I wondered if we’d ever go out, if one of these chance meetings would turn into a date. 

One day I saw him in the bank in my neighborhood. He was walking out, I was walking in to cash my paycheck before starting my shift at the clothing store in the same strip mall. We both stopped and stared at each other, then hugged. We talked briefly, he looked like he had something on his mind, and I said “What?” thinking he was going to drop down on one knee and tell me how much he loved me, I was his childhood sweetheart, let’s run off to Cherry Hill and live happily ever after. Instead he asked me if I was hungry, did I want to go to the Taco Bell across the street. I so wanted to, but I had to work. He gave me his number and told me to call him. I said ok. I never did. About a year later, when I was on a SEPTA bus an old grade school friend noticed me and came over to ask if I heard what happened to Kurt Estes. My stomach bottomed out. My mouth went dry. “No,” I said. “What happened to Kurt Estes?” What happened to Kurt Estes? He shot himself in the head.

For years I tortured myself with the why why whys of it all. Why would someone like Kurt Estes kill himself? I heard all kinds of sensationalistic stories as if he were a real celebrity carcass that the tabloid vultures like to pick on. He couldn’t take the pressure, going from his grade school glory days to being just another face at an all-boys catholic high school. There were horrible stories about who found him and how he was found, in the bathroom with a hole in his head, the high school yearbook opened up to the page of the football team that kicked him off the previous year. There were rumors of drugs, not being able to fill the shoes of his older brother, he was gay: all kinds of intrusive and pointless speculation, but really, who knows? The thoughts that haunt me have more to do with that last day I ever saw him, in the bank, when he asked me to lunch. I always think if I just would have gone to Taco Bell, if I just would have called him then maybe I could have saved him. Then there’s the other side of maybe, the one that has me in the shoes of people who were actually a part of his daily existence, the ones thinking that there they were, in his life, and feeling so guilty about being unable to prevent what occurred.

The tragedy of losing my first celebrity crush as well as real-life crush to self-inflicted gunshot wounds is the worst kind of irony, one I didn’t even recognize until I began writing about it. What also weighed heavily on me is what haunts everyone who’s ever lost someone suddenly, the ghost of words unspoken. For me, I wish I would have taken him on that dance show. I wish I would have had a taco with him. I wish he knew then all of these things I am now wishing. 

I wish his family a peace they will never find. I wish he would have been a dad. Maybe it is irrelevant to say, but I am still alive, and not a mom. Would my baby also have been Kurt’s baby? It’s impossible to know what losses have been incurred.

What I do know is the opportunity to tell Kurt he was the first boy who was ever nice to me because he wanted to be is forever lost. I’ll never get to tell him he was sweet and funny and added sunshine to all who knew him. That I was honored that out of all the girls at St. Jerome he chose to initiate and cultivate a friendship with me. I won’t get to tell him how much it meant to me that he was gentle with my heart, that even then I recognized how impressionable it was that he was never cruel or even careless with me, like some boys could be for sport. He was the first butterfly in my stomach, and now the first boy angel to flutter on my shoulder.

Originally from Philadelphia, Rachel Remick spent a few years in Las Vegas working for a popular live music venue before relocating to Tampa where she writes and cares for dogs. Both her fiction and narrative non-fiction short stories have been published in several literary magazines, among them Rosebud, The First Line and Bluestem, as well as women’s magazine Sasee. She is also a multiple contributor to the Chicken Soup for The Soul series of books.