Chasing the Dragon: Part 1

We just want love like any young girl. Remember your first real kiss and your body would tremble and you had no idea what was going on but you didn’t want it to stop? Then this chase began where you were out for the first dragon. A simple kiss turned into a little tongue, turned into a little suck on the neck and so on forth down the body. We didn’t want the trembling to stop, and to be honest if there was something to bring it back I’d be chasing it right now, but I’m a 30 year old woman with enough experience with the dragon no where in sight.

The difference between any young girl though and a grown woman is that I now know that isn’t actually love. The trembles and the stolen breathes are just a good time feeling that has nothing, although a nice addition to sometimes, with love. I don’t think the dragon that I’m chasing has actually been seen by my own two eyes, so finding it to even begin chase is almost impossible at this moment. The dragon that I thought I knew was just a close cousin to the first kiss behind the foot ball bleachers. The one where he (or she) is on my mind 24/7 and the air I breathe literally isn’t as satisfying as the air that I breathe around them.

That dragon is a nice dragon too, but it slowly finds ways to hide better, resulting in the once sweeter air turned into just another moment with them, the company still nice but not exciting in any particular way.

This dragon that I want to find, I think once found won’t run like the rest. This dragon will snuggle up inside my pocket and just tickle the tip of my finger to remind me of its existence when ever I need reminding. It’s patient, it’s kind, it’s not boastful, and most importantly it doesn’t make you chase, well maybe with a bit of play once in a while but it’ll always come right back.

I don’t know what it’ll look like or feel like. I don’t know how to look for it in any matter. The first dragons were so easy to find. They were in your face and begging to be caught, at least until they grew their final wings and flew into the sky never to be seen again.

That’s my big problem. Instead of staying on my personal path, I see a the flip of a tail in the bushes and I’m off my trail so quick you wonder why I went back to it in the first place. I’m more obsessed with the next dragon than I’d like to admit.

Maybe I watched too many Disney movies or Christmas time hallmarks during off season. I thought I was special enough to find what I thought most girls grew up to just randomly trip into; true freakin’ love. Now I’m an adult with a preteen complex still hoping for prince charming getting a slurpee at the same time as me down at the 7/11. He goes for the blue raspberry, I go for the blue raspberry, we accidentally bump cups and some how it starts a conversation on god I don’t even know right now. Something cute and Disney channel appropriate, well, until we start texted later that night because you know after such a little cute meet we traded digits.

I should be proud of myself to have held onto that hope to be honest, regardless if that last bit of bubbly turned your stomach a little or made you giggle, it’s real for some people so why couldn’t it be real for me?

I met, we’ll call him Ed, on a night out with a girlfriend, we’ll call her Julie, that I went to high school with. She had coaxed me into getting my best club attire; which you would laugh at if I showed you a picture, it’s burned into my mind forever, we’re talking circa 2009 jean skirt stuff. She was moving away and wanted to leave with a bang, heck yeah girl. Except I was not in good shape. I recently had some back issues plague me, and being the 19 year old super human I was I wasn’t going to go get it checked out. It’d heal by it self, for sure. Julie was leaving town though and I couldn’t say no.

We walked, well I kind of limped, into the club, that I used to joke about to people about not being able to touch the walls because they were infested with STDs, and then we eagle eyed the first guys willing to buy us underage girls a drink. We smiled and did what we were taught to do by every other girl there, smiling a little bit with a touch of small talk over the loud ass music. An soft arm grab and a laugh at whatever nonsense they were saying and laughing at themselves. I noticed early on that most men I met liked to laugh at themselves, a lot. Was is nervousness? Narcissism? A flirt tactic? I still don’t know, and to be honest I probably never will. I talk to 99% less men now then I used to so the data may never be made up enough to know.

We’d slip away from our ever so horny co-dancers after a song or two. We thought buying us a drink was worth about that even though most the men we were able to get to buy said $6 drink made up mostly of blue dye thought it was worth a full night of regrets.

At some point into the night I had to take a break, and I told Julie I was with that I’d be hiding at a table in one of the corners of the dance floor. My 3rd cup of cheaply mixed Blue Curacao and loud Telephone by Lady GaGa fueled euphoria in the back corner was kind of what I needed that night even though I made it hard for my friend to get me out. It had been a rough year or two and now my best friend that I had moved in with after I left my parents house were really having some roommate issues. My job was shit and to top it off I had to use said roommates car to get to work most days. I had broken up with my boyfriend from high school and had regretted it but it was too late.

I was 19 and the magical world I thought I was stepping into really wasn’t as magical as I was tricked into believing. Well, the only person that really told me that this “real” world would be a shit show may have been my social studies teacher in high school. The lady was on something different and had a bit of an eye twitch but she was one of the nicest and most honest adults I knew. If I would have paid attention more I would have seen how unhappy the adults were around me and that could have given me a hint.

My few moments of entrancement in the club lights watching everyone melt away some daylight stresses was interrupted by Julie coming up to me while dragging some guy 2 feet taller then her with a case of guy liner and he didn’t make it hard to tell his favorite color was black. Oh yeah, that’s her type I thought. He was handsome still though. My type then if I had any had to of been what ever jock meets cowboy was.

“Hey! He has a friend with him! Let’s dance!”, she hollered 6 inches from my face. Then she gave me this look and then squeezed his hand and giggled. The poor guy was going to be exercised by her tonight. By the grace of god he wouldn’t get out of her owning a piece of his clothing by morning. My friend was fun, I mean almost all my friends were fun but she was just, free, is the best word I can think of. I admired her for it then.

I let her grab my hand with her free hand and she led us to the crowded and sticky dance floor. She started doing the only dance girls my age knew how to do then and there right away; the bump and grind. God, it sounds so cringe now. I was standing there for a few seconds waiting for his friend, not having a clue who it was but assuming he’d have a clue when he saw me awkwardly standing close enough to Julie and her new found tall creature to know I was with her, but far enough to let people know I wasn’t involved in their make out session. I knew she wouldn’t let me dance with a guy I wouldn’t approve of so I waited with anticipation.

You know those movies where guy meets girl and the world around them just kind of moves extra fast but they’re stuck in what I’d call a bubble of their own. Like, it’s just them. That was it for me, there was my dragon, standing right there behind him grinning. The lights were still flashing. The music was still loud, not that I could tell the words apart. He was just there. This average height angel with brown soft hair and a smile that immediately made me think, “oh fuck”, but in a good way. I was immediately smitten, and I want to say he seemed like he thought the same thing. He was almost in slow motion as he approached me.

Still stuck in our personal bliss bubble, we started dancing. He grabbed my hand and we had this sort of dirty classic dance moment face to face. Which of coarse turned into the cringe bump and grind but I digress, it was slow and sensual and it actually felt like he wanted to take me to dinner before taking me home and doing things to me that society would exercise me for. I was all for it.

The lights suddenly turned on signaling the clubs closing. It was too soon. Would my prince charming on the sticky dance floor ask for my number or something? He did! Can you believe it, well of coarse you can, because you’re smart and you kind of knew where this was going to end up.

We were both so incredibly sweaty and might I say slightly gross, but still the type of gross I’d probably lick up at that second. Hey, I was 19 and my panties were always in a bunch. It was a weird time in my teen mind. I could get a better look at him in the light and I can honestly say he was just as good looking as he was in the dark club lights. I really couldn’t take my eyes off of him. Ed took his flip phone out of his back pocket and had me put my number in. We hugged each other and did our thanks for making the night better and then him and his friend, or more actually come to find Mr guy liner was his brother, walked out and Julie and I slowly followed behind and found her car on the other side of the parking lot.

He texted me on our way home and said he wanted to see me again very soon and would text me in the morning. Then he said sweet dreams and what was the equivalent to a kiss face emoji at that time in 2011. The smiles were intense and I grabbed my pillow and squeezed the hell out of it all night wishing it was him. The dragon was sitting in the corner of the room watching me, waiting for the time to pull that feeling away and hide until next time. Not yet dude. This was nice, and I'm going to leash it. I slept that night like a sick in love baby.