Its day 2 of the vacation in mexico with “sign girl” and its not going too bad. Who said that a trip with someone that you barely know is a bad idea??? The first night was an early one. we had been up all day and the airport was packed. So, when we actually got to playa and into the condo, we were all a little cranky and tired. We hung out until 9 or so at the beer bucket but that was about all the energy that we had left. I let sign girl have the upstairs bedroom and steve and mandy took the downstairs bedroom and that left the couch for moi!

I think she is having a pretty good time so far. She has her people magazines to fill her time when we are idol. I am glad that she is the type of person that gets along with everyone. From the flight attendants to the shuttle driver to everyone else that we run into…she has no problem introducing herself and starting up a conversation. That’s a definite plus. She doesn’t seem to have much of me talking to just about every stranger I run into either. That’s pretty much how I roll. I meet people, introduce myself and invite them to our bar. And some actually show up!

Yesterday, was our first full day and it started off with us making a trip to walmart. I bought $150 worth of food for the group and she threw in $60. So, that was a plus as well. After we spent over an hour at walmart, we took a cab back to the condo and we were too lazy to cook at that point.  So we all went to a restaurant on the beach and had breakfast. We had our toes in the water and asses in the sand! Thanks zach! Anyway, so far so good.

Steve is making bacon, eggs, toast and coffee…and there is a pirate ship fast approaching so I have to run. I had every intention of taking a morning jog but that has yet to happen. But at least I brought my running shoes! Haha…

Later,
Al

Can’t you tell my Kidd’s party shoes????

You know it’s a big deal when before they release a trailer for your movie…they release a trailer for the trailer!  Here’s the tease for “Eclipse” – the full thing will be out on Friday 3/12 (debuting in Robbie Pat’s new movie “Remember Me”).

Robert Pattinson said this version was the first he’d seen of the movie too!

Here’s what they thought…you agree?

Judy Lander in fifth grade didn’t count. We never held hands. Lisa Shaeffer in sixth grade was my first girlfriend but not my first love. I didn’t love her. She was pretty and I was just hanging out until something better came along. I was a player, like that.

Seventh grade brought a different crowd and Vicki Jones into my life. My first game of Spin The Bottle. My first kiss on the lips. Vicki was not so much hot as she was easy. I found out later I was the 4th guy in 7th grade to make out with her, and it was only September!

So, I still haven’t revealed the first love. Eighth grade. Not Kristy Norton or Bev McCarty ‘cuz they didn’t love me back. In my most pathetic junior high moment, I stood near Bev without her knowing and made a friend take a picture. Yeah, way to go Lloyd Dobbler.

Ninth grade. Not Julie Biddle (yep, 3 cheerleaders in a row) because she had a douchey boyfriend who scared the crap out of me. Even after the ultimate act of love on my part–I accidentally set her hair on fire–we never truly hooked up. Sadly, I was becoming the guy girls go to talk about their problems. I was developing my counseling skills while the rest of the guys were developing their MUSCLES. I still wish I’d gotten THAT memo.

And then, Tenth grade…wow, just writing those two words stirs up feelings…AND her face.

Robin Hubbard. Blonde hair, green eyes, WAY out of my league. She was maybe the one hot girl in the whole school who didn’t care if you were a football player, and she liked ME. I fell hard. After two weeks, her dad asked me if I had a home. After a month, we were still inseparable. She made me laugh. I made her laugh. She thought my family was “hysterical”, not “frightening” like all the girls before her. At the Miami Boat Show, we ditched her family and snuck on board a 75 foot sailboat. We laid on the round bed together on that boat for over an hour. Side by side. My heart was coming out of my chest.

To this day, I don’t know what broke us up. It could have been her twin sister campaigning against me because she was jealous that Robin had a boyfriend and she didn’t. (I don’t subscribe to that theory. The twin was equally as hot and could have gotten any guy she wanted.) It might have been because I got too possessive. The minute she was out of my sight, I got nervous. My grown-up therapist called it “early manifestation of abandonment phobia”. (By the way, I didn’t go to therapy because I was crazy. I was a Ridalin kid and it was required by law.) The beginning of the end was after the ninth grade basketball game against Gibbs. We lost by 30 points but it wasn’t my fault because like every other game, I didn’t get off the bench. After a quick shower (which I only took because it was also required, even though I didn’t sweat much sitting on the bench), I raced outside to find her. I was asking everyone where she was. Finally, Sara Creveling pulled me over to the corner of the gym and said, “Robin already went home. She wants to know if it’s okay if you guys chill for a while.” I didn’t know exactly what that meant but I knew it wasn’t good. I raced home, called her house, and her jock brother hung up on me. Then her dad hung up on me. The next day, I went to the baseball field that was exactly halfway between my house and hers, our sacred meeting place, and sat in the bleachers waiting for her to come. We had no scheduled meet-up. I was just hoping against hope that she’d know I was there. She didn’t, or if she did, she didn’t care.

I had no idea that I could feel so bad. I was physically sick. I missed school for two days. It was bad. I was like Edward in Twilight. I couldn’t even be near her but I had three classes with her.

Over the next two weeks, after school I would go sit in the bleachers at that baseball field, waiting for her to come to her senses.

I moved on eventually and so did she. We got to the point where we could finally have a conversation without one of us tearing up…and by one of us I mean me.

Junior year of high school, we ran in different groups and I almost never saw her. But the summer between junior and senior year, we ran into each other at a party and started our romance all over again. I dumped a girl I’d been with the whole year for the chance to get Robin back. We had a summer of love, excitement, and ridiculous drama. At the end of the summer, we both came to our senses and learned the grown-up lesson that sometimes, fiery passion is not enough.

She wanted to talk. I wanted to talk. We met at the beach, by the pavilion. It was one of those, “You go first”, “No, you go first”, kind of conversations but we were both trying to say the same thing. After breaking up and getting back together 6 times in two years, we agreed to end it once and for all. We hugged goodbye…she was wearing my Tarpon Zoo sweatshirt, and I let her go.

I don’t think a first true love story should be one-sided. I think it should be required that the person you love loves you back. Otherwise, I’d be talking about how when I was in kindergarten, Danny Boy Howard and I used to kiss “like grownups on TV” underneath a flipped-over plastic kiddie pool. I have to remember to start monitoring what Emma Kelly is exposed to a little more closely…I forget how early kids “get it.” But anyway, even though it was my first kiss, it wasn’t my first “in love” kiss.

And then I had a fistful of crushes but a couple of loves that never loved me back. Oh, Chris and Mark….You don’t know how different high school could have been……..

But then there was Bennie, who later asked me and everyone else, including his own mother, to start referring to him as Bene. I seem to remember there was cologne of the same name that gave him the idea…But Bene and I met at Valdotti’s Modeling School. Yes, I went to a modeling school and I’m sure that sends roars of laughter through more than a few people reading this. But I wanted to be an actress and believe it or not, there were no acting schools in Florence, SC. But in the Yellow Pages under “acting” was Valdotti’s School of Modeling. So with no other choices, I took my 19-year-old, over-permed, size 16 self up to modeling school and signed myself up. Within a couple months, I was teaching the acting class. No, I wasn’t that good. It was that bad.

Anyway, Bennie/Bene comes breezing into Valdotti’s one day like a burst of sunshine — blond-haired and blueberry-eyed and bubbling over like a giddy school girl talking with a Southern accent thicker than syrup. Oh, he was pretty. And we clicked. We found each other to be hilarious. Soon we were doing everything together. And then one night, we decided to go to the movies together — “Dirty Dancing.” (Rest in peace, Patrick Swayze.) So we left his car at Valdotti’s and took my red Fiero — because it was way cooler car than his car, duh. When we got back to Valdotti’s, it was late and everybody was gone, so we just put the car in park and sat there with the engine running and the radio playing and we talked for the longest time. And then he kissed me and I was just IN LOVE. Here I was — this overweight girl with fried hair being kissed by the prettiest boy I’d ever seen. And then we hear a tap on the window. It was the police making sure we weren’t up to any funny business. “Oh, but I work here, Officer!” I was humiliated.

But Bennie/Bene and I went on to date and I just couldn’t be with him enough. When he decided to go with the name change, I even bought him an ID bracelet that said “Bene.” I was a very supportive girlfriend. I couldn’t kiss him enough. I never wanted him to leave me and when he did, my whole body would ache. It was the most blissful torture I’d ever felt. And I excused every little lie he told me — about being a year younger than he first told me. But only because he was afraid I wouldn’t date a 17-year-old! Who wouldn’t understand that! And then about how his Porsche got stolen so until his parents could buy him a new one, he was stuck driving a Honda. I know. I didn’t buy it either. But then his mama backed him up on it because she didn’t want to embarrass her baby boy! I just let it go because I figured he was intimidated by my super cool red Fiero…

But then one day, Bennie/Bene met my friend Patrick. Patrick was fabulous. I met him at Bogie’s nightclub. Boy, could he dance. He was the best shagger in Florence. You should’ve seen him swinging girls across the dance floor. And he wore these incredible red high-top tennis shoes. I’ll never forget those shoes. Anyway, I adored Patrick. And Patrick adored me. But it turns out that Bennie/Bene and Patrick also adored each other.

Soon, Bennie/Bene would start spending the night at Patrick’s because it saved him a 30 minute drive back home and Patrick lived only 10 minutes away from me. It just made sense. But Patrick had a roommate. And it was a two bedroom house. And Bennie/Bene doesn’t sleep on couches, so he had no other choice but to bunk with Patrick. I was sick. I knew, but I didn’t want to know. Eventually Bennie/Bene just moved in over there. But I kept dating him. How could I just let my first love go? I couldn’t. But then finally, we were two nights away from New Year’s Eve and Bennie/Bene called and canceled on me, saying he would be too tired and would just stay home with Patrick instead. Too tired two nights from now?? I flew into a rage. I raced over to their house and banged at the door, screaming for them to let me in. Patrick only opened the door after I promised not to physically harm them.

I raged for what felt like forever, but was probably only a good 10 minutes. I was eloquent in my fury. I screamed in both of their faces, “How could you do this to me??” was repeated quite often. But they just sat there in silence. And finally I left. And that was it. My first love was behind me and it’s more than likely affected my dating life ever since.

Not only was Tosha Terry my first love, she was my first. Ok, she was a year younger than me, so what. I was 16 and she was 15. no biggie. Tosha was a yellow hammer. With long, flowing black hair. And man did she have a pretty smile. We met at the Aquarius movie theatre. Tosha was a somewhat tall girl. She lived about 7 miles from me and we went to different schools. That didn’t matter a whole bunch because, I had a car. If I remember correctly, Tosha’s mom was a single mom. Actually, so was Tosha. Yeah, Tosha was more experienced than me. I’m not real sure how many times she had done it but obviously, at least once. But that didn’t matter. Tosha was beautiful. Let’s talk about Tosha’s booty for a minute. It was perfect. In fact, I’m not sure but I think her daddy was a meat burglar. It was like someone had stolen two hams and put them in the back of her pants.

I only saw Tosha on the weekends but that was enough for me. I would cruise over to her house in my 200sx with the fog lights in the front. And we would kiss for hours. The only thing that would stop us would be if her baby would start crying. Speaking of her baby, that baby was always sleeping on Tosha’s bed which seriously, interfered with my plan. So we ended up on the couch.

We didn’t date an extremely long time but I was devastated when she broke up with me to be with a senior. Damn those seniors. I remember locking myself in the room and listening to my commodores’ album for hours and just crying my butt off. I kind of doubt if I had the same effect on her. Anyway, Tosha was a very beautiful girl. Her nose was so cute and actually, even as I write this, I can see her face. There was no real magic moment that made me fall madly in love with her. She was just extremely beautiful and I loved her almost immediately. I did remember that she was a great kisser. Then again, I was 16. Any girl that would kiss me was a “great kisser.”

As a teenager, I believe that it is tough for one to really distinguish “love” and “lust”. My hormones began to start having a party in my body around 12 years old. I did pretty well with girls as a kid, but when I turned 13 everything started to change. My voice sounded like a dying cow, I would get a huge zit on my nose about once every two weeks, and at times I felt as if I moved like a newborn deer on ice. I felt so awkward that I started shying away from girls.

Summer going into 8th grade was pretty much average. This meant my football season was underway. The best thing about playing pop warner football was the fact that each year we got cheerleaders, and since our district was pretty huge, we would always have different girls because there were two teams in our age group. We never really learned who our cheerleaders were until our end of summer BBQ. That is where I met my first “love”, her name was Yumi. She was different like me. I never have looked like one ethnicity. I have been told that I look Asian, White, Mexican, Filipino, and Polynesian. She was Asian, but had a valley girl voice and a French last name. I later found out she was Japanese, and French… pretty much rocked at guessing. She had light brown eyes, had a mole on her cheek, and was tall (at the time, due to me still being in the girls are taller stage), she had boobs (only about 50% of girls had boobs at the time), she had long dark hair that went to the middle of her back, and she smelled like strawberries… I would say her face is similar to Lucy Liu. At the time I was going through I think only Asian girls are hot.

To tell you the truth, I really didn’t talk to her because I thought she was way too pretty for me, but for some reason I caught her eye. I had seen her at school, but had never talked to her. After the BBQ I went home and got in the shower, only to have my mom walk in there holding the phone as I sang some amazing Elvis Presley (that was my shower ritual, until that night). My friend Delissa was on the phone. After yelling at my mom for “ruining my life” I called her back.

Delissa told me that Yumi thought I was cute, I could hear her laughing in the background. I was pretty flattered, but I played it cool. So then she asked me if I thought she was pretty, and I said yes. So the next day we had a double date with some friends at the mall and it took off from there. We talked every day. I would ride my bike to her house. It was fun and new. I had never had a girlfriend like that before… heck, I had only kissed girls during spin the bottle before that. She was the first girl to ever buy me a present… it was Hugo Boss cologne; I thought I was so cool because I had expensive cologne.

The problem was that her parents did not really like the fact that I was not Asian. They didn’t like that we spent so much time together, so it became a bit of a Romeo and Juliet story. I would sneak out to see her at her friend’s house. She would lie to them about where she was going to meet up with me. It was awesome… and scary. I seriously thought her dad would kick my butt. We ended up dating our entire 8th grade year.

Her parents found out about the sneaking around… and they didn’t like the fact that we had been dating so long because they thought she should meet as many boys as possible while she was young. So they sent her off to backpacking trip some kids from school went on. I couldn’t afford it and ended up being alone that summer. I had no contact with her. When she got back she told me that she had developed a crush on Brian Davis, he was a dude with cool hair who girls thought was cute… naturally I didn’t like him. So I spent the remaining month trying to get her back and somehow I did.  We got back together. I thought I was soooooo in love with this girl. Once high school started everything changed. Brian Davis was not the guy I should be weary of. In this new jungle there were guys with cars, facial hair, and muscles. I was a 14 year old kid with shaggy hair, a super thin blonde mustache, on the freshman football team, and no money.

About two months into our first year of high school she dumped me again, because some senior named Eric developed a crush on her. He was Asian, older, had a car, was in a dance crew, and seemed to be pretty popular. Once again, I was devastated. I don’t know where that Eric guy is now, but I do know that they stopped dating about a month later… and she dated another older guy, and another. I eventually moved on, after I got past my awkward stage, cut my hair, shaved, and kept playing football. She quit cheer, joined flag, and became an art girl. I never talked to her again, until we graduated… and all I said was “wow, long time no talk.” I was so mad at her for dumping me that I said I would not date anymore Asian girls because they would remind me of her. She was the first and last Asian girl I ever dated.

I still struggle to this day with the question of what I felt. Was I really in love? Or did I just like her a lot? I never expressed my deep fears with Yumi, or talked about my family problems in depth, or passed gas in front of her, or felt as if she were my best friend. I think we were two kids trying to act older than we were. She was the first girl I said, “I love you” to… and I think at the time I meant it because my definition of love was completely different than it is now. I thought that if you like someone a lot, you love them. I started realizing that if that was the case, I loved a lot of girls.

So I would say she was more of a “puppy love”. I always knew I would marry my first love… and that is Kinsey. She is the first girl to know everything about me. My imperfections, my fears, my flaws (which I have many of), and my strengths… and she loves me for that. We have gone through very, very tough times and we have come out of the cloud, which is how I know she is my first true love.

Moral of the story: being a freshman boy in high school sucks… I would have wrecked shop if I were a girl.

Well since it wasn’t clearly defined what “first love” means-I am gonna go with someone I was in love with but didn’t know me. The one and only Jonathan Taylor Thomas. JT^2 as I called him. He was on the cover of every Teen Bop I can remember. I had dreams about him and compared my male classmates to him. No one has ever really come close to JTT since then….no I really fell in love for the first time in high school-I guess. My definition of love now is so much different than it was then so I question whether immature love is the same as the love you have when you know yourself and who you are. I first fell in love with a guy friend in 8 grade. He was hot and athletic and so cheesy but all the girls loved him. I used to have my mom drive me by his house and try and figure out where he was going to be hanging out on the weekends. Wait-that sounds like a crazy girl. Is it really stalking if your mom is taking you? He got wind of the fact that I was into him and it was an incredible romance of about 4 weeks. He bought me the new Beastie Boys CD and we would meet up to jump on my trampoline in the backyard. It was very romantic. I remember I used to get so nervous all the time around him and could never really be myself. I also had a unibrow so I’m thinking that’s why things went awry. One day when I was getting ready to go to a school festival I got the call. He was there with friends, calling from a payphone. The conversation went something like this: “Hey Jenna. Hey Griffin. I’m about to leave to come meet you. Hey Jenna, I’ve actually been meaning to tell you that Im just gonna hang out with my friends. Oh okay…well that’s fine, I will see you there. Umm Jenna I meant more like I wanna hang out with my friends ALL the time. Like don’t wanna be with you anymore. He had another girlfriend a week later. I was so heartbroken-We never even kissed! It’s funny because I had my heart broken so much in the early dating stages and now I’m the one that tends to get bored and restless.

If we talk about real reciprocal love I was the heartbreaker surprisingly. I was a little late to the game. I didn’t find him until I was 17! We were friends for about 3 years prior to dating and I think I made him date me. I used my powers of persuasion to convince him that we would be great together..how pathetic. Well we actually ended up dating for about 2 years and then halfway through my freshman year of college, I decided it was time for me to be single. It was really a terrible breakup because he didn’t want it at all and I was bad about stringing him along. I always have the desire to remain friends with the people I date, even if it ends poorly. I hold on to a part of them because I feel like it will all be worthless if I don’t. How can you spend years of your life with someone and then act like they don’t exist? Well I’ve learned in the years since that friendships ARE possible with exes but there is definitely a window of time that you need to be apart. By keeping in contact, it puts the broken-hearted at a disadvantage. They are unable to get over you and vice versa. There needs to be that “outta sight, outta mind” period so you can go back to being you. I can honestly say that I’ve managed to remain friends with most of my exes except for this first love. I never see him or speak to him anymore and I feel disappointment with myself because of it. I have never understood how people can date for years and years and then just go down in flames. I suppose if someone cheated on me I would definitely never talk to them again. Honestly, I fall in in love with friends and then if things don’t work out, I am desperate to go back to friends again. Unfortunately it all changes when that line is crossed.