It was like every young adult novel or after-school special, with the new kid walking into the classroom in the middle of the school year and the teacher introducing him as a transfer from some school far away. Naturally, he was heartbreakingly cute, with that ’80s spiked hair straight out of Tiger Beat and heavenly brown eyes.

The girls literally sighed.

Our drama teacher, Ms. Dwyer—God bless her—put him in my group. I was directing a scene out of You Can’t Take It With You, and I made him play either the grandpa or the uncle—I can’t quite remember which. My group was supposed to perform the scene at some drama festival, where other schools would perform other scenes from other plays.

Which meant, of course, a field trip with the new boy, Joe.

Joe and I were the first to meet up at the school before the trip, so my mother had the chance to meet him and embarrass me with stage whispers of “Ooh, he’s cute!” as she dropped me off. I’d bet that she was already picturing Joe and me as a couple, his spiked hair and my big hair locked in a tender AquaNet embrace.

He and I talked awhile, and I found out that he was half white and half Filipino (the mixed ones are always so cute!) and that he wanted to play the villain in a soap opera (no kidding!).

I recently looked him up on Google to see if he actually became a soap opera star, and unfortunately the only interesting tidbit I’ve found is that Joe Blake is slang for steak, snake, and cake.

But back to the field trip. Joe and I chatted a while, and after everyone finally got together and managed to make it to the festival, I even got to see some skin as we got into our costumes—Joe secretly opened a flap on his overalls to confess to me about a slight lack of—ahem—underwear.

That was just about the best piece of hip skin I ever saw.

By some fluke—yeah, I’ll just bet you believe it was a fluke—while everyone else performed onstage during the entire scene, our two characters spent a lot of time offstage before entering together. We needed to come in, shaking off gunpowder from some experiment gone awry, and since we didn’t have black powder, we used baby powder.

So that meant he and I got to sprinkle baby powder all over each other. Kinky!

Long story short, we had a great day—or at least, I had a great day—and I was already picturing us holding hands and hugging.

…because that was about as far as my poor stunted romantic imagination went at that time. Already, one of my 14-year-old friends had had a baby, and there I was, imagining Joe hugging me and giddy over the fact that I got to see the skin of his hip, for crying out loud.

Toward the end, he needed a ride home, and my mother volunteered to take him home. So there I was, thinking YES! I might actually get to see where he lived! You know, the basic thoughts of a stalker-to-be.

The ride, however, was unbearable. I’d been laughing at his jokes all day, even if they weren’t that funny—something I didn’t realize I was doing at the time.

Joe: Why do the Filipinos have so much pride in their food?

Me: I don’t know. Why?

Joe: Because they make so much pride rice, pride vegetables, pride…

Me: [laughing uproariousy]

Everyone knows that laughing is like having an orgasm—good, hearty ones are always the most satisfying and enjoyable; fake, exaggerated ones leave you feeling uncomfortable and a sense of Wrong; and lack of either makes you want to call out, “Check, please!”

So there I was, laughing hysterically at his jokes and feeling as though, hey, we’re really having a great time together. He likes me! He likes me! Until I made the mistake of trying to tell a few Filipino jokes of my own.

Me: So the teacher says to the Filipino student, “Use the vocabulary word tenacious in a sentence.”

Joe: Okay.

Me: The student says [I then affect a horribly stereotypical Filipino accent], “My mudder took me to da store to buy me some tenacious.” [i.e. – tennis shoes]

I, of course, laughed uproariously again. In the meantime…

Joe: …

The sound of chirping crickets resounded in the background, and all I could think of was that I needed to reenact a young adult novel or an after-school special and totally transfer to another school far away.

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