A 90’s Kind of Love

The most intense, giddy, all-absorbing crushes are reserved for that person whom you initially dismissed. You noticed her too-broad shoulders, the way her mouth hung slightly open when she was confused, or that she said “irregardless.“No sweaty hands, no halting conversations—because there’s no attraction here.

So you don’t notice as you work long hours together on the presentation that she’s hilarious and charismatic. She laughs at your meeting notes and makes fun of the font you chose for the group assignment. You think about her when you're not in class together. You dream (actual, REM-sleep dreams) about her. You want to ride bikes with her. Her casual grammar idiosyncrasies become bewitching. Her lovely, alluring mouth can do no wrong; nor can her perfectly sculpted shoulders.

Then, the semester ends, the work teams get reshuffled, the neighbors move. Now, the ache sets in. You have no more hours with her; no more reason to email; no vending machine to loiter around because you know her schedule. The sleepless, stomach-churning infatuation burns white-hot. Every time you happen to run into her now, you hang on every word, but it’s over. Love, unrequited—the drug in its purest form, the syrup flowing out of the tree, the morning light on the first day of summer. God, it hurts.

We met in the heady high school days of the mid-nineties. Again, I noticed your flaws at first. Your advertising was—well, it was straight-up weird. The can decoration was strangely drab and off-putting, with disaffected caricatures in grays and red. Morevoer, I was drinking someone else: Crystal Pepsi. It was fizzy, strange, and easy to love. You seemed easy to ignore. Is that why I fell so hard? Right before, of course, you disappeared forever? Suddenly, you were gone—a failure, the burgeoning Internet called you—and just as suddenly, I wanted the quixotic tang of OK Cola.

My friends made fun of me for talking so much about you. I responded by talking about you more. I drank nothing but Crystal Pepsi, to try and efface the sticky cola residue on my heart. Clearly (sorry), it didn’t work. Crystal Pepsi went away, and...it didn’t bother me. But here I am, over twenty years later, writing to you.

I should have known right away. You were perfect. I should have stored 2-liters and 12-packs and cans and bottles in a bunker. A bunker of you, OK Cola.