MY FIRST INTELLECTUAL ROMANCE

T Ragos was the first guy I’d ever dated of any race who wasn’t a jock, wasn’t good looking, none of my girlfriends wanted him, had a face-full of pot marks… but I was crazy about him.

He was the first guy who recited poetry. We would walk for miles along the West river talking about the many places we would travel when we were old enough to get our passports on our own.

We spent hours in Central Park watching children in the playground, discussing the merits of early Bowie, Laura Nyro, The Dead Kennedys, Was not Was, Lil Green (a female blues singer from the twenties). He knew everything I knew and our interests were so similar.


We were not of the same race, we were not of the same teen social status (I had my choice of jocks and friends of all races and monetary status- he got beat up and ignored) I don’t know what pulled me to him.

A year later I was no longer feeling it, and started dating jocks again. But for a brief moment, I had an intellectual romance.