Crush

 

It was 1986 and I was fifteen years old (or pretty close to it) when I first saw his face up on the big screen.  Oh, I had had my share of crushes by this time.... that good looking older boy a couple of streets over, Shaun Cassidy, that center fielder for the Braves, Dale Murphy....it's a lengthy list.  


But this? This was some kind of different. My good friend, Susan, and I went to see Top Gun and now I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking it was Tom Cruise, right?  Wrong.  


It was that bad boy, Iceman...Val Kilmer.  I thought he was hawt!  But I was conflicted.  Maverick was the good guy, the obvious choice here so why was I pining for that cold, aloof, no good Iceman?  I can't say what it was exactly but I was convinced he was gonna be mine, mine, mine.  

I was aware of the fact that I was only a  painfully shy freshman in high school living in a small southern town who had never even kissed a boy and he was this much older tanned and muscled up movie star living on the other side of the country but I knew none of that would matter once he gazed into my eyes.


It would be love at first sight and we would live happily ever after in our castle on the hill.  


That summer we moved from Georgia to North Carolina and I became preoccupied with making new friends and meeting new boys and pretty soon my memories of Val began to fade and I eventually lost that loving feeling.  


Fast forward to 1991.  I was twenty years old (or pretty close to it) and for the past several months my good friend, Jeannie, and I had been obsessed with Mr. Mojo Risin a.k.a Jim Morrison. 


I can't recall how this obsession began since the man had been dead for as long as we had been alive. I think we heard one of his songs playing at some party we'd crashed  on the radio and suddenly we were about all things Doors.  We were wearing tie-dye from head to toe, hippie beads and sunglasses at night.  


It was a phase.  Just a phase.  


When we heard they had made a movie about our beloved dead singer?  We were over the moon!  We were like those crazy Twilight groupies who camp out outside the theater wearing their Team Edward shirts.  Only our shirts were tie-dyed and had a dead singer's face plastered across the front.  


And there he was. He was back.  Val was back and that old flame was burning again.    Jim who? That's Val Kilmer.  Iceman!  Iceman is playing Jim Morrison!  Diane Kilmer....Paula Diane Kilmer... Diane L. Kilmer....  Yep, my crush was back.  

Of course I was twenty and living the life of a twenty year old so I didn't spend my days dreaming up ways to run away to Hollywood and stake claim on my man but anytime he popped back up on the screen...


As Doc Holliday in Tombstone in 1993.  

And then again in Batman Forever in 1996.  I was fifteen again for a brief moment in time...

I fell in love, got married, had babies, became widowed, fell in love and got married again. But from time to time I'd see one of Val's old movies on t.v. and I'd smile and remember that loving feeling that once coursed through my veins.  

Then a couple of years ago, I was flipping through some trashy magazine in a waiting room somewhere and there he was again...

And just like that, I lost that loving feeling....and now it's gone, gone, gone..wooooooh!


Well what do you expect when you base a relationship solely on good looks alone?  It would have never worked out in the long run.  


 

This post was inspired by Mama Kat's writing prompt, "A boy you had a crush on…where is he now?"  and Jenny Matlock's Alphabe-Thursday's  Letter C.