The definitive edition of Please Love Me

 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. 

— Matthew 5:8

My story begins and ends at a frat house just off Line Avenue. If you’re from Shreveport, you may remember the place and its broken-down charm. When I close my eyes, I still see college students crowded onto its wraparound porch, bottles in hand. I’m surrounded by laughter. I smell beer and mildew. Madonna is singing. There are no cell phones. 

    It was a time when I believed frat houses were glamorous and life was akin to fairytales. 

    I was born in 1966, at the height of what was dubbed the charismatic movement. It swept through the Bible Belt, and through my mother like fire, they said. On her twentieth birthday, she was filled with the Holy Spirit. 

    I’ve yet to find anyone who loves the Lord more. Not Billy Graham. Not even Mother Theresa. Jesus speaks to her frequently and even visits. Once he walked with her on the dusty side of a road, just as he did with the twelve disciples. She says his hair is lighter than most people think. Apparently, he does wear brown sandals. 

    That story led me directly to this one.  

    And so it goes that in the summer of 1984, I met Matt Adler at the frat house off Line Avenue. With my eyes closed, I’m both frightening and beautiful again, so small inside my sleek peaches and cream frame. 

    On the night our paths cross, I notice Matt standing just outside the door as I glide over the threshold full of cheap confidence. His legs are long but not too long and bowed just the right amount. They lead to a waist higher than mine, something I notice because I’m tall and have long legs. When I finally look at his face, it welcomes the smile I’ve wasted on all the others. 

    “Nice legs,” I say, moving past as if I belong in the frat house, the decade, the world. 

    I try to blend into the crowd while searching for someone I know; anyone will do. I tug at the edges of my white, preppy shorts and wonder if I still have lipstick on. Jungle juice flows from the nipples of a bald mannequin named Lolita. An ugly sign bears her name. 

    I glance around the dark room searching for the guy with the perfect legs. He stands in the kitchen doorway staring at me over the 7-Up he’s drinking. He's perfectly still, a statue waiting for a pedestal. I stare back as if straining to receive a message meant only for me.

    He looks as if he knows a lot. A sort of residual nerdiness overlays his handsome face. Nerds are big due to Revenge of the Nerds, and so I have a theory that there are two types. One is shy and intellectual, and knows he’s socially unskilled. This may or may not be painful for him, but he chooses not to fight it. The other knows exactly how he should behave but can't quite pull it off. 

    Matt looks like the second kind.