Short

I almost dated a dwarf. I don’t mean that I came close to going out to dinner with someone who could have made it to the third call for Ewok auditions. I mean my very first girlfriend was almost a dwarf, missing the essential criteria by maybe an inch and a half, two tops.
She was proportioned like one of those Russian doll sets where each doll contains another doll inside it, she being the second to smallest. She also somewhat resembled what many cultures symbolize as a fertility totem, though I don’t think she would have been able to carry anything larger than a mango to term.
She had moved to Cape Cod from New York; a city kid, wise beyond the years of her peers. She always wore a cool, unimpressed expression that seemed to say, “I come from a place where the rats are bigger than me and the hot dogs are bigger than your penis,” or at least that’s how I took it.

She smoked Marlboro Reds, which counted for a lot, because this meant that she had chosen to smoke this particular brand, rather than steal the pack from her parents, as the rest of us did.
Most fourteen year-olds in my neighborhood couldn’t find anything stronger than a NOW or a Tareyton in a purse or glove compartment. It was the ‘80’s and smokers had begun to go lighter as many were suffering from the early stages of two burgeoning plagues; emphysema and Reaganomics, neither of which had ruined anyone’s lungs or self esteem just yet, but coughs and ill-advised investments were increasingly forthcoming.
Her name was Jem, (with a J) short for Jembelee. Her father’s name was James and she had three sisters, Jennifer, Julie, and Jocelyn. This was a long passed down family tradition, and a strictly patriarchal one at that. James’ dad’s name was Jasper, and his father’s name was Joseph. Jem’s mom was cut out from any entitled connection, as her name was Marilyn. Had James been borne sons, they would have all been J’s too.
The family also had a Chihuahua named Gene, but just so things didn’t become phonetically confusing , they pronounced his name with a hard “G”, making anyone who called the dog instantly as if they were from Calcutta, or perhaps Rio.

The summer Jem and I dated was preceded by a spring of utter discontent; birds chirped in hushed tones and flowers bitterly bloomed only once a week. Were I an even slightly intuitive soul, I’d have read the signs; the wind blowing from the north, the regular afternoon rains and the way they matched the cycle of the moon, the dog shit almost constantly found underfoot. But no, a girl had smiled at me from across the room for the first time. She had unleashed her exotic Gotham charms and they came at me like 5th Avenue DVD peddlers of romance and they all had the Star Wars trilogy (the good one's) for free and I had been hypnotized. By an evil midget.
"Can your dad give us a ride to the Barn?" she'd ask, meaning the small mall of artificially barn-like structures in Eastham that was the Gift Barn, the Game Barn and the Pizza Barn. Plus there was a mini-golf course, which, fortunately, bore no direct farmish title like "Corn Links," or the "Baa--aaa--aaa--ck Nine," though the 14th hole required negotiating a wildly swinging cow udder that bordered on pornographic.
"Sure," I'd say, every time, which was at least 4 times a week, knowing too well that for each ride I'd have to do a lot of bargaining and planning. My father was beginning to suffer from the early stages of Alzheimer's disease and though he was retired and, I suspected, secretly relished the opportunity to get the hell out of the house, he still had to be plied with promises that this would be the last time, a promise easy to make as he'd surely forget it had been made within the hour.
It should be noted my father also drove approximately 10 to 20 m.p.h. under the posted speed limit, meaning that in a 25 mile-per-hour zone, I could get out and run far enough ahead in a short enough time that, given the old man's failing mind, I could pretend to be a hitchhiker, and given the old man's sense of generosity, he'd pull over and pick me up, especially because of the slight resemblance I bore to his son.
He'd drop Jem and I off at the quasi-rural complex and slowly make his way back home, as my miniature mate and I waded into the sea of punk teens and white trash tourists that perpetually filled the area just past the parking lot and just before the entrance to any of the three barns. I always wanted to play miniature golf, but knew better than to float this idea as the one time I did, Jem completely freaked out, ranting about what an affront the mere name of the sport was. Instead we would find a picnic table, pull out some Marlboros and start to smoke the night away. Knowing what I know now, I often wonder if minus the cigarettes she and I would be, respectively, normal in height and really quite tall. This of course was all moot, as every single member of both her family and mine were not only all under 5 foot 8, but also smoked, with the exception of her two younger sisters, who were barely started on candy cigarettes.
Soon, friends with huge mohawks and patches on their jackets proclaiming a love for anarchy and bands such as the Circle Jerks and Scraping Foetus off the Wheel would arrive, having been dropped off by their parents, too.
They'd smoke and we'd smoke and they'd all be short and we'd still be short, and eventually, almost every time it seemed, my very first girlfriend would go off with one of them. Eventually she'd come back and I'd ask her where she'd been. Eventually I'd believe her and eventually it would seem as if nothing had happened, because, of course, it hadn't.
However, eventually I would see two of my friends who really loved each other and it would occur to me that they didn't leave with other people for hours at a time. They would just sit there and laugh and kiss in that awkward, repulsively wet and beautifully clumsy way teenagers kiss. Eventually, I'd come to my senses. Eventually I'd find a girl who smoked, who had all those patches of all those really fucking good bands, who was, like me, an utterly terrible but earnest kisser, a girl who really loved me. Even if it would only be for a short time.