My first boyfriend I remember with absolute clarity. His name was Jack and he was an immigrant from one of the countries of the still intact Soviet Union. He spoke heavily accented English that sounded to me like the characters in Dr. Zhivago. He was tall, with pale skin with a slight blue cast, like milk spilled on a table. He had giant blue eyes, blonde hair and the sharp angular features of an eastern European.

I don't remember how I met him, he wasn't friends with any of my neighborhood friends, he was just around and then he was around more. I would be babysitting at the neighbors and he would just appear walking to the park with us, nibbling from the kids plates as we all ate lunch on the front porch. He would just appear, when my friend Leah and I rollerskated on the smooth entryway to the Catholic school at the end of the block, our cheap, battery-operated boombox blasting out INXS, George Michael, Terence Trent d'Arby, and Belinda Carlisle. He was just around and then somehow he became my boyfriend. Very sneaky those eastern Europeans.

At fourteen, me having a boyfriend mostly entailed Jack hanging out while I babysat and coming over in the evening to make out in the screened porch attached to our garage. We went on like this through a whole summer, fall and winter. I remember the morning I woke up to a foot of snow. Have a good day, love Jack, carved into the powder covering our driveway. It was the first romantic thing a boy had ever done for me.

Jack is one of those people I still think about. There's no regret, no unrequited love, we were just two teenagers taking the first shaky steps toward adulthood. I remember him clearly but I knew so little about him that I can't speculate much about what happened to him, where he ended up. I know he was very poor. I know he was a bit of a wandering stray. I know he liked to watch me rollerskate. I know he was a good kisser. That's it. Nothing to google there.