Those talks with J about our grandparents started a process that continued over the next few weeks to develop a deeper relationship between us. She was always over to see me and my roommates, and I was always visiting her and her roommate, so we became relatively close. She had a lot more experience with relationships than I did, and was not intimidated by guys, so she sort of took the lead in most parts off that process. There was no single point where that relationship went from friendship to something more; it was one tiny step at a time.
I initially resisted many of those steps, but girls are well known for using the right tricks to get guys to do what they want. I was in no way "wrapped around her finger" but I was consciously appreciative of her attention. Neither of us had cars, so we spent all of our time on campus, much of that together. She was one of the only other students on campus who rode a bike, and did much more once we were together. We ate nearly every meal together in the cafeteria, and were already both involved in all of the same groups and activities. Living around girls for three months at camp that previous summer, as well as all of the social boundary pushing activities that take place there, had also helped prepare me for this situation.
J had a couple of close friends who were also a year older. I knew them, but not particularly well. One day they cornered me in the cafeteria and "interrogated" me. I was not at all comfortable talking about anything like that. So when I was finished, I was proud that I had answered every question without really telling them anything of significance. My view was that none of it was any of their business, and I didn't understand until years later that they were actually trying to help me. Talking to my family about it was interesting as well. I had never had conversations like that before, so I put it off as long as possible. When J discovered that I hadn't told them at all, months in, she was not pleased, which totally blindsided me. I couldn't care less whether she told her family or not. I finally told my family over Christmas break, only when directly asked by my Mom: "So when are you going to get a girlfriend?" I wasn't going to lie about it, so there we went. This resulted in my parent’s insistence that I order her flowers for her birthday, which was over break as well. Not a bad idea, but not really from “me” at the time.
Females were about a foreign to me as aliens would have been, but I did have one advantage. Her roommate Lindsay was good friends with me, and the three of us hung out together a lot. The presence of a third person alters the dynamic, and relieves some of the tension in many situations. Much more importantly, she was the source of the "Lindsay Translation." Girls and guys speak completely different languages, but I had an interpreter. (J: “That juice was really good.” Lindsay: “Mike, she wants you to get her more juice.”) It was extremely blatant, and that was okay with all of us. I had my own personal relationship advisor, and it definitely helped me learn how to pickup on those “little signs” that girls give.
That relationship was also an interesting time for experiencing and discovering boundaries to intimacy, in me and others. I did a lot of reading and study about relationships and purity during that time, but didn’t really talk with anyone else about that directly, because I wasn’t even remotely comfortable talking about those subjects. But J had much more experience with those types of relationships than I did, so she took most of the initiative in pushing things forward. She was the first girl I ever kissed, and my conversations with her were my first experiences in communicating about those topics. But I definitely learned a lot more about girls that semester.
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