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Episode: #53 Leif

Author: Spotify Studios
Duration: 00:46:31

Episode Shownotes

On Valentine’s Day in junior high, Leif was supposed to ask Kalila out. But he never did. Seventeen years later, Kalila wants to know why. Credits This episode was hosted and produced by senior producer Kalila Holt, along with Jonathan Goldstein and Phoebe Flanigan. The supervising producer is Stevie Lane.

Production assistance from Mohini Madgavkar. Editorial guidance from Emily Condon. Special thanks to Max Green, Flora Lichtman, and Connor Sampson. In the IM recreation, Karina was played by Reagan Didier, and Leif was played by John Claassen—thanks to Greg Holt and Tony John for making that possible. The show was mixed by Bobby Lord. Music by Christine Fellows, John K Samson, Blue Dot Sessions, Katie Mullins, Florian Le Prisé, and Bobby Lord. Our theme song is by The Weakerthans courtesy of Epitaph Records. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Full Transcript

00:00:03 Speaker_04
Kalula.

00:00:04 Speaker_10
Yeah.

00:00:05 Speaker_04
Hi. Hi. It's Jonathan.

00:00:07 Speaker_10
Yeah. I called you.

00:00:08 Speaker_04
So you're hosting the show.

00:00:10 Speaker_10
Yeah.

00:00:11 Speaker_04
It's a personal story.

00:00:12 Speaker_10
Indeed. Yeah.

00:00:13 Speaker_04
It's like an oral report that you're- Is that what it's like?

00:00:16 Speaker_10
It's a little condescending.

00:00:19 Speaker_04
Well, I mean, it's a report given by the mouth.

00:00:21 Speaker_10
I mean, sure, by that metric, all your episodes are oral reports too. Well. Yeah. It doesn't feel so good, does it?

00:00:29 Speaker_04
It doesn't. Here we go. An oral report. given by Khalilah Holt. Put your name at the top of the oral report.

00:00:38 Speaker_10
How do you put your name at the top of an oral report?

00:00:42 Speaker_04
You say it.

00:00:49 Speaker_10
I'm Khalilah Holt, and this is Heavyweight. Today's episode, Leif. right after the break. I'm walking to work one morning when I spot Leif heading towards me. From the ages of 12 to 14, Leif was my crush, the object of my junior high obsession.

00:01:23 Speaker_10
I still Google him occasionally, but he's completely absent from the internet. I have no idea what became of him. It's like he just disappeared. So when I see him on the street, I feel my heart speed up. I wonder if I should say hi.

00:01:38 Speaker_10
I wonder, if I say hi, in what tone I should go. Leif? Leif? Oh, Leif. But then, as I draw closer, I realized that the man I thought was Leif is not Leif at all, and in fact, is not even a man. He's a teenager.

00:01:57 Speaker_10
This makes sense, given that I've not seen Leif since I was 14 years old. Still, having your heart speed up at the sight of a teenager is a sure way to feel like a creep. And just like that, to quote Carrie Bradshaw, Leif is back on my mind.

00:02:22 Speaker_10
All these years later, and I remember the exact type of pen Leif wrote with. I remember his birthday.

00:02:28 Speaker_10
I remember how he kept his wallet on a long chain, the first time I'd ever seen such a thing done, and wore a quick silver sweatshirt with holes worn through the sleeves that he'd stick his thumbs through. He was pale with blue eyes, short and slight.

00:02:43 Speaker_06
— I remember him being kind of, like, wayfish, almost, like, ethereal.

00:02:48 Speaker_10
— Crushes do not exist in a vacuum. They require gleeful gossip with your friends. And so, I call Lucia, who's been my best friend since elementary school, to talk about her old classmate, Leif.

00:03:02 Speaker_06
He had this, like, light blonde hair that he dyed and was blonde. Not like a long, like, down-to-your-butt hair, like a bob length, but like shaggy. For men. Shaggy. There we go.

00:03:12 Speaker_10
A men's bob. Once, while away on a school-sponsored trip, we phoned Leif from our hotel room. Me, Lucia, and our other friend, Emily. The three of us huddled together on the scratchy Marriott Comforter, stifling our giddiness as we dialed.

00:03:30 Speaker_09
I don't remember if we actually talked. The thing I remember is that we called. Did we talk to his parents? We talked to his mom.

00:03:35 Speaker_10
Our friend Emily asked if she could speak with Leif. It's Emily, she said. Emily, said Leif's mom. Go upstairs and talk to him. Then she hung up on us. Turned out he had a sister named Emily.

00:03:51 Speaker_10
Lucia's stepmom was a photographer, and she once mentioned that if Leif and I ever started dating, she wanted to take our portrait. I don't think she knew I had a crush on him.

00:04:01 Speaker_10
Leif was just so short, and I was so tall, that I think she found the idea of us as a couple funny. I was already six feet tall by the end of eighth grade.

00:04:12 Speaker_10
I got pressured into playing basketball, but I was so meek that I usually just stood there while some terrifying girl shoved by me with the ball. I don't like to look at pictures of myself from that time.

00:04:24 Speaker_10
Standing next to other kids my age, I look like the teacher or like someone's off-putting sister home from college. None of my pants fit correctly, and my socks were always pulled up too high. I used to listen to the song Eleanor Rigby and panic.

00:04:40 Speaker_10
In my interpretation, it was a song about how no one wanted to date poor old Eleanor Rigby, just like no one wanted to date me.

00:04:54 Speaker_10
When I was 13, one day I was sitting by the gym after school with my friend Desiree when she told me, I picture you getting a boyfriend in college.

00:05:03 Speaker_10
She laid out this whole hypothetical where me and my future boyfriend reached for the same book at the library. At the time I was offended. College? Other girls at my school, Desiree included, already had boyfriends.

00:05:18 Speaker_10
The middle school version of a boyfriend where you were afraid to touch each other and broke up after a week. But still, I had to wait till college?

00:05:27 Speaker_10
But as it turned out, I did not get a boyfriend before college, nor in college, nor even for several years after college. And so I concluded, the problem was not my circumstances. The problem was me. I was not dateable.

00:05:44 Speaker_10
After meeting me for the first time, people might say, oh, she was funny, but they'd never say, is she single? I was simply not a person that anyone could think of romantically.

00:05:56 Speaker_10
At college parties, boys would grab my friends and start dancing with them, and I would stay for a while, dancing alongside them like I was part of the good time, but eventually I'd walk away.

00:06:07 Speaker_10
It was weird for me to keep standing there, smiling blankly at the wall while they were making out. By now, I'm in my 30s, and I actually do have a boyfriend. Sam and I have been together for four years. We live together.

00:06:23 Speaker_10
We've taken trips, know each other's moms, list each other on emergency contact forms. And yet, still, I can't shake this feeling that I'm behind, that there's something wrong with me, that I started too late, and now I can never catch up.

00:06:40 Speaker_10
Sometimes Sam tells me stories about the girls he used to hook up with, or about his high school girlfriend, or the girlfriend he lived with before he lived with me. I know that he's not trying to get back together with any of these people.

00:06:53 Speaker_10
I know he's as invested in our relationship as I am. Still, when he tells these stories, I feel so inadequate that I want to cry.

00:07:01 Speaker_10
A couple times I have cried, and he has been confused, and suddenly we're in an argument because I don't know how to explain why I'm crying. I want charming stories like that. I want to rhapsodize about my past of young love and mutual discovery.

00:07:17 Speaker_10
Instead, my past is a wall I smiled at, and the only stories I have about people I've hooked up with are vaguely unsettling to repeat.

00:07:33 Speaker_10
I liked Leif at a time before all that, back when it still felt like romance might happen for me, like any interaction could be the start of a love story for the ages.

00:07:43 Speaker_10
One time, I brought Whole Foods sushi for lunch and felt self-conscious because I'd seen The Breakfast Club, in which Molly Ringwald is mocked for bringing sushi for lunch. But Leif walked by my table and said, is that sushi? And I said, yes.

00:07:57 Speaker_10
And he said, I love sushi. And I said, would you like a piece? And he said, really? And I said, yes. And suddenly I was proud to have a lunch of whole food sushi.

00:08:05 Speaker_10
Leif talked constantly about a band called Billy Talent, a semi-yelley alt-rock group with lyrics about misery. I started listening to them because I knew Leif liked them. And from there became an obsessive fan myself.

00:08:20 Speaker_10
Once I ran into Leif at a Billy Talent concert. I pretended not to see him because I didn't want him to think that I'd followed him there. But he came over and said hi to me.

00:08:30 Speaker_10
There were little moments where it almost seemed like he could be flirting with me. We followed each other on the blogging site, Zanga, and for a while, there was some sort of glitch where Leif was unable to comment on my page.

00:08:43 Speaker_10
When the glitch was fixed, he was so excited that he left me 100 comments in a row. Comment 42 said, on the 42nd day of Christmas, I gave to Kaylee 100 comments, lots of typing, and a pear tree. I still have a journal from that time.

00:09:06 Speaker_10
In it, I'd write Leif all these vague letters. It is humiliating to read these letters now, to the point where I refuse to quote them here. Suffice it to say that I constantly referred to him as dearest.

00:09:20 Speaker_10
Surrounding the letters are my thoughts about myself, mostly how I wished I were a different person entirely, someone charismatic and sought after. Sometimes I'd have this huge swell of self-hatred that I didn't know what to do with.

00:09:36 Speaker_10
Once, I tried to cut myself, but the kitchen knife I chose was not very sharp, and so it was harder than I thought it would be, and I gave up. When I find someone who wants to date me, I thought, this feeling will go away.

00:09:49 Speaker_10
I hoped that Leif might be that someone.

00:09:53 Speaker_10
I'd concoct long fantasies about how we'd get together, and sometimes I'd realize what a good mood I was in, and then I'd realize the good mood was because of something I'd made up, something that hadn't really happened at all.

00:10:12 Speaker_10
In the winter of eighth grade, I finally decided, enough with the secret pining. It was time to let Leif know how I felt. And so I took action. And by took action, I mean that I delegated action to other people.

00:10:28 Speaker_10
There was a stairway right next to our classroom that was just a single flight, enclosed by doors on each side. It was in this room of stairs that my friends, Lucia and Emily, cornered Leif and told him that I liked him while I ran home and hid.

00:10:44 Speaker_10
Afterwards, I asked them what he said. They told me he said, okay. That night, in a fit of panic and despair, I got online. I logged on to Zanga, and I wrote a veiled, angsty post about what a huge mistake I'd made.

00:11:01 Speaker_10
Leif saw the post, as I knew he would, and he IM'd my friend Karina about it. And here is where something amazing happened. Because in this conversation with Karina, Leif said he would date me. He said he thought I was cool.

00:11:18 Speaker_10
He was going to ask me out on Valentine's Day. Seeing couples perform how much they liked each other made me feel inferior, so I hated Valentine's Day with a showy passion. Each February 14th, I'd wear all black as a sign of protest.

00:11:35 Speaker_10
Leif's thought was that this romantic gesture might help me to reclaim the holiday. I know all this because, at the time, Karina promptly copy and pasted the IMs with Leif into an email for me. I couldn't believe what I was reading. I was so happy.

00:11:52 Speaker_10
Finally, I thought. Finally, the thing that only happens to other people, it's now happening to me. On Valentine's Day, I got up and my mom drove me to school. People were giving out candy and paper hearts. I tried to look nonchalant.

00:12:14 Speaker_10
I went to science class. I went to lunch, to recess, to math, to basketball. And then school was over and I went home. Leif did not say a single word to me all day. I have no idea what happened or why he changed his mind. Huh.

00:12:36 Speaker_06
Did you ever talk to him about it?

00:12:38 Speaker_10
I rehash all this on the phone with Lucia. Never did we speak directly about it. Like, we spoke through you and Emily, through Karina on IM, and, like, through my veiled Zanga posts. Interesting.

00:12:54 Speaker_10
And having been my best friend for all these years, Lucia intuits what I'm building up to.

00:13:00 Speaker_06
So you, you want to try to find him or?

00:13:04 Speaker_10
Yeah, but I'm afraid I tried drafting a letter and I was like, do I just sound insane?

00:13:12 Speaker_06
Anyway, so do you think this is completely insane to do? No, I mean, I'm sure you wrote, you're a very good writer and a thoughtful person. So I'm sure the way you approached it was good.

00:13:25 Speaker_10
Since Googling Leif had always failed me, I turned to a public records database that I get through work. I was hoping to discover a possible mailing address for Leif, and I did.

00:13:36 Speaker_10
Looks like maybe he lives in Arizona, and I saw he had like a, from 2020, a court thing from defacing a political sign.

00:13:48 Speaker_06
Well, I guess you don't know which direction that could go, but hopefully it's a good direction.

00:13:54 Speaker_10
to Leif directly, the way I never did back then. I want to know what he really thought of me and why he never asked me out on Valentine's Day. All these years, I've believed this story about how people don't see me romantically.

00:14:11 Speaker_10
But if I can change the beginning of that story, if I can see myself differently at 13, it could reframe everything that came after. I name-dropped you in the letter. You name-dropped me because I'm so well-known.

00:14:24 Speaker_10
Well, I was like, we used to live together, but now we both live with our boyfriend so that he wouldn't think I was, like, trying to date him now. Hi Leif, I wrote in my letter. I don't know if you remember me, but we went to Near North together.

00:14:39 Speaker_10
I had a huge crush on you, and I was hoping you'd be up to talk to me about what you remember from that time. I hang up the phone with Lucia, and I walk to the mailbox. I send off my letter, but then several weeks go by and nothing.

00:15:10 Speaker_10
Should Leif get the letter and decide to ignore me, or do I just have the wrong address? Usually when reporting a story, I try calling at this point, and I did find a phone number for Leif.

00:15:23 Speaker_10
However, the idea of dialing it makes me want to lie down in the middle of the street and simply pass away. And so, just like I did at 13, I recruit someone else as an envoy. And who is that someone else?

00:15:38 Speaker_04
You. Oh. Yeah, it's you. Okay, so I'm sort of like that whole quorum of girls all in one adult man.

00:15:47 Speaker_10
This is regular host of this program, Jonathan Goldstein. I want him to call Leif on my behalf to see if Leif got the letter and would be open to speaking with me.

00:15:57 Speaker_04
Yeah, no, I don't think that'll be awkward at all. Let me get my pattern down here. Hi, there was this girl, her name was Kalila Holt.

00:16:05 Speaker_10
You should say Kaylee first. I think he would know me by Kaylee.

00:16:07 Speaker_04
Hi, I'm Kaylee Holt's boss.

00:16:12 Speaker_09
When you say it like that, it is really weird.

00:16:14 Speaker_04
That is weird. No. Hi, you don't know me, but I was enlisted by an old school chum of yours. Ew, don't say school chum. An old flame. Ew. A paramour.

00:16:26 Speaker_10
My confidence is decreasing with every passing second.

00:16:29 Speaker_04
I won't embarrass you in front of your crush.

00:16:33 Speaker_10
Are you choking?

00:16:34 Speaker_04
Choking on this bonbon.

00:16:36 Speaker_10
As my boss asphyxiates on a piece of candy, I weigh the pros and cons of just making the call myself. But in the end, I make the same choice I did back then. Better to send an incompetent in my stead while I hide at home. I obsess all day Thursday.

00:16:59 Speaker_10
I obsess all day Friday. Jonathan doesn't offer me a single update. I can't even tell if he's made the call yet. Then the weekend begins, and I still have no idea what he's done.

00:17:12 Speaker_04
Okay.

00:17:13 Speaker_10
But whatever you did do, it worked because Friday night, checked my email, and I had an email from Leif saying that he would talk to me.

00:17:28 Speaker_04
Wow, okay, well, let me just say, I am almost 100% certain that I had nothing to do with that.

00:17:37 Speaker_10
Well, really, because it happened that day.

00:17:39 Speaker_04
Yeah, it is suggestive.

00:17:42 Speaker_10
Jonathan tells me that he had indeed tried calling Leif's number.

00:17:46 Speaker_04
Okay, here's the call. You ready? Okay, yeah. Okay. Hello, is Leif there?

00:17:57 Speaker_11
Yes.

00:17:58 Speaker_04
Could I speak to him?

00:18:00 Speaker_11
Yes, this is her.

00:18:03 Speaker_04
This is Leif?

00:18:05 Speaker_11
Yes.

00:18:09 Speaker_04
Leif, I just want to make sure I have the right person. What is your middle name?

00:18:17 Speaker_11
Chicken Doodles.

00:18:19 Speaker_04
No, no, that isn't the Leif that I'm looking for. I'm on the toilet right now.

00:18:40 Speaker_10
In his email, Leif proposed that we talk in nine days, which is kind of a weirdly long time. I can't help but worry that he'll bail last minute, that this'll be just like Valentine's Day all over again.

00:18:54 Speaker_10
So in the meantime, hoping she might remember some clue about what happened back then, I text my old friend, Karina, the one who brokered this whole Valentine's plan with Leif on IM.

00:19:06 Speaker_07
When you texted me that it was you, I was like, oh my gosh, like, did something happen? Like, is she calling me to say that Ms. Bergen died?

00:19:17 Speaker_10
Ms. Bergen being our longtime principal.

00:19:20 Speaker_07
Which she did, by the way, if you didn't know. I did hear that, yeah. Okay. May she rest in peace.

00:19:29 Speaker_10
I'd felt deranged texting Karina that I wanted to speak with her about Leif, a random kid from her eighth grade class. But Karina responded, I legitimately thought about you and Leif last week.

00:19:41 Speaker_10
So just like we used to in junior high, the two of us chat on the phone about a boy. And then he IM'd you. Shut up. Did I send you the conversation? Yes. So then I...

00:19:57 Speaker_10
And, buried in an old AOL account, I find that email from Karina with the whole conversation between her and Leif laid out. I would, like, absolutely love to see it. Let me send it to you.

00:20:09 Speaker_10
Leif's screen name was Chaotic Detortion, which I think is just Chaotic Distortion spelled wrong.

00:20:16 Speaker_07
OK, let me read this. OK, at 10.17 p.m., nice.

00:20:21 Speaker_10
And as Karina reads, here for you, dear listener, is a dramatic recreation of that IM exchange with two young actors playing the roles of Karina and Leif.

00:20:35 Speaker_12
Hey.

00:20:36 Speaker_01
Hey, Leif. What's up?

00:20:38 Speaker_12
Kaylee's talking about what I think she is, right? On Zynga?

00:20:42 Speaker_01
Hold on, let me see.

00:20:44 Speaker_12
Um... Kaylee likes me, right?

00:20:48 Speaker_01
Did Lucia and Emily tell you something?

00:20:51 Speaker_12
Yeah, after school the other day.

00:20:53 Speaker_01
Yeah, she does.

00:20:55 Speaker_12
Well, if she comes on, will you tell her something?

00:20:59 Speaker_01
Yeah.

00:21:00 Speaker_12
If she comes on, tell her that I'll go out with her. But my health is always screwing with my life, so I'm probably not going to be able to be 100% boyfriend material.

00:21:12 Speaker_10
Leif had some sort of illness the whole time I knew him, but I never knew how sick he was or what he was even sick with. He sometimes had to leave school early. He was on crutches for a while, and there were days when he just looked frail.

00:21:27 Speaker_10
But at 13, we didn't think to ask any questions. Back then, Karina just thought it was sweet he was considering his health and his role as my future boyfriend.

00:21:39 Speaker_01
Aw, but do you like her?

00:21:42 Speaker_12
This is kind of awkward. Yeah.

00:21:50 Speaker_10
All these years later, and that yeah makes my heart start pounding. I was wrong, I think. See, I was wrong. He liked me. He said he liked me. But then it goes on.

00:22:05 Speaker_12
OMG. Don't tell her. I'm not crazy about her. But hey, if she likes me, I don't hate her or anything. And Kaylee's cool.

00:22:19 Speaker_01
Yeah, she is. So you want me to tell her that you'll go out with her? Why don't you just talk to her on Monday?

00:22:26 Speaker_12
Do you think I should?

00:22:27 Speaker_01
Yeah, because I mean, I don't think she would believe me. And it would be nicer if you told her. Are you getting her something on V-Day?

00:22:34 Speaker_12
I guess, when is Valentine's Day?

00:22:38 Speaker_01
Next, next Tuesday. OMG, you should tell her on V-Day, cause she hates V-Day.

00:22:44 Speaker_10
Whoa, yeah, I will. I always thought it was Leif who came up with the Valentine's Day plan, but it was actually Karina. It wasn't a romantic gesture at all. It was the gesture of a thoughtful friend.

00:23:00 Speaker_08
But I don't remember anything after that. I didn't even remember that he didn't end up saying anything. Like, he didn't end up saying anything to you at all? No, we never talked about it. No, really? He did? I'm pretty sure he mentioned his health again.

00:23:23 Speaker_08
Maybe I, like, followed up and he was like, honestly, my health just, like, really isn't the best.

00:23:29 Speaker_10
So did Leif not ask me out simply because he was too ill? Was this not asking, actually, a romantic gesture? Something worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy? Or did he just not like me?

00:23:47 Speaker_10
I'd asked Leif to talk on Zoom, and I pray I won't break out or have a bad hair day because, you know, I want to look good.

00:23:55 Speaker_10
The morning of, I put on an eyeshadow that someone once told me was flattering and wear a t-shirt for my favorite band because I figure it's cool to like music. Then I head to the studio and test the microphone. Hello, hello. All right, that's working.

00:24:14 Speaker_10
I feel ill. I feel physically ill. Oh my God. Oof, okay, I can do this. Here we go. On the Zoom camera, you can't even see my T-shirt or flattering eye shadow, so that was a lot of wasted effort. I see that Leif is in the waiting room.

00:24:49 Speaker_10
I press the Admit button, and he appears on screen. Hi. Hey. In spite of his deeper voice and tattoos, life seems the same. Like, there's no discrepancy between the person I imagined all these years and the one I'm actually looking at. Um, how are you?

00:25:10 Speaker_05
I'm great. I'm doing great. How are you doing?

00:25:14 Speaker_10
I'm doing, you know. Unfortunately, faced with the person I imagined all these years, I suddenly can't remember how to have a conversation. It's like I've lost 20 years of social skills. What's your life?

00:25:34 Speaker_05
Um, my life, well, I, yeah, I don't know. I just do life things, you know. Eat food, go to the grocery store. I've got a dog, you know. Sure. What's your dog's name?

00:25:49 Speaker_10
Ronan. Good. Given that I'm incapable of asking any question more specific than what is your life or who is your dog, Leif takes the lead.

00:26:04 Speaker_05
I've been doing like a lot of activist-y stuff in Tucson and that consumes more of my time than I probably should let it.

00:26:14 Speaker_10
In fact, the nine-day delay Leif asked for was because of his activism. A few weeks earlier, he was at a protest with the Stop Cop City movement when he was tased and slammed against the ground by a police officer.

00:26:28 Speaker_10
He's been recovering from a concussion. At this point, we're 40 minutes into the conversation, and I've somehow managed to avoid asking Leif any questions about eighth grade at all.

00:26:41 Speaker_10
Even though he knows we're here to talk about how much I liked him, bringing up that time still makes me nervous. What do you remember about me?

00:26:52 Speaker_05
Yeah. I, uh, I remember you being very tall and maybe a little awkward, but maybe that's just because of the crush or whatever.

00:27:01 Speaker_10
No, I was awkward.

00:27:02 Speaker_05
Yeah.

00:27:03 Speaker_10
Yeah.

00:27:03 Speaker_05
Like, I know that you told me at some point that you had a crush on me. I have like a vague memory of like, there's like that stairwell Lucia's telling me or something like that, like in the stairwell. Yeah.

00:27:17 Speaker_10
I ramble through my memories of what happened after that stairwell moment. And finally, up to the question that I really came here to ask. You were gonna ask me out on Valentine's Day, but then that never happened. And I don't know why.

00:27:34 Speaker_05
Oof. I'm sorry. Yeah. I don't remember. Like, the Zanga post sounds vaguely familiar.

00:27:46 Speaker_10
Can I send you, because I in fact have these IMs between you and Karina.

00:27:50 Speaker_05
No way.

00:27:51 Speaker_10
Can I email them to you?

00:27:53 Speaker_05
Yeah. See what cringy ass things I have to say.

00:27:57 Speaker_10
Leif mostly reads through the IMs in silence. But at one point, he makes a face and again goes.

00:28:05 Speaker_05
Oof.

00:28:07 Speaker_10
When he's done, he laughs self-consciously.

00:28:09 Speaker_05
All right. Well, that was fun.

00:28:16 Speaker_10
You have no memory of this?

00:28:18 Speaker_05
I don't know. Vaguely, I guess. Like, it's obviously, obviously it happened.

00:28:23 Speaker_10
I mean, yeah, it'd be weird if I typed all this up.

00:28:26 Speaker_05
Yeah. Yeah, it'd be pretty weird.

00:28:29 Speaker_10
What part were you oofing at?

00:28:32 Speaker_05
Oh, just, I mean, don't tell her. I'm not crazy about her, but hey, you know, she likes me. It was just like that. Yikes. I don't really know what happened. Obviously, we didn't date, I don't think. We did not date, no. I totally forgot about that.

00:28:54 Speaker_10
I mean, that would kind of be worse if we did date and it just was gone from your memory.

00:28:58 Speaker_05
Yeah, that'd be real shitty, yeah.

00:29:01 Speaker_10
I mean, like, it seems like you did not like me.

00:29:04 Speaker_05
I do remember you being, like, very funny, but, uh, yeah. I do agree, though. I think I, like, wasn't, like, into you, into you.

00:29:14 Speaker_10
She used the eighth grade parlance. But then, Leif raises a key thing I've been wondering about, the explanation that he gave to Karina at the time, his mysterious health issues.

00:29:31 Speaker_05
I was like very, very, very sick. I was like in the process, essentially, of getting diagnosed with Crohn's disease.

00:29:41 Speaker_10
Crohn's is an autoimmune disease. Leif's intestine was attacking itself, making it hard for him to do basic things like walk or eat. In the years I knew him though, Leif didn't know he had Crohn's. He didn't know what was wrong with him.

00:29:56 Speaker_10
He was just getting worse and worse. It took over two years of waiting rooms and misdiagnoses before he finally got to a doctor who helped him. At that point, he was so sick that the doctor pulled his mom aside to say that she thought Leif might die.

00:30:13 Speaker_10
They immediately admitted him to the hospital, where he stayed for three months. I'm not a monster, so of course I'd never say that I'm happy someone was so ill they almost died. But hearing all this, I can't help but feel kind of relieved.

00:30:35 Speaker_10
Because if Leif was that sick the whole time I knew him, then it wasn't about me not being good enough. There probably just wasn't any space in his brain for dating and crushes at all. So I put this to Leif.

00:30:48 Speaker_05
I for sure had crushes.

00:30:51 Speaker_10
Well, there goes that theory. Can I ask who you had a crush on?

00:30:56 Speaker_05
Yeah, yeah. I know I had a crush on Sorka for a while.

00:31:01 Speaker_10
I was gonna ask you that, actually.

00:31:03 Speaker_05
That's what I always suspected. You got me figured out.

00:31:07 Speaker_10
Serka had shown up at our school one year from Ireland, and all the guys instantly loved her. Somehow in that one year, she dated three or four people. I, as someone who'd never dated anyone, found this profoundly unfair.

00:31:22 Speaker_10
Like, what about the rest of us? In my moments of insecurity, I always used to think, there's no way Leif likes me, because I'm pretty sure he likes Serka.

00:31:33 Speaker_10
So while on the one hand, it's validating to hear that my read was right, on the other hand, it's devastating to hear that my read was right. I move on to my next theory. Do you think that any of it was height-related?

00:31:46 Speaker_05
I don't think so. I don't think so.

00:31:55 Speaker_10
So what was my problem? I asked Leif if I had some defect that prevented him from seeing me romantically. And although he really thinks about it, he can't come up with an answer.

00:32:09 Speaker_05
I'm just trying to think if there has ever been anyone where I'm like, I'd love to date this person, but they've got this defect, you know?

00:32:17 Speaker_10
Who he falls for, Leif says, has always felt beyond words, especially in the eighth grade. Well, how do you feel about talking? Am I freaking you out?

00:32:34 Speaker_05
No, not at all. Not at all. It's fun to catch up and, like, hear what you remember.

00:32:39 Speaker_10
It's really nice to talk to you.

00:32:41 Speaker_05
Yeah, you too, Kaylee. Talk to you soon.

00:32:43 Speaker_10
All right. Talk to you soon. I'd felt good while I was talking to Leif. He was cool and nice, as he'd always been. And yet, as soon as we hang up, I suddenly feel really sad. I sit there for a while, alone in the studio.

00:33:04 Speaker_10
And then, as I always have in times of stress, hello, honey, I call my mom. I fill her in on the conversation and how the only logical conclusion seems to be that yes, I was right. I am in fact undateable.

00:33:22 Speaker_11
Who wouldn't want to date you? You're awesome.

00:33:24 Speaker_10
Thanks.

00:33:26 Speaker_11
And I mean, I know I'm your mother, but that is also true.

00:33:29 Speaker_10
I feel like that's true in terms of like people wanting to like be my friend, but I don't feel like that's true for like dating.

00:33:39 Speaker_11
You feel it not just from when you were younger, but you feel it even now?

00:33:42 Speaker_10
Yeah.

00:33:43 Speaker_11
That makes me feel kind of sad. I'm sorry. Don't be sorry. It makes me feel kind of sad and it makes me feel mad at people that don't see you.

00:34:07 Speaker_10
I don't, yeah, I think I'm having a hard time characterizing it, because I do feel, like, weirdly emotional, but also, like, he was nice and the conversation was good, you know?

00:34:15 Speaker_10
So I don't want it to seem like I thought he was, like, being an asshole or anything, like he wasn't.

00:34:19 Speaker_11
I don't hear that from you at all. I don't hear anything about any judgment about him. Yeah. You trying to piece it together for you. Yeah. Yeah, give yourself a little space.

00:34:39 Speaker_10
I give myself several weeks of space. And then, as I keep trying to piece it together, I decide there's one more person I want to speak with.

00:34:48 Speaker_02
Very excited to talk to you.

00:34:50 Speaker_10
So thanks for being up to do this weird thing.

00:34:53 Speaker_02
Yeah, no, it is weird. And I definitely feel weird about it.

00:34:58 Speaker_10
This is Serka, the Irish girl that Leif, and the rest of the entire fucking class, was into. Because in case it's not weird enough to reach out to my crush after nearly 20 years, why not also reach out to my crush's crush?

00:35:14 Speaker_10
I always suspected he had a crush on you, and he said, yes. Did you know that?

00:35:21 Speaker_03
Jesus like he would like he would like burn CDs for me and stuff. I feel like he also gave me a sticker that said George W Bush is a punk ass chump. So like yeah I had an awareness.

00:35:38 Speaker_10
I want to talk to Sirka because I think of her as the anti-me. Like, here's how Sirka's Valentine's Day went in junior high. She walked up to her boyfriend at the time, holding a Hershey's kiss, and said, do you want this or do you want a real one?

00:35:52 Speaker_10
I want her to tell me how she achieved such romantic success, what she had that I didn't have. I had laid all this out in my initial message to her.

00:36:03 Speaker_03
So I said this to my husband and he was kind of like, well, it's obvious, isn't it? Like you were just new and different. And I think that's exactly it. Like you guys had all been together from the age of two, do you know?

00:36:17 Speaker_03
I literally was just new and different. I honestly think it was that simple.

00:36:21 Speaker_10
I think that's part of it. But I feel like there was something about your personality to like that. I feel like there was some like charisma or like confidence or I don't know.

00:36:31 Speaker_03
I feel like I think that that has got to be fake until you make it, though, doesn't it? Because looking back and looking at the challenge that was laid at my doorstep, I probably just lent in to some kind of confident persona.

00:36:47 Speaker_10
Serka only attended Near North for a single year, and it wasn't an easy transition. Because of her mom's job, she was uprooted at 12 years old and plopped down in a foreign country. Her dad, all her old friends, stayed back in Ireland.

00:37:04 Speaker_10
She remembers the day she came to visit our school for the first time.

00:37:07 Speaker_03
I remember crying and I remember saying, I don't want to go there. My memory isn't of feeling Invincible or anything. Like, quite the opposite. Like... Like... Overwhelmed and shut down, you know?

00:37:24 Speaker_10
It's that sense of panic, Serka thinks, that made her act so confident when she started school with us. It was her way of managing. Still, in the year I knew her, she often felt insecure. And dating didn't make that feeling go away.

00:37:40 Speaker_10
Any way you cut it, boyfriend, no boyfriend. Junior high is hard. Circa tells me she's been married for about a year and a half now. How did you guys meet? We met on Tinder. I'd asked Leif the same question about how he met his partner.

00:38:04 Speaker_05
Actually, through Tinder, we are a Tinder success story.

00:38:08 Speaker_10
I met my boyfriend through Tinder too.

00:38:10 Speaker_05
Nice.

00:38:11 Speaker_10
Serica, Leif, me, even though I always felt like they had some power I lacked, almost two decades later, we all ended up in the same place, living with people we met on Tinder.

00:38:30 Speaker_10
Back when I talked with my friend Karina, I'd asked her what her impression had been of me when we knew each other in junior high.

00:38:36 Speaker_08
Oh my gosh, Kaylee, I adored you. I remember you being very intelligent. You were very funny. I know, like, you were tall.

00:38:50 Speaker_08
Just, you know, at that age, I feel like you always look at everyone else and, like, don't form your confidence or, like, embrace every bit of yourself until later in life. I remember being like, she has so many things going for her.

00:39:06 Speaker_08
I hope that she becomes more confident.

00:39:11 Speaker_10
My past self was tall and awkward, and the boy I liked didn't like me. And all these years later, I'm still tall and still awkward. And I still often feel left behind by romance.

00:39:25 Speaker_10
But then again, the junior high me would never have had the courage to have these conversations at all. So maybe I did become more confident. And some people do want to date me. I'd want to date me.

00:39:41 Speaker_10
These days, I don't think too much about Valentine's Day. It turns out that I don't like being one of those performative couples any more than I liked watching those performative couples. This year, on February 14th, my boyfriend made dinner.

00:39:57 Speaker_10
I did the dishes. Happy Tuesday, he said. Happy Tuesday, I said. Then we watched TV. It was nice.

00:40:39 Speaker_00
Now that the furniture's returning to its goodwill home Now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damage deposit Take this moment to decide If we meant it, if we tried

00:41:15 Speaker_10
This episode of Heavyweight was produced by me, Kalilah Holt, along with Jonathan Goldstein and Phoebe Flanagan. Our supervising producer is Stevie Lane. Production assistance from Mohini Madgaukar.

00:41:26 Speaker_10
Special thanks to Max Green, Flora Lichtman, and Connor Sampson. Editorial guidance from Emily Condon. In the I Am recreation, Carino was played by Regan Dadir, and Leif was played by Jon Klassen.

00:41:37 Speaker_10
Thanks to Greg Holt and Tony John for making that possible. Bobby Lord mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson, Blue Dot Sessions, and Bobby Lord.

00:41:47 Speaker_10
Additional music credits can be found on our website, gimletmedia.com slash heavyweight. Our theme song is by The Weaker Thans, courtesy of Epitaph Records. Heavyweight is a Spotify original podcast.

00:41:57 Speaker_10
Follow us on Twitter at heavyweight, on Instagram at heavyweightpodcast, or email us at heavyweight at gimletmedia.com. You can follow our show on Spotify and tap the bell to receive notifications when new episodes drop.

00:42:10 Speaker_10
We'll be back next week with a new episode.