Cupid's Arrow

Good morning and welcome to Thursday Thoughts. Today, we’re featuring Paige Etheridge and her tale Kissing Stars Over the Rising Sun.
When Cupid’s Arrow Injected Me with Geek Love
I was eighteen and crushing hard on a communist.
My parents were getting divorced at the time, so I was feeling pretty weird about romantic relationships in general. I was dating one guy with a black belt and hooking up with a violinist. Neither were serious, I kept everything physical at PG-13 or lower, and I didn’t break any hearts when either ended. I was pretty secretive about both of them, they were older and outside of my main circle, so no one at my school knew about them. Meanwhile I was crushing hard on my high school’s Salutatorian; MIT admitted with a voice like caramel.
He was out of my league, which still mattered in high school, and not my normal type. When I was a teenager I was stupid enough to be into the Hamlet personalities. Besides that were the skaters and artists. My two best friends at the time thought I had terrible taste in men, and this jonesing for a nerd who was also a self-proclaimed communist was my worst choice of all. “You find a pale geek wearing glasses hot, why? Why aren’t you going with hot older black belt?” But I wanted him anyway.
I was listening to Fan 3’s “Geek Love” like crazy. Though I promise, the guy I was crushing on was way cooler than the guy in the song. I played it on repeat mostly because it caught the feeling of being smitten by a guy outside of my normal type.
As many people do in high school, I responded to my friend’s qualms through song lyrics:
“They try to act hard now pretend like they floss,We’ll see who’s laughin’ when my geek is their boss.”
This is also what inspired me to try my first love spell. My new religion, I converted to Taoist at seventeen, was cool with magic, and there’s a sect which used it themselves. Though the magic was too advanced for me and I ended up having freaking dreams that night.
I did manage to get his screen name after that, back when AIM was huge among teenagers. I know I didn’t get it from him; probably from a friend of mine who was actually in his honors classes. This led to a few buttery conversations with him online. He told me about the free lasik he was getting from a doctor he worked for. I asked him about communism. He told me more about his plans for the future. I talked to him about my recent upgrade to black belt as well as making it into my dream college. At least he thought me getting into my exclusive writing program was cool. I was thrilled to see that his own writing was rich as caramel, not matter the topic.
I finally asked him to tutor me in math. He did. He brought up getting pizza with me after. It felt like a date, but to this day I’m still pretty sure it wasn’t. Not much happened beyond breaking down equations and Italian food.
On Valentine’s Day, I worked up the nerve to tell him how I felt through AIM. Unsurprisingly, I was kindly turned down. My awkward Valentine’s Day got worse. While I was still recovering from the blow, two other guys signed on to AIM and admitted to having feelings for me. The feelings weren’t mutual. At least I still had the violinist and hot black belt. Still, this continued my theory Valentine’s day was a cursed for me whether I was single or not.  -Paige Etheridge


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Blurb
Emerging from the ashes of Post WWII Japan, the Pan Pan were born. Transforming themselves into the antitheses of what Japanese women were supposed to be; they were the loud, vulgar, and independent lovers of the American GIs occupying their land. For many of these Women of the Night, it became more about pleasure and riches than survival; burning brightly for a few years before being wiped out by the Japanese themselves. Nearly erased from history for being too wild.
This is the story of one of these women.
Her name is Miyako.



About Paige Etheridge
A voice has been inside Paige since she was young to write stories. She remained conflicted about this until her teenage years which is when she finally embraced it. She graduated from SUNY Purchase’s highly selective Lily Lieb Port Writing Program with a dual degree in history and creative writing. After that, she freelanced for several publications, including Inked Magazine, mostly writing about MMA and alternative culture. She’s a black belt in Shaolin Kempo Karate, a Piscesan, and an Athenian descendant. She lives with her husband Scott and dog Athena near Virginia Beach.

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