If you've been following me, even peripherally, on Facebook then you will know that I have a completely unreasonable, uncontrollable crush on this guy:
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| Peeta Mellark from the Hunger Games a.k.a. Josh Hutcherson |
First crush: tween years
The first guy I remember seeing in a movie and thinking "wow, he could be my boyfriend" was Erik von Detten who played Andy "Brink" Brinker from the TV Disney Movie Brink.
I think I was about 12 or so when this happened. It was a such a horrible, horrible movie about a surfer from CA moving to CO and learning to snowboard. While he's doing this, he meets a girl (duh) who's a skiier so this rivalry arises between the
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| Is it too harsh to say he looks kind of like a sex offender? |
Ultimate Hot Guy: teen years
Fortunately he only stuck around long enough to make it into one of my stories before he was replaced by a real-life guy crush and one that has held my "ultimate hot guy status" pretty much exclusively since. I have no picture as this was a real-life guy and I never talked to him to profess my undying love for him. However, let me tantalize you with a description of him from my novella Love in the Time of Zombies:
"The man...I have been contemplating him since last night. He just stands there, on the platform, dark and brooding. (...) He stands about six feet tall and wears his long blond hair in a braid. A black fedora tops off his outfit of a suit jacket and jeans. He seems to be packing at least a few guns, the shotgun I noticed earlier and a couple of handguns, for good measure. A long knife also hangs off his belt, unsheathed. Maybe he thinks it makes him look menacing? Occasionally he turns to look around at the crowd, as if searching for someone, and occasionally he fires – the gunshots reflecting in his mirrored sunglasses. "
Let me set the scene: It's 1999, I'm in my second semester of freshman year at Boulder High, and I'm kneeling at my bottom locker trying to fight through the legs of the sophmores and juniors to get my books. When I stand up and turn to walk down the hall I see him: Tall (in my memory he had to be like 6'5''), long blonde hair (down to his waist or even his ass), pale skin, dressed in black, goth dude - flipping his hair in slow-mo (seriously this memory is kind of like a porn) as he swings his (black) backpack over one shoulder. I remember just standing there as people pushed past me. Later I come to learn that his name is August and he is a senior (I think), but that he has a girlfriend. Well goddammit. That was pretty much the end of that. I think I did end up hanging out with the same group of people as he did, but as he was a senior and I was at first way too shy and then later way too distracted/oblivious to talk to or notice him, I never got to know him even as a friend. I don't even know if it really was the guy named August but there you have it.
Even today, the male main characters I write about have part of him in them and I save most of the bad-assery and womanly talents for these guys. He first appeared on paper in my Sparks novella as a fire wizard guy and then later in Love in the Time of Zombies (working title) as the main dude with the giant gun and the fedora. He also became the leader of my fictional band Senz'Ale, and took part in various other ridiculous roles. I never even drew him for fear that my (lack of) skill wouldn't do him justice. The weird thing is that this guy was not my type as long hair on guys usually makes me twitch (probably b/c guys can't do hair) but apparently in Lyndsie fantasy-land it's as nice as girls'.
The Dry Spell: Early College
After that there wasn't much in the way of fantasy guys for a while. I think I was hoping to find a real guy who was like he was from fantasy. In early collge, there was this wizard-in-training guy named Warren from one of Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth novels (I think) but those books started sucking horribly so I abandoned them with little remorse.
Sophisticated Guy Crush: Late College/Grad School
Then in late college I found Simon from Firefly. I literally could not watch the show without sighing tiny little teen-girl sighs.
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| Simon in the first episode of Firefly |
And holy god doctor, where the hell did you get those biceps?
You can tell that I still think he was a pretty good choice.
The End: Adulthood
Adulthood is the time where teen-girl fantasy men come to die. At this point you are "all grown up" with a career, a car payment, a co-habiter and in a lot of cases, a husband. Somehow sleep and laundry become higher priority than pining and brooding for hours on your computer over a chat box with a guy who claims he role-plays Simon Tam or some other fantastical Romeo. However, inside every woman, a teenage voice is struggling to be heard and that part of us somehow still wishes we were single and in high school, before the corruption and the betrayal and heartbreak. I don't understand this as romance in high school and that uncertainty really sucked for me, but there you have it. Maybe we all wish we could go back because we know the phase won't last forever, but the thought of being that free again has a silver lining. And as long as we're even slightly aware of pop-culture, we will find some adorable face that will make us secretly *squee*.
A year or so ago, I had a passing crush interest on Vincent Nigel-Murray, the cutie British intern on the TV Show Bones with a head full of detailed but useless facts.
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| How is that face not the cutest? |
Stills just don't do him justice, you need to have him with the face and the mannerisms and the adorable accent all rolled into one.
Now, this will be a spoiler so if you're like me and haven't gotten to season 6 of the Bones DVDs your parents gave you for Christmas then you may want to skip this next paragraph. In searching for pictures and cute videos of him, I found out on the Bones Wiki that he dies at the end of season 6 by being shot in the aorta (yes they're that specific). How sad is that? I think that made my crush on him just a little bigger....Anyway...
Vincent Nigel-Murray was the last one before this new Peeta Mellark phase.
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| Whether he's trying to be the 16yo from the movie or the 19yo he is in real life, he's just way too ripped for comfort. |
Then there's Peeta...oh Peeta...you were such a nice guy throughout all three Hunger Games books even when you lost your leg and Katniss was a total bitch to you, jerked on your heartstrings, repeatedly left you for Gale, tried to kill you, refused to kill you...You were nice to everyone in the books, including Gale, and you were completely selfless but not in any sniveling, whining or self-deprecating way. You refused to be beaten down even when you should've totally just given in to sweet, sweet death. And you also saved Katniss from killing herself and ending her own miserable life (intentionally or un- ) more time times than I can count. Suzanne Collins has, in fact, created the ultimate man crush.
And damn you, Josh Hutcherson, you played Peeta to a T with your carefree smile and the complete ease at which you slipped into the character from the book. This was the combination for the perfect storm and it is wreaking havoc on grown women and teen-girls everywhere. Curse you! This is a time when I'm supposed to be slipping more into adulthood and the land of monogamous, fulfilling, mutually beneficial relationships that involve house shopping, family activities and meal-planning. Maybe I know, that in my final months as a widely-known single girl, that I'm allowed only one more fan-girl following. And I believe that I have chosen well.
(And seriously, internet, stop with the fuckin' bread references. I'm certain that 99% of you making these jokes haven't read the book. You just don't get it. Srsly. It's annoying.).
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