Cupcake Crushing Charlie

In the 1980s, there was a CRUSH soda commercial that I secretly loved. I suppose that was the point of the marketing campaign. As I recall (and my memory here may be faulty) there are two brothers who are on their way to the big brother’s soccer game. Big brother gives little brother the bottle of CRUSH and cautiously tells him, “Don’t drink it.” Of course, it is a hot day and the bottle holding the orange soda is dripping with perspiration from the ice cold refrigerator from which it was just grabbed. Big brother is working up a sweat on the field while little brother is working up a sweat on the sidelines as he flirts with the possibilities of the glass bottle. His desire and curiosity get the best of him and he surrenders to the craving by having one sip. And then another. And finally he chugs the entire drink. The soccer game ends, sweaty big brother comes over to little brother (who has just wiped his mouth with the back of his hand with a big exhale of satisfaction) and asks about the whereabouts of his CRUSH. Poor big brother, we think, but we feel gratified because we just experienced little brother’s bliss.

And more importantly, young Erin experienced her first crush.

There’s a similar scene in “Once Upon A Time in America” (which I have just recently watched…twice)when twelve year old Patsy buys a frosted cupcake for a girl. It is intended to be in exchange for sex. When he arrives at the apartment in the tenement, he knocks on her door and the girl’s mother answers by telling him that the she is in the bath and he has to wait in the hallway for a few minutes. Over the course of the next two minutes, we watch his fierce internal battle as he sits on the stairs undressing his cupcake. First the string tied around its packaging is undone. Then he lifts off all edges of the parchment paper, smoothing them down so that the cupcake is standing alone in the middle of a floor of white. Every 20 seconds, he glances from the closed apartment door back to the naked cupcake. He picks the cherry off the top and places it in his mouth. After that he dips his index finger in the frosting and licks it off impetuously. Another glance at the apartment door and his face lowers to the cupcake. He picks it up and takes the biggest possible bite and without swallowing finishes it off with a second bite. He chews it and licks every digit that has touched it. As he begins to crinkle up the parchment paper, out steps the freshly bathed girl who asks what he wants. Patsy says that he’ll come back tomorrow.

Patsy had a cupcake crush. And 30 year old Erin had a crush on twelve year old Patsy.

Patsy and the CRUSH little brother are bookends to a library of innocent and unrequited crushes. Charlie McDermott was my first real live crush. He had a crew cut, wore glasses, and had three older sisters. All of these factors were important: I thought he was athletic, smart, and sympathetic. He kicked homeruns during kickball in gym class, he was in the small reading group with me, and he was nice to the girls when the rest of the boys thought we had the “cooties.” It was 1983 and during Mrs. Wilson’s second grade class year when I discovered Charlie’s flaw.

The advanced reading group was meeting across the hall with Mrs. McGee and in our book, there was a section about ballet. It was my first year in “The Nutcracker” and this was well-known to my classmates, so “we” were very excited to be reading this section about ballet. At our small table, one person would read a paragraph aloud and then the person to their left would continue. Today, Charlie began the section and he pronounced ballet: “ball-ett.” I was mortified. I was also shy, so I could not broadcast the feeling. Instantaneously, Charlie secretly tumbled down into the ranks of smelly second grade boys. Clearly, he wasn’t smart and having older sisters didn’t really make a difference. From that day forward, I continued to enjoy his kickball glory and appreciate his academic competitive edge (we often compared math scores) but my crush was officially crushed. Charlie and I went to school together from kindergarten through sixth grade and 20 years later, members of my extended family continue to ask about “Charlie McDermott.”