He met the love of his life in 1986, four decades later he set out to find her, and everything ended unexpectedly: “I don’t know you”

First loves leave an indelible mark that time can’t erase. Some romances outshine anything we see on the big screen, yet they don’t always have a future or a happy ending. That was the case for Carrie and Bautista — two Argentinians who fell in love in their twenties but whose paths had to part, as Bautista recounted to Infobae four decades later.

They began a secret affair after meeting by chance in 1986 at Bamboche, a nightclub in the Flores neighborhood. “She was a total knockout,” Bautista says, recalling her as tall, with light brown hair and green eyes. He, four years younger than her, asked her to dance — and she said yes. Then came the kiss. “And what a kiss! You know that feeling when everything inside you shifts? No doubt, it was the best first kiss of my life.”

But afterward, she confessed it was her first time going out — she was engaged and had three children to take care of. “I’m not looking for anything, but you’re a good guy,” she told him. He didn’t care. They kept seeing each other often.

Bautista, knowing the relationship had no future, still tried to move on. He met Mariana, a librarian from Villa Urquiza, and they had a son ten years later. “I would’ve wanted it all with her,” he says now, acknowledging that the story with Carrie had never really ended. One day, he tried to surprise Carrie by going to her house, but she had moved without telling him. It was her sister — the same one who had been with her that night at the club — who years later, after bumping into Bautista on the street, told him that Carrie had separated from her partner.

She gave him Carrie’s new address, and they met again. But by then, Bautista was engaged. Not long after, in the summer of 1988, she said goodbye for good: “I’m getting back together with the father of my kids. We can’t see each other anymore.” But in Bautista’s mind, at least, it wasn’t the end.

The ending

He never stopped thinking about her. “It wasn’t something I could control. Everything reminded me of her. There was a chocolate commercial they used to play all the time, and the woman in it looked just like my Carrie. Every time I saw it, I imagined holding her again,” he says.

At 62, after having moved to a new city, he went to get new glasses — and thought he saw her. That stirred everything up inside him again, and he decided to search for her. He tried social media but had no luck. So, he hired a private detective agency at a considerable cost. They eventually gave him an address and a phone number.

He waited near her house many times, but never caught a glimpse of her. He sent her a WhatsApp message — no response. So, he decided to write her a letter and leave it under the door.

That did get a reaction — but not the one he was hoping for:“What do you want? I don’t know you. Don’t come back to my neighborhood. This is harassment.”

And they did not live happily ever after.

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