So in the last episode…
Ma had just learned that, as a mere fifteen-year-old, I’d single-handedly besmirched the family’s reputation by casting decency to the wind and unabashedly ‘making out’ in front of God and all the fans during most of an entire basketball game in the Foxcroft Academy gym. And yes, it was bad enough to do that, but on top of that I’d also rubbed the family’s nose in the dirt by choosing to publicly ‘make out’ with a CATHOLIC!
But hey, I didn’t know she WAS Catholic!
But here’s some biology I had learned in biology that morning:
When you’re the guy, and the damsel in distress just happens to be The Class Hemophiliac of 1964, The One Most Likely to Bleed Out, (the one, by the way, whose finger you pricked in the first place,) and whose hand you were ordered to hold in order to keep her from bleeding out… it turns out you just automatically imprint on her. You know, like the newly-hatched duckling imprints on the first biological entity it encounters.
So: not totally my fault...
“Well, you’ve seen THE LAST OF HER… You KNOW that, right?!” Ma decreed.
LIKE HELL I HAVE! …is what I was thinking. But what I actually mumbled as I shuffled off to bed was, “Well, that’s gonna be difficult considering we do both attend the same small school, plus the fact that we are enrolled in the same science class. So, we’re bound to… you know… mumble mumble mumble… etc.”
“YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT I MEAN!”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
So three things:
(1) I went to bed that night impatient to wake back up the next morning, get myself to school as soon as possible, meet up with Sue, and while away the day meeting her in the hall by her locker and sitting at her table in the cafeteria…
(2) I went to bed marveling at the unexpected magic of having walked to how I’d walked to school that morning as a Pinocchio but returned home after the game as a real boy!
and (3) I went to bed champing at the bit to start getting acquainted with my new self in the morning!
MY NEW SELF!
I mean, I couldn’t get over it: I was no longer ME (thank God). I was an entirely different person! I was a kisser now! It was kinda like that movie The Body Snatchers, if you think about it.
It had literally taken me no time at all. Like learning to swim by having your swim coach just throw you right off the dock, sink or swim.
Why had I ever imagined it was so difficult?
One of the good things about it was that I now had “credentials.” For instance, a couple of episodes ago I’d described how devastated I was when I found I just couldn’t quite dare to make myself take that particular next step (kissing) with my girlfriend at the time. So yeah, I’d got dumped for being “too boring.” But I couldn’t help it. For some reason, I just wasn’t ready.
But… ha-HAH! One evening at the Rec Center that same ex-girlfriend spied me over in a far dark corner of the dance floor making-out like crazy with Sue. So she made it a point to just happen to stroll past us. She stopped for a moment, looked at me with a raised eyebrow, and said, “Well— sure looks like you’ve changed!”
Made. My. Day!
See? Credentials!
God, my adolescence was SO STUPID!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
One of the things that was so bizarre about starting to go out with Sue is that I didn’t know the first thing about her. Nor she about me. Somehow, two strangers, we’d just bonded instantly. Just like that. With one random snick of the biology lab fingertip-nicker instrument (try saying that five times fast). It was like being in one of those speed-dating marathons, only to find you’d found the one you want on the very first go-round. Bang. I was in a hit-and-run ‘relationship’… but with whom?
Because I really had no idea by whom or what I’d just been captured. And yeah, captured is the right word. Because she was the one who’d made the move. Not me.
Her? She was active. Me? Passive as all get out. Her? Bold. Me? Pretty much a mouse. A mouse who’d spent his last three years (passively) praying for a real girlfriend to happen. And then, unexpectedly and ‘magically’… it just had!
Me? A male Cinderella.
And then it turned out she was older than me by almost a year. So apparently we’d just broken the rule that stated girls mature a couple years ahead of boys, so an older girl would never find what she’d be looking for in the likes of me.
Her? A high school ‘cougar’?
What an odd state of affairs.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Immediately we started hanging out together every day after school. Like a lot of the Academy kids, we’d walk the mile from FA down to Lanpher’s Drug store.
We became a thing.
Toward the end of our sophomore year, I got my class ring. I chose the gold, with the onyx stone. And of course I loved and cherished it. So much so that I just couldn’t wait to give it away. I immediately had to ask Sue to go steady with me. And she said yes!
So, before long the cryptic initials “S. D.” & “T. L.” began showing up all through the pages of that gossip rag they tried to pass off as a school newspaper.
Yeah. And I remember the rest of that school year with Sue seeming to fly by in a blur, like one of those 1940s’ black-and-white-nightlife movie montages. You’ve seen them, in those movies where your country-bumpkin main character somehow gets discovered by a talent scout, leaves his little-one-horse-town-farm-values behind, only to get corrupted in Hollywood. And then you view his downward spiral into the dark hell of Tinsel Town’s carnival of wild parties, sex, and drugs depicted as a rapid succession of images set to a dizzying, jazzy soundtrack: the neon signs depicting champagne glasses, scenes of taxi cabs pulling up to nightclubs and casinos, burlesque beauties, those successive calendar pages flying off the wall…
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Hey, guess what! One day Sue got her driver’s license. She was ecstatic. Of course, I was happy, too. This meant we could go out on some dates.
But there was a bit of a dark side for me. Namely, it left me feeling pretty embarrassed. To, you know, have Sue always pulling up in our driveway and tooting the horn, letting me know that she was sitting out there waiting on me. I mean, it was supposed to be the other way around. Traditionally, the guy was supposed to be the one doing that. So I couldn’t help feeling kind of creepy about it. I mean, what self-respecting boy wants to be a ‘kept man”?
But hey! It wouldn’t be too long before I got my license as well, would it. Just a matter of weeks. Then things would be alright. Yeah, then. I had to keep telling myself that. And telling myself that. And telling myself that…
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Hey, and guess what else happened! One day I……… flunked MY driver’s test.
(There’s an interesting story about how I flunked that test, but I’ll save it for another time.)
I was not ecstatic. I was depressed. Deeply.
That meant weeks more of waiting before I could get another shot at it. Weeks that would feel like months of going through the continued ignominy of waiting for the beep of Sue’s horn in the driveway. Weeks of those old bag, busybody neighbors of mine all thinking to themselves:(tsk tsk!) There’s that brash, wild girlfriend of his again!
God, how I hated to have to tell her I flunked it. God, how I hated how my life stunk. Sue was obviously sad about it too, although she covered that up pretty well. But I knew I’d failed her. Along with myself. I felt nervous and unsure about what the unexpected lack of a license would mean about our going steady.
And I felt like a little damn kid!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I guess our dates must not really have amounted to much. I mean besides that first, all-important, make-out marathon of our ‘basketball’ date, I can’t really remember any other one with any clarity at all. With one exception. Which was a dance, right at the end of our sophomore year, in June.
The departing seniors had rented the Legion Hall for their good-bye party. Anybody could attend though. We were both pumped to go, despite my excitement having been dampened by the ongoing shame of having to once again wait on Sue’s horn out in the driveway.
It was an impressive dance, DJ’d by one of their own class members. There were refreshments and decorations. But there’s really one reason why this one stands out in my memory as much as it does.
A very popular couple (a senior boy and his steady girlfriend, a girl from our sophomore class) got into a big argument, apparently the last one of many before. And although none of us wanted it to happen, we watched them break up right then and there in front of us! That cast a pall over the rest of the evening. It was like a lot of us were part of an unofficial imaginary fan club of this couple, and when they broke it off it seemed to affect us all. I will always remember it as such a dark, really sad affair…
I remember really wondering just how awful such a break-up like that would feel. And I guess, you know… me with no license and all, I was worrying about the longevity of mine and Sue’s relationship as well. Because Sue had started hinting around, every once in a while, about maybe going out to California to live. But I was so into us that I couldn’t believe she really meant it.
At the same time, though, she seemed to remain perfectly OK about me not having my license yet. So, I wasn’t too worried. And besides, right up till July, we were still going strong.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Right about then, my younger cousin, Freddy, invited me to accompany him and his parents to travel down through the White Mountains of New Hampshire for a week-long visit with an uncle of his. I had serious second thoughts about going, as I really wasn’t too keen about leaving Sue. But somehow I got talked into it.
Heck, it would only be for a week, so that wasn’t so bad, really.
And I ended up having such a wonderful time on that trip. Freddy and I got golf lessons from his old man before we hit the greens at a professional 18-hole golf course. And then he smuggled us into the large Rockingham Park racetrack where we got to bet on the horses, even though we were underage. A number of memorable and entertaining things kept us hopping throughout the entire week we spent down there.
One REALLY memorable thing, however, occurred the minute we got back home.
Several friends of mine couldn’t wait to tell me the news: Sue had started going out with another guy! I couldn’t believe it. I just didn’t want to believe it. So I refused to believe it, you know? But then when one of those friends delivered back into my hands my class ring, I fell apart. I was crushed!
Sue had broken up with me. And without a word. Without even a good-bye. Without even giving me my ring back herself! Without giving me a reason.
Of course if I hadn’t been half-head-over-heels-blind, I could’ve seen it coming from a mile away. There are none so blind as those who will not see, yadda-yadda. She really had been making plans to go to California all along. Of course she had.
And she was older than me, even though not by much. So… there was that rule cropping up once again, the one about girls developing a couple of years ahead of us. I wonder how we lasted so long actually.
And then too, it (once again) had much to do with my old nemesis: my “boring” quality. And by that, I’m referring to me developing physically, emotionally (and sexually) in the slower (if not the break-down) lane. After having gotten comfortable with hugging and cuddling with my last girlfriend, I’d really only added a single step forward in this latest relationship. And that was kissing. And only kissing. I mean, even though from my point-of-view I’d been feeling I was beltting home runs out of the park with Sue, I wasn’t. I’d actually never even gotten to see what was on the other side of second-base.
Boring-again-me.
We’d gone together for a few months. Making-out right to the end. But apparently it was really just puppy love I’d been experiencing. However, it had felt like love to me. So…
I had a hard reality to face. She was just… gone. Totally. It was like she had stopped existing on this planet. And what did I do? How did I react?
By retiring to my bedroom, that’s how. And I didn’t want to come out, ever again. I just wanted to stay there lying in my bed for the rest of my life. I didn’t want to eat. Didn’t want to talk. Didn’t care if I ever got my license or not.
What was the point? Life was just bad.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
OK. Spoiler alert. This is where I’m going to go maudlin on you. Because… well, don’t you think maudlin is called for in a scenario like this.
You’ve been warned.
A box of tissues is suggested…
You ready?
Ae you sure? Here I go.
A couple of weeks slogged by. And during that whole time, I had one, single “friend,” and one “friend” only— one single “person” in the entire universe who seemed to understand not only me, but the misery I was going through…
That’s right…
I pretty much had his complete works right there in my room— well, his complete works up to that point in his career, anyway.
But let me tell you… that man sang to me straight from my record player and the heart. All day and all night long. Letting me know that, not only did he know what I was going through, but that he was going through exactly the same thing himself, right along with me.
Yes, “Cry, Cry, Cry,” “There You Go,” “Home of the Blues,” “I Still Miss Someone”— all those heart-grinding songs, so many of them. But… the one he seemed to have written exclusively just for me (the one that sang The Sad Story of My Sad, Sad Heart during those doggone, lonesome, blue weeks of my bedroom pity-party) was one that had a ring of acceptance about it, one that seemed to offer a tough-love, healing philosophy:
“Guess Things Happen That Way.”
Here. Take a listen for yourself. You’ll see what I mean:
Yeah, me and Johnny. Johnny and me. We understood each other. And he was working so hard to get me through the darkness. I mean, nobody wants to go through it alone.
Yeah, Johnny and I go way back.
And all I can say is… thanks, man.
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