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By Rhetoric Date: 2001 Oct 11 Comment on this Work [[2001.10.11.12.33.3755]] |
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No sparks flew, no ignition fire; just a couple mid-pubescent kids on a stroll through life in Small Town, USA. The running joke, laced with heredity and ethnic association - three Jews, a Catholic, and an Agnostic walk out of a synagogue... the beginnings of a tacky Penthouse one-liner? This was us - our little group of ambitious and worthwhile teens who shared Bat Mitzvahs and Boones Farm Strawberry Hill. You were the leader... always stepping up for a cause and Saviour of our humanity. We marched on Washington (Gay and Lesbian Rights), we held tearful vigils (for Holocaust Victims), rallied the troops for the first female Governor of this great state (Somebody Pritt?), saw Dylan and Arlo, and ranted about you (too liberal and not nearly practical enough) and me (the token Republican with a warm heart for social causes). Time limped ahead and soon Jr. High turned to Sr. and three Jews turned two and one social activist, a Catholic became drunk or lost in the visuals of acid heaven, and the Agnostic - well, he just watched it all from his Mommas pool. Two schools and one small, green bridge away, our lives filled with boys and girls and drugs and sex and love and essays and cars and music and French during 4th period. We still met up and rehearsed life on the weekends - some weekends. Summers were our time to be the 5 again, which turned to 10 or 12 depending on who's house we were at. Then, the end o' summer-time extravaganza rolls around and one last blast must be made before school really got rolling - The Sternwheel Regatta! Dripping August nights spent in front of the Holiday Inn - it got no better for a 17 year old with a cheap buzz and thousands of uninterested fans rockin' to Tiny Tim (We do things slower here in West Virginia). The stage was set for 'The First Kiss'. This kiss was a telling sort, loaded with urgent need and resolution of a former life. This kiss had been coming for years - 3 to be precise. However, to a teen, three years screamed eternity. I loved that kiss, sad that it couldn't go deeper in that restaurant bathroom (seedy tricks to fill lemonade cups with vodka in bathrooms). I never spoke a word and you seemed to forget its power. Although, I never forgot the cupid line of your lips and the way you touched my hair. Once again, time drew a line - you to school in New York and dreams of writing, me - to a different Small Town, USA to study boys. I did well at my chosen curriculum. I met, swooned, fussed at, cried over, had two 'oops, I think I am pregnant' confirmations, and developed one bad reputation for dating a Black football linebacker. I dare say that we merely exchanged hugs and sweet nothings at holidays and funerals. You lost your mother and somewhere, we all lost you - I lost the boy I knew and loved. Enter: time and our twenties. School is winding down and I am back home to care for my sick mother. My life was mess and yours was just beginning. Another funeral and 2 hours spent in a childhood home brought us to here. Here we sit in my car wondering if you should come into my downtown apartment and stay the night. Here we sit kissing, then proclaiming it ' a bad idea'. What is a girl to do with 8 years of love (lust if you set the right lighting) for a boy, who is looking and feeling more like a man than she ever thought possible. Your braces were gone and my legs finally caught up with my ass. Here we sit wondering if IT will be as good as we always dreamed. You are still a Jew, and I am religions away from my former existence - yet we made this night of agony our confirmation. You did come inside and stay the night, and the next. I pretended this was only one of those things - you know those things that happen when people forget what else to do. I will never be the virtuous poet you seek, and you will never relax long enough for me to show you how funny I can be; this much is known. What was not known is the best part - that, that you can go back and make right a moment that was all wrong. We had a 5 rushed minutes in a Subway bathroom that desperately needed to be 3 months, in an "A" Frame on a mountain. So we did meet each others adult personas and become acquainted. We spent hours reading verse and listening to Robert Johnson. I began to realize that we could be close and intimate, without the sex and vegetarian meals cooked over a fire. That, dear boy, is where I leave you - perfect and untarnished in my drab box of lost loves. May 1998 |