... everybody writes about high school from stephen king, diablo cody, john
hughes, lucy montgomery , susie bertie
everyone at some time writes about high school.
poems full of angst & drama, teen romance & pregnancy and the whole square
peg/round hole thing.
i wanted to write something different.
not revisit the same old song
& dance
impossible task & good luck with that !!
for me .... high school began with a walk ...
a walk by about 5 or 6 of us girls across the empty lot south of the junior high
... a lot used by the football team to practice. a lot, that on this day was
being played upon by about 7 or 8 guys, playing football or some close relative
of said sport.
sorta knew them, sorta didn't.
most went to different grade schools and maybe madison junior high - regardless
.... we sort of converged there on that empty lot and some ancient prophecy was
lit, some cosmic alchemy completed - as from that moment on ...
high school began.
relationships that would last forever loosely began to weave in & out of our
dewey-skinned adolescent lives leaving us stranded and
bound by loyalty & friendship.
the other event that marked a change for me was when bill walked into music
class and i swore to god, i had never laid eyes on a more beautiful boy. there
was no hope. no one else held a candle to his allure & hot teen boyness.
yup. lost forever. he went on to date one of my best friends, and even then,
bill rarely spoke to me, rarely even noticed my existence.
by that time, i hardly cared.
the stupid fantasies of him were forgotten - bull-dozed flat by the attentions
of others
but at that exact moment in time, in that late afternoon lame, ridiculous music
class ....
high school began.
throughout school, i always wanted to be one of those girls .... you know....
those girls whose knee socks stayed up.
really up.
right under their knee. yup. smooth and tight, fully fleshed out with round
calves and beautiful, knit socks going all the way up to that bend & crease in
the leg.
mine ?
not so lucky.
if i could keep mine up for half of the day without yanking them
skywards - well, i was happy. they preferred to slip slowly and annoying down my
not so plump and meaty calf and pool around my skinny ankle .....
fantastic.
and
stupid looking. not cool.
yes, i wanted to be one of those girls ...... nancy , sally , anna and some
girl whose name i don't recall but who was ( of course ) a cheerleader and had
dark, long hair and perfect socks.
a couple years later as i headed into my senior year, i would go to europe with
a group from high school and 2 of those girls - anna & sally would
befriend me throughout the trip - thinking i was cooler then the others?
smarter???
no, i just think by then, my socks stayed up.
ya' know, a year or so after graduation while sitting in a bar in lincoln, some
underclassman came up to me and was all - ooo-aww !
you're bertie - ohmygod - you were so popular in school !!!!!
fuck, if i had only known then.
never was a cheerleader, though i often would try out with friends just to
fill a space, take up a line .... don't know if i didn't want to loose, or if i
didn't want the attention - some hybrid of the two !?
had more fun watching games then actually doing something at them. early on in
my high school career won some random kissing contest with tim during a football
game, and it became the stuff of legend & urban myth.
i had my first formal introduction to bowling green during a football game, must
have been a varsity game as all the guys of our particularly little circle, were
sitting behind us.
b.g. suddenly stuck his freezing cold hands down the back of my shirt and i was
lost .... lost to his hands & his eyes
probably ..... and as that story played out, lost in his ghosts, addictions,
lies and the holes in his heart ahhh well.......
bg & i had one perfect moment with a whole lot of misplaced moments thrown in
....... the perfect moment was on the side of my house one night after his dad
had died .... and we had real, grown up conversation and it was scary & real &
poignant.
shit, i didn't know what poignant was at that age,
but i knew that i had won the
high school lottery as there where so many mystical, pure breath-taking moments
that it was then
that i began to feel different, alien in some respects.
does everyone feel as alive as i do????
am i some alien being fallen to earth as some gangly teenage blonde girl ?
why do i dream of flying?
why do i love so fiercely ?
why does it hurt so bad and
why are colors so bright & vivid ?
conversations with brewer where mature and phenomenal - no one ever really knew
that we talked almost every nite, until that girl got in the way and turned him into
something resembling a stranger.
and then .... there was being with darcy. why those times seemed to stand apart
from all the rest,
i don't know.
we seemed to be some truer self when we were
together, something separate and evolved, existing in some space between.
lessons in sex & james bond were
the bones of our relationship
building a connection that prevailed & existed
with much laughter & mischievous behavior on both our parts
ahhh..... girlfriends mattered, but i tended to hold myself apart a bit.
except for slames. things were easy with her.
and she was as boy-crazy as i though our greatest times were usually spent
getting high while bike riding or laying on her brother's bunkbeds listening to
elton john's goodbye yellow brick road ......
we were sure of one another & fit
however ....
i always seemed to be, maybe, a tad too much for the others to handle or understand
sometimes, i was the an article of convenience for meanness & separateness.
maybe i was too skinny, too blond .... but i always knew when this was the game.
i remember sitting around the dining room table with a group of
discussing something round-hole-like ,
while i sat there studying the recently carved " d " on my right
bicep.
yup. i always felt a little outside-the-lines.
slumber party's were treasured times :: no rules applied, stolen liquor was
usually involved and honey typically got poured into my pants .
for me, the best part of sleeping over at someone's house, was the wee hour of
the morning walk, we would sneak out around 3 o'clock in the morning and walk
past all the guy's houses .....
eventually to wind up at the football field as dawn broke.
good times.
stealing my folks car ... yeah well how wrong is THAT !!!
hours spent just riding around together .....
the whole tribe .......
down barren country roads, out to the lake, out to that haunted house
listening to music, laughing, making out, smoking weed, drinking - ahh high school.
always really believedi would one day marry bay.
yup. felt destined somehow and right .
when we broke up, he began seeing toad-girl , i thought i might truly die.
god, i hated her.
bay and i always the best time together.
- never had sex though ...
i know, i know ... hard to believe !
some mutual friend once told me that he was afraid he'd hurt me. kinda sweet
that.
the most notable space of time with bay was at richardson's party, was that graduation ?
found bay passed out on the floor of a trailer parked in the stable, we
continued into the stable, saddled up a horse and rode him up far into the
hills
we laid on the ground & watched stars for a couple hours,
eventually heading back just before dawn.
of course, toad-girl was crazy mad and well ..... fuck her.
it was pretty cool.
high school was pretty cool actually
and i do believe i won the lottery on the whole experience.
i still want to know why i dream of flying ....
why are colors so vivd & bright and
why do things hurt so much, and other things
feel so fucking good .
