The Boys of My Youth (26 page)

Renee finishes my hair and asks if she should braid it. A vote is taken: two for the braid, two for leaving it down. I throw
my vote in with leaving it, we do some last-minute adjustments, and then, making Janet go first because she has confidence,
we step through the front door and into the farmhouse.

The living room walls are painted black and the furniture consists of a sprung couch with no cushions, an old dentist’s chair,
a black-light pole lamp, and a giant stereo system. Right now a guy named Dave is changing the album. Like a priest performing
the sacrament, he kneels before the altar and removes the record from its sleeve. Holding the edges and blowing softly on
it, he sets it on the turntable, moves the needle into place, and gently drops it. Deafening sound ensues.

Except for one guy named Bob, all the guys who live here are named either Steve or Dave, all have ponytails of varying lengths,
and all worship Ted Nugent. They refer to him as Ted and speculate on his whereabouts constantly. They’re a year or so older
than us, high school graduates who are busy amounting to nothing. We all have crushes on one or another of them. Mine is in
the kitchen right now, mixing up a concoction of lemonade and Everclear. He’s a sweet-faced Steve with a charming personality
and a massive drinking problem. He hardly ever notices me, but when he does I think I’m going to die. “Here,” he says, handing
me a plastic cup of potion. I take a sip and try not to shudder. It tastes like sugar-flavored eau de cologne. “Hey, that’s
good,” I respond brightly. I’m working on having a better personality.

“Ted here yet?” he asks me.

“Uh, no,” I reply. He wanders into the living room and I wait a second, then follow him.

Elizabeth and Janet are sitting on the funky couch reading album covers. Renee is on the floor, cross-legged, smoking a cigarette
with her eyes closed. No sign of Carol. I look around. One of the Steves is missing as well. I drink some more of my medicine.

The music is so loud that the sound is distorted. I want to turn it down slightly, but I don’t dare. It is an unspoken rule
that girls don’t touch stereo equipment. When the record ends there is a sudden leaden silence that rings almost as loudly
as the music. Everyone looks startled and uncomfortable. A Dave gets up and pads over in his sock feet to put something else
on. A different Dave loads a bong and passes it to his right. Someone switches off the regular light and switches on the black
light. This is a relief for those of us who are worried about how we look; now everyone is equal, with velvety faces, lavender
teeth and eyes.

The weed is laced with PCP; after two hits I feel like I’m in a hammock on the top deck of a gently rolling ocean liner. I
stretch out on my back, using a stack of magazines for a pillow, and crawl inside the music. My head is an empty room, painted
white, with high vaulted ceilings. There is a long beat of silence and then the sound of alarm clocks going off. I sit in
a straight-backed chair in the middle of my head. Suddenly there is the pinging of a cash register and the sound of coins
falling. I open my eyes briefly and see the rapt faces of the other revelers, the purple-toothed smile of a nodding Dave.
I retreat back to the dark side of the moon. Money changes hands, guitars echo off the white walls.

When I come to it’s some time later, there are more people around, blue-jeaned legs step over me from time to time. I like
the party from this angle. Eventually my favorite Steve comes in and sits on the floor next to my head. He has another cup
of poison for me. “You missed Ted,” he hollers into my ear. In
honor of trying to have a better personality, I make a disappointed face.

Although there are girls present, none of them seem to be my friends. “Where’s Elizabeth?” I mouth to him. He leans in and
puts his lips, then his tongue, to my ear. I pull my head away. “She’s occupied,” he yells, and gestures toward a closed door.
When I ask where everybody else is he shrugs. I truly hate it when this happens.

As it turns out, Renee is in the kitchen, very stoned, doing the dishes. Three guys are sitting at the kitchen table, one
cleaning pot, the other two watching Renee like she’s a TV show. When she runs out of dishes, one of them obediently picks
up another stack off the floor and sets them in the water for her. This place is a pig sty. I pour myself another cup of whatever
that crap is.

Renee looks at me foggily, trying to assess my mood. “Want to dry some dishes?” she asks.

“Not hardly, pal,” I say. The guys at the table give me a long look and I give them one back. A Dave holds out his hand to
me.

“C’mere,” he says kindly, pulling me onto his lap. The Beatles are on the stereo. “The Long and Winding Road,” a song that’ll
break your heart in about one minute, begins to play. I sit quietly on the Dave’s lap and hum a few bars. He pets my hair
awkwardly for a while and then puts his hand up the back of my shirt. The other two guys exchange a smirk.

I take Dave’s ear by the lobe and whisper into it. His eyes open wide. He puts his hand across his chest protectively as I
get up. “She’s
fierce,”
he says to the other two. Renee drops some crusty silverware into the brown dishwater. She struggles for a second to bring
me into focus.

“Jo Ann doesn’t like that kind of stuff,” she explains to them.

“Well, man oh man,” Dave says. “What did
I
do.” The other two laugh.

Looks like my old personality is back.

In the phone booth in New York, I draw a picture of a girl with her fists on her hips, eyebrows converging, mouth set. She’s
wearing my clothes. I have one question to ask Elizabeth, but first she wants to tell me about her weekend.

“I went out with a guy who looks like the Artful Dodger,” she says. “He’s in a band
and
he wears a top hat. He couldn’t wear it on the date, though, because we went to a movie.”

“That’s good,” I say. I tell her I’m working on a party scene.

“Which party?” she asks suspiciously. “What am I doing at it?”

“It’s sort of a composite of all parties, you know?” There’s silence at the other end. “It’s just a
party
party, is all, with those guys who all had the same names.”

“The Ted Nugent guys?” she asks.

Well, yes.

“I never liked any of those guys, did I?” she says hopefully.

Uh, I think Dave Nelson would be hurt.

She probes her brain, comes up with a memory. “Oh.” She thinks for a second. “Well, he was a nice guy,” she says firmly. “Wasn’t
he?”

We ponder for a minute and finally both admit we can’t remember. I say they all look alike to me, and then instantly regret
it, because I’m going to hear a lecture. Here it comes.

“Your attitude towards men s-u-x,” she begins. “Look at me. I got divorced, too, and I’m not bitter.”

Well, I’m willing to be bitter on both our behalfs. In the meantime, the one question I have to ask is Why were you always
with guys and I never was?

“Because you were mean, that’s why,” she says gently. “Remember how mean you used to get?” This makes me feel awful. I was
a mean person.

“You weren’t a mean
person
,” she says. “We were just weird back then. We were insecure.”

But you weren’t mean.

“Well, I had the exact opposite problem,” she replies.

I light a cigarette illegally in the phone booth and try to blow the smoke into my coat pocket. The conversation goes on and
on, more about the Artful Dodger. Meanwhile, back at the party, Renee shows me her pruny fingers.

“Exhibit A,” she says. “This is exactly why you shouldn’t take speed and go to a party.” I pour her a cup of liquid nitrogen
and she downs it quickly, the way she’s doing everything else. “I keep thinking I want to clean the bathroom,” she says.

“I’d steer clear if I were you,” I advise her. “Five guys live here.” She can see the wisdom in that.

Pretty soon Carol comes into the kitchen, blinking her eyes against the light. Her hair is a mess, her shirt is buttoned wrong,
and she’s been crying. He has hurt her feelings, which isn’t hard to do. He forgot her name or something. “Let’s go,” she
whispers. We rustle up Elizabeth and the three of us fade through the living room and out the door. The Steve I have a crush
on is sitting on the front porch steps, smoking a joint, waiting for Ted. He reaches out and places his hand gently around
my ankle. I stand there patiently until he lets go, and then continue down the steps. “See you,” he says.

At the car, there is a moment of silence. Elizabeth tries to hand the keys off to me but I’m not in the mood. I climb in the
back and hold on to my hair as we pull from the drive to the road. Carol stops crying and claims she’s never going to another
party. Elizabeth and I exchange a look in the rearview mirror. “In my whole entire
life,
” she says emphatically, “so
don’t even try asking me to.” The sky is full of diamonds, the moon is a narrow sliver, the road winds and curves, the drugs
are wearing off. We left Renee and Janet at the party without a ride.

The voice of Motown comes on the radio and we sing quietly to ourselves. All the houses have their eyes closed as we sweep
silently past them. Carol fixes her shirt, lights one cigarette off another, and I wave good-bye to them from the alley behind
my house. Through the bushes, up the back walk, still humming. In the kitchen, two cookies and a long drink of water, up the
stairs and into the bedroom. Across the hall my parents sleep peacefully behind their closed door, innocent as children.

On the way back from Florida I drive a hundred miles out of my way in order to visit my mother’s grave. Small Illinois town
where she grew up; the gas station, body shop, and ice cream parlor are owned by my uncles, on the edge of town a small barren
cemetery is full of my dead relatives. My mother’s tombstone is dark granite, on either side of it are pink geraniums, planted
by my father. In front, beneath her name, is a coffee can full of wildflowers withering in the sun. Someone has been here
before me, an aunt probably, driving past on her way into town from one of the nearby farms. The withering flowers prompt
a maudlin scene in which I am both the actor and the audience. A red-tailed hawk circles overhead, a tractor chugs by on the
highway, holding up a line of cars. A daughter weeps in the afternoon sunlight, a mother remains silent beneath a load of
dirt.

Hours later my street appears in front of me, a tall catalpa tree, a child’s scooter, and then the driveway where the husband
stands, just off his bike, home from work. “Hi,” he says
cordially, putting an arm across my shoulders. And then, “I have a meeting tonight.” His hand looks as white as paste next
to my Florida arm. Inside, he goes into the study and closes the door. I hear the long beep of the answering machine as he
listens to the messages and then erases them.

In bed that night I remain stationary as he toils in the darkness. Afterward, there is silence and the sound of breathing.
Next to the bed, my big collie whines in her sleep. Finally, he says quietly, with something in his voice I don’t recognize,
“It’s good you’re back.”

Tick, tock. Breathe in, breathe out. There is no mercy at this hour of the night, and my own voice sounds strange in the darkness.
I’m not
, is what I tell him. He rolls over and puts his face in the pillow. Everywhere you turn these days there’s someone crying.

Billboards, fence posts, and cows go by at seventy miles an hour, a van honks as we pass it and someone gives us the finger
in a friendly manner. We’re caravaning our way to the rock quarries for a swimming party. Three cars and two vans are full
of people and beer; I’m riding on back of a motorcycle, driven by my unofficial date, a charming madman named Wally. Wally
is already in the party mood and so am I, because it’s my nineteenth birthday. I have on a microscopic swimming suit, a Rolling
Stones T-shirt, and Wally’s helmet. He has on cut-off blue jeans, sunglasses, and a baseball cap. Every once in a while he’ll
holler, “Hold on!” and then execute an amazing maneuver that involves other vehicles on the road. I’m absolutely terrified,
and keep imagining what skin on pavement would feel like. Nevertheless, I can’t quit egging him on.

The water is like cold silk when you first get in. Elizabeth and I float ourselves around on air mattresses until we see a
water
snake swimming directly toward us with its head stuck up like a periscope. We take off for the beach and sun ourselves on
an outcropping of rock. Somewhere in the vicinity, Wally is tapping the keg while others are running speaker wire. Eventually
music comes forth and beer makes its way over to where we are. Guys start catapulting themselves into the water.

I get special treatment because it’s my birthday. People keep calling me over to their cars and vans. “Here,” they say generously.
“Do some of this.” In an effort to stay awake for my birthday, I decline almost everything. I’m a famous lightweight; even
beer in the afternoon makes me sleepy. I stretch out on my rock and let the sun bake me while the others swim and get wasted.
Elizabeth keeps up a running monologue next to me which I can tune in and tune out at will. Wally comes over to shake water
on us from time to time; we bat him away like an insect.

Sometime during the early evening he produces three pills, one for each of us. “What are these?” I ask him. He looks at one
of the pills closely, turning it over in his hand.

“’Lilly,’” he reads. “They’re lilies, that’s what. Red ones.” Down the hatch.

Within an hour I’m singing a medley of Beatles tunes to anyone who will listen. My legs are not working correctly. “Hey, Jude,”
I say to the guy sitting next to me. His name is Tom. “Did you have any of those red lilies?” He doesn’t know what I’m talking
about. Elizabeth is nowhere in sight but I can see Wally off in the distance, slapping his leg and laughing silently and hysterically.
He squints over in my direction and motions me to come hither. I point to my legs and shake my head. We give each other the
peace sign.