So in 1985, I finished my eleventh grade year & I began my twelfth grade year. I worked in the summer, I had a friend with whom I mostly hung out, I listened to a lot of music, & I read lots of books, comics, & whatever I could get my hands on. I had virtually no idea about the future. I hadn't thought about college - I had a sense I would be going, but hadn't made any plans. No one at school talked to me or asked me about it - I don't think I ever spoke to a guidance counselor after ninth grade. My family couldn't talk to me about it because none of them had any experience with college. I feel like I lived in the moment almost by default, but I certainly wasn't seizing the day. I was just kind of existing. School, part-time job, fast food, sleep. Every day.
The songs that I loved were all about love but I was very awkward around girls. There was one person, a young lady named Cynthia, to whom I wrote notes constantly, & she wrote back, but mainly because she was friendly. I don't think I found her attractive, & I don't think I really wanted to kiss her or anything, I simply wanted practice. It was obvious she didn't want anything like that from me. She laughed at most everything I said, mainly because she was very religious & very conservative, & I could say basic mainstream things & be outrageous. I remember one time she asked me if I had a bible, & I said, "Sure. It's in the fiction section of my library." She found that funny & horrifying at the same time.
A class that became important to me was AP History. The teacher tended to cultivate personal relationships with his students - not in a weird way - he thought of himself as a mentor - & he was also the faculty sponsor for the Whiz Quiz high school team I was on. He would encourage us to keep our things in his room, so most of twelfth grade I didn't really use my locker. I guess I thought it was some kind of status, & I took to coming to school before 7:30am to avoid the teachers who wouldn't let students wander the halls before class - they would make the students gather outside closed doors before 8am, & let them in like for a concert, a concert no one wanted to go to. I could sit in the hall before the teacher arrived. & then sit in his classroom before first period. A couple of other students did it too, & we became friends of a sort. I suppose I thought we'd be friends longer, but we mostly lost touch after high school.
It was in AP History that I first fell in love for reals. Her name was Laura - it probably still is, but I of course haven't seen her in decades. I actually asked her out once, I took her to see a play, but she thought of it as a "just friends" thing. My heart was quite broken after I dropped her off. I went to where my friend worked at the Mobil gas station & just slept in my car, more depressed & forlorn than I had ever felt. I simply had no idea what the right thing to do was, how to go about it, or even how to read basic signs. I suppose she thought I was nice. From my current vantage point at the precipice of 53 years, I don't know where I got the courage or bravery to even try.
Most of my high school stories are not fun stories. I might have been a bit arrogant - I was the asshole in the class who got the perfect score on the test & ruined the curve. I certainly felt superior to everyone despite being secretly envious. Why them & not me? I read books about looking inward but never quite examined myself. My mother had this way of making you do things with her moods & with strange, awkward compliments which I think she learned from her mother. I too would toss in words of self-pity, unthinkingly, as a learned behavior, which for the first time people called me out for doing. One high school friend didn't talk to me for months because she felt I was somehow manipulating her. My lack of self-awareness made me think she was in the wrong, not me.
But I don't necessarily think of my seventeenth year as a dark time. I was surrounding myself with things I loved, I was seeing more movies, I was reading lots, I was finding new music. I was finding out what I liked, something that really takes a while, & needs cultivating. The person with whom I spent the most time, my "best friend," would have gladly been anywhere else if someone else had only asked, but we did drive around Dallas listening to music, going to record stores & book stores, sometimes well into the night. I came to know the city better.
The truth is, it was neither as hard as I thought it was, nor as easy. I was woefully ill-equipped for looming adulthood, & I had no one to help me, & would have rejected anyone's help if it had been offered. My lessons were in the works of creation I loved. & I tried to join in: I actually wrote a book in that year. (It wasn't that long, maybe 200 handwritten pages.) I remember almost nothing about it, & it's in a box somewhere, but I wrote it in pencil, so it's almost certainly faded. I do recall I was very proud of myself, & the friend I mentioned above, the one who called me manipulative, she asked to read it. My "best friend" never offered to.
& she read it! When she handed it back to me, I remember this as if I were there at this moment, & I asked, "What did you think?" She looked kind of puzzled & said, "It's terrible, isn't it?" As if that were something I already knew.
My reaction was swift. I took it back from her, I stormed away, & I honestly never looked at it again. It seems I was not going to be good at taking any kind of criticism for my writing in my life.
Though that really happened, it also feels like a metaphor for the person I was at seventeen. Confident enough to take the time to write a novel, but unable to have a friend dislike it, & willing to just reject it outright once the slightest negativity came my way. How many other things did I abandon & give up when there were signs it wouldn't be celebrated & embraced immediately?
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