My brother asked me to write a story two years ago. maybe a year. I don't know. It's felt like a long time. It's not that it's a difficult story to write. It's just one that difficult to write well. There’s a necessary motion of words so that it's not a clunky list of events. Strangely enough, a completely unrelated anniversary can help. I don't know why. But whatever. It's like coffee for my fingers. Some way to get beyond the giant lump in my brain.
Today is January 7th. That's a special day in my history because, in 1987, I got that chance I'd only dreamt of: to be alone with a girl that was interested in me. Just the latter was an exciting victory.
Every middle schooler needs what I got. I'm pretty sure. This shot at romance without fearing judgement from passing schoolmates or intruding parents. I don't know exactly the history of the girl who invited me over. She was new to our class and had seemingly catapulted puberty. We were both 7th graders even though she was two years older. She smoked. Fucking impeccable smoker. Her exhale and smile made her seem like she was twenty. Her cool sweaters and workout pants with leg warmers put her from another planet. One that we'd only seen on TV. How I ended up with her I don't know.
There was this one instance where I was at school spraying Choraseptic into my head to mitigate throat pain. She asked how I was doing and I said I had a sore throat and maybe an ear infection. These are words that typically repel people. She was strong. Cigarette strong. She took me outside, lit up another and grabbed my head. She inhaled half of Kentucky Korn field and said, “don't move." For her, I was rigid. She shot into my ear a slim teen's volume of exhaust. It worked. Somehow her blowing smoke into my head helped my throbbing ear ache. Was she a witch? I don't know. I would take my chances. I didn't want to kiss her then, but I would. I got healthy. A musical montage of good living landed me in about the same place two days later. And it was there, in the anemic winter sun of Walden, CO where, on the western side of our high school, we went after each other's tonsils.
I'm not sure if you know this, but if someone cradles your infected head and breathes heavily into your ear, you have a chance at romance. It might be a long shot, it might be someone simply terrible at resuscitation but, in this case, I felt empowered. Fueled with nicotine dreams.
I was 12. She was 14. She was a goddess. I was plump child clinging to her fully developed frame.
It was many awkward kisses later that she suggested that we spend some time together outside of school. It is these invitations that excite and scare a boy. Yes. I very much wanted to meet anywhere. We could lie in a culvert for all I cared. But there was fear. My libido far more eager than my brain. Which could be the definition of manhood. I had no idea I was on my way to the sacrificial slab of virginal termination.
The slab was her parents couch. Or maybe her aunt. I can't remember, but she ended up with an apartment all to herself. I couldn't believe it when I walked in. This well-appointed, two-bedroom half of a duplex was all ours. I would've chugged an entire bottle of Chloraseptic for strength.
At first we sat outside while she smoked. I watched. How is Formaldehyde and fiber glass wrecking the pure pinkness of youth sexy? It's terrible, but on January 7th, 1987, the shorter that cigarette got the quicker I had to figure out everything I ever wanted to know.
I'll spare you the details, or at least I did 36 years ago, by not. doing. anything. I lay like a frozen soldier on the couch while she caressed my head and kissed my face. Every part of me rushed to my corduroys to make something, anything happen. It did not. I simply let her pet me for an entire movie. And I left. I walked the streets in sub-zero temps until I could find my brother. I waved down his red Ford F-150 and landed on the familiar warmth of cloth seats with vinyl piping. Somehow, over the raging treble of Ronnie James Dio, he heard what I had to say, or what he needed to: there was an attractive teenager who had a place all to herself whenever she wanted.
That son of a bucket. She was my ear doctor for fuck's sake.
Anyway, he's a good guy. One of the best. Maybe cuz I helped him get laid so much. I don't know. I do know that not much grows at 9000 feet in the mountains, except opportunism. Miners showed up there a hundred seventy years ago and said, shit, it's cold, we might as well try to get rich.
That's the first step to getting where I'm going. We're going to have unglue from chronology and go to 2019. These were halcyon days. pre-pandemic. I'm not even sure who we were. Outside of grieving. Our father had been killed and this was one of his many memorials. The one the kids got to put together. An ad-hoc celebration of life in our brother-in-law's shop. It turned out to be as good as a funeral could get. Outside of me thinking I could handle smoking weed and drinking. In seeking numbness, I ended up clinging to our Subaru thinking the world had tilted into a sheer cliff. Letting go meant certain death. People would find me hanging on to our car’s tire and ask if everything was OK. I was the bereaved so there was some latitude, but I would warn them about the earth on its side.
Eventually I would be able to let go because my brother showed me how. Letting go of convention. Of mourning in a shell. Curled up and hoping to appease people who were there to comfort you. I got to let go and then let go again. I hurled my brains out in front of a bunch of kids.
I didn't give one single damn. One of the children at this most solemn event said “OMG what smells?
“It’s Tyler’s uncle,” said one kid about me and my sister’s son. I remember trying to get up off the floor to say something about being born and then shaped into one thing or another by crashing into those around us.
Up next? I'm pretty sure it was 1982.