High School Daze

I looked at my last post and it seems I'm on some Man kick. I started thinking about other men in my life. Boys. Guys. Fellas.

I like men. I like how straightforward they are. You are either a woman they desire, or they like you, but don't desire you, or they dismiss you entirely because they don't like you. That's about it. Compare that to the one hundred subcategories women place their friends (Movies Only, Gym Partner, Mom Buddy, Frenemy, PMS Support) and you see why it's so refreshing.

Here are a few men I knew only as boys:

My very first day of high school, a boy one grade older and widely known as a violent bully whipped out his penis and shook it at me. Oh, yes he did, too, while bellowing something about putting it somewhere. I was somewhat unclear on the concept of where, at barely fifteen. I kept my face neutral, because that's what one did at that age to show one wasn't Freaked Out. Yelling violently while showing me your dick in a deserted quad? Oh, puhlease. I am so not impressed. (A sneer would have been better, I suppose, with hindsight. Or it would have gotten me slapped.).

This was in those creakingly ancient 1980s, when that sort of thing was considered what some naughty boys did (and date rape was simply known as a "bad date," you may recall) and was not generally thought to be an official offense. It never occurred to me to tell anyone, and I made certain to never wear my Jessica McClintock skirt again, because the lace trim surely had been the inciting detail.

He was a sexual predator of many throughout high school and he was killed in a war many years later, by his bunk mate. Others have come forward to say they would have killed him, had they been given the chance.

So, you know, I won that one by waiting it out.


.

I was madly in love in high school, with a boy who threw rocks at me and called me filthy names. Well, first we had one wonderful date, where he sat me on his knee during a party while singing along with The Rolling Stones. And then he turned poisonous and I didn't know why. And it ate at me for years and years. In fact, this was the pinnacle of the Bad Boy routine - a boy whom I would have soon realized all on my own I did not much like, beat me to it by not liking me first, thereby securing my undying fascination with him.

.

I don't often think of Chip, but when I do, it is with great fondness. He was my first crush. Kindergarten. He asked me to make him watercolor flower paintings to pass off as his own to his mother, and I did so willingly. He did not return my affections. He had red hair and freckles and reminded me of Howdy Doody (before my time, but still an icon) and I thought that was remarkable.

Now my son, in my life some 35 years after my last glimpse of Chip, quite strongly resembles him (and Howdy Doody, I suppose). I don't think that's closure, but it is a bit weird. Are we all living in some sad sack, thin ghost version of "Groundhog Day," with minor revisions of the same people walking through your life over and over until you sort things out? Well, that would hardly be the worst thing.