That summer was very quiet for me. I continued my self conscious efforts, usually inside, due to the heat of the August days. At around five p.m. everyday I made my way out onto the front stoop. The sun declined sufficiently by that time for the awning to provide sufficient shade. The deep blue summer sky was starkly contrasted by the green foliage which coloured my front lot. A cool breeze blew sufficiently often to keep one refreshed against the air which was still hot and dry from the day. I would always have a pitcher of lemonade outside with me, just to keep cool. At about five thirty everyday, Jesse and Sherlock would come walking by. I would wave politely as would he, and that was it. We passed each other in time and space. I liked seeing Sherlock though. Everytime I saw him, I remembered, with humour, our first encounter. Looking back on events it was rude of me not to offer him some lemonade on those hot days. Then again, I was not one to offer anything to boys. One of the worse things one could be at my high school was a ‘tease’. Even a innocent glass of lemonade could be construed by a boy as a display of affection and I certainly didn’t want Jesse to think I liked him. It would be cruel to lead him on and then have him disappointed.
Ever since that first encounter with Jesse, I had taken to going on nature walks. I went walking for hours on end into the woods, and by the streams and rivers which networked throughout the landscape. I looked into the rivers and noticed all manner of fish, salamanders and frogs that I had never noticed before. I turned over every rock just hoping to catch a glimpse of some other species I had yet to discover. One could find an infinite amount of beauty, under just a single rock, provided you chanced upon a lucky one. There exists a very special type of beauty in nature. It is the type which can only be found if you are looking for it. It doesn’t lay out in the open for everyone to see but must be sought after. Often this search has to continue for many hours but when you find it, rest assured that it is an experience unique to you and you alone. For, once you place that rock back down, and cover up that speckled newt or shew away that butterfly, that scene will never be exactly repeated. It’s precise details and feelings are yours to remember, and yours alone.
After hours and hours of such adventures, I would come home riddled with cuts, scrapes and mosquito bites. My parents noticed that I was stewing about my self and in their habitual fussing over me, tried to arrange for me to go to camp. When that failed my father offered me a job at his office, even though I was really too young to do anything useful. It was kind of them to offer, but I didn’t take it as such at the time. I was horribly offended. I was just fine. What business was it of there’s if I chose to spend my days walking and exploring? I declined their offers, sometimes rudely, but always emphatically. After much effort, they recanted and allowed me to spend the rest of the summer in peace.
Kevin still kept in touch and we saw each other about once every two weeks. We would go out in groups with Tammy, Claire, myself and now Patty who was officially Kevin’s girlfriend. ‘Officially’ was an interesting term when used in terms of boyfriend and girlfriend. I am not quite sure what made it all so ‘official’. There weren’t any rings exchanged and there wasn’t any verbal contract. At no time while I was dating Kevin did he flat out ask me “Would you be my girlfriend?” ‘Offically going out’ with Kevin just meant that one was seeing the most of him at that time. Since Kevin was so sought after, to be ‘officially going out’ with him was like attaining a beauty queen title of sorts in our circles. I scoffed at the triviality of the whole arrangement quite possibly because I was no longer benefiting from it. I grew tired of being the third, fourth or even fifth wheel, depending on how many people came out with us, on one of Kevin’s excursions. It is amazing how time brings about change within us. I remember even declining to attend one of Kevin’s excursions to the roller rink when just three or four months ago, I would have died just for the opportunity. On second thought, perhaps time should not be thought of as an entity unto its self. It’s more the events that occurred in those short three or four months which soured my interest. Kevin was like a shooting star in the night, which streaked brightly across the sky and then quickly faded away. While initially he was wonderful and magical, with time I simply grew bored of Kevin and his accompanying crew.
At the end of August, I actually looked forward to the beginning of school. Although I would never admit this to my parents, parts of my summer were boring and I probably could have used a little more structured activity. Still I felt refreshed and ready to face the new year. I had never spent a summer exploring as I had. The animals and plants that appeared so cold and foreign to me on the paper of my biology textbook, now had new meaning to me. I was actually looking forward to learning more biology. Just a few days before the start of school Kevin had his going away party. I was there.
I remembered a large line of girls all of who, at one time or another, had caught Kevin’s eye. Kevin hugged and quickly kissed them all. I felt like I was an item on an assembly line just waiting to be attended to. Kevin reached me and hugged and kissed me exactly as he had all the other girls who preceded me in line. He also told us that he would write us all. I ran ‘hot and cold’ with Kevin in those summer months after our ‘break up’ which incidentally was just as ‘official’ as our getting together. Sometimes I could understand him, and sometimes he annoyed me. At that exact moment I was leaning more towards the latter part of the spectrum. I felt like I was just another notch on his bedpost. Soon after the line of girls, my self included, had sent him off the party disbanded, much to my relief. I caught a lift home with Tammy’s date. I admired Tammy for having moved on, and thought that a new boyfriend for me would be the perfect remedy for that which was ailing me. Claire still rode in the car with Kevin. “Poor girl,” I thought to myself, but she was pretty and I wasn’t worried. I knew that she would have a boyfriend of her own soon enough.
I never saw Kevin face to face again. Suprisingly, I did receive three letters from him. He told me how he was making out in university and recounted a few highlights from his football games. They were fairly short and the time between each arrival grew longer and longer. Just the same I was glad to hear that he was doing well. Many years later, when I met up with some old friends from my town I discovered that he had married and now had three children and I am sure that he was a good father to them. My final evaluation of Kevin was that he was that he was an average person who lived an average life. That average personality just happened to be housed in a well sculpted, Greek hero style body. So, in the end, after a great deal of contemplation, running hot and cold when thinking of Kevin, finally my tap ran lukewarm, the average of those two extremes, where it stayed for the rest of my life. I would have many more such relationships. My mind should have learned the obvious lesson from my experience with Kevin and sought more fulfilling companions. However rationality was still not at the helm. My hormones would stand at the helm in its stead, sailing from one popular man to another, never finding a place to drop anchor and rest.
It was with the intent of finding another boyfriend that I returned to school with zeal. I dressed to kill and I had an attitude to match. I snubbed everyone and everything who did not meet with my approval. Only this year, much to my disappointment, I realized that I couldn’t get away with it. Tammy had graduated last year with Kevin’s class, and Claire was extremely busy with her new boyfriend. She always called me over to sit with her but I just didn’t feel comfortable. Most of our old clique from last year had graduated. Claire usually sat alone, save her boyfriend with whom she exchanged all sorts of inside jokes pertaining to their relationship, which left me in the dark. So, most lunches I sat by myself, just hoping to establish a new group of friends. Instead of having a whole group of people come rushing to sit by my side, as I had expected, I found my eyes cycling back and forth, as though watching a tennis match, watching people file by me. I would learn much later that I suffered, not from a deficit of popularity, but from too much popularity. Many of the formula’s which are required for success in teenage years are very delicately balanced. I was the former girlfriend of Kevin who was the most popular boy that year. In the early runnings of September, there hadn’t yet arisen a contender who could take his place. To make it simple, most of the boys were too shy to risk talking to me. Quite rightly so too, for just a few months previous, I probably snubbed them all from time to time. The girls who were jealous of my success with Kevin also didn’t want much to do with me. At least, I could get a ‘hello’ out of them and occasionally coax them to sit with me, even if only for that day.
My salvation came when Jesse passed by one day. He passed straight by me. I was used to this sort of thing by then and wasn’t particularly phased by it until I noticed him stop and look back. I looked at him, trying to judge his mood. He was still just looking at me. I tried a friendly wave and a ‘hello’ just to break the ice. No harm in that, I had been doing it all summer when he passed by walking his dog. He started hesitantly,
“Is this seat … uh … is it taken?” I motioned him to sit down and he did, placing his bagged lunch on the table. I couldn’t figure out why he was so nervous about asking such a simple question. Then I recalled snubbing him when he dared to attempt sitting in a chair which would obscure Kevin’s view of me. I remembered how totally absorbed I had become with him. I had a fleeting sensation of maturity thinking that I would never be like that again. I dissipated quickly though, realizing that given the right guy, I would probably be caught doing the exact same thing.
Jesse just sat there silently eating his lunch and occasionally chancing a look at me. I was quite bored so I tried to get the conversation going.
“So, how is, oh what was his name … Sherlock?” I was hoping to uncork a bottle and allow the wine of conversation to flow. Instead, I found that I had blown up a dam sending a torrent of sentences rushing towards me.
He described the numerous adventures that he and his dog had taken that summer. I could relate to most of them because they were along rivers and streams I too had explored. We discussed all sorts of hidden alcoves and glades that we had discovered. Some of the places he had discovered, I had chanced upon too, but I was more interested in hearing about the ones I had yet to find. My mind absorbed them like a sponge, cataloguing and prioritizing which ones I wanted to visit first. His conversation, while occasionally tangential, was always topical. He would jump from science, to history, and then to current events. I found it very easy to immerse myself in his conversation.
However, he wasn’t a saving grace to me by being an fascinating conversationalist, but instead, by being a catalyst. By continuing to sit with me at lunch for the rest of that school year, he removed the enigma that surrounded me. Suddenly, people found me approachable again. If Jesse, who was of average popularity, could talk to me, then so could anyone else. Just a month after Jesse and I took up the habit of having lunch together, many members, who incidentally dined nearby, tried their luck on me. That year the football team, was very lucky. In total I dated four football team members, every one of them, very handsome in his own right. On average, each relationship lasted about a month to a month and a half before either I or he would get bored of the other and call it off. You know it had to be quite an extensive dating career when I could cite a statistic like an ‘average span per relationship’. I am proud to say, that I only got dumped twice in my dating history and once, I was about to dump him when he beat me to the punch. The one thing I was proud about was that in all of my relationships, I was able to control the level of physical activity. I knew that when a boy went for a walk with me alone, what he was expecting and that I had to ensure that I gave only what I wanted to. I would let boys go pretty far, but with uneasy feelings about my first encounter with sex, I was unwilling to let anyone I didn’t utterly trust, try again. On second thought, I imagine the football team didn’t get as lucky as they had hoped.
My relationships were so temperamental because I loved ‘the chase’. I loved the attention of being chased by men. As soon as all of dust stirred up by they boys, in their energetic attempts to woo me, settled I found that I was coupled with someone who really didn’t interest me. I got into the habit of being bitter about men. I complained to Jesse over lunch about how they lacked depth and sensitivity. I knew I was preaching to the converted with Jesse being a nice guy but I just needed to have an ear listen to me. I always wondered if Jesse minded my complaining, but he never said anything to that effect, and always listened patiently. The irony of the situation only struck me years later. I was complaining about lack of caring in men to a man who was caring enough to listen to me. I was searching for a man who was sensitive and I was discussing this search with a sensitive man.
Now, I always look suspiciously at women who complain about men all the time. It seems that it has become a common practice, which almost goes unnoticed. I nod my head patiently listening to them say that ‘men are all scum’ realizing that there are a lot of men, moreover people, who do fit the bill of being ‘scum’. I also realize that there are so many people of this sort that it is entirely possible that these particular women have only come across men who are ‘scum’. But then I think back to the days of my youth and my mixed up priorities for choosing a mate and wonder. I know for a fact that there are many terrific people out there in the world. However, due to the muddling effects of hormones, peer pressure, and societal influences, they often get overlooked. I was certainly not immune to this, just look at how I went after the most popular guys, ignoring my husband to be, who was right there all along. Finding a good mate is much like finding the hidden beauties of nature on those numerous hikes I took that summer. They aren’t necessarily out there in the open just waiting for you; you have to search for them. You often have to search for them at length, but when you do, it’s always worth the wait. Of course, these pearls of wisdom came to me in my latter years of life. I try to avoid living in the past and wishing I had my youth to live over again. Every so often though, when I think of what I know now and how confused I was then, I give in to the temptation.
