How to Crush Without Being Crushed

It usually got cooler there quite a bit sooner up in rural New York than it does around here, so old memories are triggered at times they don’t actually correspond to. Heck, by the time October rolled around, we were often already well acquainted with our heavier jackets.

That odd temporal shift of memories crops up at odd times. Lately, when I catch just the right breeze and see the sun setting, I remember many a night spent with friends up North. This is one of those memories…

It was the end of summer just before my sophomore year in high school. As usual, I was hanging out with my cousin and her friends in the little community that we lived in. When I hung out back then, it was usually either with them or with my buddy T. It was a lazy late summer night, the slight chill of fall was just barely creeping in. The sun was still setting late enough to spend a lot of time wandering around before it was too dark to see.

And when it became too dark to see, well, that’s when the real fun always started.

On this particular night, that fun didn’t involved drinks or drugs–a sad rarity in this crowd. No, on this particular night we were up to something much more my speed.

Someone, most likely Mike (one of the local boys who would very soon after end up on my cousin’s parentally imposed “Black List”–making my job as an alibi even more important), suggested we play a game of manhunt. Being young and bored, we all readily agreed.

For anyone who doesn’t know, manhunt is basically a glorified version of “hide and seek” with a dash of “capture the flag” thrown in. You split up into two teams. One team hides, the other seeks. Some other variations include home-base rules similar to capture the flag, but we weren’t that organized.

There weren’t a lot of us, but we were already split kind of evenly along gender lines. There were me, Mike, Jason and Dan on the guy side (that was only half of what the group would eventually be… and all but me would end up in trouble at some point in the future) on the guys’ side. On the girls’ team were my cousin, Jodi, Jody and Marcella (as time went on, more names would get added to that list, too… though at any given time half of them wouldn’t be speaking to the other half). We sent the girls out to hide first.

Now, I grew up in a very rural small hamlet of a small town nestled comfortably in the woods. My particular hamlet was, long ago, a private gated community. The gates were gone long before I was born and any exclusivity had gone soon after them. There were groups of houses close together, but there were also overgrown vacant lots and long swaths of genuine forest that had yet to be developed. In order to be “found” you not only had to be spotted, you had to be tagged. For our game of manhunt, we had set the boundaries to a moderate sized area that included a good mix of these different terrain types. The good news was that since it was the end of summer, most of the seasonal residents had already gotten on their way south for the impending winter. This made their yards fair game for us.

It seems that back then I spent a lot of time hiding with this group. Especially after my cousin was forbidden to be around most of them. See, these were the “bad boys” of my little piece of woods. They were the stoners, the drunks, the general juvenile delinquents. They were also members of a couple of families with reputations stretching back at least to my parents’ generation–maybe further. In a small town, when your family has a reputation, be it good or bad, you’re pigeonholed from the day you start school until you either graduate or break the mold and make a name for yourself. This generally seemed to apply more to guys than girls, though I can think of my parents giving me a strange look when I mentioned the last name of female friends–but that only happened twice, and they weren’t even from my hunk of woods.

In fact, most of the girls that were ever part of that group were imports of some sort. They either came from outside of our hunk of woods or had just moved there. My cousin fell into the latter group, as did Jodi and Jody. Marcella, on the other hand, was local. She lived right down the road and around the corner from on the other side of the woods from where were hiding and seeking that night. I was pretty good friends with her older brother (who would later go on to turn down a film gig with Disney in favor of finishing high school and later become a broke, gay, cabaret actor), so I had known her for a few years. We’d all ride our bikes together. Come to think of it, she was the one who stopped short in front of me once, causing me to run into her, throwing me backward off my bike and bouncing my head on the pavement something good (who needs helmets? Not me…).

Somewhere along the way, though, Marcella went from being the not-quite-annoying little sister to a pretty cool young woman. And at some point that summer, probably during those long nights we all hung out together, I got a bit enamored with her. By the time this game of manhunt rolled around, I was in full-out crush mode. I clearly remember being very happy that she came out that night. I remember how the light of the moon added silver highlights to her dark brown hair. How her slight accent carried across the cooling air, sometimes mingling with the chirps of the crickets and frogs into a natural symphony of indescribably beauty. I remember how the sweater she wore that night felt when I touched her arm, convincing her to stick around for the game.

Nothing, of course, would ever come of that crush. I was quite happy when she stopped hanging out with the group. I like to think that kept her from getting sucked in to the muck and mire with some of the others.

The game was on. The girls were hidden and we were hunting for them. It was dark, but I’ve always been at home in the dark. I can see in the dark better than many other people, or at least I could back then (kind of funny when you take into account that what everyone else was eventually smoking is supposed to increase night vision…). My best catch that night was a double. Slinking around the corner of a house, sticking to the bushes and deep shadows, I heard people talking a little down the hill, in the middle of the yard. I circled around, confirming that it was, indeed, two of the girls hunkered down behind the one bush in the middle of an open yard. At one point, they had almost seen me–I had accidentally rattled a bush as I passed by it. When I came up behind them, they were still discussing if they had seen anything or not. As I tapped them both on the shoulder at the same time, I told them “You really have to be quieter.” They jumped straight up and almost screamed.

After the women were rounded up, it was they guys turn to hide. We scattered and found our places. I set myself up in a small clump of trees, just across from my uncle’s house (which we were using as a starting point). Mike would later tell about how he shimmied up onto a neighbor’s roof and nearly fell off when he tried to move from one section to another–right before he was spotted and tagged. Dan had gotten himself underneath a car or boat that had been battened down for the season–he was found and tagged, too, but not without a chase through a briar patch. Jason, I’m not sure where he hid, but he was chased through the same briar patch Dan was. Me? They never found me. Even with all of them looking. I’m just glad I was hiding close enough to hear them call off the game. It was satisfying. Though not quite as much as the time I hid on a bench, in plain sight, with a bright light shining down right over my head–that was priceless. I think I even waved at some of the “hunters” when they walked by.

That was a good night. Probably one of the overall best I ever spent with that group. Definitely one of the most sober, too. I don’t think there was any alcohol or weed consumed by anyone that entire day. It may have been the last day like that. All my other memories of that crew, especially once a few other people were added, all involve them in a drug and alcohol induced haze. They weren’t fun drunks, either. That would have been entertaining. As it was, it was just sad and depressing.

But that night. That one night. That was a good night.

Tags: friends

Kerry was just one of those girls that I found myself falling for quite unexpectedly in high school. She really was more like one of the guys than anything else.

Except every now and then… there was just something.

I had first met her in middle school. I had an English class with her one term. Academically, we weren’t on the same track (though I still think she was a lot smarter than she ever gave herself credit for). We weren’t into a lot of the same things, we didn’t hang out much outside of school and we didn’t really travel in the same circles.

In all fairness, though, I couldn’t claim that anyone really did much of the same stuff I did. My social standing in high school wavered somewhere between “nowhere” and “everywhere” with a general feeling of disdain. I could be anywhere and most people would just ignore me and let me sit there and watch and listen.

Except for Kerry.

It was in high school when we started spending more time with each other. Mostly at lunch, then during the plays. She was only in the one I wasn’t in, the rest of the time she was on stage crew. I got along better with the stage crew than I did with most of the other actors, so we got to spend a lot of time together during show breaks.

She was the first girl I really danced with. She was the first girl that put me in a headlock. And there were days when I was convinced that she was going to be the first girl who I did a lot of things with.

Short and tough, she could come across as antisocial as any disaffected Gen Xer, complete with flannel and jeans. A bit of a heavy metal edge was softened by an actual appreciation of real friends and hard work–both relatively rare in high school.

We always had fun together. We also always meant to get together a lot more than we actually did.

The summer after our senior year, after I had gone to the Key Club International convention in New Orleans and before I left for college, we finally did manage to get together.

It was me, Kerry and our friend Georgia (a pretty standard group to find together in the quad or in the hallways at high school). We got off to kind of a late start, the sun was already setting on a nice late-summer day. Ice cream was high on the list of things to do, and so we went to one of the (many) local shops and got our cones from the white-clad server behind the stick-covered sliding window.

Sitting on the bench next to the orange building (that even then needed a paint job badly), we laughed and licked and talked and chomped our cones.

Then the inevitable question was raised: What are we going to do?

The decision came rather quickly, a rarity in our group. “We’ll go to the track and catch a horse race!” After all, it was just a little down the road from the ice cream place, and it was bound to not be too crowded (it never was during those years… except during the dog show, one of the other times I could be pretty sure I’d run into Kerry as her parents had some pups that were purebred).

So we hopped into our cars and made the two minute drive to the track.

And discovered it was closed.

This perplexed us for a moment.

Then we remembered…

It was Sunday night.

And so there we sat, parked next to each other, doors open, radios on and tuned to the same station. The Proclaimers came on and we sung right along with I’m Gonna Be, our almost in tune voices (ok, her’s was in tune, but she was in the chorus) echoing off the ancient, out of style walls of the main track building and bouncing back at us from the still warm pavement.

That’s about when the security guard showed up and told us we had to leave or the real cops were going to show up.

With nowhere else to go, and everything in the county closed (it being Sunday night and all), we parted ways.

I wouldn’t see Kerry again for more than a year. I got a midnight-ish drunk call from her once my first year of college, but I didn’t see her again until the second summer when I was working road crew for the county. She just happened to be out walking on the road we were starting work on. We chatted briefly and said “We should get together.”

We never did.

It was just a few years ago that I tracked her down, through the Internet and her older brother. She seemed at least vaguely happy to hear from me and invited me over to her and her boyfriend’s place for a holiday party. I went, of course. There were some other people from her circle of high school friends there, ones who had kept in better touch or who had at least stayed in the area.

I told her that a lot of us guys had crushes on her in high school. She, of course, said “Why didn’t any of you say something! I didn’t think anyone liked me.”

And I had a moment of bittersweet memory of that one perfect night.

When I could have told her.

I could have looked right into her blue-green eyes and said “I’m gonna be the man who’s growing old with you.” I could have taken her oddly delicate hand and held it tight in mine and swore that “I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500 more” just for her.

Because, back then, I would have.

She was one of the first people I really fell in Love with. I just didn’t know it at the time.

Now, I haven’t spoken with her in a few years. She disappeared from my life completlely just before she got married.

Some days… I wonder how she’s doing.

And when I hear The Proclaimers belt out that one tune… I smile… and sing right along.

Tags: friends

Growing up in the middle of nowhere, it was always the people on the fringe that interested me most. That was often the “bad” fringe–they were more exciting and often seemed to have a bit more depth than the preppy, cookie-cutter, bright clothes and scrunchies/penny loafers set. This, of course, meant that a good many of my crushes were on those troubled souls and my ever-present savior/martyr complex brought me fantasies of whisking them away and saving them.

Rosie was one of those girls that had more than a reputation–her entire family had a reputation. Going back at least a generation. You really couldn’t get more “wrong side of the tracks.” I was, of course, smitten. And, really, she wasn’t all that bad of a bad girl. I knew many people with much less of a reputation who did much worse things than she did. She was a good person, but not many people ever took the time to see that.

I never got to hang out with her much–what passed for my social circle back then wasn’t all that large and, therefore, didn’t overlap with many others–but I did get to talk to her a little at a sweet 16 party for a mutual friend. It was a very fun evening and, I believe, the last time during high school we were in the same place together for more than five minutes.

She graduated the year before I did. Every now and then, I’d run into her around town. I Went off to college and, again, would run into a little around town–at the local bar, or out shopping–when I came down to visit over the five years I was mostly away.

At one point she was working at the local bagel shop, so my father saw her and passed greetings back and forth on a semi-regular basis. It wasn’t any deep contact, but it was nice to know she was still around and still doing OK. I know at some point she went through a very rough spot with addiction and an abusive relationship. She had a kid, but had lost custody at some point. Working to get that back seemed to be one of the driving forces for her.

When I moved back to my small town after college, I discovered she was no longer working at the bagel place. She had moved down the street a bit and was now working at an ice cream place that happened to be owned by another friend of mine’s family.

Because of that, I didn’t feel bad at all about dropping by and hanging out.

There were some… complications… to reconnecting with her. But they involved nothing on either her part or my own; just an overly eager interloper that we had both been trying to dodge since high school. That led to some funny stories, but none that are pertinent here and now.

The one moment that is important–and still exists as one of the best moments of my life so far–was when she introduced me to a friend of hers. She introduced me as one of her best friends from high school.

It was at once wonderful and terrible. I had barely spent any time with her back then… and if I were one of her best friends…

We ran into each other a few more times in those early years I was back in town, but, before long, my job took over more and more of my time and drew me out to the other corners of the county. When the ice cream shop closed, I lost track of her.

The last I heard anything definite was a few years ago (not too long before I left the area) through a semi-mutual friend. Rosie had fallen back on hard times. She’d lost the good job she had wrangled herself, she was using god-knows-what again, and had, again, lost custody of her (now two) kids.

I almost ran out one night to see if I could catch her at the run-down hotel she was living at week-to-week. But I didn’t know what I would say. I didn’t know what I could say or do. Maybe, I thought, if I could have just been there more during the previous years… been there for her… been a better friend…

I didn’t go that night. I couldn’t go other times. Other responsibilities reared their ugly heads. I moved out of the area and don’t go back much at all these days.

Where is she now? I don’t know. No one I talk to ever mentions her. Sometimes, even though I’ve gotten most of my personal complexes under control, I still think I could have saved her. But then I wonder what the cost of that would have been. And then I wonder if I would have cared what the cost was.

I made a choice and I live with it. Just like hundreds of other choices I’ve made. When there is no clear path, we all do the best we can.

And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that there is rarely a clear path.

(As originally told to a friend of mine about three weeks ago. I should probably edit it more…)

Tags: friends, helping

At the end of seventh grade, a wonderful young woman took the time to sit down next to me one day at the end of a band period. There had been a particularly obvious display of how my peers treated me that day. Her boyfriend at the time was involved in that display.

It was almost like something out of a John Hughes film.

As I sat sullenly in the auditorium, she came and sat down next to me.

“Hey,” she said. “You shouldn’t pay any attention to them. You’re a pretty OK guy.”

And then, she left.

At the end of that year, she moved on to the high school while I suffered through one final year of hell.

But about halfway through that year, her words finally took root and began to grow.

Karen wasn’t one of the three that kept me alive through high school, but she was the first one of my peers to take the time to actually tell me I was worthwhile. She’s also the first girl I had a serious crush on in those fragile years that didn’t cringe when I came near. We were never great friends, but I always had a tremendous amount of respect for her.

That seed she planted grew into a full-blown tree of strength by the time I hit high school. It was something I could always fall back on. And after I divested myself of my toxic obsession with the girl my “friends” had convinced me I was madly in love with (regardless of the fact that she wouldn’t even give me the wrong time of day or breathe in my direction), I could see clearly the truth in those few words.

Because of that, I was open to the idea that I could positively affect other people’s lives. Not that I had any clue how I could do that, especially with my own so hopelessly messed up.

That, dear friends, is where my Three Maidens come in. Kristen, Jill and Sarah.

I recently mentioned Kristen. Jill was another flute player in band with me and one of Kristen’s best friends. Sarah played violin in the orchestra, just a stone’s throw from the band room, and could often be found with Kristen and Jill.

Little did I know when I stepped into the wilds of high school and reconnected with these three women just how important they would be to me…

(To be continued… because I started writing this way too late and need to sleep…)

Tags: friends

After three hellish years in middle school, I was determined to make as clean a start as possible in high school. I was back in with people I could relate to better (those a year ahead of me) and there was a larger pool of potential friends (a whole extra year, as a matter of fact). So I decided to try some new things.

One of those things was Key Club. There had been no school-based community service group in the middle school, so getting involved with Key Club was something very new. The only other community service experience I had back then was through Boy Scouts and the little bit I was required to do as part of my Confirmation sacrament class (yep, back when I was still technically Catholic… but that’s another story for another time). Key Club was something different. It was co-ed, it spanned all four classes of students, and it had competition to contend with (from the school’s other community service group, Interact, sponsored by Rotary).

As soon as I attended the first meeting, I knew I’d found a good place. There were faces I recognized right away from any number of places. Paul, the president, played trumpet in the school band, so I saw him every morning, just one tier down and a few seats over from my trombone spot. Meghan, the treasurer, was from one of the more prominent families in the county (I knew the family from church).

Most importantly, though, was Kristen. She played flute in the band, so I had met her in middle school. Needless to say, I (as well as a number other guys I knew) had a crush on her. (For now, we’ll ignore the fact that I would also eventually have crushes on just about every other girl in the club–and in the band–as well.) Key Club would be a chance to get to know her outside of band. That was a big extra bonus to the general goodness of the promised community service.

As the year went on, I was enthralled by the charisma of the club’s president. Paul was just one of “those” guys. Everyone loved him. He inspired people to do their best and made it all fun, no matter what “it” was. His enthusiasm and hard work made Key Club, band and the school as a whole, quite the experience–even for a lowly freshman like me. When he got all psyched up about the Key Club District Convention, so did we all.

The District Convention went on, quite literally, in our back yard. It seems my county was pretty centrally located to the population of New York State (at least as far as Key Club distribution was concerned) and the location for the District Convention was at The Pines, one of the big local hotels. I signed right up for a spot (and, of course, got my parents to pay for the weekend).

There was only one small problem.

I had a conflict in my schedule.

A few weeks earlier during the morning band class, Mr. Rovitz (our conductor) had been talking about the upcoming musical, Oliver. In the past, I had seen some of the high school’s productions and had been quite impressed by how good they were (apparently I missed the abysmal ones by a couple of years–there are still stories told about the tragedy that was Camelot in the 80s). I knew I wanted to be a part of the show, preferably in the pit band (since I was a trombone player, after all).

It wasn’t until I had my hand raised and was walking up to the front of the room to put my name on the sign-up sheet that I realized I had made a horrible mistake.

For a minute or so, my attention had drifted to a conversation with the guy next to me. What the “call for interest” had been wasn’t about the pit band.

It was for the musical itself.

On stage.

Singing and dancing.

Not knowing what else to do (and definitely not wanting to look like a stupid freshman in front of the flute and clarinet sections–which were, of course, composed almost entirely of very crushable women), I signed up for an audition slot and went back to my seat. Then I sat there in terror, wondering what I had just done, as Rovitz then called for interest in the pit band.

I don’t think I even realized at that point that Kristen had signed up for it.

Since I had signed up for an audition spot, it only made sense for me to actually swallow my fear and do it. And so, one day after school, I got up on stage, read some lines, sang (and I use the term loosely) a couple of bars and was eventually given the part of Mr. Brownlow. A part which, thankfully, had no song or dance numbers. Solo song and dance would be something I’d be able to avoid right up until my senior year.

When I realized the convention weekend and the last big play rehearsal weekend were one in the same, I hustled to work out some sort of compromise. There was no way I was going to be able to miss any of the play rehearsals, so it was my time at the convention that would have to be truncated. The only challenge was I’d have to find a way back and forth from the stage to the convention.

And that’s where Kristen came in. She was in the pit band and she had a car and she was going to the convention, too. It was only sensible that I hitch a ride with her. That’s just what we did.

For two nights her and I would make the fifteen minute or so drive from the play rehearsal to the hotel, grabbing some food along the way. We’d make it in while everyone else was at dinner. So we just sat and talked. I gave her a tarot reading. We talked some more. I was actually sad that people came back from dinner.

It was the most intimate and honest conversation I had ever had with a girl at that point in my life. She actually listened to me! What I said actually helped her with problems she was having! She wasn’t freaked out by the things I was in to!

The convention also gave me the chance to get to know a lot of the other people from my club in a totally different way than you get to know people in school. At that convention, school social standing didn’t matter. We weren’t freshmen or seniors, we were Key Club members. And we had fun.

But the thing I remember most is that time I spent with Kristen. Over the next three years, she’d become one of the three most important people in my high school life.

Tags: friends