Smells like teen spirit
It's 2:00 in the morning and I can't sleep and somehow I start thinking about Colorado Boy. How he entered my mind I'm not exactly sure. If I tried to retrace the train of thoughts that led to him I'd be up for the rest of the night, especially since the last things I often think before I fall asleep are I have to get to work on time, I wish I was having sex right now, what am I going to wear tomorrow? I wonder if anyone emailed me...
Actually, I think it was my tentative plans to visit my dad in Boston over the upcoming Memorial weekend that got me thinking about it. Last summer, I had the best weekend I had had in years when I went home to Boston. It was the Fourth of July and as I often do when I go back to where I was raised, I started thinking about old friends.
Crow was on my mind that July. My girlfriends and I met him when we were sixteen and were spending every weekend and almost every day after school hanging out with the rest of the teen freaks in the pit in Harvard Square. He was a skater punk then and he became our first tried and true Harvard friend. He introduced us to a whole crowd of folks, not one of whom I think I have ever forgotten. After high school, Crow stayed in Boston working for his dad and I went off to college in Vermont, but we remained friends. I’d get a call from him every so often and he'd drive his latest clunking lemon up to the school for a visit. After college things happened. My move to New York, his move to San Francisco, certain relationships, various jobs. Crow and I fell out of touch. But in the middle of last summer, I called his old number and spoke to his dad. Turned out, I’d called at the right time. Crow was still living in San Francisco but happened to be in Boston for the holiday.
Truth is, I hardly saw my own family at all that weekend. Crow came to pick me up at my dad's the day that I Amtrakked in to town. He was the same Crow, but had aged so quickly. He’d lost his boyish good looks and there were wispy grays where his once famous devil locks hung low over his right eye. Seeing him reminded me instantly of how much we had all been through over the years and how much time had passed. He showed up with another old friend, someone I’d never met before, whom he had known since junior high school. That was Colorado Boy. He too was visiting family on an extended vacation from his home in just outside Denver. He’d driven halfway across the country in his colossal green truck with his two dogs, a sleek boyish black lab and a sweet matronly rottweiler.
That night crow, Colorado Boy, and I put our feet up at one of the old watering holes in Allston. I felt teenagery. I could have even ordered a wine cooler, I was feeling such teen spirit. We made a pact that this was going to be our teenage weekend. We were going to do it up like we used to and pretend that we had as much freedom and as little responsibility in which to do it as we did when we were sixteen. We smoked a lot of pot. We made the rounds and visited some old friends. We sat in the park late at night with the dogs and drank beer. We went up onto the roof of Colorado Boy's father's house on commonwealth avenue and watched the lights go out over the city.
The chemistry between the three of us was great. The chemistry between Colorado Boy and me was even greater and I felt as though I’d known him forever. Sitting up on the blacktop roof, crow went to the other side to pee, and I leaned over to Colorado Boy and said, "just in case I don't get another chance to do this..." and I kissed him. He kissed me back and it was grand. Had it been a scene from a movie, the landmark Citgo sign over Kenmore Square would have been lit up with firecrackers probably sold by some retarded brothers named O’Sullivan. I remember him looking at me in awe, and not being able to turn his eyes away. We even madeout like teenagers.
It was nearing 3 in the morning and the boys offered to drive me home soon with a stop at nearby Crystal Lake, the quintessential late night summery teen hangout. We stood on the dock and watched the water rippling, smoked the last joint and shared the last two beers between the three of us. We knew that the next night, in keeping with our teenagery weekend, we had to call T and get her to come hang out with us. She was one of my closest girlfriends in high school, who I was with when crow skated his way in to our lives. I hadn't seen her in a few years and crow hadn't seen her in several. That night, after watching the sun come up with the boys, I went to bed in the house I grew up in and I slept like a baby.
We showed up at T's apartment and had our own little party. We had a party that was like a party we would have had had we been sixteen and the parents were away and we weren't supposed to have anyone over. We played quarters. We all made out with each other. But Colorado Boy and I somehow had these serious talks intermittently, like every time I had to pee. He’d come in to the bathroom and sit on the edge of the bathtub right across from the toilet, our knees touching, and he'd say the most romantic things over the sound of my tinkle. "Come to Colorado," he said. "My best friend is getting married in August and I want you to come with me to the wedding." I said okay.
We woke up the next morning before crow and T, amazed at how the apartment had been turned upside down. We cleaned up and went out to walk the dogs and get coffee and bagels. We held hands all the while, talking about possibilities. He would look at me in amazement over how this all happened, and how it had been the best time that both of us had had in forever and how easily and instantaneously we had both let our guards down with one another. I had come out of a two-year relationship a few months before having felt suffocated and under someone else's control. That relationship was one in which feelings weren't shared. They were processed, analyzed and judged. There were no magic moments, and only a few where I felt a little bit like myself. But during those three days and three nights in July, I felt as though I was walking through a dream, but I was wide awake. I reveled in being in the arms of this new boy who was so refreshingly open about his feelings, someone who wasn't afraid to say anything. The last night, sometimes just by kissing him I thought my heart was going to break. I wanted him to stay or come back to New York with me or to just pack me up in his truck and take me with him. But I had a new job waiting for me in the city and he had his job too. "You’ll come to Colorado," he said to me, "and you'll never want to leave."
He called me every night from the road back to home and he called me "darlin'". He said he was planning on talking to me every night until he saw my face again. He even called from his best friend's bachelor party in Vegas to tell me he won $300 and that was going straight toward a plane ticket for me. Meanwhile, crow came back to the East Coast and spent a day in New York. We picked up some friends and headed for the beach with burgers and beer. It felt so good to be able to show him where I lived, how I lived, after all those years.
I finally flew out to Colorado and was greeted with kisses from Colorado Boy and leg humping by the dogs. He showed me beautiful places, like the river down the road from his favorite coffeehouse where he dives in every morning and lets the dogs toss sticks around before he heads off to work. I met all of his friends. I went to the pre-wedding party, the wedding, and the after party in a five-bedroom cabin in the mountains. I loved being with him, but I saw sides of Colorado Boy that I didn't like and he began to question what it was that he really wanted. Honestly, he turned out to be a cocky bastard. Magic is really all about timing. There is a reason why you feel those things when you do.
But I want to remember that weekend for what it was, because this random meeting with Colorado boy and fateful reconnecting with Crow and T stirred my soul. The brief combination of people, time, and place that weekend was enough to make me feel like myself again. Sometimes you just need people around who can help remind you of all the good and youthful things about you, the things you forgot about once you realized you had to be all grown up.
