Seventeen In ’88 – A story of teen angst, long walks, dirty jokes, haunted rooms, haunted psyches, records as refuge, roads like mazes, young love, bonding and unbonding, deep foreboding, senseless death, and innocence peeled away slowly, layer by layer.
One February night in 1988 Max and I went to see a screening of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai at the local Drama Center. It was a Friday. Maggie, my first love, was in town for the weekend, and I couldn’t concentrate on the movie because I was so anxious to see her later that night. I remember shuffling around restlessly in my seat, just wishing that this incomprehensible mess of a movie would be over. Time crawled like a woozy slug.
Upon leaving the theatre we were startled to see that it had started snowing, and the ground was already covered with a pristine layer of white. A ripple of electric energy surged through the crowd as we exited. But I was pissed off. Not only was it a waste – what good is snow on a Friday night when there’s no school to get out of tomorrow anyway? – it was also going to make the walk from Max’s house to Maggie’s house that much more of a problem.
I had to wait until Maggie’s parents were asleep before I could make the journey, so when Max and I got back to his house we listened to records for a while. I had recently fallen in love with the music of Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson, and the whole British folk-rock scene, and at the time I was annoyingly anxious to play this music for anyone who would listen. So I played the first side of Fairport Convention’s Unhalfbricking, hoping that Max would hear in it the same graceful, ghostly beauty that I did. He humored me amiably, but the religious fervor with which I preached the cause was probably just overbearing enough to keep anyone from hearing the music clearly, with an open mind. Nonetheless, Max showed the patience of a true friend and seemed to enjoy it as we sat in the still calm of his room, absorbing Sandy Denny’s wistful, haunted voice as it meshed elegantly with the swirling snow outside the window.
Around 1AM it was time for the walk. Unfortunately, there was an obstacle I hadn’t counted on. As I crept carefully into the hallway I discovered to my horror that Max’s mother was not only still awake, but also hyperactively zig-zagging from room to room, cleaning and organizing the house. They had only just moved in a few weeks before.
So I had a choice. Turn back dejectedly for a night of restless sleep on Max’s floor, or push on determinedly, and risk getting caught. Being seventeen, I of course opted for the foolhardy, consequences-be-damned latter. The call of teenage hormones is an incredibly powerful thing.
I’m still not quite sure how I managed to get past her undetected. The only door I could use was in the kitchen, which was right next to the living room. I waited in the dark bathroom doorway and watched her shuffle between these two rooms repeatedly. Finally, I decided to make a break for it. I watched her walk into the living room and I hastily made a dash, as quietly as possible, for the kitchen door. The television was on, so it must have helped muffle the sound of my footsteps and the door as it opened and closed. Once on the other side of the door, I exhaled, probably too loudly. Of course I didn’t know how I was going to get back into the house, especially as the door would likely be locked, but that didn’t matter. I was, for the moment, free.
It was a raw, exhilarating freedom. The cold and snow fell over me like a blanket as I set out. Three or four inches had accumulated by that point, and as I walked I kept looking back at the tracks I was leaving behind. It occurred to me that if Max’s mother went outside for any reason she would spot the tracks and probably freak out. All I could do was hope that wouldn’t happen. What did it matter anyway? I stuffed my freezing hands into the pockets of my favorite trench coat, the heavy green one, and pressed on.
The snow on the road was perfect and pure. No traffic had come through to sully it as of yet. The streetlights had an orange tint, which cast a lustrous golden hue over the landscape, and in every direction it glistened. The quiet was stirring, churchlike, though Sandy Denny’s honey-inflected voice still whispered and soared through my bones.
It was only a few blocks to Maggie’s house, so the walk would only take about ten minutes. The way I was feeling, though, I would have walked for hours. For whatever reason - the anticipation of seeing Maggie, the strange energy of the snow, the thrill of evading Max’s mom – I was filled with energy, a liquid sensation of electricity flowing through me.
The single moment that I remember best about the whole night happened here, and it was a ridiculously simple one; I looked up at the swirling snow in the pale orange glow of the streetlight, with the pink sky as background. I took a mental picture. Somehow, I think I felt intuitively that this was a signal event in my life, a time when circumstances had collided in such a way to create a situation, an atmosphere, a feeling that would prove indelible enough that I would want to access the memory frequently in the years to come.
So that was the big moment; I looked up.
There was more after that, of course, including the farcical discovery, upon returning to Max’s at around six AM, that his mother was still awake and going strong, and the ensuing scramble to figure out what to do with that situation. The night, however, had made its point, and it’s that moment during the walk, looking up at the snow falling, that comes to mind when I’m sorting through the favorite memories of my life.
Overall, the night may not have seemed like a big deal, there were no big milestones, no emotional revelations, no grand dramatic developments. Just a short trek through the snow. And some music. And a fleeting moment of brazen teenage recklessness. But it’s those kind of occasions, the ones that on the surface seem innocent, that I’ve always looked for, waited for, hoped would happen, tried to create, usually unsuccessfully.
Maybe it’s a trick of the brain, like intuition, or déjà vu, or lust disguised as love. But generally, I don’t think you get to pick these moments yourself, they happen of their own accord. Sometimes you just look around and there it is.
