After we arts-and-crafted our way into a date it turned out that none
but your truly could drive so I was required to do so. The couple we
were doubling with were some friends of my somewhat girlfriend who I
did not know. They were breaking up with each other and this was
going to be their last date together so they spent the night in the
back seat of my car variously entwined and sobbing. Then we were at a
horrible Mexican restaurant where they were variously sobbing,
entwined and consuming some of the worst cheese enchiladas ever
devised by the mind of man. It was tedious in the beginning and only
got worse as the evening wore on. We went to the dance proper and got
our couple and group pictures taken and then we hung around sitting
next to our sobbingly entwined comrades until enough time had passed
to load up and go find something else to do. My date asked to to
drive somewhere secluded for a little -wink wink- slap and tickle.
That was an idea I could get behind but I had forgotten about our
lacrimonious baggage. We drove out to a jetty that people called a
levee which was at the foot a hill called west mountain which, in
turn, was at a boat dock called Lincoln beach. You would have to cast
the old beach definition net really, really wide for anything in the
vicinity to be called a beach. Yet there we were, and the geography
was not the only thing that was not as it should be. We were sitting
in a dark car on a dark road looking out at the lake waiting for the
steel mill across the way to make its nightly dump of slag into
cooling pond which would make that side of the lake glow a magical
orange-red against the plumes of steam that would billow up, I mean,
if that is not a magical recipe for teenage romance then check your
pulse. Romance, sadly, was not in the air so much as the weeping and
wailing of the damned loves in the backed seat of my car. I don't
know if I ever knew why two obviously passionate and emotional loves
were forced to separate. Was it a unforeseen move, a overbearing
parent, pregnancy , or another lover? I didn't and don't want to know
I just wanted for them to shut up with all waterworks and drama. We
tried to make out for a bit but it is really to get the mood right
when there is a snippet or blurb of teenage histrionics
intermittently intruding. It bored so deep into my psyche that it
placed a white hot poker right on that little piece of brain which is
responsible for liking people and generally being happy and burnt it
right up. I counted the minutes until we could go home, but what was
this? A twist! The lovers didn't want to go home to face their fate
and be separated and they begged to stay out for as long as possible.
Nope. I told them some story about how I would be murdered and then
beaten if I was late getting home and they asked that I drop them off
together at neither of their houses. That I could do just to get them
out of ear shot. Them gone I took my date to her house and then went
hoe and stayed up all night talking ot my brother’s friend about
his mold allergies which sounds boring but in contrast to the insipid
tumults of adolescent emotions that I had to endure for five hours it
was riveting. I never saw our star crossed loved again.
