SUCH DIFFERENCES

As I said at the time …

Finally, observing the banner in the background of the thirty-fifth reunion pictures, my wife finally connected a date she’d long known with her own experience: “When you were all graduating, I was being potty trained.”

I wonder what I would tell them, given the chance. I’m not judging them, as much as judging myself and all of the intervening years. The long journey to here. I’m not gloating that I have a younger wife, one who’s only a few years older than some of their own children; besides, that wouldn’t have been the case, had my first marriage not failed. I’m finally experiencing the challenges and joys of parenting, while they already have grandchildren – on that front, maybe they really are much older. See, I am envious of those still married to their spouse right out of high school. They took the straight path and got down to business. In contrast, many lonely nights and a sequence of transitory relationships have been my alternative. I think how innocent I was (ignorant is the more accurate term, actually), especially on matters of sex. In the intervening years, even after I realized that certain girls had gone away because they were pregnant or certain guys were homosexual, I simply couldn’t admit that any of us were actually having, gulp, intercourse. Although, years later, looking at the homecoming court photos in the yearbook, the realization flashed upon me, from one’s smile, that she must have recently become sexually active.

Which leads me to the goddesses. The beauties I both idealized and gazed at with masked lust, wondering how the soft touch would feel, how the naked body would look, how two people actually connect. The ones who left me speechless. The ones who were, in many ways, in a league other than the one I inhabited. To my eyes, they were miraculous and mysterious, invested with secret knowledge and magical powers, with taste, social graces, and high style – no matter how middle-class we were or the fact that our conversations rarely went any deeper than howdy. The reunion photos, then, confirm my fears – that goddesses may become hags – yes, mortal, even grotesque. And yet, to my surprise, some have become more beautiful than ever. How can this be? If we could only return, however briefly, for candid discourse, to uncover what thoughts, feelings, and actions lurked behind those Mona Lisa facades, both then and in the subsequent years. Not superficial conversation, but blunt disclosures. Now, however, sifting through the reunion photos, I soon calculate how few of these goddesses attended – which leads to further speculation. To my eye, they were the essence of what Hollywood starlets aspire to represent. Unlike any mythology, however, few remain in any Olympus. Instead, I must confront a youth culture that offered little wisdom.

I must leave it to the girls-turned-to-women to speak of the Adonis club and its deterioration. Besides, I was never a member. On the other hand, I’ve sometimes quipped that if I could do it all over again, I would have hung out with the greasers – that they had what I was lacking. As if they would have had me! Or am I only imagining they had fun in their tweaking of authority?

To reenter those years also means admitting shame, embarrassment, and guilt. I’m not the golden boy my mother expected, or the great talent my youth pastor counseled. For that matter, it’s been many years since I could tie my hair back in a ponytail or part it down the middle. Since I had a beer bottle tossed at me at a party. As I’ve said, it’s been a long road from there to here.

One soon approaching what will be a fiftieth anniversary reunion, if it happens.