solar eclipse

could i sit here and pretend i knew what he was thinking all those years ago, on the bottom bench of the orange lacquered bleachers of our squeaky, high school gym, scared and drenched in his own sweat?

i suppose i could. i suppose i don't need to pretend.

the boy who should have grown up next to us but his daddy was afraid to stick him in a taxi to send him off to the school across town, his dad convinced all taxi drivers were child molesters. the boy who started high school with us at the public school but after a short while transfered to the catholic school because their basketball program was way better, and he would get more exposure playing with a better team, get a free ride to university, which was probably true, and probably happened.

now he is grown and teaching school in a town i lived in only a few years back, living around the corner from my old flat, eating the same pizza and jogging the same riverside trails.

and whenever we return to the town where we grew up, at the same time, tucking ourselves in the awkward spaces of our childhood homes, we escape to the same bars with the same group of friends and acquaintances. like that Christmas he came back from Asia with all that hair and exuberance and I couldn't stop staring at him and it was too late because that boy on the bench had grown up and so had i, and our lives, when they did overlap, only overlapped for the briefest of moments, like a solar eclipse, and not enough for anything more than a vague acquaintance and a few isolated conversations, a handful a decade, where he dazzles me, having grown tall and learned to curb the teenage stink, and where perhaps, if i am lucky, i dazzle him too.

Some teeny-bop dream i had..

.. kind of twisted, romantic coming of age shit..

Fiction Alert!

The time at the grocery after school...two weeks to graduation. Dave, shy skater Dave, nervous shrugging Dave with the huge dark blue eyes and the quiet stutter, Dave who talked to her for hours on the telephone but had only ever held her hand. She was with him that day - witnessed something barbaric inside of him emerge and quickly vanish.

The kid followed them and egged them on the entire way to the grocery, and somehow it attracted a lot of attention and then there was a crowd and the crowd became this pulsating force, this mob of: "why are you letting this shit-head say this stuff to you Dave?" The kid wouldn't stop. he was begging for it, the mob said, "beat him Dave. You are being a pussy Dave, beat this dickwads face in". And he did. a fury of punches, nothing fancy, nothing dirty, just well placed punches, and he almost didn't stop but she was screaming, blurred, she knew he would regret it...she was screaming for him to stop and he did.

he took some hits too, was pushed into a shopping cart, off balance, winded him..but not as much as the little shit who had started it all. (Dave would later recall the sensation of the other boys jaw breaking under his knuckles, and become nauseated with the memory.)

by the end of it, his mother had been called and she came in her rusty white buick to gather her youngest son.
The girl went with them and Dave cried blood into her lap in the back seat. His mother smoked a cigarette and watched the tenderness of the girl in the rear-view mirror.
******
at home in the dishevelment of the rented white Victorian with lopsided porch and forever slamming front door, Dave's mother's boyfriend sits at the table with a beer and looks up as they arrive but Dave's mother shushed him and points the girl down the hall of this beautiful, dirty house where the bedroom doors never quite stay shut and the whitewash of the walls never quite stays white.. the girl nods and half carries Dave to the bathroom down the wooden hall and holds his hand under the water spout watching the rivulets of blood weave down his fingers to the drain. his liquid blue eyes are large and amazed in the dusty oval mirror. he doesn't talk much because when he does it's never anything that matters, he wants it to matter, feels like it should matter but it's stuttered silliness when it comes out.
*****
when he first came to high school his older brother got up and played the guitar and sang Imagine by the Beatles in front of the entire school, Dave just sat there big eyed and wished he could say it like that one day too. Hasn't yet.
****
the lockers at school are not big enough to fit the burden of youth. weren't when they were in 9th grade and still aren't now. they spill hidden bottles of booze and soiled gym clothes and he can never quite remember the combination until the last moment and he can never quite get it closed, can never erase the graffiti.
*****
she holds him all night while he sobs in the cold stillness of his bedroom because she knows he is horrified, sweet dave who has never hurt a fly, knows he will have bad dreams and wake up hating himself. she is not sure if he will remember but in his despair he kisses her three times on the lips as if gasping for air, (of course he will remember) each time more natural, more tender. he has never kissed her before. never kissed anyone. she smiles through the soft swell of his lips and tucks herself around his delirious warmth.
she watches him....watches day arrive opalescent gray through the window..the same trees sway outside and things will never be the same..