Junior Year: Blondes, Bisexuals, Badassssssss!
Click Here To Read My Freshman Year "Memoir".
Click Here To Read My Sophomore Year "Memoir".
In the summer between sophomore and junior year, I got myself a job. My first real job, complete with hours and paychecks and annoyances and many other things. That job would happen to be at what is now my least favorite place on Earth -- Old Navy, in Kittery. A small store, especially compared to the nearby strip malls located on Route 1. In fact, it was almost ridiculously small. I feel the need to interject before going any further, and just mentioning that I have never bought anything from Old Navy, ever. Back to the story!
It was a small store -- it seemed a lot bigger inside, until I actually entered the Old Navy down in Portsmouth, NH, and realized how small the Kittery store really was. It did have quite a few large stacks of clothing, though. And as an associate on the floor, it was my job to help women and men get the right size clothes for themselves, their sons and daughters, their brothers and sisters, most anyone. We also had to clean up after the store closed, which sometimes meant sticking around until 10 PM. When I first started working there, there was only Meghan as the person I knew; beyond that, there was a pair of people who I at least went to school with. Otherwise it was quite a lonely job. Cleaning, shovelling around women's pants across one end of the store to the other, constantly organizing in order to make sure I could get out of there in the least amount of time, doing anything. At this time, my social skills had not quite picked up as they would a year from this point; so I was a quiet kid who just tended to help people who asked and otherwise kept to himself.
One day, towards the end of the summer, a girl with long blonde hair, shimmering in the fluorescents and neon lights that glittered along aisles and "sales" tables, was discovered by none other than myself working on organizing the young girl's section. She was busy folding tiny skirts -- and I was walking back from the "warehouse" section when I noticed her. Her hair was tied back tight in a single, unbound ponytail, she was wearing a long khaki skirt, and was clad in one of the newer, red polo shirts that the store had handed out recently. I asked her if she was new; she said she had just started the day before or so. The usual small talk that goes on between people.
It's when she looked directly at me that I noticed she had ridiculously blue eyes. I walked away, headed back to what I was doing. But in the back of my mind, something bit at me, telling me to go back and say something. ... Say anything.
So I did.
I walked right back to where she was, and spoke up. "Crazy question," I began. "But, do you have a boyfriend?"
And, well, she told the truth. That she had just broken up with her boy. Later, I would have to call into question other facts that she would tell me; some seemed more fictional. But we were off to a good start. Becca was her name. She was quite the looker, as they never did really say in the old days. Blue eyes that stood out like the color in one of Frank Miller's Sin City stories. They're still stuck in my mind now. We got along well enough together. She seemed to take a keen interest in how I ended up like I had; later, finding out she was home-schooled since sometime around the second or third grade, and had filled her life to the brim with activities (teaching Sunday school, raising and competing with horses, playing piano, going to theater class, theater practice, rehearsals, performances, and somewhere in there she managed to find some time to actually make and keep friends) helped explain this fascination she had. I accepted her curiosity. We worked throughout the summer together; as she developed crush after crush on boy after boy, I made sure to keep her from falling into a pit of "I'm so bad" posers. Yes, Old Navy had those kinds of posers. Quite a few of them would put on the black cowboy hat that sat between one of the sections, and attempt to act tough, an act that never quite kept itself together for too long.
Junior year was maybe the year my high school career fell apart. The point where I realized I just didn't care what the school had to offer me, because I wasn't learning anything except that I should probably go and pay for four-to-eight more years of this type of stuff, and shouldn't ever question what I've been taught. Needless to say, I rebelled against that stance on life. It was so... unnerving. Why should I be giving up my youngest, most vital years to a classroom? I considered dropping out, but realized quickly that my parents wouldn't hesitate to destroy me completely if I did such a thing. So I opted to push through to the end, and then decide on whether or not I thought it was worth continuing with an academic career afterwards.
I would begin my days with Crime & Justice, with Mr. Lewis. Half-a-crackpot, like I said in my Sophomore chronicles; he would take us through the ins and outs of our government's ever-so-slightly set up trial system, and actually showed us places where it was entirely fucked in terms of fairness and the actual handing out of justice. I'd follow this up with Algebra; the fact that I was a junior when I was taking this still pisses me off. I was stuck with an annoying, by-the-book teacher, on top of that. It didn't exactly go well for me in that department. Before the year was half over, I simply stopped showing up to that class, and he stopped giving me detentions for skipping. So, yes, I have a lower-than-usual mathematical education. I understand algebra all right, though. I just don't give a shit, because I don't ever find myself consciously using it.
Period three comes to me as a blank, four was English III. I honestly don't remember what I'd be walking from to get there. The English III teacher was new, 24, and just about every guy in the school had instantly gotten the schoolboy crush look in their eyes. Never mind that, to me, she appeared to be leathery from a tan and had a godawful annoying voice. Most guys just saw an older lady that actually was fully grown and went pitter-patter. This tended to be annoying. Although I think she didn't mind me half as much as a student, simply because I didn't do what guys do when they like a lady. I just treated her as a teacher.
US History was my sixth period. I was back in Mr. Zamarchi's class; and once again, I aced the course easily. Things sometimes just went my way, and history was one of those things. Seventh period, for the first half of the year, doesn't stick out for me; in the second half of the year, I recall taking Introduction to Theater. This here is the important class of my Junior year, or at least the one that leads down the interesting story of being a technical assistant during our school's spring musical -- the ever-infamous high school recreation of Grease. I had one of the best jobs, probably, on the entire workstaff on the play -- a prop runner. Someone had to switch the scenery, and there were five of us chosen to do so. I actually got to know those other four people pretty well; we got along.
The leadup to the play was a strange, disastrous affair; Melissa, whom I had grown close to over the summer and school year (to the point where we were like brother and sister), is a true-to-life bisexual. She had been in a relationship, a serious one, with a girl over two years. However, as the year began and the play began auditions and the whole damn thing got underway, she began to hang around someone new -- a guy, at that. And they seemed to be getting awfully close, which bothered many of us who had actually gotten to know her girlfriend -- a tiny but tough firebrand named Jessica. She had started forming a new circle of friends on top of it -- the boy's friends.
Somewhere in here is where I actually met Aislin. Who's actually one of the only people I talk to from back then on a regular basis these days. We got along like gangbusters, if I remember correctly. And I remember liking her quite a bit. She would eventually be my prom date (a story that'll come later in this commemoration of my boyishmanhood years).
The shock, though, was Becca joining the Intro To Theater class (and only that class -- where the fuck the free time to actually hit up public school came from, God only knows). I imagine it's how she slipped into the play. That had to be the point. She grabbed a bunch of smaller roles and was understudy for a good half of the cast. Meanwhile, the five prop runners simply would get our props ready, and sit around otherwise. Saturdays were perhaps the worst. It was a five-hour rehearsal period, with people practicing the choreography, forgetting their lines, and resembling your average high school drama class. There was one person that was actually really a trained actress on the entire cast; Becca. Everyone else just either had it or didn't. And some didn't. For the macho characters of Danny and Kenickie, we had two gay men -- one that had already come out, the other who would come out post-graduation. What was worse, the Danny Zucko was a bit more feminine than even Travolta was back then. Our Sandy was a soccer player who everyone figured would become the biggest pothead before long. Melissa got bitched out by her old circle of friends for actually requesting that she play a character she had wanted to play since she was a little girl. The best casting came for Rizzo -- it was Aislin, which -- if you know her, you understand: the character's inherent deadpan humor is essentially the actress in a nutshell.
So now I had nearly the entire group of people I had met in high school suddenly within reach of one another. It seemed like a kettle ready to explode, and it was. Becca definitely put off several of my friends -- mostly the girls, mostly because the guys couldn't help looking at her. When the attention is switched off from anyone, the repercussion tends to be sour and angry. Meanwhile, Melissa got a bit more consumate with Andy, even as the play approached it's opening night and her girlfriend came up to see it. Among all of this, I was as much an observer as a member of the proceedings. I watched from not too far away as everything changed. Suddenly, Becca had grabbed the "hot" guy on the play, Melissa had broken it off with Jessie to be with Andy, Aislin roared through the play and became one of the only good things about it, and I switched props around. I had a lot of fun doing it, and even though the play ended up like crap, I felt it all had to have been worth it.
Shortly after that came prom. Here's the story, presented in cracker-jack-box treat size: I was left on the prom song. At *my* prom. Aislin has more than made up for this in the years since, just by existing -- but we're talking my fucking prom night. You only get one, unless you're retarded and go through junior year twice.
I don't really want to delve much deeper into that. I tucked it into a corner of my mind a long time ago.
And that, right there, is pretty much where my school year ended. With a bang and a crash and a bit of a flaming wreck.
But it would improve. A new job was right around the corner...
Click Here To Read My Freshman Year "Memoir".
Click Here To Read My Sophomore Year "Memoir".
In the summer between sophomore and junior year, I got myself a job. My first real job, complete with hours and paychecks and annoyances and many other things. That job would happen to be at what is now my least favorite place on Earth -- Old Navy, in Kittery. A small store, especially compared to the nearby strip malls located on Route 1. In fact, it was almost ridiculously small. I feel the need to interject before going any further, and just mentioning that I have never bought anything from Old Navy, ever. Back to the story!
It was a small store -- it seemed a lot bigger inside, until I actually entered the Old Navy down in Portsmouth, NH, and realized how small the Kittery store really was. It did have quite a few large stacks of clothing, though. And as an associate on the floor, it was my job to help women and men get the right size clothes for themselves, their sons and daughters, their brothers and sisters, most anyone. We also had to clean up after the store closed, which sometimes meant sticking around until 10 PM. When I first started working there, there was only Meghan as the person I knew; beyond that, there was a pair of people who I at least went to school with. Otherwise it was quite a lonely job. Cleaning, shovelling around women's pants across one end of the store to the other, constantly organizing in order to make sure I could get out of there in the least amount of time, doing anything. At this time, my social skills had not quite picked up as they would a year from this point; so I was a quiet kid who just tended to help people who asked and otherwise kept to himself.
One day, towards the end of the summer, a girl with long blonde hair, shimmering in the fluorescents and neon lights that glittered along aisles and "sales" tables, was discovered by none other than myself working on organizing the young girl's section. She was busy folding tiny skirts -- and I was walking back from the "warehouse" section when I noticed her. Her hair was tied back tight in a single, unbound ponytail, she was wearing a long khaki skirt, and was clad in one of the newer, red polo shirts that the store had handed out recently. I asked her if she was new; she said she had just started the day before or so. The usual small talk that goes on between people.
It's when she looked directly at me that I noticed she had ridiculously blue eyes. I walked away, headed back to what I was doing. But in the back of my mind, something bit at me, telling me to go back and say something. ... Say anything.
So I did.
I walked right back to where she was, and spoke up. "Crazy question," I began. "But, do you have a boyfriend?"
And, well, she told the truth. That she had just broken up with her boy. Later, I would have to call into question other facts that she would tell me; some seemed more fictional. But we were off to a good start. Becca was her name. She was quite the looker, as they never did really say in the old days. Blue eyes that stood out like the color in one of Frank Miller's Sin City stories. They're still stuck in my mind now. We got along well enough together. She seemed to take a keen interest in how I ended up like I had; later, finding out she was home-schooled since sometime around the second or third grade, and had filled her life to the brim with activities (teaching Sunday school, raising and competing with horses, playing piano, going to theater class, theater practice, rehearsals, performances, and somewhere in there she managed to find some time to actually make and keep friends) helped explain this fascination she had. I accepted her curiosity. We worked throughout the summer together; as she developed crush after crush on boy after boy, I made sure to keep her from falling into a pit of "I'm so bad" posers. Yes, Old Navy had those kinds of posers. Quite a few of them would put on the black cowboy hat that sat between one of the sections, and attempt to act tough, an act that never quite kept itself together for too long.
Junior year was maybe the year my high school career fell apart. The point where I realized I just didn't care what the school had to offer me, because I wasn't learning anything except that I should probably go and pay for four-to-eight more years of this type of stuff, and shouldn't ever question what I've been taught. Needless to say, I rebelled against that stance on life. It was so... unnerving. Why should I be giving up my youngest, most vital years to a classroom? I considered dropping out, but realized quickly that my parents wouldn't hesitate to destroy me completely if I did such a thing. So I opted to push through to the end, and then decide on whether or not I thought it was worth continuing with an academic career afterwards.
I would begin my days with Crime & Justice, with Mr. Lewis. Half-a-crackpot, like I said in my Sophomore chronicles; he would take us through the ins and outs of our government's ever-so-slightly set up trial system, and actually showed us places where it was entirely fucked in terms of fairness and the actual handing out of justice. I'd follow this up with Algebra; the fact that I was a junior when I was taking this still pisses me off. I was stuck with an annoying, by-the-book teacher, on top of that. It didn't exactly go well for me in that department. Before the year was half over, I simply stopped showing up to that class, and he stopped giving me detentions for skipping. So, yes, I have a lower-than-usual mathematical education. I understand algebra all right, though. I just don't give a shit, because I don't ever find myself consciously using it.
Period three comes to me as a blank, four was English III. I honestly don't remember what I'd be walking from to get there. The English III teacher was new, 24, and just about every guy in the school had instantly gotten the schoolboy crush look in their eyes. Never mind that, to me, she appeared to be leathery from a tan and had a godawful annoying voice. Most guys just saw an older lady that actually was fully grown and went pitter-patter. This tended to be annoying. Although I think she didn't mind me half as much as a student, simply because I didn't do what guys do when they like a lady. I just treated her as a teacher.
US History was my sixth period. I was back in Mr. Zamarchi's class; and once again, I aced the course easily. Things sometimes just went my way, and history was one of those things. Seventh period, for the first half of the year, doesn't stick out for me; in the second half of the year, I recall taking Introduction to Theater. This here is the important class of my Junior year, or at least the one that leads down the interesting story of being a technical assistant during our school's spring musical -- the ever-infamous high school recreation of Grease. I had one of the best jobs, probably, on the entire workstaff on the play -- a prop runner. Someone had to switch the scenery, and there were five of us chosen to do so. I actually got to know those other four people pretty well; we got along.
The leadup to the play was a strange, disastrous affair; Melissa, whom I had grown close to over the summer and school year (to the point where we were like brother and sister), is a true-to-life bisexual. She had been in a relationship, a serious one, with a girl over two years. However, as the year began and the play began auditions and the whole damn thing got underway, she began to hang around someone new -- a guy, at that. And they seemed to be getting awfully close, which bothered many of us who had actually gotten to know her girlfriend -- a tiny but tough firebrand named Jessica. She had started forming a new circle of friends on top of it -- the boy's friends.
Somewhere in here is where I actually met Aislin. Who's actually one of the only people I talk to from back then on a regular basis these days. We got along like gangbusters, if I remember correctly. And I remember liking her quite a bit. She would eventually be my prom date (a story that'll come later in this commemoration of my boyishmanhood years).
The shock, though, was Becca joining the Intro To Theater class (and only that class -- where the fuck the free time to actually hit up public school came from, God only knows). I imagine it's how she slipped into the play. That had to be the point. She grabbed a bunch of smaller roles and was understudy for a good half of the cast. Meanwhile, the five prop runners simply would get our props ready, and sit around otherwise. Saturdays were perhaps the worst. It was a five-hour rehearsal period, with people practicing the choreography, forgetting their lines, and resembling your average high school drama class. There was one person that was actually really a trained actress on the entire cast; Becca. Everyone else just either had it or didn't. And some didn't. For the macho characters of Danny and Kenickie, we had two gay men -- one that had already come out, the other who would come out post-graduation. What was worse, the Danny Zucko was a bit more feminine than even Travolta was back then. Our Sandy was a soccer player who everyone figured would become the biggest pothead before long. Melissa got bitched out by her old circle of friends for actually requesting that she play a character she had wanted to play since she was a little girl. The best casting came for Rizzo -- it was Aislin, which -- if you know her, you understand: the character's inherent deadpan humor is essentially the actress in a nutshell.
So now I had nearly the entire group of people I had met in high school suddenly within reach of one another. It seemed like a kettle ready to explode, and it was. Becca definitely put off several of my friends -- mostly the girls, mostly because the guys couldn't help looking at her. When the attention is switched off from anyone, the repercussion tends to be sour and angry. Meanwhile, Melissa got a bit more consumate with Andy, even as the play approached it's opening night and her girlfriend came up to see it. Among all of this, I was as much an observer as a member of the proceedings. I watched from not too far away as everything changed. Suddenly, Becca had grabbed the "hot" guy on the play, Melissa had broken it off with Jessie to be with Andy, Aislin roared through the play and became one of the only good things about it, and I switched props around. I had a lot of fun doing it, and even though the play ended up like crap, I felt it all had to have been worth it.
Shortly after that came prom. Here's the story, presented in cracker-jack-box treat size: I was left on the prom song. At *my* prom. Aislin has more than made up for this in the years since, just by existing -- but we're talking my fucking prom night. You only get one, unless you're retarded and go through junior year twice.
I don't really want to delve much deeper into that. I tucked it into a corner of my mind a long time ago.
And that, right there, is pretty much where my school year ended. With a bang and a crash and a bit of a flaming wreck.
But it would improve. A new job was right around the corner...
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I think "Veteran" is the best song they have on there, but give them all a listen...