It was the summer before tenth grade when Purple Rain came out in 1984. I sat in my chair on the left side of the theater watching the screen, pretending not to notice my friend making out with her date in the seats next to me. Today I wonder why had I been invited to tag along and why had I said yes? It is not hard to put myself in my room at my parent's house with the telephone in my hand, dialing the the push buttons and waiting for my old friend to pick up. We hadn't seen as much of each other since my parents had moved us across the intercoastal waterway and North up I-95 to the town of Palm Beach Gardens the year before. I'd probably called her and asked her what she was doing that weekend. Did she want to hang out?
Maybe she felt sorry for me. Maybe that's why, when she said she had plans to go to the movies with her boyfriend, she said I could come along. Maybe I said, "Okay," because I wanted any little bit of my friend I could get. Maybe I said, "Okay," because I wanted him to feel my presence, to be reminded that what she and I had extended back farther and deeper than any relationship he could hope to have with her, but the truth was that our paths were diverging. She was spending her time with rich boys who liked to drink, drive their expensive cars too fast and got annoyed by the manner in which she shut the door while I escaped all that in sweat of the ballet studio.
If someone had asked me back then what i thought of this particular boy I would've said, "He's okay," but the truth is that I hated him. I hated that he took her attention and I hated that she sat in the front seat with him and stuck her tongue in his ear at the stoplight. We were on the way to a party. You might think I was relieved to be free of the oppression that was the back seat of his late 1970's generic 4-door. It was the type that had no center console so that the front seat was one continuous bench, the same as the back, but I was not relieved to be free of it. I was out of one oppressive environment and smack dab in the middle of another. Exiting the car we entered a scene. Along side the front hedge a kid chugged beer from a long plastic tube. Others congregated around him waiting for their turns and chanted, "chug, chug, chug!" Everyone thought it was hilarious. I thought it was stupid. I followed my friend around that night, zigzagging through the people, hoping not to be seen.
I don't know what came first, the movie or the party. I only know that it came to an end the night he dropped my friend off first. Backing out of her driveway, he looked at me through the rear view mirror and said, "What's the matter with you. Are you a lesbian or something?" Without hesitation I blurted out an indignant, "No!" and turned my head to look out the far-sided window. Heat rose from my neck to my face. I wanted to hide. I thought, How could he think that about me? Yet the sting of humiliation persisted like an unanswered question gnawing at me from the inside.
Maybe she felt sorry for me. Maybe that's why, when she said she had plans to go to the movies with her boyfriend, she said I could come along. Maybe I said, "Okay," because I wanted any little bit of my friend I could get. Maybe I said, "Okay," because I wanted him to feel my presence, to be reminded that what she and I had extended back farther and deeper than any relationship he could hope to have with her, but the truth was that our paths were diverging. She was spending her time with rich boys who liked to drink, drive their expensive cars too fast and got annoyed by the manner in which she shut the door while I escaped all that in sweat of the ballet studio.
If someone had asked me back then what i thought of this particular boy I would've said, "He's okay," but the truth is that I hated him. I hated that he took her attention and I hated that she sat in the front seat with him and stuck her tongue in his ear at the stoplight. We were on the way to a party. You might think I was relieved to be free of the oppression that was the back seat of his late 1970's generic 4-door. It was the type that had no center console so that the front seat was one continuous bench, the same as the back, but I was not relieved to be free of it. I was out of one oppressive environment and smack dab in the middle of another. Exiting the car we entered a scene. Along side the front hedge a kid chugged beer from a long plastic tube. Others congregated around him waiting for their turns and chanted, "chug, chug, chug!" Everyone thought it was hilarious. I thought it was stupid. I followed my friend around that night, zigzagging through the people, hoping not to be seen.
I don't know what came first, the movie or the party. I only know that it came to an end the night he dropped my friend off first. Backing out of her driveway, he looked at me through the rear view mirror and said, "What's the matter with you. Are you a lesbian or something?" Without hesitation I blurted out an indignant, "No!" and turned my head to look out the far-sided window. Heat rose from my neck to my face. I wanted to hide. I thought, How could he think that about me? Yet the sting of humiliation persisted like an unanswered question gnawing at me from the inside.
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