The Last Year of High School
(Washington High School, 1965)
Oh yes, it was that last year that Chick got his 1959 Plymouth, jet black, and blasted around the Washington High School, like a lightening-bolt. It turned everyone’s head, should have, most likely did have, could have, even Turner, the Student Council—Social Studies teacher did a double take. I couldn’t do that morning any other way; I bought the car toughened up, made more transitive, super quick, and fast, just for that event. I knew exactly what I was doing, several friends walking towards me, as I parked my new car. Several girls I knew completely aware of me, a few never once looking at me other than looking at me with a passing glace, their eyes now hard and fixed so much so, the intent was unconscious, and set and hard. Beyond me, behind me, they looked a young painter, poet, roustabout, I walked out onto the street, and a yard or two, actual point, in the middle of the street, since now there were a huddle around me. Coach Simensen was looking, arms crossed, as if to say—‘Now what Chick¨ and Coach McManus, with his big belly, he looked serious too. I was a sportsman too, but I didn’t care to join any of the groups per se, I was a loner.
There was Sandy, the virgin bitch, not scoring or changing or seeing me bow, or begging, she held her head up and walked into the High School—I had dated her some—not quite arrogant and not really unmindful, just with a tone of innocence, as if she was sleepwalking, she’d marry some scumbag down the road and throw it in my face, because I up and left her dry one evening, didn’t bring her roses I suppose: I suppose I was no better. I don’t know she didn’t like my hardness, and I was hard, couldn’t change me, or she couldn’t change her, and I didn’t want to change her. And there was Pam S., in art class, and Linda, in art class nice, sweet, and the dough guys like Greer and Walsh, and a few others, friends. Diane F was friend, and Blackford, somewhere along the line I guess she was a friend. And there was Diane S., she always smiled at me, one big smile from Jr. High School, all the way through High School, you know what I mean, that smile that was immune in intensity; in years I’d meet her on one of my daily walks down by Rice and Larpenter Avenues, and we’d talk some, she bought a new apartment, had gotten her divorce, she lost something. She would be close to forty then—no a little more than forty then, maybe more on the forty-four side of life, but I knew her when I met her, she was a star in High School, on many of the pages in the yearbook like Bonnie and Olga, I had possibly not seen her in nearly twenty-years, a lot of human changes, so drastically were those years for her—they looked. It was as though I—you also possibly—that a girl like that, that showed so much possibility, could not other than, produce an exact replica of something more fulfilling.
And Margie M., I seen her also, she was another one of the flock, oh, yes, she knew me, I knew her, again from Jr. High School, even though I had a little crush on her—very little, perhaps every male of maturity status at Washington did at one time or another, even though I had—had had—didn’t have anymore, I watch myself, my ole friend Jack, got to her before me, his motorcycle I think, she had white hair at the twenty-fifth reunion. All these goodie, goodie girls like the bad boys. She turned out to be a social worker of all things, perhaps for those bad boys. And Diane F., she was nice, and Marilyn H., in Art, I liked art, in woodshop, I ran after the teacher with a saw, they kicked me out, art was more my style. Pam S., was cute, a sophomore. Never really got my attention too much, but got it nonetheless.
And Fred was there, he was on a lot of the sports, good ole fellow—I think, didn’t get to know him well—thus, I say this simple because I would decline to have him any other way. And Greg J, was there, he was a big ham, nice looking, king of the road type, you might say, to me not too existing, just breathing, having been born, becoming born, and then… to me, in that last year of High School, when the ham really came out of him, resilient enough for him to cope with his poisoned air, --so when the days passed, Greg was no longer to be seen taking up room in my space, he watched me from a distance, thank goodness; anyhow he looked, waved at me, said something, with a few gals as always by his side, doomed to his own fate, doomed to hunger and motion and flattery, and looking for that glare in someone else’s eye meant for him.
And Ray S., an ole pal, football boy, didn’t look like he’d be one at first sight, those kind don’t, “Sharp man, where you been hiding it?” he asked (meaning my mean mad black Plymouth). And there was Gayle J., the beauty with the big eyes, burning eyes, sweet and cute; I would remember her for a long time—had a dance or two with her, why I don’t know. Anyhow, I said to myself, you don’t marry these girls, you just look at them, I never even dated many girls from my High School, I dated girls from my neighborhood, Johnson High School, bar girls older than me, quite a number of girls. Many, but only a select few from my High School: better that way, no controversy, I could rise and fall without notice, much notice, the grapevine was thinner. Perhaps an awkward method, but Washington High School was not my official designated place to pick up girls. Oh yes, oh yes, they knew that. They figured I somehow already had arranged—laboriously whatever needs I needed in this area, and I suppose expected nothing to happen, I was safe to toy with: in which case they seldom did.
It was my generation, a single generation, one of many to be one overlapping a succession, but I liked the moment, the uproar of it, which would not last all that long—it is only revealed to you for a flash of a moment, almost robbing you of memory, then it is gone. The single result of all this is a vague hot picture of you looking back, and you were either second in command or in command of your life, one or the other.
I didn’t belong to any clubs, doubt they’d have me, especially the Stage, or Library, or Bowling or Audio Club, I was too wild for them, a silent wild child. Back there in that time of my own clowning belated adolescence.
I noticed up by the stairs by the door, where everyone stood and watched and showed off, saw me and my car racing around school like James Dean, that was in ’65, Kirlin, and Leroy, and Rob, who never became the actor he wanted to be—so I heard, and Maureen who had a crush on me—I think, Dave O., my old neighborhood friend, who somehow avoided me that last year, we hung around a lot in previous years, I remember looking in his face and it was as if he was trying to decide which of the two unbearable was the least unbearable, me or his father’s intent of having him avoid the bad boy, I think he chewed all his fingernails trying to figure that one out. That is, now he could play the good guy with all the High School girls and avoid the drinking and roustabout life, I’d bring to him, just wave as he seduced his new life, in passing me by—perhaps he was wiser than he thought, sometimes we are too much of a sentimentalist. This was no anguish, it was mere realism. We were all learning how to be grownups in the only way we could: God forbid. And then still more days passed, and I knew I was not coming back for any more; it was Now or Never, as Elvis’ song went. It was as if a single aim appeared interlocked circumstances—graduate, it was my mother’s wish. Here was a feller no brighter than a warm day, perhaps wiser, racing his car, never to grieve a moment in life, never say much beyond the moment, he drove too fast for the conservative city teachers, at war with the world, and wanting to see it all.
Bonnie somehow invented a smile, pretty Bonnie, a simple paradox with humor, secure in her checkable facts as she roamed the halls, a nod here and there. And Zibley, who was the joker, I’d meet at the twenty-fifth reunion, and Roy who I’d forget at the reunion and only to remember him later. As I would Roger remember him at first sight, with his white suite coat, that last year even he got more grown up, so you see how much effort a man will make to grow up that last year of High School. Defend oneself against old ways; reinvent oneself in nine months, mind and soul. And end up at the end of the string, as a pervert or deliberately infests himself with lice after a year of war, in Vietnam, living on the streets of the City, like Mike did, my old friend, did, does, still does; Roger to establish and maintain himself as what he uniquely was, then and now, and a little more now than then.
Yes, oh yes, there were many standing outside the school that day: Paulette, she was a peace of mind, gal; nothing will last forever, but when I met her years later, she was just the same gal; nothing different, not even lice; so now here I was a poet, a war veteran. And nothing will remain, praise to the gods, no, praise to God Almighty we change, now I can join those top dogs from High School, and take off my damned unbearable bad boy uniform. Never to be completely one of those bloodhounds—but neither the bad boy, in that lost time, in that lost era, in that forever lost moment, but it is better it remain or quit being remaining in memory, and live it by proxy, through stories yet to be written.
After High School
And now that I look back, which was all right then, is now, it was done, too late to help, them or me, we were used to one another, they were their own breed or strain of the High School student, and they nor I could expect no more, this is just simple conformation to a pattern.
It was to my surprise I would do all I did, all I was trying to do, to be, should be. I began to spend most of my time in Karate, traveling, crisscrossing the United States, then came war—medals and medals and more travel, then crisscrossing the world, then collage after collage, standing a little back from the window, watching the years coming and going to leave a dent here and there, the ambitious haul in life was in motion. No more snap-on-bow ties, moving faintly and steadily at becoming rich that was an initial goal, and thereafter, writing book after book after book. Years had never seen me spit again on the sidewalk (in addition, after four wives, children and grandchildren, all but one wife one brother, the rest had joined that old snobby group I left somewhere behind, how I picked them out, and fathered their children, and inherited grandchildren of the same, is beyond me, one of those things you just have to ponder on until the day you die and let go because the why is not there—they didn’t teach me that in High School, or seven years of college, or eleven years in the Military or around the world twenty-seven times, it is just a monster rubber plant you can never find any use for ).
Then one day I moved to Peru. Still standing where I might be out of the actual path of the pushy people, the people that charged an interest rate to be with them, and was put on television fifty times, and had a radio program, was in the papers, watching how much money I could spend, what kept me going, heart attack after heart attack, a few strokes in-between, a few other diseases cured and up and on my way I went, thrilled there was still life left in me. Realizing no matter how much money I could draw, or how famous I could become, out of the bank, someone else could draw more, but breath, oh but breath, there was always not enough of that it was not a commodity for sale, that I might be the one to lose it all, had on a few occasions lost it all, zero-plus one breath left, into it in time, and I now believed in the inevitable moment, the short day, designed for all humankind could be sooner than later, I had a choice in it—somewhat, that was when I sold it all and moved. Perhaps had I not, that someone might have said “Sorry there, you can’t draw out anymore breaths, because there aren’t anymore for you left to draw out, plus the bank is closed.”
But this time, I had learned all there was to learn about such things, and I knew how things were done. Some of us, a few of us, prepared ourselves to loot the bank, by thinking a little more light of the money, and more of life—wait a minute, that’s not exactly what I mean. I got too much respect of God and reverence for life, to just love money for money sake. You got me wrong if you think that I’m a thief, I just learned how to read better, how to take notes, look at them closer, turn them upside down, and then throw them in the waste basket. Evidently, a few of you have learned that too, otherwise you’d not be reading this. You must admit, too many people spend their most precious hours in the privy. Especially a lot of those board directors, who believe everything, all things are wrapped in something green, even the air is green for those folks.
No: 641 (6-24-2010)
(Washington High School, 1965)
Oh yes, it was that last year that Chick got his 1959 Plymouth, jet black, and blasted around the Washington High School, like a lightening-bolt. It turned everyone’s head, should have, most likely did have, could have, even Turner, the Student Council—Social Studies teacher did a double take. I couldn’t do that morning any other way; I bought the car toughened up, made more transitive, super quick, and fast, just for that event. I knew exactly what I was doing, several friends walking towards me, as I parked my new car. Several girls I knew completely aware of me, a few never once looking at me other than looking at me with a passing glace, their eyes now hard and fixed so much so, the intent was unconscious, and set and hard. Beyond me, behind me, they looked a young painter, poet, roustabout, I walked out onto the street, and a yard or two, actual point, in the middle of the street, since now there were a huddle around me. Coach Simensen was looking, arms crossed, as if to say—‘Now what Chick¨ and Coach McManus, with his big belly, he looked serious too. I was a sportsman too, but I didn’t care to join any of the groups per se, I was a loner.
There was Sandy, the virgin bitch, not scoring or changing or seeing me bow, or begging, she held her head up and walked into the High School—I had dated her some—not quite arrogant and not really unmindful, just with a tone of innocence, as if she was sleepwalking, she’d marry some scumbag down the road and throw it in my face, because I up and left her dry one evening, didn’t bring her roses I suppose: I suppose I was no better. I don’t know she didn’t like my hardness, and I was hard, couldn’t change me, or she couldn’t change her, and I didn’t want to change her. And there was Pam S., in art class, and Linda, in art class nice, sweet, and the dough guys like Greer and Walsh, and a few others, friends. Diane F was friend, and Blackford, somewhere along the line I guess she was a friend. And there was Diane S., she always smiled at me, one big smile from Jr. High School, all the way through High School, you know what I mean, that smile that was immune in intensity; in years I’d meet her on one of my daily walks down by Rice and Larpenter Avenues, and we’d talk some, she bought a new apartment, had gotten her divorce, she lost something. She would be close to forty then—no a little more than forty then, maybe more on the forty-four side of life, but I knew her when I met her, she was a star in High School, on many of the pages in the yearbook like Bonnie and Olga, I had possibly not seen her in nearly twenty-years, a lot of human changes, so drastically were those years for her—they looked. It was as though I—you also possibly—that a girl like that, that showed so much possibility, could not other than, produce an exact replica of something more fulfilling.
And Margie M., I seen her also, she was another one of the flock, oh, yes, she knew me, I knew her, again from Jr. High School, even though I had a little crush on her—very little, perhaps every male of maturity status at Washington did at one time or another, even though I had—had had—didn’t have anymore, I watch myself, my ole friend Jack, got to her before me, his motorcycle I think, she had white hair at the twenty-fifth reunion. All these goodie, goodie girls like the bad boys. She turned out to be a social worker of all things, perhaps for those bad boys. And Diane F., she was nice, and Marilyn H., in Art, I liked art, in woodshop, I ran after the teacher with a saw, they kicked me out, art was more my style. Pam S., was cute, a sophomore. Never really got my attention too much, but got it nonetheless.
And Fred was there, he was on a lot of the sports, good ole fellow—I think, didn’t get to know him well—thus, I say this simple because I would decline to have him any other way. And Greg J, was there, he was a big ham, nice looking, king of the road type, you might say, to me not too existing, just breathing, having been born, becoming born, and then… to me, in that last year of High School, when the ham really came out of him, resilient enough for him to cope with his poisoned air, --so when the days passed, Greg was no longer to be seen taking up room in my space, he watched me from a distance, thank goodness; anyhow he looked, waved at me, said something, with a few gals as always by his side, doomed to his own fate, doomed to hunger and motion and flattery, and looking for that glare in someone else’s eye meant for him.
And Ray S., an ole pal, football boy, didn’t look like he’d be one at first sight, those kind don’t, “Sharp man, where you been hiding it?” he asked (meaning my mean mad black Plymouth). And there was Gayle J., the beauty with the big eyes, burning eyes, sweet and cute; I would remember her for a long time—had a dance or two with her, why I don’t know. Anyhow, I said to myself, you don’t marry these girls, you just look at them, I never even dated many girls from my High School, I dated girls from my neighborhood, Johnson High School, bar girls older than me, quite a number of girls. Many, but only a select few from my High School: better that way, no controversy, I could rise and fall without notice, much notice, the grapevine was thinner. Perhaps an awkward method, but Washington High School was not my official designated place to pick up girls. Oh yes, oh yes, they knew that. They figured I somehow already had arranged—laboriously whatever needs I needed in this area, and I suppose expected nothing to happen, I was safe to toy with: in which case they seldom did.
It was my generation, a single generation, one of many to be one overlapping a succession, but I liked the moment, the uproar of it, which would not last all that long—it is only revealed to you for a flash of a moment, almost robbing you of memory, then it is gone. The single result of all this is a vague hot picture of you looking back, and you were either second in command or in command of your life, one or the other.
I didn’t belong to any clubs, doubt they’d have me, especially the Stage, or Library, or Bowling or Audio Club, I was too wild for them, a silent wild child. Back there in that time of my own clowning belated adolescence.
I noticed up by the stairs by the door, where everyone stood and watched and showed off, saw me and my car racing around school like James Dean, that was in ’65, Kirlin, and Leroy, and Rob, who never became the actor he wanted to be—so I heard, and Maureen who had a crush on me—I think, Dave O., my old neighborhood friend, who somehow avoided me that last year, we hung around a lot in previous years, I remember looking in his face and it was as if he was trying to decide which of the two unbearable was the least unbearable, me or his father’s intent of having him avoid the bad boy, I think he chewed all his fingernails trying to figure that one out. That is, now he could play the good guy with all the High School girls and avoid the drinking and roustabout life, I’d bring to him, just wave as he seduced his new life, in passing me by—perhaps he was wiser than he thought, sometimes we are too much of a sentimentalist. This was no anguish, it was mere realism. We were all learning how to be grownups in the only way we could: God forbid. And then still more days passed, and I knew I was not coming back for any more; it was Now or Never, as Elvis’ song went. It was as if a single aim appeared interlocked circumstances—graduate, it was my mother’s wish. Here was a feller no brighter than a warm day, perhaps wiser, racing his car, never to grieve a moment in life, never say much beyond the moment, he drove too fast for the conservative city teachers, at war with the world, and wanting to see it all.
Bonnie somehow invented a smile, pretty Bonnie, a simple paradox with humor, secure in her checkable facts as she roamed the halls, a nod here and there. And Zibley, who was the joker, I’d meet at the twenty-fifth reunion, and Roy who I’d forget at the reunion and only to remember him later. As I would Roger remember him at first sight, with his white suite coat, that last year even he got more grown up, so you see how much effort a man will make to grow up that last year of High School. Defend oneself against old ways; reinvent oneself in nine months, mind and soul. And end up at the end of the string, as a pervert or deliberately infests himself with lice after a year of war, in Vietnam, living on the streets of the City, like Mike did, my old friend, did, does, still does; Roger to establish and maintain himself as what he uniquely was, then and now, and a little more now than then.
Yes, oh yes, there were many standing outside the school that day: Paulette, she was a peace of mind, gal; nothing will last forever, but when I met her years later, she was just the same gal; nothing different, not even lice; so now here I was a poet, a war veteran. And nothing will remain, praise to the gods, no, praise to God Almighty we change, now I can join those top dogs from High School, and take off my damned unbearable bad boy uniform. Never to be completely one of those bloodhounds—but neither the bad boy, in that lost time, in that lost era, in that forever lost moment, but it is better it remain or quit being remaining in memory, and live it by proxy, through stories yet to be written.
After High School
And now that I look back, which was all right then, is now, it was done, too late to help, them or me, we were used to one another, they were their own breed or strain of the High School student, and they nor I could expect no more, this is just simple conformation to a pattern.
It was to my surprise I would do all I did, all I was trying to do, to be, should be. I began to spend most of my time in Karate, traveling, crisscrossing the United States, then came war—medals and medals and more travel, then crisscrossing the world, then collage after collage, standing a little back from the window, watching the years coming and going to leave a dent here and there, the ambitious haul in life was in motion. No more snap-on-bow ties, moving faintly and steadily at becoming rich that was an initial goal, and thereafter, writing book after book after book. Years had never seen me spit again on the sidewalk (in addition, after four wives, children and grandchildren, all but one wife one brother, the rest had joined that old snobby group I left somewhere behind, how I picked them out, and fathered their children, and inherited grandchildren of the same, is beyond me, one of those things you just have to ponder on until the day you die and let go because the why is not there—they didn’t teach me that in High School, or seven years of college, or eleven years in the Military or around the world twenty-seven times, it is just a monster rubber plant you can never find any use for ).
Then one day I moved to Peru. Still standing where I might be out of the actual path of the pushy people, the people that charged an interest rate to be with them, and was put on television fifty times, and had a radio program, was in the papers, watching how much money I could spend, what kept me going, heart attack after heart attack, a few strokes in-between, a few other diseases cured and up and on my way I went, thrilled there was still life left in me. Realizing no matter how much money I could draw, or how famous I could become, out of the bank, someone else could draw more, but breath, oh but breath, there was always not enough of that it was not a commodity for sale, that I might be the one to lose it all, had on a few occasions lost it all, zero-plus one breath left, into it in time, and I now believed in the inevitable moment, the short day, designed for all humankind could be sooner than later, I had a choice in it—somewhat, that was when I sold it all and moved. Perhaps had I not, that someone might have said “Sorry there, you can’t draw out anymore breaths, because there aren’t anymore for you left to draw out, plus the bank is closed.”
But this time, I had learned all there was to learn about such things, and I knew how things were done. Some of us, a few of us, prepared ourselves to loot the bank, by thinking a little more light of the money, and more of life—wait a minute, that’s not exactly what I mean. I got too much respect of God and reverence for life, to just love money for money sake. You got me wrong if you think that I’m a thief, I just learned how to read better, how to take notes, look at them closer, turn them upside down, and then throw them in the waste basket. Evidently, a few of you have learned that too, otherwise you’d not be reading this. You must admit, too many people spend their most precious hours in the privy. Especially a lot of those board directors, who believe everything, all things are wrapped in something green, even the air is green for those folks.
No: 641 (6-24-2010)
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