Chapter 3

III

Jets

A few days after the dance I called Jeff’s sister. By then I’d figured that at the very least I could get to know other girls through her. Everybody knows that ugly girls usually hang out with hot ones. You can’t blame them, though. When all you got is dog food, you’d better hang out with filet mignon. Naturally, sexy girls attract the better-looking guys. Why not hover around that sort of magnet?

I might’ve felt bad about using Jeff’s sister to get girls, but I figured what the hell. As Kyle and I always say, we don’t make these rules, we just abide by ‘em.

And besides, at that point in high school, I didn’t have that much experience with girls, and I needed all the help I could get. I’d made out with a few, probably six or seven, and that was better than average among my friends. But I’d never had sex before.

Sex. S-E-X. The word itself sounds so exciting to me. It’s a goal that everyone knows he’ll eventually reach. It’s just a matter of when; and, more importantly, how. So much of high school was spent pondering these two concepts—when and how to have sex—that I hardly remember thinking of much else.

I knew a lot of guys at school had done it already, but not most of them for sure. I despised the bastards that would loaf around before class discussing the details of their latest score: Where’d you meet the girl? At a bar? A club? Was she buzzing? Drunk? Bullshit like this surrounded me daily throughout high school. What’s weird is that I loathed the guys who didn’t get laid—the losers, the nerds, the Pauls—almost as much as I hated the assholes who did. And yet, in a sense, I always sort of wished I could be like both. It was easy to be either of those two extremes, it seemed, and difficult as hell to find that elusive middle.

***

No way in hell was I going to call Jeff’s sister. She’d have to call me. Oh sure, she didn’t have my number, but I didn’t give a shit about that. I knew that she liked me enough to somehow get it after I waited for a while. Sure enough, about five days later she called.

Actually, it wasn’t her, but her friend, Lynn. It turned out that Lynn was silent yet present at the dance. She said she’d seen me in the stairwell, as Maria pointed to my crotch, but we hadn’t talked other than hello. When she described what she looked like—tall, greasy, tons of make-up—though she didn’t use those words—I vaguely remembered seeing her, too. So I spoke with Lynn at first, because Jeff’s sister was too nervous to talk to me. Frightened’s more like it.

Lynn and I talked for about ten minutes. The usual B.S.: “What music do you listen to?” “Are you a Yankees or a Mets fan?” That sort of thing. And every once in a while, I’d hear cackles and gasps in the background as Jeff’s sister whispered to Lynn, trying desperately to conceal her nervous laughter and listen in. Finally, Jeff’s sister got on the phone and we talked for a while. Long story short, she bored the living shit out of me. I don’t remember if it was Lynn or Jeff’s sister, but one of them gathered the guts to invite me to Jeff’s party the following weekend. I said I would come and got the hell off the phone, confused. Hooray! Two girls called me! Fuck: I don’t want to go!

What could be worse than dancing the night away with the Jeff and his pudgy sister at that high school dance? Dancing the night away with Jeff and his sister in Jeff’s basement, that’s what.

That following week was hell. Each day Jeff would ask me if I liked his sister, if I wanted to date his sister, yada, yada, yada. I was dying to tell Jeff that the only difference between him and his sister was he had bigger tits and shorter hair.

I didn’t know how to respond to Jeff’s persistence, so I pretty much ignored him. I was already contemplating the prospect of dating Lynn, believe it or not. Although I hardly remembered what she looked like, I knew that the laws of teenage friendship mandated that she be better-looking than Jeff’s sister. And one member of Jeff’s orbit of friends, I recalled, reminded me of a horse the night of the dance, if only for a brief moment during her laugh. Was Lynn the sexy, super-tall girl that hee-hawed when Maria embarrassed me? I hankered for answers to this and other questions. I thought about speaking to Jeff about Lynn. But he was so high on me dating his sister that I had to maintain his friendship to get closer to Lynn. Pissing him off was the last thing I needed to do.

My inquiries could arouse suspicion and Jeff might uninvite me to his party. But that’s what I thought I wanted—until I became fixated with Lynn. And it wasn’t so much that I liked Lynn—hell, I hardly remember what she looked like—but I knew that she liked me, and that was all that mattered. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that Lynn’s phone call was not a girly front for her fat friend but an implicitly flirtatious petition for my presence at the party. Lynn knew she was prettier than Jeff’s sister. And man, did she have me by the balls. It’s kind of sick to think about in retrospect, that for the entire week, as Jeff’s sister probably grew more enamored with me by the moment, I was simultaneously falling for Lynn, and her, probably, for me.

Fast forward to the party the following weekend: Surprise, surprise, I wound up hooking up with Lynn. I couldn’t believe it. We played this game called Seven Minutes in the Closet, where somehow a guy and a girl wound up being put in this closet together, while everyone else waited outside, wondering if the chosen two were making out.

First I got in the closet with Jeff’s sister. I didn’t do a goddamn thing but feel nauseous. “So, whaddaya wanna do?” she kept pestering me, with a nasaly voice that warranted no less than death by strangulation. Desperate to evade her paws, I jammed my finger up my nose in an effort to disgust and hopefully repel her. But she tried to kiss me anyway! “Bitch, I got my finger up my nose!” I said. Or at least I wanted to say that. Luckily, the seven minutes transpired quickly and the door flung open to a gasping crowd which included not only Jeff, but Lynn, too.

Moments later, Lynn and I got in the closet and—bam!—we hooked up. It was astonishing. My hands grappled with her little tits as she squirmed and danced in sheer delight. Ecstatic about the sheer irony of the evening, I kept thinking: I’m at this party to get to know Jeff’s sister, and I’m fondling her better-looking best friend! Oh, what a feeling!

That one hook-up spelled the end of my short-lived relationship with Jeff’s sister. That was pretty obvious at the next school dance a month later, where she ignored me like the fucking plague.

But that next dance was where I really met Maria. Lynn and I had been dating for about a month by that point. I’d heard her mention Maria on the phone occasionally, but it wasn’t until the dance that I realized Lynn and Maria were good friends. Inseparable! And all I kept thinking was: How could Lynn like this bitch, this cunt who made fun of me at the last dance? I wanted to punch Maria for doing that to me; but, beginning that night, I wanted to kiss her even more. As crazy as it sounds, I liked her because she thought I was an asshole!

During the dance, Lynn wandered onto the gymnasium floor with Jeff and his sister. I didn’t feel like dancing at all, so I loitered all alone in the hallway. All of a sudden I was depressed. Guidos and hoods and preppies shucked and jived by with girls on their arms as I moped around in the hallway, staring at the beige and black-tiled walls surrounding me. Everyone was staring at me. Fright hit me like a bucket of cold water as I shivered with loneliness. I wanted to walk the hell out of that dance. I kept thinking: Maybe I’ll take the subway home and get mugged, and then Lynn’ll feel bad about abandoning me.

There was a person trailing me, a hunter. I felt him. At first in a brisk walk, I quickly picked up speed. I was being chased around my own school! Who the hell is it? I wondered. I ran up the stairs toward the coat check. I figured: If I get up the stairs quick enough, I’ll escape from this guy.

But as I reached the top of the stairs, I saw only my shadow.

I was scared for a just second more, and then the fear went away. Without warning, I was alone once again. Now less frightened, I sensed a presence. Of what, exactly, I didn’t know.

All I remember after that point is walking up and down the halls, doing nothing except looking behind me now and then. Talking to myself, wondering what to do now that Lynn was gone for a while, I thought about dancing with some other girl, just for the hell of it. But I really hated dancing. And besides, I had no idea how to ask a girl to dance. I always just somehow wound up doing it.

So I walked over to Zachary, the janitor at my school. Zachary was an Iranian immigrant. He’d see me after school, hanging out with my friends in the cafeteria or something, and he’d come over and ask us if we wanted some sloppy joes left over from lunch time. They served sloppy joes pretty much every day in high school.

So we’d eat the sloppy joes and all, even though they tasted like crap and caused diarrhea like a son of a bitch. We loved them, though. How often does somebody give you something for free, right? We all had a lot of respect for Zachary because of that. The poor guy, he didn’t have to give a shit about the kids that caused the messes he spent all day cleaning up. But he did. What a guy.

I approached Zachary in the hallway right in front of the girl’s bathroom. The school usually turned one of the boy’s bathrooms into a girl’s bathroom during the dances. He said to me something like: “Do you want me to open up the gym storage room so you can bring a girl in there?” I had no idea what he was talking about, so I asked him what he meant. He said that the gym storage room had all these soft mats inside, the kind we used when we worked out during Phys. Ed. I thought that was so cool. I mean, here was this lonesome immigrant janitor trying to help me get laid at the dance. As I said: What a guy!

Then, suddenly: Fate.

Just as I was about to tell him that my girlfriend was MIA, I spotted Maria coming out of the bathroom. She was so beautiful, I almost cried. Even better-looking than Rachel, the girl who whacked me off just down the hall. Mounds of sleek black hair draped over her bosom and down her back. Don’t ask me why, but I felt compelled to make her like me. Rachel and Lynn and Jeff’s fat sister and all these other girls had fallen all over me left and right, but here was this one girl who hardly paid attention to me. The night we first met, all she’d noticed was my open fly.

One month later, Maria didn’t even see me as she exited the bathroom. As sick as it sounds, that drove me wild.

Disregarding Zachary’s suggestion, I grabbed Maria by the shoulder with my sweaty fingers. She yelped out—“Uh!”—like I was assaulting her. At that moment, I guess, all I wanted to do was make Zachary think she was my girlfriend. In the back of my mind, however, something else was transpiring: I was making Maria mine.

I let go of her and she looked at me, startled as all hell. Even though we were a few feet apart I could feel her heart pounding. A vein in my temple beat like a drum. Before she had a chance to speak, I placed my arm around her shoulder as if she was my lover. I admit: I was really turned on after all the commotion. She was so hot and startled that I wanted to kiss her right then and there in the goddamn hallway in front of the janitor.

Zachary winked at me and nodded as if to say “goof for you,” and went back to mopping the floor. But he managed to catch a glimpse of her cleavage, the horny bastard.

Maria was wearing a low-cut scoop-neck blouse—a black one, I remember. God, her tits were enormous. How she managed to walk upright with those things hanging off her I’ll never know. I loved standing there with her in my arm for that brief second, like she really was my girlfriend. I almost started to bawl, however, when I realized that she wasn’t really mine, that she, in fact, hated me.

I pulled her near the wall and began explaining that I was only trying to impress the janitor. I said: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Let me just explain!”

Maria was still panting, scared and out of breath. Each time she inhaled, I felt as if her soft breasts were getting closer to my face. But they weren’t. At least I have her attention, I thought, at least she’s not running away.

I explained to her, repeatedly and with bated breath, why I grabbed her, because she didn’t seem to get it. We shared a long, quiet, private moment. As I gazed into her eyes, I inhaled her beauty. She’s so lovely, I thought. Maria had the kind of eyes that sparkled in pitch darkness. She had soulful eyes that were searching—for a friend, for a confidant, for something—but to no avail. They reminded me of the eyes of this cartoon dog I used to watch when I was a kid, the way they drooped.

On the surface, the was just another slutty Guidette at the dance. But despite her tight, stylish clothing, she looked somewhat conservative that night. Any clothes covering Maria’s fabulous body at all made her look like a virtuous lady rather than a bimbo, just as a snow-white wedding dress turns a whore into a princess.

After she relaxed a bit, when she finally understood what I was saying about Zachary, Maria gazed up at me with her tremendous eyes like a little girl lost in a big mall who had just located her daddy. She pulled away from me briskly, and, in a frighteningly monotonous voice, said:

“Christ, you’re a maniac.”

***

I remember the exact thought penetrating my cranium as Maria said that to me: jet airplanes piercing the night sky. When I get excited to the point of bliss I always think about jets. Not commercial airliners like Boeing 747s. I mean real jets, the kind used in war.

I’ve always loved jets, probably because you, dad, were a successful pilot in Vietnam. You got me into aircraft when I was very young. I still remember everything you told me about your career. You flew the B-52D Stratofortress. It was used to bomb Communist strongholds in Southeast Asia and enemy supply lines. It had only four small tail guns but could go almost as fast as the speed of sound, about 600 miles-per-hour, and could fly halfway around the world non-stop at an altitude of 30,000 feet. Its ability to avoid the enemy at such speeds and altitudes made it an invaluable weapon in the war.

I used to write away to NASA when I was a kid asking for photographs of the B-52D Stratofortress and all the modern jets. I wrote to all the space centers, like Kennedy in Florida, LBJ in Texas, and the Jet Propulsion Lab in California. I also wrote to the Air Force, and they always sent me tons of pictures and aerial maps and other intelligence. Well, okay, “intelligence” is a bit of an exaggeration. But whatever they sent me, it was all so cool. And there were a lot more air bases and space centers I wrote to, a lot that most people haven’t even heard of.

As a kid, every few weeks I received a package in the mail, filled with colorful photos of all these jets. I loved naming them after people I knew. Different people reminded me of different aircraft. Dad, you never reminded me of the B-52 at all. You’re more like the B-1 bomber, which, you told me, replaced the B-52. The B-1 can carry more armament than any other combat aircraft. It has a variable wing, which means it can be pushed forward for subsonic flight and pushed back for supersonic flight.

You don’t look like the B-1; you resemble it in more significant ways. What I mean is that all the B-1’s subsystems are duplicated. If a subsystem has one failure, the mission can be completed by using the back-up. And if the back-up fails, then the mission can still be safely aborted with the bomber returning to base. You’re just like that, only you have an endless back-up system. It’s almost like you have an infinite number, because no matter what happens to you, you always makes it through.

When I was first alone with Maria, the jet I thought of that night was the Curtiss P-40B, the first American monoplane fighter. It was used by the Flying Tigers, the American volunteer group that helped China defend its Burma Road supply line against the Japanese from 1941 to 1942. Most people have seen the P-40B, even though they probably didn’t know it at the time. It’s a small plane that always has mean-looking shark’s teeth painted on the front. I don’t know why they painted those teeth on there, but it looked really cool. Since I was young, I’ve fallen in love with a lot of jets and planes. But that P-40B is still my favorite.

Maria didn’t exactly growl like a P-40B that night, but she did have a look on her face like she could have chewed me up and spit me out if she wanted to. She appeared both ferocious and cuddly, like an attack bunny. I didn’t want to lose that look, I didn’t want her to walk away. Had she marched away that night, I don’t know what I would have done.

“Hey, Maria,” I called out. “Just chill out! I didn’t mean to scare you or anything.”

“Yeah, right,” she said. “What the hell do you want, anyway?”

The chip on her shoulder was larger than the situation demanded. She’s such a Guidette, I moaned to myself.

“I’m sorry, but like I said...” and then I just trailed off, because I could see she wasn’t getting the point and wasn’t about to either. “Let’s just talk for a while,” I told her. “Okay,” she said.

We sauntered over to the bottom of the stairwell. Nobody was around because the dance still had almost an hour left to go, and most people didn’t start running up the stairs to get their coats until after the last song of the night. We were all alone. It was time to make my move.

“What’s up?” I asked her. How original, I thought. It was a pretty lame thing to say because every hood at the dance greeted every other hood with that phrase. Actually, it sounded more like this: “‘Sup?” It seems like no matter where I walked in my high school I heard one greeting ad nauseum: ‘Sup? Sup, sup, sup—a thousand times over, all day long. And, of course, if you’re really happy to see someone, you drag it out: “Suuuuuuuuuuuuup?” How fucking stupid. I’m still pissed at myself for beginning my conversation with Maria that way.

Maria gazed at the ceiling, unimpressed. “Nothing,” she said.

She looked at her nails—they were hot pink—and then up at me. “Your name’s J. J. , huh?”

“Yea. J. J. ” I was surprised that she even remembered my name. Then again, I was dating her friend, so she’d probably heard it plenty of times before.

“What do the initials stand for?”

“My first and middle name, Joel Joseph.”

“But you prefer,” she trailed off in confusion, “…J. J. ?”

What kind of question was that? I thought. “Yea, so?” I answered, defensively.

“What’s your last name?”

“L’Enfant. Joel Joseph L’Enfant. Like it?” My voice cracked as I said “like it.” I was so goddamn nervous.

“Cute.” She was being sarcastic.

I thought hard for a few moments. I had no idea what to ask her. “Uh, well, what’s your last name?”

“Della Verita,” she said. It sounded Italian.

“That’s a beautiful last name.” And it was. I was going to ask her what the hell it meant, translated, I mean. But a more important question struck me: “Why aren’t you dancing with all the other hoods?”

“Uh, what do you mean? You mean that everyone here that’s dancing is a hood, you mean that I’m a hood? Didn’t I see you dancing with Lynn earlier? You’re pretty judgmental.”

Shiiiiiiiiiiiit! Now I was in trouble. I had to think quickly. “No, no, no!” I replied, feigning a shameful look. “What I mean is, well, I’m just wondering why you ain’t dancing.”

Curtly: “First of all, you’re wondering why I’m not dancing, not why I ain’t dancing. Second, I’m not a hood. I hate hoods. Third, I just don’t like to dance, okay?”

Okay. So in the five total minutes I’d known Maria she’d already dissed me twice: first my appearance, and then my grammar. All this from a girl whose demeanor and accent could’ve easily cast her in any number of Martin Scorsese films.

I contemplated making fun of Maria in response. No: Her uncle, Joey the Wop, would surely hunt me down and slit my throat after hearing that his little Goddaughter was insulted by some loser named J. J. I thought about asking her to dance. No: Too pathetic and slavish. I imagined replying to her insult with a kiss. No: She’d slap me silly.

Every available reaction was faulty. I was outmaneuvered. Trapped. In short, I was in love.

Here was this beautiful girl that dressed pretty much like all the other loser girls at the dance—but she didn’t like dancing! And best of all, she hated hoods! Don’t even get me started on dancing, because I hate it. I despise it. And I never understood why all these jerks enjoyed jumping around like freaks to that God-awful music. Usually, if I was forced into dancing, I’d totally ignore the music being played, like the night of the Deck the Halls Ball. Sometimes, I’d just think of a song I really liked, usually a Beatles song, and dance to it instead. As the horrendous music pulverized my goddamn brain, I’d hum The Long and Winding Road or She Love’s You, or something. That’s how much I hated dancing; that’s how much the music played at those dances sickened me.

And hoods—forget about it! The worst thing about hoods is that they thought they were normal. They didn’t realize—actually, worse: they didn’t care—that they were a bunch of followers. Not only was Maria a beautiful Italian Princess, but she hated the two things I hated most. In the endless sea of adolescent negativity, we discovered that we had two crucial dislikes in common.

My ears stood at attention and I knew I’d struck gold. What a break! I thought. The hardest part of getting acquainted with any girl was discovering some common interests. Already, we had important things in common.

I could always tell a good joke to get a girl’s attention, but anything beyond that was excruciatingly difficult to conjure up. Stuff that came so naturally to the hoods and jocks—the small talk, the chit-chat, the shit that followed “’sup”—was a pain in the ass. I was a good conversationalist, but the trouble was in getting one started with people, especially girls, most of whom couldn’t care less about current events outside the newest shade of lipstick. Without realizing it, Maria had opened up a door to my true personality. It wouldn’t be the last such time.

“You don’t like dancing?” I practically yelled out to her. “Jesus, I despise dancing.”

“Well,” she said, “I don’t despise it. I just don’t like it, okay?”

I was in heaven. This information hit me like a punch in the chest. I stood there silently for a few moments, in awe. She started to look bored, so I asked her what else she didn’t like. Maria thought it was a pretty dumb question, I could tell, so she didn’t really bother answering it. But even though she looked bored, she was sexy. Very sexy.

“Well, what I mean is, why don’t you like to dance?”

“It’s not that I hate to dance, it’s just that I hate it when I meet these stupid hoods and all they want to do is dance. I can’t meet a guy and start to like him that way. I have to talk with him first, and then I know if I want to dance with him.”

I wanted to propose to Maria right then and there. She wanted to talk first! I couldn’t believe it! What a stroke of luck. It was time to go in for the kill.

“So,” I said, “we’re talking right now, aren’t we?” That’s why I grabbed you before—I really wanted to talk to you before I asked you to dance.”

“But…” she said with a perplexed look on her face, and didn’t bother to finish. She restarted: “Well, we can talk, but I can’t dance with you because you’ re going out with Lynn. And you also like Jeff’s sister.”

Now this I couldn’t believe. Somehow, I had gone from speaking to Jeff’s sister on the phone to liking her.

“But I don’t like her!” I demanded. I had to get that crazy thought out of her head.

“Well, whatever, but you’re going out with my friend. And if you don’t like Jeff’s sister, then you’re a jerk for leading her on.”

She had me there. I was dating Lynn, and I did lead Jeff’s sister on. What could I say? I certainly couldn’t tell her that I didn’t really like Lynn, and that I didn’t plan on dating her for long anyway, because that would’ve made me look like an asshole. So I did the next best thing.

“But Lynn and me had a fight tonight,” I said. “And I don’t think we’ll be dating much longer.”

She didn’t believe me at first, but I pressed on and convinced her that Lynn and I did have a fight, even though I just hadn’t seen her in a while. It was only a little temporary lie, because I was angry with Lynn, and the next time I saw her, I was going to tell her how pissed off I was for leaving me alone at the dance. Hence the fight.

“Listen,” she said, “we can talk, but that’s it.” I was happy. I knew that once we started talking, and once I was on a roll, I could probably dance with her, or even get her phone number.

So we started to talk right there in the stairwell. We’d been talking for a few minutes already, of course. But now we were conversing; now we were the only two teenagers at the dance actually talking and learning from one another. I told her about my love affair with jets, and that I was thinking about entering the Air Force Academy, which was only half-true. I couldn’t just join the Air Force. I wanted to become a pilot at the Academy in Colorado, and to do that you had to undergo a long, grueling application process.

”You remind me of the Curtiss P-40B monoplane fighter,” I said. I told her all about what it looked like, and how well it maneuvered. She was pretty impressed, not really because she looked like a plane, but because I actually knew what I was talking about. I wasn’t acting phony like all the other guys I knew. I figured if she likes my conversation, she’d like me. But I wasn’t about to make believe I was into something I wasn’t—like dancing, for example—just to impress her. This was a first in my otherwise boring teenage life: For a moment, I felt the best way to impress her was to tell her the truth. If only for a night, the door to my heart was open; only honesty could coax her into peeking inside.

We talked and talked and talked. The tension on Maria’s face melted off and gave way to a gentle, easy smile. We talked about the movies we liked and the sports we played and the music we listened to. It was the usual stuff, for the most part. But we were actually having a conversation, we weren’t just going through the motions of one. That conversation spawned a discussion, one between two mature, interested adults, not two high school kids.

She was flirtatious, and smart. “You look just like Al Pacino,” she said.

I wondered: Is that good?

I said: “You tawkin’ ta me? You must be talkin’ to me. I don’t see anyone else around.” Maria squinted her eyes and shook her head every so slightly. “Do you know who said that?”

“Yea,” I said, “Al Pacino is Raging Bull.”

Now she was squinting so hard she looked Chinese. And then: like a machine gun, she fired: “First of all, ya stunad, it’s Al Pacino I was tawkin’ about, and second, that’s not from Raging Bull. And third, that was Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver.”

“Are you sure?”

“About which one?”

“All of them.”

“I watch the movie with my father like every weekend,” she insisted.

“Which one? Raging Bull?”

“No!”

“Then why’d you mention Raging Bull?”

“I didn’t, you did!”

“I don’t get it.”

“Oh my goodness!” Maria exclaimed. I was sort of playing with her, but I admit she

knew more about movies than me.

“I know you’re not a moron,” she said, as if she knew what I was feeling at that moment. “I’m just messin’ with you.”

What made Maria even smarter is that she wasn’t just one, but two grades behind me. A freshman. I thought that was weird, because she hung out with sophomores like Jeff’s sister. I asked her if she was left back a grade or two, and she said she didn’t want to talk about it, so I let it drop. Things were gong so well, and I was so surprised that she’d told me so much already, that I didn’t want to ruin the momentum.

“You know something,” I said, “you’re beautiful.” I nudged her chin with my finger, the way my father used to nudge me when he called me Butch. Maria giggled.

“You’re not so bad yourself,” she said.

I was in heaven. I reached out and grabbed her hand. Both, actually. And we swung our arms, back and forth, in and out, joyfully like children.

I could tell at that moment that despite her tough exterior, Maria was a little girl inside, wishing for a best friend, and a boyfriend, or both. I loved it about her. She was like the male version of me! She was a sexy, cool, nice person with a heart.

“You’re a sexy, cool, nice person with a heart,” I said. I’ve never said that to anyone else, but I’m saying it to you. And you’re the most beautiful girl at this dance. I swear to God that’s true. You’re so fucking beautiful.” I don’t know why I cursed. I guess I was just so excited to be holding her, even if it was just her hands. But she didn’t mind. The tears rolling down my cheeks diverted her attention. They were tears of pure joy.

I looked into her doey eyes. “I want you to know something. I want you to know that, well, that you are a special person. You are a beautiful person. And I’m not just talking about your face. I’m talking about you. Maria. The person. “I want to be your friend so much. I want a person like you as my friend. It would be an honor.”

A tear rolled down Maria’s cheek. She seemed as happy as I was. “If you had the choice between staying home and curling up with your girlfriend—uh, me—to watch a good movie—she smiled coyly—would you do that, or would you go to a club or bar or whatever?”

“Go the bar—” I said. “…?...”

…

Maria looked at me intently.

“Go to the bar—if it’s with you,” I said. “Or stay at home—if it’s with you.”

“Right answer!” She beamed.

Suddenly, our hand stopped swinging, and they met in the middle. Our bodies pressed together so that the only thing separating us was our clenched fists. It’s the only moment of my life when I felt I was choking on happiness. But it was a good feeling, one I wish I could have turned into an action. I felt that feeling because, deep down inside, I knew that I would never be that happy again.

Suddenly, blasting from within the gym, was the last song of the night. We knew it was the last song because the last song was always the slow one. It took me a moment to realize that it wasn’t the usual In Your Eyes, but a different, more familiar song. Love, love, love…love, love, love—those words echoed softly out the gym door, down the hallway, and engulfed me and Maria. Was it…? Could it be…? All You Need Is Love! Yes! I couldn’t believe it. Suddenly, my contempt for dancing melted away. I asked Maria to dance with me. She said yes.

Moments later we were dancing close in the gym amidst a sea of couples. But none so genuine and pure as Maria and I. I didn’t want to let go of her. I never wanted to let go. Her taut breasts were pressed firmly against the center of my chest. I remember feeling her nipples—they were tight and perky and piercing my ribs. Best of all, we didn’t even have to dance. We just hugged…and swayed.

Caressing her cute little ass that night, I didn’t think of it sexually. I only recall appreciating it’s full, circular form. It was soft as a feather pillow, tight as a trampoline. And her perfume, oh, her perfume! I’d never noticed a girl’s perfume until that night. But Maria’s added to her beauty. I sensed the hint of a rose and the scent of an orange—it was sweet but raw, natural and pure. I inhaled it.

My forehead was damp, as was the rest of my body. I was nervous about it until I noticed that hers was, too. Sweat trickled off my brow. As it rolled off my face, it melded with Maria’s perspiration. My mouth was dry and closed, and I could smell the salty steam emanating from our bodies. It was always unbearably hot and humid on the dance floor, but I didn’t care that night. In fact, I loved it. The heat seemed to melt our bodies into one.

Had I died that night, right after the dance, my life would’ve been fulfilled and complete. I didn’t need anything else in the world. Christ, I wish I had died that night.

After the song ended, Maria and I walked upstairs to get our coats. I remember checking my hair in the blur of the chrome fire extinguisher as I walked by. Thinking of Rachel, I sort of chuckled to myself as I passed that fire extinguisher. Maria heard me and asked what was so funny. “Nothing,” I said. “Nothing at all.” And then I felt as if that chapter of my life, or whatever the fuck it was—a crisis of adolescent stupidity and confusion, I suppose—was completely over with. I placed Maria’s coat on her shoulders and she smiled as if no boy had ever done that before. We remained silent. Occasionally, we’d gaze at one another, singing love songs with our eyes.

We strolled outside into the chilly air. Our bodies quickly cooled. Stream rose from our foreheads, and our mouths shot gusts of frozen air into the night. I grabbed Maria’s arm and pulled her toward me to help generate some warmth. My perception of the world was suddenly so clear. For the first time in my life, I blocked out the noise of the crowd and the traffic with ease. I didn’t see any hoods or freaks around me. Only Maria.

Only Maria.

We walked toward the curb where her father was waiting in his van. Kiss her, I thought. Kiss her!

I wanted to kiss her oh-so-badly, but I held back. There will be time, I thought, confidently. There will be time.

In lieu of a kiss, I whispered in her ear, casually, so her father couldn’t see, “I want to kiss you. But I won’t. I won’t kiss you until I break up with Lynn. I would never cheat on her no matter how bad things were going.” I wanted to let Maria know that I was seriously interested in her.

“What?” she said. I don’t think she believed me. I was crazy for saying it, but for whatever reason that night my instincts led me down daring paths. When I think I about it I realize that that night represented the birth of a new me. To her, who the hell knew? Maybe she had no desire to ever see me again. Maybe she danced with me as, perish the thought—a friend.

“What I mean is...” I said, and I anxiously trailed off. “Listen, just go home now, and we’ll see each other again, okay?” I swear, I was about to say I love you, when she interrupted: “Promise?” Smiling and shivering and looking as though she’d give me one final hug if it weren’t for her father being so close by, she turned toward the van. “Promise,” I whispered.

And then—hocus pocus!—she was gone. That was it. The best night of my life had come to an end. Amongst hundreds of students and parents and teachers amassing as the dance let out, I stood there in the cold, alone once again.

***

New York City winters are brutal, but I didn’t move from that spot for at least ten minutes or so. Cemented to the pavement, I felt like an electric fan, spinning so quickly that I looked still to those around. You can’t avoid that feeling when you’re with a girl you love, just as you cannot avoid it when flying in a B-52, right over ‘Nam, frightened as hell, fearless as a shark. I only wish my dad could have seen me that night. Hey, dad! I yelled silently within. Look over here! I’m flying your plane, and I’m doing so well! I was so happy that I again almost cried.

Jeff, his sister, and Lynn whisked by me. Lynn looked over her shoulder toward me, intently, as if I’d wronged her in some way. I suppose she’d seen me dancing with Maria. They didn’t even say goodnight. For the moment I’d totally forgotten about my ride home. My mother was supposed to pick me up nearby, but I didn’t want move from the spot where Maria had left me.

While standing there I gawked at the dark nothingness in front of me, even though probably hundreds of my classmates passed by and said “sup” as the dance let out. I was swaying one hand out, one across my body, dancing with Maria time and time again.

This time, however, I was alone and cold rather than connected and warm. Dreading myself for that emotion, that awful uncertainty following an evening of faith, I looked desperately at the clouds above my school. Now I was soaring through those clouds in an F-15, the jet I would someday fly as a U. S. Air Force pilot, the epitome of American aircraft. I was carpet-bombing all the hoods and losers that had the chutzpa to call themselves my peers. Everyone around me was blasted away for good. I had the girl, I had the best girl there was to have. She danced with me. I knew I’d see her again.