All day long, Mike and me, sitting and waiting for it, here, in the playground behind the senior center. The same dome shaped jungle-gym we had run to the first time he had hid from the sirens, and the same rusty yellow swings we had chilled at the first time we had tripped. Our spot, and all those first times, and tonight maybe the first time, the one every teenager spends his school times dreaming about.
Ali was my best friend and I’d been in love with her for months but I felt like I was in sixth grade again, getting ready for my first dance and maybe oh boy my first kiss. The girls at one house, the guys at another. Everybody getting excited and ready until finally you come and grow up together.
They were both at Ashley’s house now, doing their hair, and probably their nails, and whatever else it was they did while we were here waiting for them. Waiting for it. We weren’t meeting them until eight but what else did you expect us to do besides sit there and wait for the sun to set. When it was dark we could have a fire and we had the rack from Mike’s brother and a tent for him and Ashley and one for Ali and me…
The first time for both Mike and Ashley, and for me, but it wasn’t new for Ali. I didn’t mind though. I thought it would probably be better that way, if at least one of us knew how this thing was supposed to go. I think I even loved her more because of it, because she had loved and had been where I wanted so badly to go. Tonight.
We had found this sweet little clearing about a quarter mile from the back of the playground, all hidden by trees and shit, and once you got down the path you could yell and holler and scream all the shit you wanted without anyone hearing. Plenty of room for a fire and tents and beer, and there wasn’t anything else in the world we needed.
Just like an American pie fucking movie. But I didn’t think about any of that shit then. Did we have condoms were the cops going to come what if it rained how would it feel and how would she look is what I was thinking man and you can bet that was enough for a sixteen year old boy to think about.
Mike and I had been sitting in those playground swings for nearly a year before they finally showed up. We’d been there for so long my ass was starting to hurt and I’d almost broken my neck half a dozen times swinging my head around trying to see if it was them who were pulling into our lot. Finally we saw that cherry-red sedan of our dreams and Mike looked at me and said, “They’re here.” We both knew it was time and I thought about the sandy ground beneath my shoes and the cold rust of the swing set and the girl coming towards me and I tried to remember how it felt to be a child for the last time in my life.
And I don’t think I’d ever been more excited than when I saw that they were there but goddammit if we weren’t going to play it suave for them. We stayed on the swings and waited until they had parked and took the sleeping bags from their trunk and started walking towards us. I could almost feel the sun sinking lower behind them as they came closer, its final youthful rays descending brilliantly behind them, all smiles and radiance.
Finally we stood to meet them and I did my best to act like I hardly cared when she smiled at me and I knew for sure right then how I felt about her and what tonight was about. I don’t think I’ve ever tried so hard to keep it down I was so ready for it.
“Hey guys,” Ali said, smiling, and with her soft russet hair cascading over her shoulder I almost lost it again. “We didn’t make you wait too long, did we?”
“Are you kidding? We were about to leave.”
“You lie!” Her voice was a choir, her laugh a hymn.
“It’s true,” Mike said. “Jonah was all set to go without you. I had to hold him back.”
Ali laughed again (sweet melody) and pouted, her hands on her hips like the cutest thing you’d ever seen and looked me deep into the eyes.
“But you wouldn’t have left me, would you Mike,” Ashley said. “All alone in the woods with no one to protect me,” she finished, laughing through her last words.
“Darling, not a chance,” he answered; winking at me so that Ashley started and slapped his arm.
It was almost dark now and I took my tent and bag in one arm and Ali in the other and the four of us headed down the path. Ali and me took the lead with Mike and Ashley following, the smell of evening pines thickly shrouding our secret walk. When we finally reached the clearing I felt like I could have been skipping I was so light headed.
“We should get the tents up before it’s too dark,” I said to Ali.
“Yeah. Get the fire going, too,” Mike said.
“We should have brought a refrigerator,” Ashley said brightly. “I can’t believe we didn’t think of that.”
“A refrigerator in the woods, darling?”
Everyone laughed appreciatively and Ashley protested. “A cooler! I meant a cooler!”
“Well, warm beer works just as well, I guess.”
Ali fixed her eyes on mine again and my chest was going badoomp badoomp badoomp.
“I heard it’s supposed to be a full moon tonight,” I said.
“How romantic.”
I may have finally passed out then but I can’t really be sure. The last thing I remember seeing is the first star in the sky and her smiling beneath it looking at me beautiful beautiful.
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“We’re going to grab some blankets from the tent.”
My heart is beating so fast it’s like a woodpecker in heat. I stand with difficulty but its dark and I’m so excited I don’t care about anything else. Mike and Ashley still sitting there, dancing in and out of the light and smiles from all around the fire. It doesn’t matter what anyone says and nobody speaks because everyone’s thinking the same thing. About fucking time.
Growing up I had always thought that sixteen was the year to do it. The prime of my life, the coming of age, the license to drive, the not too soon and the still early enough to be cool. A man, without all the failings and handicaps of adulthood. And who doesn’t wish they were sixteen again? For the promise of ripeness and beauty and young love?
“Don’t stay up for us if you guys want to go to bed, or whatever...”
Best friends for years and I’m in love. She too, I think when she grabs my hand and squeezes tightly, her fingers sliding smoothly between my own like buttered apple pie and our palms clinging together and breathing deeply.
We walk hand in hand away from the light of the fire and unzip the canvas door and collapse inside. Laying beside her there I can feel her skin and her hair against my own, and in that moment they smell the way you wished everything was all of the time, from that instant until eternity a fading memory, the way you wished everything could be.
“Yes”.
Afterwards, sitting beside her in the cold with blankets and friends around us and my fire celebrating, and I’ve never been so happy. This is the happy that you see in the end of teen romance movies. The happy that doesn’t really exist until all of a sudden it does and then all of a sudden it doesn’t again. Just a taste that first time, but the taste is more than enough to keep you searching for the rest of your life at least.
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It’s been almost four years since our first time. Almost four years since my first time, the little slut. Four years since we’ve been friends and about two days since the last time we fucked.
We don’t talk much anymore. We go to different colleges for most of the year and its only now in the summer that I ever see her. Now that I’m home it’s not as easy as saying, “Sorry Ali, but I have class right now. Why don’t you try fucking skyping yourself?” She only lives two streets away.
So it’s summer now and we’re together again. Every time I drive past the senior center and the crabgrass lot where the swings used to be, and every time I smell her Paul Malls on my pillowcase it gets me. And every time it does it’s like I’m waiting for something big to happen, something real fucking big to just fucking go off with sparks and bangs and cheers but every time it’s just that knocking, just that knocking, just that mother fucking knocking like she’s here right now and I wish she wasn’t.
“Hi. Are you ready?”
Give me a minute, for chrissake.
“Mike and Ashley said they would wait to order until we got there, but I didn’t want to make them wait for us again.”
Now wouldn’t that be a tragedy if we were late for fucking Casa Labullshit.
“We could probably still make dessert if you wanted… And I think we should, Ashley was really looking forward to this.”
Fuck off.
“Our first night all back home from school and you want to sit here and watch TV. You haven’t seen either of them since Christmas.”
Fuck off again.
“If you really don’t want to go out tonight that’s fine but I don’t understand why you can’t suck it up for one night. It’s Mike and Ashley. It’s not like they’re some random friends from high school.”
What do you know about friends from high school.
“Well. I guess I’ll see you later then. You’re sure you’re all right? Fine. Call me later.”
I wasn’t going to call her later. Of course I wouldn’t fucking call her. Because I know now that that taste- that fleeting fucking taste- isn’t real. That bullshit manifestation of juvenile lust being precisely and only fucking that. And the problem is that once you’ve tasted it there’s no way you can just stop looking for it. And so you go back, again and again, and you say, Man, I know I dropped it here, it was right fucking here, but of course you know it’s already gone. And of course you know you’ll never be done with it.
