Choices

Steve lived with his mother,who was divorced, and his sister. Sometimes. I mean she was there sometimes. She was in high school and had a boyfriend who was in his twenties and was a professional musician. He was in a band that was playing in different cities all the time. I didn't know what to make of that. I mean the "professional musician" thing. There was something wrong with what he did, I thought. He was an adult living like a kid. He was greasy. But Steve thought he was cool and took to mimicking him.

Steve's mother was a drunk and ran a daycare center. I think the two things go hand-in-hand. She was overweight and sloppy and had bleach-blonde hair with dark roots. But on the weekends she would fix herself up and have a time. When she came home, she could barely walk and was very, very loud. For a few minutes. Then she would pass out.

So Steve pretty much got to go wild.

The band was doing well, and one day Wayne said we needed to get cards made up. He knew a place downtown. That was quite a distance from where we lived for boys without cars, but Wayne said we should hitch hike. I'd never done this before and was enamored of the ease. We simply walked to the main road, stuck out our thumbs and waited. Soon, a car pulled over and the three of us jumped in. Hitch hiking. I couldn't tell my parents about this one, but I began to do it all the time. I learned what to watch out for. One day a man picked me up. As usual, we had to make small talk. He said I looked like an athlete and asked me if I played football. Flattered, I told him I did. More flattery, then he asked me if I had a girlfriend, and I started getting the creeps. I said, "This is it right here. This is where I get off." A young boy hitch hiking alone got a lot of rides that ended up like that.

At school, I tried out for the basketball team. It was odd to be in competition to get onto a team. All my life, all you had to do was sign up, but I found that life was getting more competitive at every turn. I didn't know most of the fellows who tried out, and it was a little intimidating. What would it be like, I wondered, to be left off the team? I had always been one of the better athletes in our neighborhood and in our school. Now, this. I was trying out with older boys, too, since the junior varsity was made up of seventh and eighth graders. We ran and shot and did agility drills on an outdoor court with the coaches walking around us with clipboards making notes. It was cold, harsh, clinical. There were no slaps on the back or tussles of the hair, just the stalking of these men and the competitive anxiety of teenage boys.

A few days later, they posted the team rosters outside the gym locker room. My name was there. I was right. I was what I thought. I felt good all day, proud, taller, faster. But by afternoon, that all fell apart. The new team was to meet in the gymnasium after school. We would begin. Sitting there on bare benches in air moist from the showers, smelling of old clothes and deodorant with new teammates I did not know, the coach pointed me out and said, "First thing you have to do is get a haircut." Everyone turned to look and snicker. It was like a kick to the stomach, the air leaving my body, the blood rushing up my neck. My focus fell to only a few inches before my nose. I said nothing.

After that meeting, I knew I wouldn't go back. I couldn't cut my hair. I was in a band. We were good. People liked us.

I had to make a choice between two worlds. There was no good choice, I thought. It wasn't fair. I just wanted to go home, go to my room, turn back time.

Sort of.