Pomp and Circumstance

I had settled into my life alone when my father came home from my aunt and uncle's, and my life shifted once again. My father was still on crutches, though he was getting stronger, so I had to take care of most of the day to day things, my least favorite of which was doing laundry. Once a week, I would schlep up to the laundromat to wash, dry, hang, and fold.

My father and mother were coming to graduation together, which was queer to me since they were divorced, but I had learned that life was going to be full of such things. On Friday, June 6, I donned my cap and gown and drove to the big auditorium downtown. And there we all were, six hundred plus of us, giddy with anticipation and the new fear that was sinking in. We had spent the last week in a crazy frenzy of liberation, saying goodbyes to teachers and friends not knowing exactly what it meant. Standing outside waiting to line up, we watched thousands of parents and relatives enter the auditorium, stopping for brief hugs and kisses, proud or relieved. Then, for the last time, we lined up together and walked to our seats.

I was seated next to people I barely knew, to whom I had no emotional connection, and as the speakers droned on, I felt the absurdity of this, the pomp and circumstance even as I felt a store-bought, artificial nostalgia swelling in my breast as we sang the school alma mater and as we listened to the yearbook account of what we had achieved and the colorful remembrances of who we had been. And somehow, I seemed not to have been there, not to have taken part in the past three years. It all sounded like a television script or a movie I hadn't seen filled with familiar actors. I had not been to a homecoming dance nor a prom. When I went to football games, it was to smoke and talk and do something awful. I was not in any clubs, not part of anything it seemed. Their recounting of those years spent at the high school had already edited me out.

Finally, with faux-diplomas in hand, we filed out of the auditorium into the warm night air. It was over. We were done.

I saw my parents standing together, my father in an ill-fitting suit leaning on his crutches, my mother in a dress she wore to work, and awkwardly walked over. Everywhere, little knots of families--parents, aunts, uncles, siblings--were preparing to go to dinners, smiling, proud. Girls screamed throwing arms into the air, jumping and hugging this person or that, introducing friends to distant relatives, and making plans for the weekend. Most had already gotten rooms at the beach.  Graduation Weekend.  The First Weekend.  I had not made plans with anyone, but it seemed like the thing to do, so I told my parents that I was going, that I would be back on Sunday night. Then with an awkward wave, I turned my back on all of that and walked alone to my car.

I immediately drove over to Tommy's at the trailer park where it was a typical Friday night. Tommy's mother and step-father were sitting in plastic lawn chairs on the small patio well into their weekend stash of booze. Inside, Tommy sat with his guitar while his brother and sister watched the rabbit-ear images as they faded in and out on the black and white TV. I announced to everyone that I had graduated and there was a modicum of congratulations all around. I realized that I was the only one who had. I told Tommy that I was going to the beach for the weekend and asked if he wanted to come over and share a room. He hemmed and hawed about it, acting like he would come the next day, but I knew he would not, and in a little while, I got into my car and drove home to pack up some clothes.

At night, the beach was many miles of brightly lit hotels and restaurants lining A1A, and there were kids everywhere. I stopped at a particular hotel where some of the kids from school said they were staying and immediately ran into Allen. He had a room, he said, with his friends. It was fully loaded with liquor. They were going to be up all night, but I could stay in their room if I wanted.

And so I went up with them and watched them drink. It was their first time, I thought, or nearly, for they were drinking whiskey and cokes like they were bad tasting lemonade. I told Allen that they needed to slow down or they were going to get sick. Without heed. And so I watched them get quickly and miserably drunk, watched them lose motor control and listened to their rapidly deteriorating speech. Before midnight, the first of them puked.

I walked out to the pool to get away from their misery and to listen to the ocean and its promising dream. I sat watching the little lights of boats in the distance, thinking about being there, about being on the water at night, when a girl from my class sat down in the chair next to me.

"Hey. What are you doing?"

"I'm getting out of the room while a bunch of guys throw up," I said.

I knew her vaguely but we never had hung out. Like me, she had been a marginal player in school life. She came from a poorer family and had always been background, but there in the moonlight, with the sound of the ocean, I noticed that she had gotten really pretty. More than that. She looked grown up.

"You want to take a walk on the beach?" she asked me.

My throat tightened. My legs went stiff. I felt slightly dizzy.

Yes, I do want to walk on the beach with you, I thought. Yes, I do.