And now, about those "dangerous boys" I mentioned...

Come on home girl/Momma cried on the phone
Too soon to lose my baby/and my girl should be at home
But try to understand/try to understand/try try try to understand
He's a Magic Man, Momma
~"Magic Man" by Heart*

It started young for us - as teenagers still wearing braces that cut up the insides of our mouths when we drunkenly traded kisses with boys or talked too much, after entering other states of altered consciousness. With every book or poem we read, every phone conversation, or note passed between desks, we were always wanting to be "in love." We wanted this dark shining mystery, something way beyond any hallmark-card affection and above the banality of our parents’ marriages. Something real, something raw and ravishing - undiluted.

We dreamed about the "love" we wanted and wondered about the sex we knew would come with it. But it was OK to have sex so young if you were really in love right? Talk, talk, talking, over coffee and cigarettes at the cafés that hated us because we left the tables messy, and had no money to tip the waitresses. We wanted our lovers to know us like we felt we knew each other, our lives burning up so hot & quick inside us like newspaper.

We found out quickly what it was to be hurt. When the boy you wanted and talked to, seemingly for hours of true understanding, and you let him do more than you maybe thought prudent - then, when he turned out to be an asshole, he was only having fun and he “didn’t want any committment” that’s when we lost that most precious thing, the dream of a real "relationship."

But, like the insane, we repeated the same actions over and over, just hoping for a different outcome. We carried on, we got a little bit older but not necessarily wiser. We were - it seems clear now - desperate; to be loved, to have fun or excitement or experience. And also we were frustrated, because it felt like we were forever waiting, for the end of the school day, for the weekend, for the party, for our real lives to happen.

The “boys” we got involved with were often older than us, sometimes old enough to be called “men”. Even if we weren’t in love with them, we found their age impressive, in many ways, and also convenient - they could buy beer, and our days of “bootlegging” (getting homeless men to buy for us) were over.

Looking back, it seems obvious that we made choices and there were, of course, consequences, but at the time it seemed like things just happpened to us and we reacted. What did we know of “statutory rape” or even “child molestation” and what about, oh yes - where the hell were our parents? I think now that some of them didn't know what we were up to because they didn't want to know. Coming home smelling of booze and cigarettes, sneaking out of my basement room to wander the streets of Seattle at all hours of the night, being hungover and exhausted the next morning, wearing turtlenecks for soccer games (on days not cold enough to warrant it), to cover up our hickeys and they didn't have some idea?

And for me personally, if I kept playing soccer and got good grades, and wasn't too late too often for my curfew, I was mostly left alone. But more than anything, we didn't care about our parents, I guess, and we didn't think about the fact that these so-called lovers were older and illegal, or that anything we were doing might be wrong or dangerous - we only knew what we wanted to do and we did it.

So, when I too "fell in love" I almost couldn't believe it was finally happening! Interestingly, it felt like time sped up, became so much more valuable than it had ever been before, but only when I was with him. School became even more excruciatingly long stretches of languid boredom. When I fell in love for the first time I felt invincible, it was like I was on drugs and nothing else mattered, I was hooked.

And like an addict, I couldn’t give him up, even when the relationship quickly became destructive and when my good grades, my future prospect of going away to a “good” college and my parents’ wishes pushed me in other directions. Even when he broke up with me because I was going to leave, eventually, for college, I hung on; I was a little pit-bull of love, I would not let go, all the way until the end. Embarrassingly, I called him up shortly before I left, and played him "Leaving on a Jet Plane" by Peter, Paul and Mary, just so he knew of my actual departure date (even though we were actually driving to my college, down in Southern California).

This Magic-Man I couldn't let go of was remarkable (handsome and funny, he drove a Vespa and dressed mod! he played drums in a band!), and I was noticeably addicted (as one friend said, at one point, and without a ton of compassion, "aren't you over him yet?!"), but I know now that it was less about him and more about me. I wish I had known that then. I also wish my entire group of friends could have had some other focus than this cult of love we created (influenced by myths of romantic love in the general culture, of course).

Because I have to admit, I still don't completely understand it. I guess I'm just glad that I survived, mostly intact, both the spell I thought he had cast on me, and our Wild Youth in general. In the spirit of my new mantra, I think I'm finally ready to let go of all of it. Years later than I should be doing it, maybe, but in my defense I quote Sheryl Crow (channeling Cat Stevens) - "the first cut is the deepest."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_First_Cut_Is_the_Deepest

*For a memorable scene involving the song "Magic Man" - as well as an overall compelling portrait of young girls/women - see Sofia Coppola's "The Virgin Suicides" (though, to my shame, I've not read the book yet).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Virgin_Suicides_(film)