When I was 18
How to describe what it felt like to be 18 years old?
I was living in New Mexico attending the last year of high school; I was a senior. I didn’t feel like a senior. I felt awkward and lost. Between classes and classmates and smoking joints, I breezed along. Lost. There was no sex, or not much, just the ‘petting’ kind. There was a young woman - younger - who I was interested in and who I paid court to. I would play Romeo and Juliette underneath her bedroom window. She lived in the same apartments as we did. But her parents were strict. She was just out of the convent school, a sweet young thing with rosy cheeks. I called her ‘Rosy’. I tried asking her out on a date to see a movie, but her parents nixed that. She was an only child. The last I saw of ‘Rosy’ she was riding away on the back of a motorcycle, with a rough looking character. Her year book picture above.
So I didn’t have a girl friend. I had a few friends; especially a class mate who had graduated before me; Marcia. She was my best buddy, driving me around in her Mini Morris. I remember a party at her boyfriend’s place where I drank vodka and smoked pot. Boy that was not a good combination. She drove me home stoned drunk. But mainly was lonely. The loneliness got to me and one day I felt like committing suicide. But just when I was going to do ‘it’ some people showed up at my door asking how I was. They were my angels who saved me. I was liked!
I forgot Paul, my best friend who was an artist and heroine addict. We would sit in his car and I would watch him prepare his needle and fix - heating up the spoon with his fix - and then a tourniquet around his arm to show the vein and the needle went in. He was a nice guy, very gentle and kind. He was also bi-sexual. He and his girl friend offered to do a ‘threesome’ with me. I declined. THEN there was the blond girl who looked like a fairy - etherial. We were talking about our parents and she shut us all up with her story. Every night she went to bed and then her father came to ’sleep’ with her….
I was active in the school; I tutored underprivileged kids in the barrio after school, I was in theatre, I sang in chorus, I was on the school paper as an artist, I painted murals, I wrote and was part of the debate team. It was all superficial. I was still doing art, in fact I won a local contest, and then a national contest with a scholarship to go to art school. I hung out with my fellow students; we drove to Zuni Pueblo to see the dancing (read about it here). Once we all piled into a guys VW beetle and went up the mountain in the snow. Kid’s stuff.
At the graduation, everyone was stoned including me. Afterwards some friends got into a VW beetle to go up the mountain to a party. We got stopped by a cop. It was funny to remember the scene as we tried to roll up the window then put it down to mask the smell of pot. At another party I smoked some hash. It was stronger and made me see an ugly women as pretty. Strange.
Our teachers were a mixed bag of people. Mostly young and idealistic. My chorus teacher wanted me to become an opera singer and gave me lessons; he was gay. Another teacher was black and bisexual. He was on the make for young things of both sexes at parties; I avoided him. The idealistic ones tried to help us in our future careers. One young thing turned on all the boys. Once her blouse came undone and we all kept quiet, boys and girls, watching her boobs fall out. What childish antics.
I wanted out of high school bad. I was learning how to drive and that was my first taste of freedom. Driving.
Oh then there were the awards ceremony. I got a ton of them. Awkward moments as I would go up and then come back to try to find my seat amongst all the people who were dressed in the same graduation gown. I got a lot of laughs. I did get some action from that. A girl in my class - a 10 - who had never noticed me came on to me. We went camping, with a religious group, in the woods and I spent the night trying to keep her out of my sleeping bag. She wanted to ‘own’ me. It was the first time I had met female sexual aggressiveness - but not the last.
