October 3: Seventeen, Alone and Despairing, Love in the World

Trout would have come upstairs with him if Billy hadn't told him not to.  Then Billy went into the upstairs bathroom, which was dark.  He closed and locked the door.  He left it dark, and gradually became aware that he was not alone.  His son was in there.

"Dad--?" his son said in the dark.  Robert, the future Green Beret, was seventeen then.  Billy liked him, but didn't know him very well.  Billy couldn't help suspecting that there wasn't much to know about Robert.

Billy flicked on the light.  Robert was sitting on the toilet with his pajama bottoms around his ankles.  He was wearing an electric guitar, slung around his neck on a strap.  He had just bought the guitar that day.  He couldn't play it yet and, in fact, never learned to play it.  It was a nacreous pink.  

"Hello, son," said Billy Pilgrim.

You can probably make an educated guess as to what Robert was doing in the bathroom in the dark with his pajama bottoms around his ankles, holding a guitar he didn't know how to play.  Is the guitar some kind of phallic symbol?  Maybe.  Certainly, the seventeen-year-old boy isn't practicing "Stairway to Heaven."  I will leave it up to you, dear disciples, to decide.

Seventeen-year-old boys sometimes do dumb things, like sitting in their parents' bathrooms, masturbating.  Or joining neo-Nazi groups.  Falling in love and out of love with the wrong people.  Seventeen-year-old boys think that they're already men, with adult problems.  Sometimes, seventeen-year-old boys make very big mistakes.

Today, a teenage boy from my hometown took his life.  He wasn't a saint.  He'd made mistakes, done cruel and stupid things, from what I understand.  Recently, his girlfriend broke up with him.  All of this can seem like the end of the world when you're that young and that unformed. 

If you are reading this post and feel alone and despairing, you aren't.  There is love in the world for you.  Talk to someone.  A teacher.  Friend.  Family member.  Doctor.  Police officer.  Minister.  Priest.  Nurse.  Anyone.

Tonight, Saint Marty asks you to say a prayer for a young boy and his grieving family.