Adulting kinda sucks.
When you’re a kid, everything is new and exciting. You can’t wait to be old enough to drive a car and get laid and earn money and buy booze. All of adolescence is a rehearsal for adulthood, and, when you’re a kid, you’re convinced that with age comes limitless freedom and joy.
Similarly, most adults I know yearn for the simplicity and security of childhood. (I’m generalizing here. I know not all childhoods are safe and uncomplicated, and I honor those kids who are forced at very young ages to deal with very grownup struggles.) Stereotypically, we mythologize our childhoods. We’re all cast members on The Brady Bunch.
Marie Howe writes about the thrills of adolescence . . .
Practicing
by: Marie Howe
I want to write a love poem for the girls I kissed in seventh grade,
a song for what we did on the floor in the basement
of somebody’s parents’ house, a hymn for what we didn’t say but thought:
That feels good or I like that, when we learned how to open each other’s
mouths how to move our tongues to make somebody moan. We called it
practicing, and one was the boy, and we paired off—maybe six or eight girls,
and turned off the lights and kissed and kissed until we were stoned on kisses,
and lifted our nightgowns or let the straps drop, and, Now you be the boy:
concrete floor, sleeping bag, couch, playroom, game room, train room, laundry.
Linda’s basement was like a boat with booths and portholes
instead of windows. Gloria’s father had a bar downstairs with stools that
spun, plush carpeting. We kissed each other’s throats.
We sucked each other’s breasts, and we left marks, and never spoke of it
upstairs, outdoors, in daylight, not once. We did it, and it was
practicing, and slept, sprawled so our legs still locked or crossed, a hand still
lost in someone’s hair . . . and we grew up and hardly mentioned who
the first kiss really was—a girl like us, still sticky with moisturizers we’d
shared in the bathroom. I want to write a song
for that thick silence in the dark, and the first pure thrill of unreluctant
desire—just before we made ourselves stop.
Howe really captures that adolescent longing for adult experience in this poem. Adolescent boys experiment with similar taboos, and, just like the girls in Howe’s poem, they don’t speak of these basement encounters in broad daylight. It’s pretty common, although most guys will not admit it. The stigma is just too strong.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my adolescence and childhood today. I was a pretty easy kid, I think. I never really gave my parents anything to worry about. I didn’t smoke a joint until my junior year. Didn’t get blackout drunk until I was a senior. I only went on a few dates as a teenager, and the condom I carried around in my backpack never fulfilled its intended purpose during my high school career. I thought I was going to live forever.
Now, I’ve had sex at least twice (as evidenced by my two kids). I’ve also had a few careers—in healthcare and higher education and church music and event programming. I know more than half of my life is behind me, and I’ve lost several family members and friends. Mortality is very present in my day-to-day existence.
Today was the first day of summer. It was also Father’s Day. I stopped by the cemetery this afternoon to visit my dad’s grave. It was raining pretty hard, but I stood there for a couple minutes, thinking about all the things I never said to my dad (and the things I DID say to him that I now regret). As a kid, I thought I had all the time in the world. Young people drench themselves in immortality the way they drench themselves in Axe body spray or Love’s Baby Soft.
I loved my dad, but he and I were very different people with very different values. I can’t recall a single time that my dad said “I love you” to me. Almost daily, however, I tell my son and daughter that I love them. If the only memory they have of me when I’m gone is the fact that I said “I love you” way too my times, that’s enough. I’ve done my job as their father.
Saint Marty wrote this poem about his dad for Father’s Day . . .
Father’s Day, Rainy and Cool
by: Martin Achatz
I stand by my dad’s stone this afternoon
by myself, his Memorial Day flag now soaked,
deflated as a beached jellyfish. The air
is stiff with the smell of worm and mud.
Most of my dad is here, although my sisters
have lockets of his ashes in their dresser drawers.
My son has an urn on his bookshelf. I know
it contains the ashes of my dad’s pointer finger,
the one he always jabbed at my chest,
sinking his love into me like a rusty nail.
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