coda

 

Then it happens.  Two days before high school commences. Two days before I am to be emotionally trussed and buckled into the sociological rocket that is the hallways of Manual High school, twenty-four hours after I have pissed into the Polaroid of myself looking back at myself reflecting the kaleidoscopic transparency of nostalgia culled from the greatest summer of my life, giving  my cock and earnest shake before zipping back up, before invariably succumbing to the gravitational vicissitudes of a future I can not yet surmise; then it happens. I am collecting, trotting past the sockets of Terry Inman’s house where someone else now lives, walking on the other side of the street, taking a left on Cedar and cutting through the alley behind Moss avenue as to avoid inadvertently bumping into Tina, taking another hard right, walking past the house that is Miss McGanns that has loose dripping brick cement, walking past the house where the single mom from our church just moved with her twin daughter and a young daughter who shares the first name of a future Minnesota Twins hall of fame outfielder, it then happens, when I am least expecting it. It happens in screeches at first. 

The car  pulling atop the overbite of the curb in a little bump.

I hear her voice before anything. I hear her voice kicking over the ledger lines of language. I hear her voice crayoning inside the syllables of my name addressing me as the only name for my identity she has ever known.

“Hi Charlie!!!!"

 She says it in almost a scream.

 It is Pam.

I don’t know what to say.

 “How’s your summer been baby?”  I don’t know what she is doing on my street. In the back of her Camry are cutouts that look like British soldiers purportedly backdrops for an upcoming musical. I have been wanting to talk with Pam since  the last day of Music Man. I have been wanting to talk with Pam since our cast party. I have been wanting to thank her for giving me music. Wanting to thank her for giving me the greatest summer of my life.

 

I tell her my summer was fine.


 I want to tell her about how felt to kiss Anastasia after she sasses off to Couri. I went to tell her how I met the most brilliant individual while being voluntarily sedated and having brush strokes of rogue and hyphens of lipstick penciled across my countenance.


“Still have all those songs tingling inside your head?”

 I want to tell her I still have dreams where  Harold Hill is prancing across stage clad in the drum major uniform of the high school I am to attend in 48 hours. I tell her I am lost in the locomotive-shrug that is the rock Island Overture. I want to tell her that, in the peach fizz of  morning, when I cut the manger of my paper heap loose I begin to amble down Sherman avenue on my route, sometimes, I look for the Wells Fargo Wagon, wondering when it will be coming, wondering if it will perhaps ever stop for me.

I want to tell her that hs still, somehow, after all this time, thinks that he doesn’t know the territory.

 

I have tried looking Pam’s number up in the yellow pages to call her or to send her a card. I want to thank her for this summer. I want to tell her all about how I kind of dated Dawn Michelle and how it didn’t work out but how I felt like I grew from the relationships.

I want to tell her how the air conditioner felt on my bare arms inside the Mall while Dawn slurped Mt. Dew with our hands welded at the wrists. I want to tell her bout staying up all night on the phone with Anastasia and falling madly in love and watch my heart be serrated and ripped like VOID lottery tickets  wearing make-up and going out into the woods behind Lakeview museum, groping the conductors wand of my cock and orchestrating the time signature and symphony of my body in front of an audience of slim botanical stalks.

I want to tell her about Betsy and how, even though  I am eight years older than her I somehow feel that she is my daughter. That I don’t want her to endure the inevitable pangs and emotional tumult that being lodged on the merry go-round of this planet perennially entails.

I want to tell her that she taught me about art and culture. Tell her that I couldn’t stop thinking that Dawn Michelle was the most brilliant human being I have ever met,.

I want to  tell her about the music, the freshness of synthesized quarter notes double-dutching above the dance floor like glass bubbles. 

 I want to tell her about riding out to Tricentennial playground and Patrick’s bike completely falling apart. I want to tell her about falling in love with Kim Zmeskal and busting my ass, running every day , convinced that if I train hard enough I will be in the Olympics come four years’ time, convinced that my telos lies with track and field and cross country.

I want to tell convey to her that, by casting me in a play I have never heard of before she gave me  a bouquet of memories, she gave me a chorus of human beings I will never forget. She gave me music and augmented my confidence and made me feel like I was a part of something.

 

 She gave me the greatest summer of life.

 

I want to say thank you.

 

I want to hold her and tell her I love and tell her thank you.

 

Thank you for giving me all of this.

 

“Thank you.” I tell her. “Thank you for everything.”

 

“Oh baby that’s no problem baby you know that.”

 

We talk for five minutes. When I tell her I am going to Manual she tells me to do theatre.  I am standing at the window of her Camry like one of the sentinels she has in the back seat.  The car smells like Newport cigarettes and fast food. You can tell by looking at her that she is in a hurry. That she is running errands. That she doesn’t have all day even though day has surrendered into the coppery drape that is dusk, the bellowing promise of another tomorrow. Another day to stretch out in this body and discern what life on this galactic orb has to give by you giving everything that is inside your chest and loving and yearning and failing and giving some more to one day, find someone like Pam who takes a chance on  you even though she has no clue of the syllables your name.

 
I want to shake her hand. I want to give her an embrace, I want to thank this beautiful creature for everything she has added to my life.

“You are gonna love high school Charlie. You’re gonna love high school.”

 

I thank her again and she brushes it off. It’s no big deal. She waves goodbye. As she speeds off I loose myself in the almost demonic squint of her brake lights as she takes a left on the corner of Sterling and Sherman, not knowing  if I will ever see her again, my heart telling her goodbye in subtle aortic thumps and slight squeezes.

Summer is over. Everything is gone.

 

 It is time for life to once again begin.

It is time for life to be brand new.