I’ve had not one, but two Crazy Summers. I’m lucky that way. The first was the summer I was sixteen, just like in the movies. I went to Grenada with my church youth group, and when we came home there wasn’t a lot to do. I didn’t have a job. I did have a car though, and I used it mostly to drive the two and a half blocks to My Friend Amy’s house. She, as I have mentioned before, had the Teen Fun House to end all teen fun houses, as I thought at the time. I mean, Super Tetris, lots of movies, lots of food, a ping-pong table, down the street from the beach and the pool, and a very liberal sleep-over policy. What more do you want? And the best part of all was that her parents went away for a couple of weeks and left her…or us, even, because I stayed there every night…in charge. Can’t you see the credits rolling now?
To be honest, we didn’t do that much. We spent a lot of time driving to her boyfriend’s house and picking him and whatever other random boys were around up, and driving back to her house. We played ping-pong and Super Tetris and ate food and watched movies. That summer we all loved Rocky Horror Picture Show even though we never went to see it in the theater. We’d just watch it at home pretty much every night. We act it out (much) but I think we made it a point of honor to dance to the Time Warp every time. And we said all the dirty words, too. But that’s about it, I think. I’m guessing some people drank and hooked up and smoked and all that bad stuff, but I don’t really remember it. Possibly this is because I was such a goody two-shoes even then that folks wanted to protect my virgin eyes and ears or whatever. I don’t know. I did have My First Kiss during one of these evenings of just sitting around though, so maybe I wasn’t such a goody two-shoes after all! I was all boasting about it the next day to my friends when we went to the Venetian Pool: “Oh, yeah, we kissed for like, thirty, forty minutes. It was kind of…slippery.” I occasionally refer to this individual as ‘Plunger Lips” because, yall, with all due respect, that’s what he had. Try this on a person you normally kiss: Lunge up to them with your mouth wide open, and then create a huge suction with your lips surrounding their mouths. Don’t let them breathe if you can help it. There, now doesn’t that person look satisfied? You bet!
My other Crazy Summer happened right after I graduated from college. I was living in a free apartment across the street from campus and was working part time at my old work-study job. There were a ton of people on campus that year and I was probably the most social I have ever been before or since. Having my own place, even if it wasn’t neccesarily my own, was very heady and thrilling to me, and I sort of got drunk on my own power and had people over ever night for little dinner parties. I was hanging out with a whole passle of boys and I was like their den mother, ordering them around and basking in their attention. My Friend Kat came over every day and we would go all these cool hikes and to the movies a lot. We had this wonderful Fourth of July picnic that involved a loaf of French bread with butter and a chocolate bar stuck in the middle. We went on a road trip to see My Friend Anna, who was spending the summer in the Bay Area, and we went to
Joshua Tree. I liked a boy, even, during that summer, and he liked me back, and that was very exciting too. I got offered a job where I was working in August and everything just seemed to come together. In fact I have often wondered if I am now paying for the ease of that transition time then. I haven’t had anything like it since.
Three months can be a long time. Three months of hot hot sun, and Slurpees, and feeling grown-up because you have a set of cheap Target pots and pans, and having something fun to do every single night of the week. Not worrying about money. Loving everyone you’re around, loving yourself around them. Slow days and deep nights, flirting and being flirted at, being at the height of your powers. I want another one of those; I want to be at the center of the story I’m telling myself, in the chapter called One Crazy Summer.