A song on the car radio took me by surprise and brought me back to high school where girls were something I admired, feared, yearned and suffered for. Mostly from a distance. The song brought her back vividly in my memory. Joy, an Italian American Catholic High School Girl from Worcester, Mass dressed in her uniform skirt and sweater.
After I'd signed my enlistment papers at the age of 16, I got a little bolder, my tragic fate now sealed. I found ways to talk to her- usually by acting like a screwball. I'd too often do my Stallone impression. "Yo, you're a pretty tough kid, you know that?" It was a shtick we developed, but getting beyond that was a struggle.
I saw her at a few parties during our senior year. She had an older long-term boyfriend. She drank a little back then and I didn't. On a few occasions, she sat with me outside under the stars and told me about her life. Intimate stuff. A couple of times she said things like, "I've never told any one this before."
Around the time of graduation, we had a talk like that outside a party. She was comfortable with me. I was less comfortable, holding everything in and trying to tamp it all down. I finally worked up the courage to ask her about our situation. "You've told me things you've never even told your boyfriend. How come we never got together?'
She didn't hesitate. "Well, I think your pretty good looking but you're also pretty weird".
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