Life Worth Living

Since further back this year than I can remember, since probably the waning months of last year, I have been dreaming of summer, specifically, of summer nights. I have been longing for them so much that it hurts. The dusky light, the crispness of the light breeze, the soft scent of trees and grass and flowers, the long shadows, the pavement still radiating the heat of the day, the clear skies with stars beginning to peek out. Sprinklers hissing in the night, crickets chirping a cheerful chorus, melting popsicles on the grass, driving down dark roads with my best friends and the weather not too cold to roll down the windows and let the wind play through our hair. Lying back on a blanket in the backyard and staring up at the pale moon. Frolicking in the park or hiking up the hills to see the twinkling city lights like a canvas below us. Feeling free, unbound, limitless. Feeling warm and happy and content.

There’s a playlist in my iTunes called “Summer Nights” filled with songs that evoke memories of swerving down twisted hillside roads at night with my three best friends in the world. The last of those nights were three summers ago, and still just thinking about them or just listening to one of the songs from that playlist makes my eyes unfocus, staring into the past. Sometimes I get a lump in my throat; sometimes I almost want to cry.

The weather is finally swinging back into summer, and feeling the sun on my skin it’s all I can think of: those summers past and this one coming. I want so badly to return to three years ago. Almost, almost as much as I look forward to sharing this approaching summer with Leone.

We went over to a family friend’s house today, my mom, my brother, and I. It wasn’t the first time I’d been over, but it was the first time in a while. They have two boys, the elder two years younger than I, the younger two years younger than his brother. My parents went to college with their parents back in China. When I was growing up, my parents would bring me to their house a lot. There are other couples who live in the Bay Area who were also in the same small class in college as my parents, and they would bring their children, and we would have huge get-togethers.

All the other families—about three or four of them—they all had boy children. Some had one boy, some had two. There was one other girl, but when we were all 9 or 10 she was a mere infant, too young to play with us. And so I was the only girl; I was also the oldest child. It never bothered me; I became one of the boys, and little boys are rambunctious. So was I. Although I was too much of a girl to wrestle with them, I ran with them, I played with them, I climbed with them and laughed with them and squealed with them, and we threw things at each other and teased each other like children do. I grew up with them.

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“Let’s just go home,” JT said to me for the second time in a week, the second time I’d seen him after the cruise, and for the second time, it was only 9 PM. I looked at him, and I thought about all those times a year ago, two years ago, when we had stayed out long past sundown, back when I’d take however many hours my father would give me and would complain that 12 was too early, back when after I left, whoever remaining would carry on into the darkness without me. Back when we didn’t need to have something to do, because sitting and talking in a park, or the in foodcourt of a mall, or inside a dark car would suffice; back when we didn’t even need anything to talk about because we knew that we’d always find something. I thought about how many other times we’d stared at each other, the four of us, and later on three or maybe only two of us, and wondered what to do, and found something rather than gave up, and I wanted to ask him why.

I almost did, but I’m not that kind of person. I have a sort of foolish pride (and it’s stupid, I know, to even call it pride), and I wont be seen asking my best friend not to leave. Unbidden, a part of me wondered if he just didn’t want to hang out with me anymore, because I knew that “going home” meant that I went home to my house, and JT and Jack Dawson go “home” together. But then I thought, we’re past that point in our friendship where I think like that. I’ve thought like that before, to no avail, and I was wrong besides, and I know that’s not it. It’s hard to not think like that sometimes, though.

So I drove home alone with the music blasting through my windows, and I looked at the road and the headlights and the streetlights and the traffic lights and the moonlight and the starlight overhead, and I thought—here’s a beautiful summer night. It was made for us. Why are we letting it slip by?

Because two years ago we would have held on to this summer night for all we were worth, and now here’s one giving itself to us, waiting for us to grab hold of it…and we’re just going home. And then I wonder if it’s because we’ve grown up…and I think, if that’s the case, then I wish we never had.

Today Prince and I went out as planned. Actually, no, it went down more like “Dont make me get up dont make me get up it’s only 12:30, that’s still early. I might as well go jogging now wth phone is beeping—fuck, 30-45 minutes? THAT’S NOT ENOUGH GODDAMN TIME I’M A GIRL I NEED MORE TIME THAN THAT TO SHOWER AND GET READY DAMN YOU PRINCE!”

Of course I didn’t have any panties because I’d thrown them all in the wash and he had to be the punctual early bird bastard he is. He rang the doorbell and my brother went to let him in and he came upstairs. Meanwhile I was scrambling around trying to put my clothes and eyeliner on and look halfway presentable, and I ended up greeting him with my hair wet and a skirt on with nothing under it. That’s right. But he didn’t have to know that, and I sure as heck wasn’t going to tell him. Wonderful first impression of me after a months long separation.

After I managed to get ready (cursing him in my head the whole time) we went and sat outside Starbucks and caught up. I told him about my plans for a tattoo and discovered that he’s been thinking of getting one to. I told him the embarrassing stories about how I’ve become a slut since the last time I saw him and, well, let’s just say my sexual exploits were nothing compared to his. So I felt a bit inadequate, a bit like my thunder was stolen, a bit inexperienced.

But it was easy. My god, but it was easy, like we hadn’t not seen each other since January. And I remembered why we’d been such good friends and I mourned the loss of that friendship in recent months. I’d forgotten how goofily sarcastic he can be sometimes (something that I’d come to expect from only JT and sometimes Rosemary) and how cool he was when he wasn’t leeching at JT like a parasite.

And then he tells me about his friends in Saratoga and his new best friend (who he’s also a little in love with) and I cry a little inside because that used to be JT’s, Aster’s, and my spot in his life. Then like so many times before I think about how much has changed and how much will never be the same. And that’s when I want to cry a lot inside.

Today after dark JT, Jack Dawson, and I drove to a park that had a decent view of the city lights. We leaned against the gate/fence huddled in the cold and peered down and out over San Jose.

We had spent the day like kids, the three of us, playing Frisbee on the grass after we’d climbed all over the playground and swung in the swings, running like fools to catch the ice cream man and dropping our Popsicle sticks in the trash only to spy him coming around the corner again, and then we cheering and scurrying over to shell out more cash for dollar ice cream bars. We threw poppers and made a mess on the sidewalk and giggled like buffoons when a little boy popped one scootering over it. We went to Chuck-E-Cheese’s and made funny faces in the photo booth for a quarter a pop. We went to the Togos that had been one of our oldest haunts back when we were in high school; we had spent hours in that plaza eating burgers and sandwiches, slurping down cold coffee and smoothies, playing Apples To Apples in the back of an SUV.

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No matter how you look at it, Summer is coming. If you want to be scientific about it, June 20 or 21. If you want to use my primitive method, June 1 (Fall starts when September does, Winter at November, Spring at March…which means poor Fall gets only two months to itself. I knew my method was flawed). Either way, the days are growing longer, the pollen is in the air (They’re not dangerous, immune system, damnit), and it’s (almost) not too cold anymore to leave the house in just a T-shirt. Sure, there’s still that goddamned rainy season that stretches through April and never f–ing ends, and there’s still papers to write and readings to do and finals to take, but by god it feels like Summer already.

Except that none of us have spoken to Prince in months, and for all we know he’s become first flute in an orchestra or quarterback for the Denver Broncos. No matter how I might want to slap him with all the high-school-bitch I know is in me, it can no longer be summer without him. And damnit, part of me still hates to admit that I miss him, I miss him, and I’m sorry for whatever my evil twin did to him to drive him away. It’s fine to shake myself off and say “good riddance” and be glad to no longer have to deal with that tomfoolery he put us through, but it’s another thing all together when you turn around, five months later, and you realise you haven’t spoken to someone you once thought of as one of your best friends. And no matter how much I may hate him, I miss him. Especially when all the signs are pointing to Summer, the past two of which he was such a big part of.

So I guess this year we make our own summer. And by god, I hope we make it right, make memories, and dont make any more hatred. But really, really…part of me still just wants to go back to the way it was. Those were some of the best days in the world, and now they’re no more. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the best is yet to come.

I miss my senior year. The year I met and really got to know the people I consider now to be my best friends. I miss going from class to class in anticipation of Friday, the day the four of us would clamber into the Passat and go driving. It never mattered where we drove, or if we drove miles just to end up at our starting point again. I miss when it was all of us on the same side, when we couldn’t yet peer under each other’s skin to see the imperfections within. When everything was easy. Anberlin and Mae and Boys Like Girls blasting through the stereo as the wind blasted through our hair as the car wound its way down a dark twisted forest trail. The shimmering yellow lights of San Jose below us and the twinkling white points of the stars above us as we stood on a hill overlooking the city, the bay, and the world. The endless flash of the digital camera that recorded evidence of our frolics. At school, the way we would all converge from all ends of campus to that little nook. The way we carried the same textbooks every day. Backpacks thrown down for lunchtime. The bell that would ring signaling the end of break, and we would run off in separate directions knowing that we would only have to wait until lunchtime to see each other again. I miss when we all lived within 10 minutes of each other. I miss that we were all awkward and unsure and growing into ourselves and groping along holding on to each other as we made our way into the world. Those were days lost in time forever, existent now only in memory and a neglected online photo album.

When I go past the high school now, I crane my head to see, but all I can see is the tennis courts, the soccer fields, the high rise of the stadium lights of the football field. I look, and I know that I can remember and remember, and I can dream and dream, and that I and my friends can go past those fields and those lights into campus and sit on the same steps we sat on every day at lunch. And we can see the library across from us and the lawns where we once watched the antics of the lower-class-men and the grounds where we’d watch the other students, some that we recognized, some we didn’t, go past. We can go, and we can see, and we can pretend, but it will never be highschool again, and it will never be the same again.

I get bored sometimes (all the time, actually). Last night was one of those sometimes, so last night, I reablogs. I started from my old friend T.’s blog. She makes some interesting points, but sometimes I feel like she’s plumb stuck in that angsty complain-y holier-than-thou teenage phase, coupled with that I’m-going-to-stick-some-big-words-in-here-to-sound-smart-and-it-looks-forced-even-if-I’m-actually-really-using-all-the-words-correctly thing. Yet: some interesting points. But I digress. She has a sidebar linking to other blogs, and although I know none of the people, I click on a few of them. Somehow, I found myself on Mr. N’s blog. Hmm. I think. I didn’t know he had a blog.

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When I was seven, I met a boy named Alexander. He was short, and too thin like all little boys are, and his messy desk was always subject for chastisement, but this little boy had two great passions: dinosaurs…and me.

Every day at recess he would stalk around with his arms held stiffly in front of him like a T Rex. “I’m a dinosaur!” he would proudly proclaim between shrill boyish roars. When he saw me on the playground he would walk up and ask “Will you have eggs with me?” I, being the pre-pubescent little girl that I was, had it firmly in my mind that all boys had cooties, and this one most of all. I would shout at him and call him all sorts of names. Run away and hide while he chased me. Throw to the ground things he offered me. But he was never daunted. Day after day he would ask me the same “will you have dinosaur eggs with me?” and day after day he would be rejected.

On the last day of school we went around signing scraps of paper—our makeshift yearbooks—and saying our goodbyes. Alexander came up to me, pen and paper in hand, and requested my phone number. He wanted to call me over the summer because his little boy mind thought he loved me. But like always, he was refused. Ever persistent, Alex ran to the coat rack where our backpacks hung, grabbing the magenta lunchbox my dad had carefully scripted my phone number onto in case it got lost. He uncapped his pen and was scribbling it down when I dashed over and snatched the backpack away.

The day ended, and I changed schools the next year. I never saw Alexander again.

To this day, I wonder what might have happened if I hadn’t been so hateful, if I had allowed him those few digits. Nothing, most likely, save for a phonecall or two. But I regret. I regret that I rejected him. I feel sorry for him. I miss him. I wonder if I missed out on a great friend. I wonder where he is now.

I dont want any more regrets.