Life Worth Living

Yesterday Leone took me for a ride up in the beautiful Berkeley hills along tree-lined roads with neat houses tucked between them, each more beautiful than the next. We stopped at a lookout and gazed down at the bay below us, and then we took the long way home. As we were making our way through Frat Row to my apartment in order for me to pack an overnight bag, we were slowed to a near-stop by the early evening traffic.

I hadn’t been up here since last summer, notably on my way to and from The Chemist’s in the evenings. I glanced up at the house he had lived in, spotting the window that had been his last year and imagining myself and him just under it on his mattress on the floor, then looked away, not wanting to think about it. Leone inched his motorcycle slowly down the street. I craned my head to see a match of beer-pong going on in one living room. A couple houses down, loud hip-hop was playing, and a group of students were sitting with their feet dangling off the upstairs balcony of a frathouse, swaying to the beat and sipping beers. One shaggy-headed brother was especially getting into the music; when he saw me looking up at them, he raised his arms and bobbed his head rhythmically. I grinned widely up at him, sharing in his mirth.

The brothers in the house across from the balconied one were bbq-ing on the porch, sending a haze of smoke wafting through the street. As I turned to look, a toned, bikini-clad girl with long blond hair—the quintessential sorority sister—and a equally attractive brunette only slightly more modestly dressed skipped out from the house to join the guys on the porch. The blonde looked up and spotted the shaggy-haired guy on the balcony across the street. She smiled and waved both hands at him happily, calling out a greeting, which he returned. As we inched slowly away, the brunette strode across the street to greet the shaggy-haired guy, and the blonde had turned to give one of the brothers on the porch a bear hug. The shadows on the sidewalk were lengthening, although there was still plenty of light left, and the evening was warm and still. The air smelled of summer and smoke.

These are the days I love, and miss, and long for. I wanted to be that blonde girl in a bikini. I wanted to be that brunette waltzing across the street. I wanted more than I can say to bbq on the porch and just sit on a balcony in the summer air with loud music pulsing through me. I wanted to be on Frat Row that day and live like a college student instead of motoring off to far away Albany, quiet and still and beautiful, full of suburban families walking their dogs and young children along streets lined with boutiques and cafes. I wanted loud, not peaceful. I wanted to wear a bikini and strut around a house full of attractive guys, to dance, and to sit outside under the stars and cool with the pavement. I wanted to enjoy the summer like it was meant to be enjoyed.

I know people often look down on the Greek life, but I find myself wishing for it more often than you would know, especially on these lazy summer days. At that moment in time I would have almost traded going home with Leone for being able to join that group on the porch. Almost. And only almost, because grill or no grill, when it comes down to it I would rather have Leone than twenty Frat brothers.

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.

“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 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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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.