Feels Like the First Time (4 page)

The kids in the crowd stood up and went crazy. The adults sat in lifeless shock. They looked at us like we were the final sign of the apocalypse. Performing on stage was a rush of epic proportions. I looked at Jerry to savor the moment with my best friend, but he was too busy playing a demon to notice.

When the song ended with one last chord crash, we froze in place, making what we hoped was an artistic connection to the way we started the song. We formed a frozen tableau while the teenagers screamed, stomped and whistled. The adults slowly shook their heads, trying to erase the preceding four minutes from their memories. We didn’t know if anyone would think our act was cool, but even after the curtain was down, we could hear the kids in the crowd chanting “KISS! KISS! KISS!”

The crowd reaction made us sure we had won the Grand Prize, which carried the princely reward of $100. The high school principal, Mr. Alban, announced the winners. We grew more certain of victory with the announcement of each runner-up. He progressed slowly from 4
^th
runner-up to 3
^rd
, to 2
^nd
, and finally to 1
^st
, without announcing our name. I looked at Jerry and he smiled, certain we had won.

Finally the moment came. Mr. Alban paused dramatically and we heard a drum roll.

“The Grand Prize winner is… Becky Lenz for her piano recital!”

“Wait, what?” I asked Jerry.

I had no idea how this could happen. How could they give the Grand Prize to someone with talent when the acne-battling portion of the crowd obviously loved us?

We’d overlooked several factors, of course. This was a talent contest, and although our performance was creative and original, it wasn’t really a talent. Playing
Moonlight Sonata
on piano required a lot more talent and dedication than jumping around like idiots in platform shoes and kabuki makeup. Also, the average age of the judges seemed to be 112, and it looked suspiciously like several of them had turned off their hearing aids when our music played.

Once we got past our disappointment, we remembered the roar of the crowd and the thrill of mimicking our heroes. Despite having almost no talent, we had taken the Mossyrock Talent Show by storm. In the end, it seemed being denied any of the prizes reinforced our credibility with the other kids.

Just like a real band, KISS II went through a major shake-up after the talent show. Ken Schoenfeld wanted out. He thought the talent show was a one-time-only performance when he joined. To him it felt foolish to pretend to play the drums in cat makeup. Our performance stirred up a huge response, and we weren’t lacking for potential replacements. We soon settled on our friend Chip Lutz. Chip was a grade behind us, but was cool enough to hang with the big kids. Best of all, Chip could play the drums a little bit. Actual talent was a new and exciting concept.

We had plans for global domination, but they had to wait. I had entered a writing contest seeking “Washington’s Most Promising Young Writers” and Harold and I were chosen to participate. Being selected meant we got to skip three days of school and go to Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend for a writer’s workshop.

I couldn’t believe my luck, because life wasn’t great at home. Mom’s drinking was getting worse, and my step-dad’s reaction to her drinking grew more pronounced. That led to very unpleasant evenings at my house. On most days, I tried to find somewhere to be until it was time to go to my room and go to sleep.

The chance to get away and hang out with creative, smart people for three days was a godsend. Fort Worden was an old military barracks where they filmed
An Officer and a Gentleman
a few years later. It overlooked the Strait of Juan de Fuca and had postcard views of the water.

When we arrived at the conference, we broke up into groups where we were assigned writing mentors. Ours was Alan Furst, and I’d never heard of him. His first book was about to be published, and he eventually became a best-selling author of espionage novels. It’s hard to make the connection with the renowned author, but in 1977, he had long, dark, unkempt curly hair and dressed in workman chic: blue jeans and blue work shirts. He also had a very cool coat that he said was made out of a specific part of a walrus, but I have no idea if that was true or not.

He had just finished his first novel, called
Your Day in the Barrel
. He told us he got the title from an off-color joke and then he told us the joke, which made us feel grown up. He seemed skeptical about any of us making a career out of writing. During our first class, he said, “if any of you are here to become rich and famous as writers, you need to get over that idea right now.” That seemed to hold true for everyone, except for him.

A girl from Moses Lake named Lorraine Lee was in our group. Lorraine was a couple months shy of graduating, and had already been accepted into the University of Washington. She was bright, sweet, and attractive. Harold and I argued over who was going to ask her out, though we both realized we had no shot. Before we left the fantasy world of the writers’ retreat, I did work up the courage to ask for her address and phone number in Moses Lake. To my surprise, she gave them to me, along with a wallet-sized copy of her senior picture. It instantly became a prized possession. As Harold and I left Fort Worden for the drive back to Mossyrock, we were convinced we would never see her again
. 

Younger Girl

I spent the summer of 1977 in Auburn, Washington working for my oldest sister, Terri. Terri was eighteen years older than me and was smashing through the glass ceiling that hovered over women in business in the late ‘70s. She was a Vice President of Pay ‘n Pak, a chain of home improvement stores.

Terri got me an entry-level job working as a clerk in the Building Department selling tools, roofing, and lumber. She also let me stay with her, her husband Jim, and my nephew Tommy in their beautiful house. When you sat on the diving board overlooking their pool, you could look straight out at Mt. Rainier. It was quite a contrast from my normal life on Damron Road in Mossyrock. I was happy to be away from the chaos that passed for normal life at home. Plus, I only worked three or four days a week. There was plenty of time to lie around the pool and goof off with Tommy, who was my nephew, but was only two years younger than me.

My goal that summer was to read through the great Russian authors. But about 200 pages into
Crime and Punishment
, I got sidetracked by the Commodores’
Brick House
. I spent much more time hanging out at discos than I did with my nose in a book. Tommy and I were optimistic that each trip to the disco would result in a life-altering romantic experience, but girls found us resistible.

By the end of the summer, I had a decent nest egg saved up, thanks to the free rent at my sister’s house. It was enough to buy new clothes and a car. I bought a 1975 Chevrolet Vega before school started. The Vega wound up as one of the most maligned cars of the ‘70s. It was plagued by design flaws, including its aluminum cylinder block, which may explain why the dealer gave me such a bitchin’ deal. But it didn’t matter to me what the rest of the world thought. It was the most beautiful piece of machinery I ever saw. The best thing about it was that I was able to start my senior year driving to school instead of riding bus #9.

At the beginning of my senior year, the future stretched out in front of me with infinite possibilities. I wasn’t exactly king of the school; I was a little too smart and uncoordinated for that. But, I had risen through the school’s caste system to middle-class citizen, and that was enough for me.

Dawn had also changed a lot over the last two years. She had been profoundly shy when I met her. Now she was more outgoing and opinionated and I could see she was gaining confidence.

Two weeks after school started, I was surprised to see Dawn running across our yards and bounding up the front steps. She’d grown up a lot. She no longer looked like the young girl I had first met. Her strawberry blonde hair reached just past her shoulders and she was the perfect image of a foxy ‘70’s girl with her bangs feathered on the side and an irresistible flash in her eyes.

She smiled at me with that unique combination of shyness and challenge–looking down bashfully while sticking her chin out at me defiantly–and said, “My mom wants to know, if you’re not doing anything, can you come see her?” I pretended to think about it for five seconds and was rewarded with a classic teenage girl eye-roll.

“Yeah, sure,” I said, and we walked next door.

I always felt like I was being granted an audience with the Queen whenever Colleen summoned me. She was confident and stern, and projected a regal air. She seemed to always be three thoughts ahead of anything I was thinking.

As soon as I walked into the house, Colleen said “Listen, Shawn. Dawn’s struggling with her transition to high school. Her grades are starting to suffer.”

I nodded and looked at Dawn with concern. Dawn was a smart girl, able to keep up with her studies. Plus, it was too early for Poor Work Slips to be sent home. It was possible that she had brought home a few subpar test scores, and Colleen wanted to nip the situation in the bud.

Finally, she asked me the question she had.

“So, would you be interested in tutoring Dawn?”

“Yeah, I could…”

Before I could agree, Colleen cut me off.

“Of course, we couldn’t afford to pay you very much.”

I knew that was true. Walt had been out of work for a while, and things were tight at their house.

“Sure.”

“You’d be helping us out.”

I didn’t need much convincing. Whether I was getting paid or not, this was a win-win situation for me. I could score some points with an adult I wanted to impress and spend quality time alone with this beautiful freshman girl, who was now socially acceptable to date. I did the only sensible thing and volunteered to tutor Dawn for free.

A few days later, Dawn came over to my house for her first tutoring session. The dinner dishes had been cleared and Mom and my step-dad watched the news in the other room. I always saw her outside, so it felt more intimate to sit alone with her at my kitchen table. I became more and more aware of her presence–the way her knee occasionally rested against mine under the table and the warmth that radiated from her. If this were a movie, there would have been a romantic song and a first kiss. Unfortunately, it was my life, and I didn’t possess that kind of confidence or moves. Instead, I sat there with her history book open, reviewing the chapter she was studying so I could quiz her. Dawn doodled on her peechee and listened.

There was a style of writing young girls used in the ‘70s that involved taking an individual letter, blowing it up like a balloon and making it look like furniture. When I looked up at her so we could go over the review questions, I saw Dawn had written in balloon letters, “LOVE–SOFT AS AN EASY CHAIR.”

Seeing Dawn doodle the first line of a Barbra Streisand song made my heart beat faster. I’m not sure Dawn was purposefully flirting with me but I looked at her longingly, swallowed hard, and said “so, anyway, about these review questions…” The truth was that we had been friends for so long that I couldn’t find a way to be romantic with her.

I had a grand plan for the Homecoming Dance my senior year. My plan was to convince Lorraine Lee to come down from the University of Washington to attend the dance with me. The idea of me, duded up in my floral print shirt and blue polyester leisure suit, walking into the Mossyrock High School Multipurpose Room arm-in-arm with Lorraine was too delirious to contemplate. I envisioned people all around us falling over from shock.

For no reason I can imagine–other than a weird desire to help the socially inept–Lorraine agreed to go to the dance with me. She said she would drive down after her last class that Friday. I offered to spend some of my hard-earned dollars on a hotel room, but Lorraine said she was willing to stay in our spare bedroom if it was okay with my folks. By some small miracle, it was. I think they believed this was all a big fantasy and Lorraine wouldn’t actually show up.

They were right. She didn’t show.

The day of the dance, Lorraine called me at home to tell me she had a family emergency, and she had to drive home to Moses Lake immediately. She wouldn’t be able to come to the dance. I was denied my triumphant moment. I was crushed.