Flight Club

There is this certain age during youth. The early, early teen years. The pheromones kick in. The hormones kick in. Your body changes. But you are still not sure what to do with it all. I love seeing kids in this stage. Trying to figure out what to do with the body that is almost adult and the feelings that are almost adult and the thoughts that are as adult as they can possibly be. Except sometimes when they just aren't. And to have to hold all of this constant, crazy change. Oh my. This is why the kids are just nuts.

It is important for you to know that I was that age once. Not that it is a specific age so much as a specific phase. Some go through it at the end of grade school, some in high school, some get out the gate way too quickly. For me, it was towards the end of grade school. I was tall, gangly, looked older, was full of angst and contemplation. Awkward. And also pretty. Pretty in an awkward way, which just seems to make you prettier. Not that I ever thought I was pretty. The self awareness was being tested. Suddenly, others notice you. The objectification begins. You are fully unprepared. You are fully curious. Lethal, lethal, lethal.

And this is where the groundwork for your future relationships gets created. This is the testing ground, the emergence. I had swooned over the unattainable boys for years. Rock stars, actors. Poster after poster torn from magazines and taped to my wall. But now, the boy crushes were real. Not the innocent flirting of the younger years, but the lusting of the magazine boys taped on the head of a real boy. The yearnings had begun and I was scared shitless.

There was this boy. Who, technically, was recently out of high school so maybe more of a man. He was beautiful. Even better he was beautiful and cool. Even better, beautiful, older and a bad, bad boy. He sold pot on South St. in Philadelphia. He hung out there. He was beautiful. Did I mention that? I met him at my mothers friends' house. I guess they were my friends also. I hung out there a lot. I would sit on the couch and they would get stoned and talk and I would just learn. I learned that smoking pot makes you hang out on your couch a lot, learned who Nelson Mandela was, how red lights never last more than a minute so you should never run them, and that Hall and Oates were gay. I also learned that the beautiful boy that stopped by their house to buy pot to sell on South St. liked me. You know, liked me, liked me. And as much I yearned for that with every ounce of my gangly body; I was not ready for that.

He took a few weeks with it. Talking to me, throwing compliments my way. Watching the combination of terror and desire in my face. Gauging his place. Then he went for it, escalated it. Asked me to walk up to South St. with him for some reason or another. I said yes, but I don't know how or why. I walked with him, up the stairs, out the door, and around the corner. We passed the Wawa and that's when it happened. He ran into a group of his friends. More older boys. Beautiful boys, cool boys, pot-smoking-south st.-hanging-out boys. This officially made it just all too much for me. I was a bundle of nerves and confused feelings and just not ready to be around that many beautiful boys. My would be suitor walked a little ahead of me, to talk to his friends. I lagged behind. And then. And then, I just cut around the corner without saying a word to any of them. I took off in a completely different direction. Sat in a park for awhile, let the hormones rearrange themselves, got on the SEPTA bus and went home.

Sometimes you end up being more flight than fight.