Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin

My Real Memoir

I flew every day, straight up into the sky. Admittedly, I had help from my grandfather. But then, before I was two, he died, and I had to learn how to fly on my own. It was easy at first. I’d fly around the house, fly around the neighborhood, fly around the world–every night in my dreams. But then, more and more, something would drag me back to earth. My father would grab my foot, pull me down and spank me for neglecting my chores. Teachers would tie me with tethers made of schedules and bells and workbooks.

By the time I graduated from high school, I was flying again, albeit with a mixture of joy and fear—the world had gotten bigger during my captivity. Still, I had the two wings I needed to fly: love and creativity. But then the wing of love disintegrated and the wing of creativity was clipped.

I wrote to my ephemeral muse, Gail (above), depicting her flying with “a cloak of wind, gold-skinned, the sun splitting into a million threads about the halo of her figure.” But myself, I described as starting to fly, then falling back to the earth like an eyeless blackbird (an allusion, no doubt, to the break-up of The Beatles and my own band the previous year).

Would I ever have wings again?

Yes.

How?

I could write!

I didn’t need a band to make music, or to be cast in a play to do theatre. I could write and direct my own plays, make my own music. And I did!

But what about love, the other wing? I traded flirts with a sweet-voiced singer on an A Cappella Choir trip to Kansas City, only to lose her in the tall grass. And then there was uncomplicated Maggie McCluskey, with her perfect body and less-than-perfect brain, who called me by my nickname, Og, and considered me her Irish-American soulmate.

I wasn’t.

Not even a little bit.

Then, suddenly, there was Darlene, with her Slavic cheekbones, arched mouth, and expressions fraught with nuances. I thought she was the most sophisticated creature I’d ever seen. She was complicated. And unattainable. I asked her out anyway, and to my astonishment she said yes. But on the way to her house, I feared she’d discover I was an intellectual featherweight, a dime-a-dozen funny boy, and laugh me off.

But she didn’t. She laughed with me, and sat in a grocery cart while I pushed her around an empty supermarket parking lot, letting me see that she was just a girl after all. A callow catholic school girl who still lived with her parents. Who’d cried just three years previous on prom night, fearing she was pregnant because her boyfriend had French-kissed her.

Still, she fearlessly kissed me back–some fears she’d overcome. Others she hadn’t. Those nuances I’d seen remained hidden, maybe even from her; and there was something that tugged at the corners of her smile. Could I be the balm that healed it? The word that spoke it away? Maybe. If so, it seemed, the word would be…

Love.

My Real Memoir is a series. To read the next one, click here.