The Death Of Adolescence

Dear Kent,
     I wanted to write to you about our experience at the men's
conference last month.  Kent I remember you saying that some of
the exercises seemed awkward but Kent I believe their purpose was
to trick our intellect and help us access our emotions.  The
exercise that surprised me the most was the plaster masks we made
of each other's faces; Kent that one brought up so many memories
and feelings.  I couldn't find those words - until now.  I know
that you couldn't see me but I was crying as I made your mask.
     When we began the plaster mask exercise you laid flat on the
floor in front of me.  I realized we were both men now, 37 years
old, and as I cut up the plaster bandages and prepared the eater
to dip them in, I was reminiscing about the many years we have
been friends.  The room was warm and quiet and as I placed the
first strip of wet cloth across your eyes, I felt a sadness come,
and my fingers slowly rubbed the contours of your face.
     You and I are two 10 year old racing on our bakes.  We sail
on winds of laughter and innocence.  It is summer and we swim
naked in the crystal pool water; the sun is our clothing;
timeless adventurers we are.  Kent that was the happiest time of
my life.  Then I went on vacation.
     I remember that summer of 1965 wa the hottest and most
humid, I had ever known.  My family went on vacation to Aileen
Texas, to visit my mother's family.  My mother and father left me
with my grandma and grampa at the old wooden house our family
called St. Mary's.  I thought that it was named after the old
woman who died there in my grandparent's care because they said
"she suffered like a saint."  As a Baptist child, I never
questioned religious mysteries.  Since I didn't know much about
saints, to me it all made sense.  It turned out that was actually
just the name of the street.  My cousin stewart had agreed to
come and watch the Ed Sullivan on T.V. with me.  Stewart was four
years older than my ten and the awkward changes of manhood had
grasped him early.  To him I was cherubic and spoiled, his rich
cousin from California.
     My uncle Tom's headlights shone through the screen door as
his car careened up the driveway and came to a stop with a thud
against the giant petter tree in the backyard.  He stumbled into
the house, cussing and swinging the hook that took the place of
his missing arm.  I saw him go into my grandparent's bedroom and
heard him crashing around the room as he took off his clothes and
turned off the light.  I followed Stewart and my grandparents to
the doorway where my uncle slurred how sorry he was and wiped the
slobber off his face with his now naked stump.  He asked me to
come sleep with him.  I was afraid I couldn't say anything.  He
shouted and begged and saying I was his favorite nephew.  My
grampa told him to shut up and then told me to go to bed with
Stewart in the other bedroom.  I remember now how relieved I had
felt.
     I entered the other bedroom as Stewart turned off the light
and switched on the droning fan that would blow the smothering
heat from the room.  We pulled the sheets over our bodies, and
the moon shining through the window by the bed made the sheets
look like snow, as they clung to us like the summer air.  He
asked me to touch him and I curiously moved my hand to his erect
penis.  Something inside felt very wrong but his attention made
me feel older and accepted by him.  He then rolled onto my back. 
I could smell his body odor as he whispered it wouldn't hurt. 
Oblivious to the movement inside the room; suddenly I was only
aware of what I could see and hear outside the window.  There was
the constant metallic buzz of the katydids, the darkness that
surrounds the stars and a mosquito truck with its gently floating
fog that landed on the lawns and trees.  Fear seized me back into
the room as I felt him release inside me and his body jerk.  Then
he was still.  I was terrified.  Was I dying?  Anguish filled my
mind as an invisible shield went up around me.  The springs on
the bed complained as I got up and crossed the dark hall to the
bathroom.  I turned on the bathroom light and even the roaches
were repulsed by me as they escaped into the cracks and the
haunted shadows.  I was in pain as I touched myself and realized
he had damaged me.  My mind was numb and yet insane thoughts
filled my head and my heart raced.  I cried out to God but I felt
too sinful for my voice to ever reach heaven.  My parents would
be ashamed of me, and their voices were angry inside my head.  I
wanted to die.  My stomach ached and I shivered as I cleaned
myself and turned off the light.  I cried as I crawled back into
bed with Stewart.  He said that it would be our secret.  He said
I would be all right.  He lied.

                              ---------------

     When I smoothed another plaster bandage over your chin, I
began to tremble and tears fell into the wet plaster.  I could
feel how the round youthful face had matured with its angular jaw
line, and then my fingers touched your beard.  Childhood was
gone.  Kent do you remember the year when we were going to start
the 7th grade?  I prayed all summer for pubic hair and confided
to you how afraid I was that I would have a smaller dick in gym
class.  Where did that dick thing come from anyway?  Remember how
we told each other about our first time masturbating?  You used
Ben/Gay and almost burned your pecker off.  I told you about
sanding a speaker cabinet I was building for our rock band and as
I leaned on the sander for extra leverage I had my first orgasm. 
I still get a boner when I walk through the Sears Craftsman too
department.
     The next bandage I placed on your lips.  The white mask is
forming over your face.
     We are fourteen now.  Full of jocular knowledge we had
gained from the porn magazines my older brother kept that were
not so carefully hidden.  Sex burned in my mind and every thing
had a sexual meaning.  First, we experimented with each other
then on other boys and then our first girlfriends.  Somehow
friendship and being sexual got mixed up.  Then we tried drugs
and booze.  I felt cool and important but most of all - I didn't
feel.  Fear and insecurity haunted me temporarily kept them
silent.  
     I rub a dripping plaster cloth and then another over your
forehead and I become aware of the lines there.
     I remember seeing your face at our 8th grad graduation and I
was saying goodbye.  I am moving away.  I am saying goodbye to my
girlfriend, the student council, the rock band, my school chums
and I'm crying because I'm leaving you.  Ashamed, I hide my eyes
and my mother is fussing as she drives.  I can't answer her
because she won't understand.  She sees any interest that
detracts from her as betrayal.  Kent, I am lost.  I have lost my
identity.  My family is in trauma.  My mother becomes depressed
and ill and my father is so exhausted from his commute to L.A. he
is almost invisible.  My brother and I are friendly for the first
time, mainly in waging war on our parents for making us move and
we have dope smoking in common.  This is better than his usual
abuse.  We have moved to Huntington Beach and I am a little fish
in a big pond.  I'm afraid but soon I meet kids who will be my
friends - as long as I have drugs.  I discover a new meaning to
the word HIGH school because I'm stoned every day.  I finish
school in three years because I don't fit in there.  There are
various sex encounters, girls and guys but it's like the drugs:
it has nothing to do with connection or intimacy just getting out
of my head.  One of the better memories of these years is a rock
band I played in with some older guys.  We're good and make money
but I spend it all on drugs and my car.  You visit me and I write
to you letters filled with cartoons of teenage angst.
     I have a day job working at a bus depot washing dishes. 
There's a man who comes in and reads manuscripts that he pulls
from a well worn, leather brief case.  He wears a coat with
leather elbow patches and smokes a pipe.  I tell him I want to be
a writer.  He invites me to his apartment to talk and see his
work.
     The writer offers me a beer as we sit down and look at some
photographs.  I'm impressed he sees me as old enough to drink and
hang out in his cool bachelor pad.  He must be at least 35 and I
wonder if he knows I'm only sixteen.  I notice the photographs
are mainly of men and as I get farther along in the book they are
naked.  I ask him what type of stuff he writes and he sits next
to me on the couch.  "I write the copy that goes between the
pictures in pornographic books."  He grabs me and kisses me, his
beard scratching my face.  I'm suffocating and crying and I don't
know what to do.  He says he wants to jack me off and I let him. 
I remember going home and showering but nothing could make me
feel clean.  You would think I would have learned from this, but
soon afterward I let one of the writer's friends do it too.  This
time it's for money, so I can buy some pot.

                     ________________________________

     The plaster mask is in place and I dip my fingers in the
water and smooth the surface.  Over your browline, to your
cheekbones and down to your chin; the white image stares at me.
     I'm 17 years old and in college part time but my grades are
poor.  My parents tell me to go to school full time or get a job. 
I decide to try a job.  My dad finds me a job at a vitamin
factory.  Many young people that work here are Jesus freaks. 
They have long hair just like me but they smile continually.  The
first time I go to church with one of them I go forward and
receive Christ.  I now have a new identity.  I have thoughts to
think, a belief system, values and behavior clearly defined by
the Bible and the Jesus people culture.  I develop a smile.  I am
happy and excited and most of all I fervently attend church
meetings and do the Lord's work.  I strive to please God and to
do His will.  I pray against sexual temptation and will try to be
celibate till I marry.  I take life more seriously now and I
begin to consider careers.  I want to be a musician but my
father's voice pushes me towards a more responsible path.  I hate
school and I ask myself, "what school has no homework?"  I decide
to go to barber school and I finish by my 18th birthday.  I get
my first job and within three months and I am making big dollars. 
I move out and buy my first house and I get a new BMW.  Most of
my friends are older and married.  I feel older myself with all
the responsibilities I now carry.  I rent my extra rooms to two
male roommates and discover what it is like to play a little. 
Echoes of my previous years come to visit me in the form of
compulsive masturbation and pornography and I justify this
because my christian roommates drink more beer than I do.  The
old fears still plague me.  I feel like I don't fit in.  The
things men measure masculinity by are out of my reach.  I've
never been good at sports and my body is short, round and not
muscular.  Sexuality still worries and confuses me.  But I push
the fear down and try to be a better christian.  I continue
progressing in my career and buy my next house, this time in
Irvine.  I am 21 years old.  I begin dating a pretty and
intelligent girl named Laure.  We talk about everything and have
so much in common.  I fall in love with her immediately.  She is
goal oriented and defiantly not a quitter.  My biggest fear that
she will discover the real me and leave.  We are engaged after
dating for three months.  Laure's family is so close and they
talk to each other.  This appeals to me because my family is
frozen in silence.  Sometimes Laure's family fist fights and rage
but Laure says it's because they love each other so much.  We
marry in six more months.  Ten years later after the births of
our two children my addictions escalate until I bottom out.  I am
in recovery for sex and alcohol addiction. 
     I touch the mask and it is dry enough to lift off.  We are
saying goodbye again this time as two men.  It is the end of the
men's conference.  I press into your arms and I feel your head on
my shoulder and sense your tears as you shudder.  I'm crying too,
but this goodbye is different from all the rest.  I feel like
it's the recognition of the death of our adolescence.
     Kent the roads we chose are different.  I think the one you
chose takes more courage. I do not regret one part of the years
we spent together or anything we did.  Thank you for forgiving me
for my selfishness.  You have remained my best friend  through
the years.

                              Bob

This is an article that appeared in Tracks in the Sand.  If you
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