In June of
1985 we left our
parents' houses to move into Murphy's sister's mobile home while she was away teaching at camp. Some of us went back after the
summer ended; some tried to go back but found their old rooms rented out or turned into sewing nooks.
We shopped for groceries for the first time in our lives, buying ridiculous amounts of fish, cheese, and water. We watched pro wrestling on lazy Sunday mornings and subjected each other to "the Brain Claw" whenever Baron Von Raschke used it on TV. We played The Who, The Damned, Billy Joel, Muddy Waters, Mad Parade, and the soundtrack to Chess depending on who got to the turntable first.
We sat on the fence of the drive-in theater next door and watched movies for free. We threw a cherry bomb as high as we could and ran when it failed to explode in mid-air, instead igniting with a bang on our neighbors' roof. We worked at day jobs, or didn't. We ate nothing but chicken nuggets and french fries for days on end, and lived amid complete squalor. We cheerfully accepted offers of food, house cleaning, and sex from girls who hoped that we would change, and who left full of hurt and regrets when it became obvious we wouldn't, not that summer at least. We chased each other with fire extinguishers and wrote the word DIE on the wall with shaving cream. We played role-playing games constantly.
Nick broke his arm when he fell out of the back of Murphy's pickup truck during a beer run and I got the phone number of two girls while we were waiting in the emergency room. We spent all of the money Rob's parents left him for use while they were out of town in one night. Sean and Murphy clashed constantly in a battle of passive aggression versus outright aggression. Greg quietly hated my guts for stealing his girlfriend. Ronn installed a red light bulb in our room, making it look, I grumbled, like a damn French whorehouse.
We stayed up late at night drinking beer and listening to the blues on the radio, the glow of the dial illuminating our young faces.
It felt like it lasted forever; and then one day we woke up and it seemed like it all had happened a million years ago, and to someone else.