(Drugs too, but no rock and roll. We played classical music at AH.)

This edition of the Way Back Journal records one of the most memorable days of my teenage years.

From the alienation of the school trip to H, to the feelings of acceptance and belonging at AH, from the primal experience of learning in person where dinner comes from, the transformation of living animals into meat, to being invited into the bed of a guy I found attractive ~ the day burned itself clearly into my memory.

MS said "no hassle" when I told him I wasn't going to have sex with him (I was a virgin then, and also menstruating at the time, which was the reason I gave him). B, the snorer, was probably faking the whole time, because the story came back to me later, word for word, to my UTTER embarrassment. Of course MS could have told as well, which I suppose is equally likely.

(Keep your eye out for further mention of JG ~ he was the new gym teacher ~ as well. In retrospect, I should have paid attention to the fact that he really did go out of his way to take us to AH.)

What strikes me on reading this again is how careful I am in expressing positive feelings. I say things like "it was nice." Or "it was good." It's very measured, very restrained. I think I was afraid to show enthusiasm even to myself, for fear that the thing I was enthusiastic about would be taken away. Part of me still feels that way, and not surprisingly, since that does seem in fact to happen often.

I also had to laugh at my description of my Mom's concern at my traveling plans having changed. Imagine if she'd had any idea of the kind of shenanigans I got up to at AH, and what sort of influence those horny young musicians and caretakers had on me!

My parents never had reason to believe that I was anything other than "a good kid." I made damned sure of that. I swore like a sailor at school (I later found out that my blue vocabulary was a frequent topic at staff meetings, as apparently I held the record for foulest mouth ever in the 9th grade!), but never ever at home. (I learned to swear at the first sleep-away camp I went to at age 12, where I was literally trained in it by a cabin full of older girls. That place was truly perverse, maybe I'll write about it one day.)

I also smoked dope on a pretty regular basis, especially in my first two years of high school, sometimes leaving school during a free period to go smoke a joint and return to class (usually Spanish, where we were merciless to Mr. G anyway) high. In retrospect, I'm stunned by this behavior, not least because I completely and utterly got away with it. It's also worth noting that the dope of the day was pretty mild and ineffectual stuff, comparatively speaking, but still. At parties we didn't drink all that much, but marijuana was everywhere.

Hell, I expect half the parents of the people in my school smoked too. But not mine.

The difference between people who really screw up their lives by doing stupid things and those who don't is generally, I think, a matter of luck. I was pretty lucky.

For the record: I no longer eat meat.

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