Freedom is a Four Letter Word
It’ll almost make you faint, charging out of the house into one hundred degree heat after you’ve sat dead still indoors like a zombie for three full hours. Even our freshly tarred street is seriously blistering in the convection oven outdoors, making me wonder what will become of me and my sister if we don’t reach the cooling aid of the pool water in time. You’d think that our heavy sweat might help to chill us if we could catch a breeze, but not a leaf is shaking on the trees.
“C’mon Jenna, you’re walking too slow,” my sister says. A trickle of sweat drops from the side of her flushed chin.
“Well, you’re not the one carrying the backpack full of pool stuff.” I bicker back.
As we walk, car engines grind in the distance, roofers pound, and radios blare from backyards. It’s amazing how you can’t get away from loud noise even when you turn off the TV and go outside where hushed nature supposedly lives. The world is so deafening I can barely make out the weatherman’s words streaming live on the air from my neighbor’s pool. I think he’s joking about today’s forecast being for sunburn and frizzy hair. That makes me smile to myself, the picture in my mind of people walking around with bright red skin and afros. But then my smile fades right away when I realize that I’m right out in the middle of that forecast. I don’t know what I was thinking. This level of heat is not funny in the least. “Jenna, why are you being so slow?” Toni asks again, straightening her terry cloth shorts and matching tube top. “Sorry.” I pick up the pace to walk in step with her, to the beat of the Rolling Stones song, ‘Beast of Burden’ that’s blaring from another neighbor’s radio. It’s an appropriate song to walk to while schlepping towels and beach bags up an asphalt incline. It helps me walk faster. After ten more minutes of climbing I stop again, this time to pop a tar bubble with my toe and daydream of having a boyfriend who would come by on his bike with a big squirt bottle full of water and haul me up the rest of the hill, leaving my sister behind. I desperately want this boy hero, especially today. He will be an adorable teenaged rescuer and he will take me away from all of life’s stiff, cruel, and sweltering consequences. I can just feel his tender touch and bright grin that will grant me the great thrill of abandon. A glob of hot water trickles out of the tar boil I popped, calling to mind those hot wet kisses I’ve had with boys in the past. Kisses like that make me forget about being nervous and anxious and lonely all the time.
The twenty grueling minutes have finally passed. At last we’re bearing down on the pool. The sound of tweeting lifeguard whistles and playful young voices is so close now, calling to us, saying yes there is rest for the weary.
The entrance to the pool has a heavenly scent of chlorine mixed with cut grass. We unpeel our sweaty clothes inside the cool change rooms until we’re down to our one-piece bathing suits. It’s dizzy out into the sun baked poolside inferno where the hasty temperature change has made me light headed. Still, I race Toni to the high dive, flinging my towel, clothes and backpack on the lawn nearest the deep end. Getting to the stairs first, I climb up fast to pound on the board thrice — bounce, bouuuunce, bouuuuunce; then shoot up into an exhilarating gunshot lunge. For the moment I feel like air. My body feels tight and straight and light. I dive downward breaking the surface with a deep plunge into the cold water. The strong current washes clean against every inch of my body, sucking the sweat from my skin.
Circling up and down the blacktop outside the pool is a boy my age looking tall, tan and tempting. He’s confidently perched on a BMX bike, hypnotizing me with his precise movement and clever action. Flipping belly down on my towel now I lay on the grassy rise, peering from underneath the nose of my pink baseball cap, scrutinizing his every move. My gaze returns time and again to his muscular legs that begin at his thin waist and end at his sock-less ankles and white canvas shoes. I think he’s beautiful the way he appears so playful, like a boy, even though he’s almost fully grown.
The street outside the fence is quickly teeming with girls of all races, sizes and ages, stacked up on top of one another, hoarding the asphalt nearest the biker, like there’s a banquet there and this guy is the main course. I guess they’ve all found something they’re hungry for. But I’m hungrier. He’s the prince I’ve been dreaming about. He’ll make me forget about my troubles at home. I suddenly want the love of this boy in the worst way. And I decide that I’m going to get it. It isn’t going to be hard, either. After all, I know the secret weapon. I read it in my Teen magazine. It’s called the lust factor.
I wrap my towel around my waist focusing on feeling the pleasure of my wet body against the warm, dry cotton. I’m just the right amount of sweaty and salty to be appealing, not smelly thanks to pool chlorine and Tussy deodorant, the cheapest special I could find up at the local convenience store. “I’ll be right back, Toni.” I say. Acting like I don’t notice the biker and all the girls in his vicinity, I stand on the sidewalk outside the pool grounds. I act disinterested in a way that normally commands any boy’s attention. But it doesn’t work on him. His focus stays fixed only on his bike and the road below it. I start toward the gathering of girls around my future guy, feeling very confident to try my second approach on him.
“Who’s this demon on wheels?” I ask boldly, flirtatiously, cutting through the crowd, directly asserting my intention to get his attention. I don’t know where those words come from, but I’m glad I say them. They work. The bike rider looks up at me in surprise, keeping his balance by hopping sideways on one wheel, bouncing over to me like Tigger, smiling a giant goofy smile that makes him seem less perfect, more real.
“I’m Jeff,” he says to me with an open mouth, an out breath - a huff and a puff that might just blow my world down.
? ? ?
Just as sure as the dandelions rise to the golden summer sun, Jeff has come knocking on my door every day for two weeks, ceaselessly balanced on his trick bike. Today he’s particularly fired up from all his heat-of-the-day action, but it’s actually me who’s sweating, panting, pawing to get outside with him before my own static electricity shocks me. Just looking at his boyish eagerness, his fifteen year old lust makes me want to test out my newfound sensuality, the teenaged desire to touch and be touched. I haven’t been grounded in weeks, so I’ve been taking advantage of my free time by kissing Jeff in the hot streets of Knightford Heights. We kiss so often in fact that we decide we might as well be going together. “Let’s make it official,” Jeff says, and invites me over to his friend Bobby’s house for an all day swim.
“Of course,” I say. “Wait right here, I’ll change into my suit.”
I’m still not allowed to have people inside so I leave him leaning against the warm brick as far under the shade of the roof beam as he can get, looking out into the crisping grass, spending entire minutes of his personal time doing nothing but waiting for me.
I go through my Mom’s bags of new clothes in the basement to dig out just the right bathing suit, a blue one with an anchor stitched in. Yes, an anchor. Attached, secure. My clothes fall off in a hurry, replaced by a beautiful blue swimsuit. I tear off the price tags, and give my hair a quick brush. The wooden handle clacks down loud on the dresser where I toss it. With my open palms on both my cheeks, I press my colossal smile down to tame it.
Ok, I can’t afford to keep Jeff waiting a second longer. If I do, I should expect him to be gone because everybody knows that leaving is what guys do if you keep them waiting. My Grandma hiccups in the other room, then coughs, “Where you goin’?” I usually ignore Grandma, but this time I kiss her sagging cheek, noticing she smells like a cardboard box. “Out with Jeff,” I say smiling like Alfred E. Neuman on a rollercoaster, flying down a one way track to mad love.
Jeff’s bike looks deserted, dead, lying lonely in the ankle high grass of my front yard. Catching sight of it as I come back out my front door makes me fully elated, because it means Jeff hasn’t gone anywhere. He actually waited for me.
“That was quick, Jenna,” Jeff says, reaching toward me from his seat on the pavement step, pulling me onto his lap, steadying me for a kiss. He gives me a quick peck on the lips; just the right nudge to get me feeling giddy again. I yank him up. “Let’s go, Lemur.”
A few barren blocks separate my house from Jeff’s friend Bobby’s. What normally is a tedious hike over familiar territory is now new and invigorating. Jeff performs tricks on his bike all along the way, staying gracefully suspended on one wheel, riding circles around me, using every curb, every stone, and every inch of pavement like props in a great production. Feeling highly energized, intensely light by our pairing, I can’t help but bolt down the street. Jeff gives chase, playfully skirting my heels, cutting me off with rims of rubber as I run. I feel almost indestructible now. I sprint even faster, bounding with an immeasurable sense of freedom – the kind of freedom you can only feel when you’re fully, romantically, attached.
Attached.
“Jenna, this is Bobby,” Jeff introduces me like a gentleman, setting his bike down to take my hand. I’ve never met Bobby, but everybody knows who he is. He’s the kind of guy who doesn’t need to do tricks on bikes to be admired. He just naturally lights up the hallways of my school with his boyish grin and bubbly personality. He’s got a clean way about him — a genuineness that people just want to be around.
Our shadows stretch far away from the rounding summer sun, painting solid stripes of shade across the glassy pool water. Bobby bares his belly first, tossing his shirt in the grass. His pretty pony-tailed girlfriend Lisa and I lay our towels down beside the water. I leave an open length of towel beside me so Jeff can sit and cool his legs in the water and begin pouring sweet affection on me.
“Wow, you’re beaming,” Lisa says, elbowing me in a friendly way. “You must really like Jeff, huh?”
I blush and smile just as Jeff runs past me, stepping on his half of my towel, a launch pad of sorts, for his crashing cannonball entry into the pool. His plunge flings a wave of water skyward, cresting and slapping over the left side of my head, matting half of my hairdo. I have no choice but to slide into the pool and sink under the surface before anyone sees how my flip went flop.
While Lisa and Bobby splash and toss each other in the shallow side of the pool, I have to settle for watching Jeff try dumb looking dives for laughs. It isn’t what I had in mind, but I have to admit the way he twists his body and crashes into the water with that fake surprised expression makes me laugh so hard, a very unladylike wad of snot comes out of my nose.
I clear my nose and look over at Bobby and Lisa to see if they saw me. No. They’re not watching me or Jeff. They’re watching each other. Bobby’s got a sweet and sentimental hold of Lisa’s weightless bikini clad body, and so it would seem; her heart. Her legs seem to wrap three times around his lean waist. That’s right up close and personal. Nose to nose, his broad shoulders are neck and neck with her narrow shoulders. They race for the gold prize, the winning kiss and they both prevail.
I look down at my body. The water makes my skin look greenish and my normally narrow hips look like huge blobs. The stitched anchor on my bathing suit looks rippled and warped underwater. My spirit sinks. Jeff never slows down enough to look in my eyes like that. But there are obviously boys who do. Boys like Bobby. He thinks the world of his girlfriend, and I think that maybe that’s more the kind of guy I’m looking for.
Jeff tugs at my ankles from the pool floor, smiling bubbles up at me with his hair stretching out like a black waving water plant. He looks ridiculous. But he doesn’t care how silly he looks. I slip away from his grasp and spring up the pool ladder to dry off on my towel, testing to see if he’ll lie down next to me.
An hour later, deeply tanned and slightly wet, he finally slides up on his towel beside me and leans over to kiss me. He has a natural scent – a slight and sweet sweaty smell that’s fully, inexplicably intoxicating to me. My annoyance evaporates in the heat of instant infatuation. I don’t feel shy about wanting to press my whole body against his.
Bobby’s shed smells like the barn wood’s been baked for days in the sauna-like temperatures. The smell of dry summer wood heightens my level of lust. I want nothing more than to kiss Jeff in the suffocating heat. We climb up the stairs inside the barn and lie down together on the loft’s hot floorboards. Jeff instinctively climbs up over me. Our passionate kissing makes the loft’s temperature seem to climb higher and higher. We’re generously sweating now, intensely focused on what it feels like to touch body to body. We’re so focused that we don’t hear Bobby’s Dad coming up to see what was going on.
“What kind of ship do you two think I’m running up here?” He says, firm, but not mean. Jeff and I come down into the daylight squinting, looking sheepish, our hair tousled, our necks flushed and blotchy from fifteen short but eventful minutes – probably all I was ready to handle all at once, anyway. Jeff steps forward to offer a charming apology to Bobby’s Dad and before you know it, they’re wiping sweat off their brows, laughing like long lost cousins.
I relax into the pool, feeling fully charmed myself. Obviously I was too quick to come to a conclusion about Jeff not being right for me. I kick into a backstroke toward the far end of the pool to get a good view of Jeff who’s still chit-chatting. I can tell Bobby’s Dad finds him fascinating. And look at those incredible legs. There’s no question, I decide. Hands down, Jeff’s a good guy. And he’s all mine.
? ? ?
“I’m seeing a few other girls.” It’s Jeff’s way of explaining where he’s been – why he hasn’t been coming to my door for the past few days. “I need my freedom. But I want to keep seeing you,” he adds hopefully. He’s staying put on his bike, gripping the handle bars, seemingly ready to steer away at a moment’s notice, depending on my reaction.
Jeff’s comment triggers something ugly in me. It’s the same feeling I get when my Dad talks about freedom, loving freedom, wanting freedom. I think people tell you they want freedom for a reason. It’s a big hint from the very start, so that when they start to keep you at arm’s length you won’t be surprised. Fair is fair and you were told up front that freedom was the rule. Jeff’s hands are on his handlebars for God’s sake.
“Don’t expect anything from me unless you’re lucky.” He must’ve whispered that to me sometime when I wasn’t paying attention. “That’s the deal.” But I never shook on it. And that makes me feel like I’m back underwater again holding my breath, grabbing for that emerald green treasure while it skirts away from my hands and sinks, deeper, and deeper, and deeper down.
Believe me; I realize it’s not natural to clutch at things, at people, at love, just because you want them. But when you feel like you’re falling down a long dark pit toward emotional isolation, it’s very hard to stop trying to seize the very first thing you see and hold onto it for dear life. This whole situation with Jeff reminds me of a breakup I had last school year. It started when a girl in my class and I were claiming that we had the same boyfriend. We were both so adamant about being his only girl that we decided to go directly to the source. We’d let him say whose boyfriend he was. When we found him, we found out. See, he had his arm around a third girl.
That was the day I decided I was never going to let any boy make a fool out of me. I made a beeline straight toward him and I said, “Excuse me. Just so you know. I’m not your girlfriend anymore and I never will be again.” It made me feel strong telling him what I would and would not take from a guy. And even though my sweet reward for standing up for myself didn’t come right away, it did come. A few months later, my ex-boyfriend finally did come to his senses, asking me for forgiveness, wanting to be my boyfriend again. Unfortunately for him, it was about seventy days (and seven girlfriends) too late.
So I know I’ve got to break things off with Jeff right this instant, because I don’t want what he does. I want to be closer to people. I think that’s what freedom really is –arriving at such a great and powerful willingness to be close to other people that you gratefully take your hands off your handlebars, realizing with relief that you are at last ready to show people your eyes instead of your back. “If you want to see other girls, go ahead, but I’m not going to be one of them,” I say, breaking up with him abruptly, determined to put myself back in a place of power.
“Ok, if that’s the way you want it.” He agrees much too quickly for my own comfort. And the next thing you know, he’s convinced me to kiss him goodbye. It’s the best kiss I’ve ever had, and so I let him kiss me again and again until the kisses start to taste like tears — tears of admission that my heart has broken wide open again. He holds my head close to his body, the scent of his sweet sweat intoxicating me one last time. I try to memorize the smell. Then I pull apart from him.
It’s so hard.
But I do it.
I ditch my wish for a boy hero.
And I walk away.
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JENNA FORREST, B.S.A. is the author of Help Is On Its Way - A True Story, the first memoir written specifically to unveil the shocking secrets that some real life kids keep hidden. Throughout her career as a media-trained professional, Jenna has also been able to encourage the most pressing passions of adults, teens, and children in order to get them manifested where it counts, at the heart level. Recently, Jenna’s work has evolved toward writing as a way of reaching larger audiences. Her most recent project, Help Is On Its Way offers a genuine reminder that hope perseveres in the face of even the most daunting circumstances. Help Is On Its Way is Jenna’s contribution to the trend in mainstream books, television shows and films featuring extra perceptive, intuitive characters. |