Coming of age in 1984

Writing last night’s post and mentioning Fort Lauderdale reminded me that this is only the second time I will visit Ft. Lauderdale. The first time was in 1984 when my high school friends and I somehow persuaded our parents to let us leave the state of Maine at age 18. That’s me all the way to the right sitting down – I look like I’m 12. Nice Ferarri glasses, BTW!

I wasn’t really a jock, geek, freak or anything in particular. I ran cross-country and track; peformed on stage; held elected office. But I had many sets of friends in high school — I was a bit like Randall Floyd from the movie “Dazed and Confused.” If you havne’t seen it run, don’t walk, to Blockbuster and pick it up. Randall could float from group to group and somehow managed to always have strong relationships with everybody. Looking back, I was somewhat like that.

The “jocks” invited me along. One them was my best friend Pete, with whom I held a strong relationship all through high school That’s him sitting right behind the girl in the front. We told our parents we were all 18 and that “we are adults – we can do this” with looks of disgusts on our puffy faces. My friend Pete’s dad was also our English teacher. I also had my first involvement with a “gay issue.”

I swooned after these boys. They were hot. Something felt different in me when I hung with them. If any of you from this group read this, pleeeeez don’t panic. I didn’t know what it was at the time. Anyhoos, Pete’s dad warned us about the hotel in which we chose to stay: “The Jolly Roger.”

THE DAD: I heard that the Jolly Roger is a gay hotel.

US: (shocked) Reallllll-y????

THE DAD: Yes, if you swim in the pool you might get AIDS.

I look back on this exchange with renewed shock. We didn’t know much about HIV and AIDS back then, and this was the prevailing belief in backwoods Maine in 1984. I didn’t know what to do. I was so scared. I thought about pulling out…”

THE DAD: I’m just kidding….

What a fucking bad joke!!!

So we boarded “People’s Express” for the flight south. The drinking age in Florida at the time was 19, so we had all gone up to Colby College in our town and rounded up fake ids. They worked! The first afternoon there, we proceeded to get absolutely drunk. Someone had the brilliant idea for everyone to get naked, get in the bathtub, and one by one drink a beer bong. At the time, it was probably the sexiest thing I ever witnessed. Everyone ran around naked for a while soaked with sticky beer.

Then we hit the bars.

We found “Penrod’s on the beach” which offered 2 cocktails, a hot dog, a t-shirt, and sun screen samples for $10. Perfect on our tiny travel budgets. The boys got laid, but I didn’t. I remember sharing a bed with Pete and feeling SOOO confused and guilty.

We met up with other friends from our high school and all hung out. We destroyed one of our rooms one night as we hosted a toga party and had a fire extinguisher fight. I sat in my first bar ever and muttered my first drink order: “Can I have an Alabama Slammer, pleeeze.” You have to picture me rocking back and forth with my hands cupped between my legs.

We had a great time. I remember getting off the plane back in Maine and our parents all met us. I had lost 10 pounds (and down to 145 or something tiny) as had everyone else. We were tan. And as we all went to the Pancacke House to share breakfast, we looked at each other. It was the first time any of us had embarked on a trip with his buddies and no parents. It was the beginning of my LOVE of travel. And I felt low. I hadn’t gotten laid and didn’t really understand why.

The week changed all our lives. As “Let’s Hear it for the Boy” and “Little Red Corvette” blasted on our stereo all week, we were becoming men. Our hormones were nuts, and it’s a trip I will think about when I’m back in Lauderdale.

I know this post is a bit “Wonder Year”-ish, bear with me. Besides, Fred Savage is now playing a gay character on TV.

What I most learned is that I was ready to leave my hometown and never turn back. And I did.

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