July 17, 2010

• How the working girls do it…

   I distinctly remember driving through a fast-food restaurant with my mother on my 18th birthday, in late September 1986.  I was explaining to her why I needed a boyfriend – a “serious” boyfriend.  All of my friends had (or had at least gone through) a “serious” boyfriend and it seemed like I was wasting my time when it came to finding a soul mate.  I remember this sense of urgency, but don’t remember why or how I came to view 18 as a last chance to find a soul mate.  What was my hurry, anyway?  I do know that high school boys had been a waste of time and I had had a disappointing summer with my first older (he was 21) boyfriend, so I was wondering where all of the mature young men were hiding out and I wanted to find one.  I figured he should be between the ages of 19-25, have a job or be a serious college student, have a car, and be the type of guy who would lavish attention on a girlfriend – call every day, buy gifts and cards, have money to spend, that sort of thing.  I remember vividly the urgency and exasperation with which I explained my plight to my mother.  She assured me that I would find someone.  Having married and had her first child by the age of 20 herself, perhaps it’s not such a mystery that I inherited this idea getting started on life, already, as soon as one graduated from high school.
  
  I had graduated three months earlier, in June 1986.  I had begun working after-school at a countertop company as an accounting assistant, doing accounts payable/receivable/tallying payroll hours.  I found the job through my high school accounting teacher.  I graduated on a Friday, spent grad night at an all-nighter Disneyland party, and on Monday morning I reported for a full-time position at the company, 8am-4pm.  No rest for the wicked – I was on a vocational track and I was one of the lucky ones who had fallen into a full-time, well-paying position.  (I remember that I started at $7.50 an hour and quickly got a raise to $8.  Keep in mind this was twenty years ago and this is STILL more than minimum wage today, so it was good pay.  I do believe my stepfather, main provider for a family of 5, was making at that time about $12 an hour at a union lumber company job). 
  I loved working and being responsible and earning money, and I loved the work… I thought I was about 30 years old, but I wasn’t.  I was 17 and I didn’t even have a driver’s license.  My mom or dad drove me to work and either they, or my best friend, Michele, picked me up everyday.  It was on the other side of town from where we lived, but pretty near my dad’s work. 
  
  I had gone to my senior prom with a 20-year-old named Donny…  He spent the night before the prom in a jail cell in Tijuana, Mexico.  He made it home the next morning, but he had lost his license and the night of prom my mom had to drive me to pick him up and take us to Michele’s house where Michele’s date would be driving all of us to the dance.  
  The next month, in June, Donny did not go to grad night with me because he had already left for a summer job in Northern California doing construction.  He called me pretty regularly and, over the course of the summer, made a couple of brief trips home to San Diego during which we would go out for dinner or to the movies or to make out somewhere.  We kept dating, but we weren’t exclusive.  God knows what he was up to miles away in Northern California with all of his party buddies.  And I dated several boys during that summer after high school – or, rather, I went out dancing at an under-21 night club (do they still have those?  because our suburban town had TWO and urban San Diego had even more in the mid-80s…) practically every night of the week and always ended up having a good time with someone.  I re-connected with a couple of boys from my high school – it was very freeing, being out of high school – I went out with some guys whom I had never spoken with in high school and we marveled at being relieved of the social pressures of school and being free to date whomever we wanted now. 

  Michele was also very responsible and she was working full-time at Sears, in the jewelry department.  We spent weekends with a Sears crowd that included several older guys, and by older I mean into their mid-to-late 20s.  These guys had nice cars and took us to beach parties where a lot of drinking went on.  As irresponsible alcohol use figured greatly into most of the social situations in which I found myself between the ages of, say, 17 and 25, I have to point out that I *never* drank.  I don’t mean that I never got drunk, which I didn’t, but I NEVER drank.  I know my parents trusted me, but looking back… why did I trust any of the people I hung around with and who DROVE me all over San Diego county?  Oh, I am going to be a paranoid parent when my kids are teenagers…
  
  My parents did hate Donny, my prom date, and it is not hard (and wasn’t hard then) to see why.  He was older and he drank.  A lot.  He was rough around the edges, partied hard, and, in general, must have seemed way too worldly for their virginal responsible daughter.  Donny had returned to San Diego sometime in September, before my birthday, and, lucky for my parents (and probably for me) he turned out to be a big flake.  By then, my parents had forbidden me from seeing him.  This meant that I went out with him a few more times, of course.  But when he started expecting me to pay for dinner (since I had the fancy job now and construction work was hit and miss, especially for a partier/drinker), I started to get fed up.  I had enough self-respect to know I didn’t need this and he really had not much to offer, other than a good time.  I made excuses not to go out with him, we stopped seeing each other several nights a week and instead would only see each other on the weekends, but when he made no effort to do anything special for me on my birthday, I stopped returning his calls.  It didn’t take long for him to stop calling and that was that. 
  
  Which brings me back to my dilemma of celebrating my 18th birthday with no boyfriend to make it special.   Poor me. 
  By this time, my friend Michele had been dating a friend of Donny’s named Craig.  We had met Craig and Donny at the same time and Craig and Donny had been together doing construction up north, in fact working for Craig’s father’s company.  Craig and Michele were on-again, off-again throughout the summer, and they picked up a regular dating schedule in September.  Craig was cute and attentive and funny and well-dressed and worked for his dad and drove a brand-new VW Cabriolet, and so I was jealous that Michele had that going on and I was alone.  I was the third-wheel, regularly going out with them togehter, and had become good friends with Craig, too.  I could complain to him about Donny and he agreed, even though Donny was his “friend,” that he was a major loser who I was better off staying away from.   
  
  A few weeks after my birthday, sometime in mid-October ’86, Craig had an inspiration – he said he had a “friend” for me to go out with. 

  “I don’t know, Craig, I was not too impressed with the last friend of yours.”
  
  “No, no, this guy is great!  I swear.  I’ve known him since we were in 3rd grade.”
  
  “Well, if he’s so great, how come you’re just now mentioning him?  And how come I’ve never seen him?”
  
  “He doesn’t really party, so he never hangs out with me up here” (in suburbia where I lived and where the players came to hit on under-21 girls at the dance club!).  “Plus he was with us up north working all summer.” 
  
  “He was with you and Donny all summer and he doesn’t party?!  I don’t think so.” 
  
  “No, no, he’s totally mellow.” 
  
  So I agreed, ok, we could go on a double date.  What would be the harm in going out to dinner and going dancing?
  
  And that is how I met David, in mid-October 1986.   He was 21 and he was invited to an under-21 dance club to listen to music he didn’t like in the name of a chance to meet a cute, slightly boppy, but very mature and responsible 18-year-old who wore big baggy sweatshirts out dancing and never drank.  And he not only showed up, but he called the next morning.
  
  

  • 6:58 pm
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