It Came From the '90s: Second Chances

This series looks back at the 1990s and its influence on the generation of people who came of age during the decade.

*****

As I rounded the corner, she was walking right at me. Our eyes locked. We were clearly stunned to see each other. The sea of humanity parted, receded, disappeared—students bounding through the crowded halls after the final bell, the cacophony of excitable teenage conversations, all of it, reduced to white noise, then gone, in an instant. While I was rarely confident of anything back then, I was certain of this: in that split second, I knew this was my second chance.

It was my first day home for college break, and that one moment would influence the rest of my summer—and the rest of my life. Suddenly, there was hope. Naomi. It had been two years since we last saw each other. Running into her that afternoon had to be a sign. There we were again, in that same hallway, in that same high school. From the look in her eyes she recognized this second chance also. We talked, awkwardly laughing, barely able to contain our elation with the serendipity of it all. She smiled. That smile! I'd almost forgotten its brilliance, how incredible its radiant warmth felt on my skin. She was absolutely beautiful. She reached out and gently held my hand steady while a jolt of electricity shot between us. My knees buckled. She turned the hand palm-side up, then wrote her number on it in blue ink. I resolved to call that night, and to spend as many minutes with her as possible that summer.

Walking out of the school, staring at her number on my sweaty palm, I thought, "I'll never wash this hand again."

*****

"Is that all you plan on doing this summer," my girlfriend asked, incredulously? The irritation was palpable, even through the phone lines. She had every right to be angry; I was an awful boyfriend. And the more she realized this, the more I leaned harder into it.

"Yes, it is," I replied coldly from a pay phone inside a supermarket, while my friends waited nearby. One of those friends was Naomi.

All I planned on doing was working long, grueling hours as a cater waiter, watching the Knicks, shooting hoops, seeing concerts, getting blitzed, and hanging with friends. Maybe the girlfriend wanted me to fill my time that summer with her, or to at least invite her to visit. Instead, I was using our physical separation to widen the ever-expanding emotional distance between us. It wasn't the mature way to handle this, but what did I know of maturity yet? I was an angst-ridden college kid, a self-styled Gen-X slacker-cynic who'd never been in a truly good relationship before. The order of the day was avoidance, at all costs.

A wide-open yet somehow missed layup by Ewing, and the Knicks flamed out of the playoffs earlier than expected. An excruciating, gut-wrenching loss. I got over it quickly though; my thoughts and time were elsewhere, mostly devoted Naomi. She and I were trying to respect the fact that I was in a relationship, albeit one on life support. The strain was starting to show though, our best intentions crumbling under the weight of mutual respect and attraction. We didn't say it, but it was clear we desperately wanted to be together. The girlfriend on the other end of the payphone suspected all of this. A large part of me wanted her to know, to force her to end things, so I didn't have to do it.

*****

For previous year, I'd felt like I was residing on the periphery of my own life, socially unsure and uncomfortably adrift in the teenage wasteland. Why are these other kids so confident, I marveled? Why are they so much more at ease with themselves?

Few people seemed to notice this loneliness in me, or if they did, they never said anything. I had a few good friends at home that summer but they were dudes, so we weren't sharing feelings over dirt-cheap cases of Natty Light. My new/old friend saw right through me, though—she understood these feelings because she was experiencing them too. We recognized these shared emotions in each other, and it connected us.

Together, we were proof that we were not damaged goods. We mattered to someone.

Throughout May and into June, she listened to me vent about everything that contributed to my feelings of helplessness. She offered sympathy and a shoulder to lean on. And, oh, how I wanted to lean on that shoulder. We spent long evenings sitting under the stars and the moon, just talking, but sitting dangerously close to each other, knees touching, hearts racing, always finding reasons to narrow and even eliminate any physical space between us. Being close to her was a reminder that I existed.

*****

After one last fight over the phone, it was over between the girlfriend and me. We wouldn't be getting a second chance. We didn't deserve one. For all of her cruelty and impatience, I only offered cowardice and emotional detachment. It takes two. We were a car wreck, and we were totaled beyond repair. I felt only relief.

Years later, I would also feel some regret. Not for getting out, because we clearly should not have been together, but for how I didn't do it sooner, or more honestly. I'm sure she believed I'd been cheating on her; I had not, but how many times can you linger over a hug with a special friend before that becomes inevitable?

Naomi and I were now free to make good on that second chance. No one in our way, no years or distance or galaxies between us, only endless possibilities. It was invigorating, and also slightly scary, because all obstacles in our path were gone. It was just us now.

*****

For the rest of the summer, through her kindness and compassion, she helped me find the courage to express myself, to open up to another person for the first time in a year, and really only the second time in my life at that point. We spent most of our free time together. We watched the Fourth of July fireworks downtown, sitting arm in arm, knees still touching, heads leaning against each other, looking to the explosive night sky, smiling. We saw Tom Petty on the Wildflowers tour, outside in the mild, evening air of summer, surrounded by 25,000 people, another sea of humanity that we barely noticed. Lost in the magical summer world we created together.

We listened to Vitalogy on cassette as we drove around late at night—she never wanted to go back home, for reasons that became obvious when I spent time there. She carried a sadness that no one her age should have to manage. She hid it well, but not from me. It's remarkable how much goodness and light she emitted, when you consider what she had to live with.

On rare evenings we didn't spend together, we still plotted to see each other, somehow. Late at night, while driving a friend home who also lived out in her beautifully pastoral part of town, I'd swing by her house. Her parents asleep, cicadas singing and fireflies dancing, trees rustling and stars shining bright in the pitch-black sky. I'd coast down the length of her drive, guided by the light of the moon (h/t Josh Ritter). I carefully scaled the porch to the second floor, then tapped softly on her window, perched precariously. She cracked the window slightly. We talked, briefly, in hushed tones, symbolically touching hands on opposite sides of the glass.

Finally, we would part for the night, knowing we'd spend tomorrow together.

After all, this magical summer would last forever. Right?

*****

It might seem like this remembrance is heavily tinted by some cliched combination of rose-colored glasses and wistful nostalgia for my youth. But, the thing is, this is actually how I perceived that summer at the time—it was all so surreal, and the feelings it engendered in me were so wildly out of step with how I'd felt for the previous year.

Before I rounded the corner that day in my old high school, I'd felt disjointed, unable to make a meaningful connection with most of my peers. Many of those feelings fell away, because of one person. I know. Trust me, I know. This isn't the sort of thing you should pin on someone—it's too much. Eventually, in the fall, leaning on each other that much became more than either of us could bear, but during that summer, so filled with feelings of magical realism and genuine hope, we were more than up to the task. We were there for each other, fully present, engaged. That's all that mattered.

The following summer, long after we'd started to drift apart the previous fall, long after that sad night in November when we tearfully but amicably parted ways, I heard Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' new song, "Walls (Circus)". When I was young, I moved from one moment to the next, one relationship to the next, rarely if ever looking back for long. My attempts at shelving the memories of that summer, though, and of how it made me feel, simply evaporated when I heard that song. I still knew that she and I took things as far as they could go, and I felt no regrets about that. But hearing Petty sing about "you got a heart so big / it could crush this town", or "some things are over / some things go on / part of me you carry / part of me is gone" helped me more fully appreciate what our time together meant, how every relationship leaves some imprint on our lives. This gave me some small measure of closure. But not enough.

Writing this, transcribing into words what my younger self believed to be one magical summer, offers a shot at final closure. Something about our parting has eaten at me for years, two decades, in fact. After experiencing some major, life-changing events like illness, the death of both a parent and an old friend, and the birth of my children, I'm far more reflective than ever. Through the unreliable nature of hindsight, I sometimes believe that on that cold November evening, I could have—no, I should have—told her that even though we were breaking up, she could still call me. I'd be there if she needed me.

All these years later, I have no idea where she is, what she's doing, or most importantly how she's doing. This has been tough to accept, but not because I'm pining for someone from my past. It's more about wrapping my head around the idea that you can spend such concentrated amounts of time with someone and then, the years fly by, and it's as if they and the time you spent together only existed in dreams. It's also because I'm facing the prospect of never being able to tell her what I wish I had told her all those years ago. This is possibly as close as I'll ever get to that, putting it down in words for posterity, hoping it helps ease the guilt.

I've been told I have no reason to feel guilty, and rationally I see that. I do. The entire thing is also more than a little self-involved—as if I was the one person who could help if she ever needed it? That's absurd. She likely went on to find new friends to confide in, naturally, just like I did, just like we all do. Still, that nagging feeling of regret returns whenever I recall how she helped me at a time when I desperately needed a friend. Because, while we eventually dated that summer, our foundation was first built on a deep friendship between like-minded souls. We spoke each other's language, we listened intently to one another, we made each other laugh. Clearly, writing all of this is my way of honoring that time, and the memory of her kindness and selflessness.

Today, if given the opportunity, I would tell her this: I never forgot. I still remember. And I thank you.

Also, if you ever need a friend, I'm here.

*****