Longboard Schlongboard
“For my 17th birthday, I’m gonna get some dick,” I thought to myself. I backtracked incredibly quickly. “Or maybe just a kiss and some light dry humping, that would be fine…”
The day I turned 17, I thought my life was finally changing. I had received a pair of DocMartens, jeggings, and a crop top from my sheepish and embarrassed looking parents. I knew I would no longer be the girl who ate lunch quickly and quietly alone in the band room before practicing her oboe… no- people would be begging me to eat with them once they laid eyes on my shabby impression of an Urban Outfitters mannequin. Just when I thought my birthday couldn’t possibly get any better, I felt my phone vibrate in the too-tight back pocket of the sausage casing I wanted to call jeans.
After frantically googling how the fuck to respond to what seemed in the moment to be a highly salacious sext, I finally took a moment to breathe. It seemed impossible. Could it be? The resident Bad Boy of my AP Bio class wanted to teach ME how to longboard? He must have heard the crinkle of the tissue paper as I unwrapped my new orange crop top; smelled the leather of my new DocMartens. However he sensed my newfound identity from across town at 8:30PM on a Monday, he knew. I had become a woman.
At that moment, it was all so crystal clear. If I wanted to eat lunch with the cool kids and not with Ollie the Oboe, I had to get fucked. Literally. No 17 year old could launch herself to the top of the social strata while carting around her V Card like… well, like… a big old fat virginal loser, duh!
If I was going to accomplish my goals, I had to hatch a plan. My parents were delightful, but far too Protestant to grant permission for me to partake in this strange Gen Z mating ritual. If I were to achieve my bona fide femme fatale status, I was going to have to break the rules. Take no prisoners. Watch the world burn. Sneak out. Not exactly a risk taker, the thought of sliding open my bedroom window and sneakily jumping onto the driveway below was more reminiscent of an escape from Alcatraz than of high school hijinks. The wheels in my head started turning as I racked my brain to remember which step was creaky, which doors made the least amount of noise being locked and unlocked. I interrupted planning my prison break. Fuck it, I said to myself Act now, think later. My therapist at the time, Dr. Weinand, would have been proud of my sudden ability to distance myself from the disastrous consequences I was always making up in my head. He was constantly telling me things like “Embrace high school, act like a kid for once! C’mon Clara, you’re not going to drown whenever you get in the pool. You’ve been swimming for years!” Considering that I began seeing him for debilitating anxiety that had manifested in more ways than one, including an irrational fear of drowning despite being a varsity swimmer, this may not have been exactly what he meant. This one’s for you, Dr. Weinand. I composed one of the most beautiful and risky texts I’ve ever sent.
I held my breath. Too risky? Not risky enough? Time would tell. After a tense few minutes that seemed to last forever, I felt a vibration that set my heart aflutter.
At that moment, a revelation dawned on me as if sent from my parents’ Protestant God Himself. Noon! Of course! There would be no need to sneak out for a midnight rendezvous, an unusual Tuesday with no school, teacher training or something, meant that his longboard was mine for the taking. With my mom leading her weekly Bible study and my dad at his clinic all day, there wasn’t even a need to cite a Sarah, Marissa, or Kennedy as a fictional friend I was spending the day with.
The next morning seemed to pass by at a painstakingly slow speed. In a newfound talent to move at the speed of light when the possibility of sex was on the table, it only took my ten minutes to hastily swipe on my mascara, highlighter, and shabby attempt at contour instead of my normal thirty. I was so excited that I spent the morning reclining on the couch already in my outfit. I certainly wasn’t relaxed enough to lounge in order to pass the time, my new jeans were so tight I couldn’t sit up straight for fear that the denim cutting into my stomach would leave the tell tale sign of high school shame- a long red line embedded in my tummy would mark me as one not fit to wear a crop top. Finally, at 11:54 an alarm set on my phone signaled that it was time for me to leave. All of my googling earlier in the morning had suggested that it would take me approximately 8 minutes to drive to his house. Arriving two minutes late will be fashionable, I thought to myself as I yanked on my DocMartens. They were a little loose, but fashion over function, my New Designer personality seemed to say.
While driving to his house I could feel my heart quicken. Already an unnaturally anxious teen, my pulse had skyrocketed past 135, easily. I debated pulling over to the side of the road to document my pulse in my anxiety notebook. I’ll do it when I get home, I said to myself, Dr. Weinand needs to know the pulse got past 130 without any physical exertion, but it’s not worth the extra few minutes throwing off my schedule. I shook my head and continued on my way until I had pulled up to his place. His parents, successful business owners in town, owned a gorgeous old house in the heart of the historic district. Large stained glass windows pulled my eyes upward toward deep purple shingle which pulled my gaze upward to see- a boy? No, a man. I hadn’t even needed to fish my phone out of my pants to send a sweet “Here!” text because my Knight in Shining Armor had taken residence on his roof.
When his eyes settled on my car he lazily slid down his roof and climbed down one of the many gothic trellises lining the house exterior, all while managing to keep his lit cigarette between his lips. Once he reached my car, he threw the butt on the ground and stamped it out under his heel. Sexy, I managed to convince myself. He climbed into my car, his lanky legs too long for my scrunched up Toyota.
“Nice ride,” he noted, nodding his head in approval.
“Ahaha, ahaha, uh- thanks, man…” I blurted, stumbling blindly through words.
“I thought we could just head toward Aspen Grove- so…”
I nodded my head enthusiastically while doing mental gymnastics I never knew possible. Aspen Grove… Cemetery?? Cartwheel. We’re longboarding in Aspen Grove Cemetery??? Cartwheel back handspring. The Bad Boy of my dreams is teaching me how to longboard in Aspen Grove Cemetery????! Cartwheel, back handspring, backflip backflip backflip. I couldn’t figure out if this plan was genius or utterly idiotic. My hormones spoke for me. As I creepily stared at his mop of hair out of the corner of my eye, every bone and muscle in my body was dancing. I silently prayed to the only deity I knew. Dr. Weinand, if you’re listening, please don’t let me look stupid, or get murdered, or die. But mostly please don’t let me look stupid Amen Amen Amen. I jolted the car from drive into park.
“Here!” I announced, falsely chipper. By the time I had chastised myself for being such a awkward FREAK, the long legs of my own personal longboard instructor had carried him far away from my car and into the cemetery. I quickly ran to catch up, my new shoes clunking every step of the way and announcing my ever so awkward arrival into adulthood.
By the time I reached him he had set his longboard on the ground and extended a hand to me. I grabbed his clammy hand and we locked eyes. My heart skipped a beat. This must be what Edward Cullen’s hands feel like. I hate misogyny and Stephanie Meyer but I do looooove Robert Pattinson. In those few moments I took in how handsome he was. Coming in at an awkward 6’5”, AP Bad Boi had the sort of floppy mop of brown hair that made every girl swoon in 2014. He was wearing skinny jeans and some shirt, but I was more focused on the skinny jeans. I’m reticent to call my 17 year-old self a horn dog, but… I was a horn dog. I kept thinking, “what is under those hot topic jeans?”
He squeezed my hand and I shook myself out of my trance.
“You alright?” He asked, flipping his brown mop of hair.
“Oh, me? Oh yeah for sure for sure… just… centering myself.” Centering myself. Alright Dr. Weinand, you were right about the value of mindfulness. I gathered my courage and mounted what seemed to be an unsteady death trap.
“I’ve got you,” he said, in what can only be described as a disgustingly picturesque moment straight from a Disney Channel original film. “It’s all about balance. Bend your knees, breathe, and the rest will follow.”
It all seemed a little too simple but Dr. Weinand must have been listening to my prayers from way up in his office, because I did a surprisingly decent job of keeping myself looking cool, calm, and collected. I could only imagine how someone in the distance might have seen what was happening. What cool, suave girl could possibly be longboarding with AP Bad Boi, Longboarding Extraordinaire? I imagined them thinking. Is… that… is that, Clara? Clara Reynen? Yes. It is.
The next 45 minutes felt like a rom-com come to life. In the moments where I almost fell on my ass, he caught me. In the moments where I did an actually pretty good job, he cheered me on. There were hand brushes as we passed the longboard back and forth, stolen glances as we glided down hills next to each other. My one whimsical run through the trees, which was really just a way to let out a nervous toot within him realizing. It worked. Following my fart frolic in the trees, we found an old Vietnam memorial to sit on and shot the breeze. Remember what Dr. Weinand says, I repeated to myself, Getting in the pool doesn’t mean you’re going to drown. I inched my pinky closer to his across the granite store. The tension could have been cut with a knife. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who sensed it, because after a while he leaned in close and asked me the most important question I had ever been posed with.
“Do you, uh, wanna try one more hill? Or… do you just wanna get out of here?” He murmured.
My heart rate reached new record highs. Get out of here??? I barely knew where “here” was! I was freshly 17 and in that moment the real life opportunity to get laid seemed all too real and all too scary. But I knew I had to play it cool. If I wanted the evening to end with a kiss goodbye and maybe some light groping, it all depended on how I handled this moment. I flipped my hair over my shoulder and winked, to the very best of my ability.
“I’ll do one more hill,” I stammered, trying to play it ice cold. I turned and gestured to a random hill to the left of myself. Despite not being able to see the bottom from the top, I quickly nodded. “This one will do.”
A slow nod of approval told me all I needed to know. If I pulled this off I was in the clear and was at least guaranteed a tobacco-y goodbye smooch. I looked back once more to wave goodbye to my future sweetheart and ticket to the upper social class of my high school cafeteria. I mounted the longboard. I kicked off to head down the hill.
That’s all I can remember.
As I quickly learned, steep hills, genetically weak knees, and blunt head trauma are not conducive to remembering the final details of a bad first date. I have vague memories of being shaken by a flustered and frazzled boy, and even more vague memories of an ambulance ride to the Emergency Room. When I finally came too, I was surrounded by my own frazzled protestant mom and an even more frazzled physician father.
“They had to do four CT scans,” my dad shrieked, “four!”
“You snuck out?” my mom whisper-screamed.
“Why does your bra have so much lace on it?”
“They had to cut you out of your jeans!”
“Your pulse was so high they thought you had internal bleeding-”
The noise built to a breaking point and my head was pounding. So much for catastrophizing this time, huh, Dr. Weinand? A whole year of therapy down the drain. All for a stupid boy. The boy! I thought to myself quickly.
“Mom! Dad! Shut up! Is anyone waiting in the hallway?”
They looked at each other slowly, recognizing the root of my rebellion was simply disdain for the fact that the closest I had come to a sweet kiss was with Ollie, my oboe. My mom touched my arm gently. My dad looked around, bent down next to me and broke the news.
“He… uh, left pretty quickly after we got here. I’m… I’m sorry.”
I could hardly process his words before the pain medication held my hand and led me into a deep, deep dark slumber that would last nearly three full days. I hobbled away from my 17th birthday with a sprained MCL, a torn meniscus, a stress fracture in my tibia, a torn ACL, and a concussion.
I clung onto some shred of delusion hope that as I crutched my way through the cafeteria when I returned to school the next week that I would be greeted with an invitation to a lunch table. But instead I was greeted with shocked gasps, pity stares, and loud whispers about my new shoes. I made my way through the cafeteria quickly and took refuge among the trumpets, trombones, and Ollie the Oboe.
Needless to say, there was no second date.