how very lucky to be a girl

The other day, I received a message on Facebook.

Subject: We

Body: Have a friend in common!

It was an e-mail from an old, dear friend who I’d known back in high school.  He was living in San Francisco, but apparently has been spending his summer on Fire Island, sharing a house with one of my best friends.  Funny how small this world is.  Stuff like this happens to me all the time.  And I love it.

Most of the time, I love when worlds collide.  This was no exception.  Over dinner and drinks, my dear friend shared an old story that I’d long since forgotten.  One too funny not to share with you.

We were Juniors in high school and we were wild.  Our days were spent devising ways to slip away from our prep school campus without getting caught to smoke shitty brick weed out of coke cans made into smoking apparatus, grab munchies and return unnoticed.  Nights were spent partying at whoever’s house was absent of parents.  We spent our winter weekends at a local ski resort.  It was close enough that we’d drive there in the morning, return home that night and head up the next day.  That was where we’d first met Michael, and through him, his friends.  They went to a neighboring school.  And they were every bit as mischievous as we were.

Michael’s friend Ricky had a house at the resort.  He’d invited us all up to stay for the weekend.  We packed up our ski pants, jackets, hats, gloves, boots, and Vuarnets for day,  jeans, shetland wool sweaters, wool socks and LL Bean shearling-lined duck boots for the nights (yes, we were retardedly, unfashionably preppy).  We put our skis on the rack and drove to the Ring-A-Bell on Polish Hill where we could freely buy cases of beer from a man who clearly knew we were underage and didn’t care, and we headed out for the weekend.

Ricky’s house was a large Craftsman on the mountainside.  Warm and welcoming, rustic.  Braided rugs covered the aged pine plank floors.  A warm fire crackled in the family room, the kitchen buzzed with life and the obligatory game of quarters played atop the chrome-plated laminate-top 50′s rectangular kitchen table.  Music, most likely U2, poured from the speakers.  We drank and laughed and danced and played well into the night.

I have no idea what time it was when I stumbled upstairs in search of a hand towel to go wash my face and pass out for the night.  As I combed through a hallway closet in search of one, I felt a presence behind me.  I turned to find Ricky, who took me in his arms and started to kiss me.  He’d caught me entirely off guard.  I’d thought he was amazingly cute, but he’d given me no indication that he was at all interested in me up to that moment.

We stood in the hallway making out for a while and then made our way into a dark room, the one in which I’d be sleeping that night.  Our hands grazed the walls in search of a light switch, but we couldn’t find it.  There were two twin beds in the room.  We felt our way past the first and made our way to the second, next to the window.  We were loud and drunk and sloppy and the room was pitch black.  It was amazing that we actually made it to a bed.  We laid down together, fully clothed, and continued to make out.  Ricky’s hands found his way up my sweater.  I removed his shirt and he unclasped my bra with one hand.  He pulled my sweater off and we clung to one another, skin to skin.  He moved to unbutton my jeans.  My hand stopped him.  He continued to kiss me and continued his effort to get into my pants, as I continued to stop him.

Ricky, stop.  I’m not having sex with you.

But I love you.

No you don’t!  You don’t even know me!

I could learn to love you.

It was perhaps the best line I’d ever been fed, but it met with no success.  I was still a virgin and I was hardly going to lose my virginity drunk to some guy, I don’t care how cute he was, who I’d only just met.  Ricky gave up after a while, but he stayed in bed with me, holding me closely, spooning, running his fingers through my long hair, kissing me, my shoulders, neck, breasts until he fell asleep in my arms.  It was a twin bed, so that didn’t last long.  He woke a few hours later and left me to sleep comfortably the rest of the night.

Dawn had arrived.  Birds chirped their morning’s welcome, snow-covered branches glistened in the white winter rising sun as it crept inside the window and glowed upon my face.  My eyes opened slowly.  I stretched and rolled to my side, facing the door and the other twin bed across from mine.

There lay Michael.  On his side.  Eyes open.  Smiling at me.

A throaty “Good morning” and a smile made it past my lips to him.

He paused and continued to look at me with a knowing smile.

I could learn to love you, Staci.

Was all he said, laughing, to tell me that he’d been there all along.

Neither he nor Ricky ever did learn to love me.  But that hardly mattered.  Because what they had done was grant me one of my most favorite memories.

.