At Seventeen

I have never attended any class reunion of any school I graduated. And I don’t plan to be at the upcoming 50-year reunion of my high school class.

It’s not that I don’t want to remember those times.  I couldn’t forget them, even if I wanted to. Among my peers, I had only two friends. Both are long dead. Most of my “social” time was spent among adults: two of my mother’s friends and some teachers, including one whom I hated at first but who influenced me in ways I didn’t realize until much later. 

I wasn’t exactly “date bait.” To my knowledge,  none of my peers considered me physically attractive. I had no social skills. (Sometimes I feel I still don’t have any.) I was bookish, but not in the way I am now: My energies were directed, mainly by my father, toward subjects and pursuits that would help me get into West Point, Annapolis, one of the other Armed Forces academies or an ROTC program. 

And, even if I were less nerdy, I wouldn’t have wanted to date. Like every other LGBTQ kid in that place and time, I was in the closet. Other non-confirming kids might’ve “come out” if the social environment had been less hostile. But I couldn’t have: I didn’t even have the words to express how I felt about my gender and sexuality and knew of no-one who could be a model for me. So, dating anyone, whatever their identity or orientation, wouldn’t have felt right.

About my only solace was cycling: up the Atlantic Highlands scenic route; along the ocean from Sandy Hook to Long Branch, Asbury Park and sometimes beyond; out past the farms and horse ranches in western Monmouth County. That, of course, made me even more of an oddball among my peers, nearly all of whom discarded, abandoned or handed down their bicycles the moment they got their driver’s licenses.

So, if I have no plans to go to my class reunion and make no effort to recall those times, why am I talking about them now? Well, the other day I was in a store when Janis Ian’s “At Seventeen” played on the PA system. 

I hadn’t heard it in a long time, but it was all over the airwaves during my senior year—when I was seventeen. It, of course, is about not “fitting in” because of one’s looks, personality or socioeconomic class. Some, including yours truly, have also heard it as a song about being “in the closet.” That makes sense, especially when you realize that she “came out” a while back.

As much as I appreciate the songwriting talents of Joni Mitchell, John Lennon, Laura Nyro and the Bobs (Marley and Dylan), none of their works, or those of any other tunesmith, has ever meant as much as Ms. Ian’s anthem did during that year. And I daresay that even now, almost no other song can move me, again, the way “At Seventeen “ did (to tears) the other day. For that, I will always be grateful to Janis Ian.

Not Extinct ?

 While enjoying my bourgie Sunday brunch and coffee, I looked at a Buzz Feed item in which people recalled cartoons from their childhood that no one else seems to remember. Dinosaurs weren’t really part of the ones I saw (“The Flintstones” doesn’t count!) but they seem to have been prominent in later generations of animation.

Those extinct creatures, it seems, were in the most improbable of situations. I can imagine one of those cartoons including an image like this:

I’ll Show Them My Midlife Body

 The Fake Tan Führer’s deployment of National Guard troops to cities whose citizens voted for Democratic mayors—and, ahem, against him—and his threats to do the same in other cities with similar polling patterns, is one of the most nakedly political actions taken by a US President.

You, dear reader, will see that one of the adjectives in my previous sentence was a deliberate choice after you read what I’m about to say.

Portland, Oregon represents everything our dear leader detests. A liberal democratic mayor is just the icing on the cake: It is full of (or, at least, has the reputation of being full of) the very sorts of people who scare the orange makeup off his face: environmentalists, vegans, queers and (stage whisper) cyclists.

So of course he wanted to send his Praetorian Guard, I mean soldiers, to the Rosebud City. But first he had to claim it was “out of control.” Translation: People are protesting his policies.  And who, exactly, is behind all of the discord he sees in his fever-dreams? An organization he deems as “terrorist”—even though it doesn’t exist.

But the good folks of Portland plan to show their discontent with the armed occupation of their city in a way you might expect of them:  with a naked bike ride.

The emperor may have no clothes. But could a human body—clad, perhaps, only in a bike helmet and gloves—be the uniform of resistance against uniformed oppression?

If Mango Mussolini decides to sick his bodyguards on New York, my hometown—which might elect a Democratic Socialist (gasp!) mayor—I just might show my midlife body during a raw randoneé.