Loitering As High Schoolers Do | AHDYA ELIAS ATTEA

Loitering as High Schoolers Do

AHDYA ELIAS ETTEA | CALIFORNIA I was genuinely—and surprisingly—bummed to have missed my high school’s ten-year reunion. Hear me out, I was starved for social interaction during the pandemic. In fact, I am proud of that decision to cancel. If only I could make responsible choices for the betterment of public health. Perhaps it’s wise that I’m single. Best to stay out of everyone’s way. But, freshly single during a pandemic, this sitting with my feelings, yes literally sitting because there is little else to do right now, has most of all, left me obliterated. Worse, I regressed into, maybe, my adolescent self. “Why am I wanting so badly to go to this freaking reunion?” I text the old high school group chat. The typing bubbles rise and fall without any actual response, but I can feel my friends rolling their eyes. “Horny, huh,” Charles responds. My old friends know me too well.

I stare at my phone a while longer responding to the group thread. We share updates about our life and bat away the gravity with callus humor. Yet, there’s only so many jabs in the vein of “Hey bro, have you even left your house in a week?” until we’re seriously worried about everyone’s emotional stability. No one wants to open up because is it worth complaining? We haven’t spoken in forever and this is how we want to make our new introductions? We know we’re all in the same boat. “But, hey, you’re all my friends and you should feel open to talking.” We text a little more. Open up a little more. Someone shares, “it’s easier to talk about this stuff in person, I guess.” A suggestion goes out that we have our own reunion, maybe sometime in July when Molly, in from Seattle, will be visiting family without her wife and kids, and most likely, just like in high school times, bored and likewise starved for social interaction.

It was agreed: second weekend in July. Meet at some bar none of us have ever visited, meet everyone’s–or most everyone’s–significant others, make plans for next time, and call it an early night. That’ll work well. Perfect, actually. Charles, just back from his road trip cancelled mid-way by wildfires in California; Callie, who was dragged home from New York by her father after the love of her life died by suicide; Adam, who much to his character (god love him), had never left; Patrick, who we would have Skyped in, but by some magic, managed to return stateside despite the blacklisting of flights by each and every country; and myself, now single, whose world has halted in its own way, with little else going on.

It seemed on the day I drove to Nashville to see everyone, the mimosa flowers, which indicate midsummer, nearly gave up on life. Then, the rain came in. A three-hour drive later and wiper blades shoving back storm clouds the entire way, I made it to the first signs of Nashville. The rain made the air smell something not quite renascent, but more nostalgic. Petrichor is somewhat universal, could that be it? I couldn’t tell what that familiar feeling was, and it was even harder to tell even as the clouds started opening to reveal new buildings, interstate exits under construction, and if you know anything about Nashville, more construction in general. Before I knew it, the interstate opened its mouth wide to devour every commuter. Lost, or rather disoriented–and stuck in traffic—I opened Maps to navigate through a city I used to know by heart. Directions along a new set of roads to some sports bar. Whose idea even was this place? It didn’t matter. As I turned into the parking lot, I saw Adam, Callie, and Patrick all leaning against one of their cars. “My friends,” said my eager heart, slipping through my open smile. It was a thought I hadn’t had to think about in a long time, and a feeling of security I hadn’t felt in such a long time. The sun was now peeking through the break in the storm, but it couldn’t compare to the way my friends stood next to each other, illuminated.

Once seated, we leaned onto the table, leaned heavily on our drinks, smiled heavily at each other and just exhaled. Vaccinated and without insecurity around breathing anymore we just said, “Wow.” And then, “Well, this feels strange to be at a bar together.” (Yes, yes, the pandemic. By now you, the reader, and us, the characters in the story are aware we are in a pandemic. But no, no, we mean to be together, drinking, so formally—at a sports bar). It was this unfamiliar feeling against the evening cicadas settling down while the world remained in calamity. It was this unfamiliar feeling against a once recognizable city paved over and over again. It was this unfamiliar feeling against where we were in time, or rather the last time when we all drank together: Maybe freshman year of college? Maybe high school? By “wow,” we mean feeling the sense of distance finally recognized on an emotional level. We try our best not to utter a defeated sounding “remember the old times?” Of which, none of us want to say. None of us want to turn into a generation that reminisces. We continued to catch up, talking about where we are living now, how difficult it was getting here or there, quitting and finding work, or even new movies out. Our conversation loitered like high schoolers, as if out in the parking lot again leaning against cars, looking like trouble in a suburban town after the streetlights went on, not a care about time.

Speaking of time, the bill had been paid. We were welcome to leave at any point. This is a sports bar, remember? But, no one was moving. No one wanted to be that asshole to kick the high-schooler-in-us out. “So, guys.” Molly interrupted, drumming her hands on the table and smiling adoringly at each of us. “Ah, look. I know we all said we were busy tomorrow, but but but but.” She laughed at herself tripping over her own words. “What if we move this conversation to my parents’? Old attic hangs, anyone?”

“Oh, so you hate the sports bar atmosphere? I was just easing into it. I think I rather like this thing called sport,” I teased.

“Yeah, sorry guys, I haven’t paid attention to anyone all night. Hockey’s on,” Patrick chimed in, face glued to the screen. Charles wheezed in laughter, elbowing him in return.

“And, some of us are stand up citizens who have work obligations in the morning,” Adam declared, leaning forward and holding his hands on his hip like some John Wayne character. But as he puffed his chest up to tower over us, he held his breath scanning the table.

“Are you fucking me, Adam?” I slurred a little too bluntly, feeling only somewhat tipsy.

“Listen, y’all. I think everyone should–responsibly,” Callie whipped her eyes at me. “Get in their respective cars, or hop in mine if they don’t feel okay to drive” Callie’s glare still fixed on me.

“I get it! I have sinned!” I interjected followed by a burp.

Callie continued, “Whatever, I think we all should drive to Molly’s. And I don’t know, just take a nap tomorrow after work if we need it.”

“Ah, fuck, fine,” Adam exhaled, throwing down his hands. “Come on, let’s go!”

Callie and Molly cheered. We all loaded cars and remembered the usual routine: park before the house, don’t let the headlights peer in, and don’t wake the dog. We slowly cracked the door to Molly’s attic to reveal the wall-towall carpet which still held stains from the last time we drank, and barfed up, Smirnoff Ice. Or was it zinfandel? This was the room that raised me. It was the room I spent nights in when I didn’t feel like going home for an entire summer. It was where my friends and I confided about incorrigible parents, impossible crushes, and the insurmountable insecurities, whether we really talked about them or not. This was our rendezvous spot after we slipped through liquor store registers undetected with our older siblings’ expired IDs, cruised on bikes after curfew (yes, in fact my hometown had a curfew, or so the cops told us), threw fireworks like hand grenades (months out of season), explored apparently the

“World’s Largest Treehouse,” or spun mud trails in undeveloped cul-de-sacs in a bout of Waffle House imbibed mania. If it weren’t for this room that brought us together, and reminded us we were welcome somewhere, I do not know how we’d survive.

Sure, maybe if a single adult reached out as a mentor to me, then I wouldn’t have gotten into such recklessness. I would have believed a long time ago that I, for instance, didn’t need to be single for the sake of public health. But that wasn’t the case. Besides, sometimes we didn’t do reckless things! Sometimes we hung out and did nothing. So, what did we do once we got there to Molly’s that night? Nothing, of course. Talked. I think we played a board game. Someone probably farted. Hell, I don’t know. I look at teenagers now and think the same thing, “What are they doing? Nothing?” It’s not even about differences in generational behavior. I understand now that this doing of nothing, this loitering, is like sunbathing in the safety and comfort of, hopefully, a feeling of belonging. No wonder my friends shined like sunbeams when I arrived. They are a warmth you can’t get lying out in the sun or released in capsules of Vitamin D.

This meetup was everything, especially after thirty years that include multiple major declarations of war, summers of political unrest, economic depressions, domestic attacks, climatic catastrophe, late-stage capitalism, 24-hour digital communications, pandemonium—remember Y2K, those Left Below books, or those asteroids that were supposed to obliterate everyone— and, yes, a pandemic. I know every generation believes the world is going to end in their lifetime. At this rate, who knows about ours. The odds seem good. But we were born at the end of the Cold War. Where did that hope and possibility in humanity go? Right now, I am practicing what Maslow taught us about self-care, of needing to belong, of needing familiar—and hopefully positive—surroundings. I am running my tired (and probably dirty) toes across that carpet. I am opening my smile wide like a satellite catching the beams from my friends. I am most definitely not drinking Smirnoff Ice, but I will crash here tonight to enjoy the brief moment of pause during a bottomless time, where the hands and hearts of my friends are there to assure me that I belong.