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Coloradans

by ALAN HANSON

Morgan Fuller is the first girl I meet in my unfinished housing development the year we move to Colorado Springs, the year 1995. We are close and express that we “like” each other. The boys in the neighborhood tease me because Morgan has heavy, dark hair on her arms. I don’t notice this, I notice she’s smart and shiny and we ping-pong our jokes. But now I notice this. I ride my bike to her house and tell her we can’t hang out anymore. I ride back, my stomach in a twist by the time I get to Bow River Drive. I don’t come out to play for a week, I lie on my carpet learning shame.

Jason Cannerberg’s father hanged himself before he knew him. He brings a framed service photo of his father in his Navy uniform to Show and Tell. He is my best friend for one year. One day, dusty and hot, we walk from the playground to the indoor bathrooms. In the foyer, a gust kicks up a whirlwind of sticks and leaves, empty Frito bags. Jason shrieks and runs outside. When I ask him what happened he says, “I saw my father’s face.”

Kyle and Joseph are two years older than I am and live in my housing tract. Joe’s dad, Tim, is a big-bellied, dirty joke telling, denim jacket wearing, George Thurogood humming, abusive, and happy man. We know where he keeps his weed. Joseph saw it once, in a small wooden box in the back of the walk-in closet. Joseph’s parents have just divorced and we are unsupervised Monday through Friday from 3:05pm to roughly 5:30pm. We gingerly remove the box from the musty, flannel flanked closet and set it upon his father’s bed. We open it and see marijuana crumbs, wisps of tobacco, a mangled pack of Zig-Zags, and two Polaroids, face down. Kyle reflexively snatches the pictures and flips them over. There’s Joseph’s father sprawled out on the very bed we stand before, his penis flopped up on his heaving stomach, grinning wildly. The next, a flash-bright close-up of Joseph’s mother giving a sweaty blowjob. My throat hitches. Joseph slowly takes the photos from Kyle, places them back in the box, walks the box into the closet. As we shamble down the stairs Joe says, “let’s go smoke this weed you fucking pussies.” We never speak of it again.

Lauren is just Lauren, I never learn her last name. I never learn where she lives. We both wander the wide streets of Briarwood aimlessly and often run into each other. She will be quiet for a long time and then say something like, “Washing the dishes makes me horny.” She describes the hot water on her hands and the butterflies I don’t know about. That same week she walks me to the side of my house, back against the vinyl siding, and pulls up the front of her purple-striped shirt to show me her boobs. I stare at them blankly until she puts the shirt down and goes home. I’m rushed but paralyzed, the excitement all getting stoppered by that look-over-your-shoulder feeling of doing something capital W wrong. Later, walking down my street at dusk, I run into one of the Stone sisters, severely Christian and without a television, she says to me, “My dad saw that girl flash you earlier today.” I turn on my heel and walk quickly home; my guilty peek behind the curtain witnessed, judged, worried the burning in my face will never extinguish.

Jamison Leffler has shaggy blonde hair, is skinny like me, and wears “actually funny” t-shirts, not “joke shirts.” We are both unnoticed and laugh entirely too loud. At lunch we have a good section of table on the lower level where we play Magic: The Gathering undisturbed. We are almost always talking about Metallica, girls, and the guys who are trying too hard. The next semester a girl I have a crush on, who occupies a table with higher social value, invites me to sit with her and I accept. I make new friends. My interactions with Jamison become limited to a single head-nod from across the cafeteria, and even that fades. When he looks at me I am wearing a mask. I think about Jamison no less than six times a year for the rest of my life.

Jennifer Maars is my first “girlfriend” and my first real kiss. Her friend’s coin her a nickname: Maars Bar. She writes me intricately folded notes in gel-pen that I keep for at least eight years. After school, I walk her home and she asks me to turn around when we are two blocks from her house. Two weeks later we are talking on the phone when her stepfather comes on the line. “Who is this?” he barks. I tell him. He says, “Jennifer’s isn’t allowed to talk to boys. Don’t call here anymore.” He hangs up but immediately calls me back. “If you were planning on going to the band concert tonight you aren’t anymore, understand?” I hang up. A year later Jennifer and her mother move to Des Moines to escape his anger, and the things he was doing to Jennifer at night. 

The car is packed as my father shakes Joseph’s father’s hand in the street. We are moving to Kansas and the neighbor’s have all just said goodbye. The day is bright and quiet as we drive off. I stare out the window watching 5952 Fossil Drive fade out of view. My father, annoyed, wants to know why I’m crying. But I don’t know why. And this isn’t the first time.

Alan Hanson is a contributor to This Recording. He is a writer living in Los Angeles. This is his first appearance on these pages. He tweets here and you can find his website here.

"Art Of Letting You Go" - Tori Kelly (mp3)