Worlds Apart (5 page)

“Well…it was good seeing you.” Her intonation indicated the conversation was over. I was losing an opportunity that I desperately needed to seize. I had a chance right here, right now, and needed to make the most of it. There was no turning back; the time was right. But only seconds remained, as she was headed into the abyss of the school stairwell.

Her back was to me. Several paces of empty space separated us in the otherwise empty high school hallway.

“Delancey.” She turned around slowly when I called out her name. “Would you like to…” I started asking, voice cracking, throat dry, out of air and moisture at the same time.

“David, I really don’t know. I think you might be better off asking some other girl.” The words fell from her full lips, like grenades from a B-52 bomber. I stood in silence, dejected, rejected, and crestfallen. I could see that she understood my pain, and as the seconds of awkward silence lingered like poisonous gas, there was a change in her countenance.

“How did you even…”

“Know what you were going to ask me? You’re so obvious. I’ve been on to you for some time now,” she said. I couldn’t even finish a sentence. “David, I’m heading home; if you want we can ride the train together.”

I heard the words, and saw them leave her lips, one syllable at a time. A sheepish grin escaped, and I nodded yes, for my throat was still too parched to speak.

Delancey and I walked four blocks to the subway, making small talk about school, teachers, the upcoming SATs, and college. I flashed my student train pass and entered the turnstiles; Delancey used a token. The platform was overcrowded.

We boarded the train without speaking, standing just inches apart. I could smell her sweet breath, as well as her subtle citrus perfume. We remained silent, until I shut my brain off, and just let my emotions take over.

“You smell so good,” I said. She blushed, glancing downwards.

“Are you upset that I turned you down?” she asked.

“Technically, I didn’t ask you out, and you never said no.” We both giggled.

“There are so many other girls in school, why don’t you ask one of them out?”

“I appreciate your interest in my love life, but I can take it from here, thanks,” I said curtly. The F-Train was now over the Manhattan Bridge, and we were awestruck as usual by views of the Brooklyn Bridge, the East River, and all of lower Manhattan, including the World Trade Center.

“I never get used to this view, even though I see it every day.” Delancey’s eyes lit up with the awe that filled my vision.

“I know what you mean.” I asked her about her family.

She talked about her father, who owned big, expensive restaurants in the city. She was being pulled in different directions by her divorced parents. Her mother was remarried and living on Long Island. Delancey lived with her father in the city during the school week.

“Why did they divorce?” I asked, realizing that it was none of my business the moment the question was asked. Delancey paused.

“I’m sorry I asked the question; it’s none of my business.”

“It’s okay…I just…well, I really don’t know what would be the best answer. There were so many reasons, like years of constant fighting. I could go on and on. But I guess the best way for me to answer is to say that they never should’ve gotten together in the first place. They were doomed from the beginning. My mother is so different from my father. She is…well….I wouldn’t say that she’s a hippie, but she’s definitely a free spirit…free willed, and just not really the kind of woman that I could ever see my father with. He is regimented, a workaholic, with very specific routines, and structure…a pragmatist. My father had plans for my entire life laid out on paper before I was born. He wanted me to go to the private school in the city that he picked out when I was two years old. He plans well, even for a divorce.”

Delancey’s expression seemed to change when she discussed her father. I could sense they were close, much closer than she was to her mother.

“It was a really big argument when I told him I wanted to leave private school and go to Stanton. It was like my entire future was over for him. But I threatened to live with Mother full time on Long Island, and that’s all he needed to hear before he relinquished. But that’s my dad. Very possessive and controlling. And my mother, the free spirit. How does anyone control a free spirit?”

The F-Train was in Manhattan, and I asked her where she lived.

“Upper West Side, I have to change to the number two at Times Square. What about you?”

“I’m in Astoria, over the 59
^th
Street Bridge,” I replied.

“That’s not what I meant. How about your parents?” she inquired.

“It’s just my father, brother, and I. My mother died when I was eleven.”

“Oh, David, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay. We’re surviving without her.”

“What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?” She seemed concerned.

I really didn’t want to get into it. “Let’s just say that your mother is a free spirit, and my mother’s spirit is free.” Delancey exited the train and waved good-bye. I stayed on, and headed home. The double doors closed, and through vandalized windows I watched her walk up the platform as my train pulled away.

“Delancey!” I called out, but there was no answer.

Chapter 3

A hard, cold October rain fell on the first day of the month. October is such a great month. Gone were the summer strolls, now replaced with brisk walks. The brightly tinted treetops dripped with the changing of colors, signaling autumn in New York. The girls on the subways looked better in the fall. They wore sweaters and fashionable full length clothing, but they weren’t covered up with coats. It was a great time to be a boy in high school, and although I liked baseball and basketball, girl watching was my favorite sport.

There was only one month to go before the SATs, and it became easier to study when the weather was dreary. Studying was all on my own, nightly, with books borrowed from the local library in Queens. The absence of part time employment meant I did not have the money for SAT prep classes. Studying for the SATs was difficult and slow going. I consistently put in three hours a night, in addition to my normal workload of five hours of studying and homework daily. Math was my strength. The reading and vocabulary parts were more difficult.

My body had acclimated to the lack of sleep and coffee was my elixir. Stanton students learn early that sleep is a luxury. Sleep can be taken with short naps on the subway, to and from school, whether sitting or standing. Many of my deepest sleeps occurred when I was standing on a crowded subway train in morning rush hour.

The truth, deep down inside, was that I dreamed of becoming a professional musician. I loved playing guitar and singing. If I had attended a normal high school, one less academically intense, I may have been more inclined to pursue my musical aspirations. In reality, Stanton and its students frown upon idyllic notions like musical careers. College was not optional at Stanton; it was required, and instilled within each student’s psyche from the beginning. We were all expected to be future engineers, doctors, scientists, etc., not musicians. A lot depended on my scores on the upcoming SATs. I felt the pressure to do well weighing on my shoulders and aching in my joints. Bile from anxiety filled my digestive system.

My work on the school newspaper was about the football team. Our football team was having a winning season, suffering only one loss thus far. My articles were a little grander than reality, as I painted a picture of heroes winning battles with my stylistic writing. The football team’s record was deceiving. If you are unfamiliar with high school football in Brooklyn, you would think that our team was fantastic. In reality, our rivals frequently were missing their best players, due to incarceration. However, a win is a win. Stanton did not have its own football field, as was the case with most other New York City High Schools. The Stanton Serpents played football on a field they leased from a nearby college. Like in the Middle East, land was at a premium in Brooklyn.

Sam was weighing heavily on my mind. He was becoming a pain in the neck. I’m not sure if he knew or even cared about my feelings for Delancey. He had tunnel vision, which was required for him to succeed in his elected future field of medicine. Tunnel vision was also necessary for success in the field of high school romance.

Sam discovered that Delancey’s birthday was that week. He was unusually enthusiastic about making yet another move on her. Sam’s parents never gave him any money, and he never held a job a day in his life. He was a bit lazy, and really did not believe in the concept of working for a living. Sam would often say, “Most people work because they believe it will lead to money, and yet they are still broke. Logically it is flawed, and therefore the opposite should be true.” The logic tables we had learned in school could not be applied to real life.

Sam’s attitude had to do with being born into a wealthy family in Iran. With the overthrow of the Shah, they had fled, taking some of the wealth with them to England. But like most moderate Iranians fleeing in the dark of night, the majority of the family fortune was left behind. Sam’s family only recently immigrated to New York. He joked that his family left the magic carpet behind, and as a result wasted their money on airplanes. He once had servants and chauffeurs. The lavish lifestyle he was born into was gone forever, but he did not accept that in America, he needed to work. He accused me of having a poor man’s mentality. Sam could not grasp the idea of America as a place where people start over.

Instead of getting a job, Sam mooched off the rest of us. He always said he was good for it, and that he would repay us when he was a doctor. Carlos usually lent him the most money, banking on their friendship lasting into the future. But that day, Sam needed a lot of money. He planned to buy Delancey something special, something expensive. He asked me ten times for money, knowing which buttons to push when he said, “Don’t be cheap.”

I gave him a five dollar bill; it was all I had on me. I asked for change; he said he didn’t have any. Then Sam asked other kids for money. This went on for two days.

The day of Delancey’s birthday, Sam and Carlos were not at lunch. John explained that they had gone to Bloomingdales to buy a very expensive bottle of perfume.

“How much money did the Persian Prince get begging?” I asked.

“About $150 dollars,” John said. That was a lot of money for a kid without a job or an allowance. When Sam put his mind to something, he usually pulled it off.

I went to my next class, health education. This was a brutally embarrassing and visually vivid class. It was mostly about sex, pregnancy, AIDS, and birth, though not necessarily in that order.

The health education teacher was a young, beautiful woman named Mrs. Bulzer. Her good looks didn’t help the situation for most of the boys. We were all dreading that day’s class: the birthing video. I had made sure to eat a light lunch.

Howard Moh was a small, nerdy kid and very uncomfortable discussing the topic of sex. Howard asked questions that led the class to realize he had literally not hit puberty yet. He had no clue about sex. When he saw the infant delivery during the video, he vomited and fainted. The class laughed; it was bad enough his nickname was HoMo, but now this incident would follow him wherever he went. Mrs. Bulzer had succeeded in associating sex with something disgusting, and in this case Howard had helped. She had spent the past few weeks stirring up fear of AIDS, and now pregnancy and birth could be feared as well.

We had to write a one page anonymous essay on our views of sex. I contemplated writing the word “none” in the middle of the page and then handing it in. I would not have been exaggerating. I started writing that I had not had sex yet, and wasn’t planning on having sex until I was older, perhaps 19 or 20. Don’t get me wrong, I was as big a day dreamer and fantasizer as anyone else. I sometimes daydreamed that Delancey and I were on a deserted island, the result of a fortunate accident. Anyway, the fear of AIDS and pregnancy overwhelmed me.

I was not sexually attracted to the girls I knew in school, except for Delancey, and she was out my league. I also did not want to get involved with someone in high school and carry on a long distance relationship at college. I felt that I wanted to really be in love with the first girl I had sex with. It was a silly romantic notion that I had carried with me for a while. I included all of these points in my essay.

My grandmother, Calli, had done a great job of convincing me that sex was a bad thing. She always mentioned that only bad people had sex. She never mentioned married people having sex, just “bad people.” This was not a conversation I could ever be comfortable having with my grandmother. At that point, I was willing to wait a few years.

I wrote that I was afraid of getting AIDS or any other sexually transmitted diseases and be sick for the rest of my life. This was actually true. A guy on my block had died of AIDS the year before. I folded the paper and handed it in.

I really didn’t care that I was still a virgin or that I was willing to wait until I met the right person. I had bigger fish to fry. College applications were due soon, as well as the SATs, midterms, the prom, finals, etc.

In a school like Stanton, I would guess that most of the kids were still not sexually active. Sure, there were some who were, but this was not your typical high school in America. Sex was not the priority; success was the priority. The two might be mutually exclusive. Who really had the time or the opportunity? When I came home from school every day, my younger brother was home and I had chores. Besides, it’s not like I would have ever wanted a girl to see the poor neighborhood and sloppy, small house we lived in. Try that for an anti-sex campaign suggestion. The class dragged on forever, until the bell finally rang. I had sports articles to write and headed to the pool.