That summer when we were younger

The truth of the matter is that none of us were happy that summer. For a while, Jackie insisted that she was, but we later came to understand that she was defining happiness in entirely the wrong way, if it is fair to say so. Besides which, she was sleeping with an older man who wore expensive watches. She had nothing in common with any of us anymore.

Okay, it's probably not fair of me to say that all of were not happy that summer. James was working as a trainer in an old boxing gym, teaching kids off the street how to land a proper jab. We all knew for a fact that James didn't know shi- about boxing, but these kids didn't know any better, and who were we to blame him for being caught up with the idea of a better version of himself as projected by these kids. Something about this relationship between perception and reality seemed vitally important. None of us knew enough about boxing to be able to tell by the end of the summer that James hadn't become a really good trainer. Though, to be honest, we watched one of his little charges get his ass handed to him, losing by TKO in the second round after taking a series of left hooks to the head that left him floored until the eight count and on his feet but not on this planet by the time the ref called the fight. Afterwards, we took the kid, who turned out to be a little shi-, and we almost felt sort of bad that James had put so much stock in these kids opinions, out for ice cream and he tried to touch Jackie's breasts.

The real point is that we were all unhappy for causes unknown. Sydney had gotten into a motorcycle accident in the spring, and, as a result, she'd ended up with her jaw wired shut for the better part of three months. And you wouldn't believe the sort of things we'd all say to her knowing that she couldn't answer back, just turn beat red and stamp off way down along the beach where a bunch of druggies hung out beneath the bridge. And she'd pout down there for hours, to no avail, trying to get good and high off second hand smoke before she came back to glare at us all.

We were, most of us, in the early part of our twenties working at dead end jobs in retail stores and public libraries stocking books, waiting for the summer to be over, so we could forget that we were supposed to be making something of ourselves. Those days that last forever gave us all too much time to think about the positions we were in, and the failures we were fast becoming. Laura would usually bring cigarettes and those of us who smoked would cup our hands in the wind against the wind and toss the butts into the ocean and not one of us even dared to try our hand at a metaphor.

Derek would usually bring just enough beers to leave us all disappointed that there weren't more, and we'd occasionally make a camp fire and try and keep the smoke out of our eyes while we bitched about the people we wanted to love us the most. When we grew bored and our eyes were all stinging from all that damn smoke from the wet logs we'd put together we'd talk about whoever hadn't come that night, speculate about the sorts of things that could keep them from our nightly funereal engagement. And that's what it was, I now see, way before the thing with Jimmy, which, I suppose, was perhaps preordained after all those ashes had burned away, and we were left with the bare light of the moon on our ageless faces.