30 March 1998: St. Elmo's Fire

In the summer of 1985, I was seventeen. I had recently seen "The Breakfast Club," identified most with its character Alison Reynolds ("When you grow up, your heart dies. It's unavoidable. It just happens"), and had happily finally sloughed off a year-and-a-half-long, worthless crush. I had never been kissed or, more accurately, never kissed anyone. "The Breakfast Club" became my talisman and I, bespectacled, bebraced, and be-ugly, was ready to join the outside world.

That summer as in all summers, Old Lyme families hosted AFS students on a Bus Stop. After a school year somewhere in the country, American Field Service bussed students from abroad on a fortnight's jaunt throughout another region of the country, giving them two- or three-day tastes of other towns. This year, as part of the emergence from my cocoon, I participated in the Bus Stop.

One of the activities was the Cruise to Nowhere. We hired an Orient Point ferry out of New London to tour us aimlessly around the Sound for a few hours. So there I was, chatting with my own high school cohort, meeting students from all points of the globe, thinking, "Hey, I can do this!" I could meet people, be chatty and personable. Who palpably showed an interest in me, among all the fascinating foreigners, ended up being a young man who worked on the ferry. Oh. Well, he was somewhat foreign. He lived in Montville, nearly half an hour away.

Naïve, desperate for a date, terminally unpopular, I marveled at this boy's notice even while cringing at Bill himself. He asked me out. Not only had I never had a date, but I had heard of a new movie with three of the five "Breakfast Club" actors: "St. Elmo's Fire." This I had to see, and I had no car. So I acquiesced.

We went out thrice. I saw "St. Elmo's Fire" and "Back to the Future" and kissed someone and was kissed (by choice): I achieved my objectives. I knew I didn't want to go out on the third date before I went: when we wound up playing pool in the Groton sub base I knew how right I had been not to want to go but not until later in the evening did I realize how wrong I had been to go anyway. I did try to brush him off. A penpal was moving to Berlin, Germany; I told him I was moving to Berlin, Connecticut. He didn't believe me. (I don't lie well.) My mother's car was rear-ended and I contemplated inventing whiplash.

I was about to go away for a week to a pre-college program. I went. I hadn't planned to fall in love with anyone there but I certainly was ripe for it and that at first sight; by the end of the week PSA and my feeling for him changed my life.

Bill called me the day after I got home, whereupon I blew him off good and proper. His whining manipulation had overcome my squeamish distaste and won him second and third dates, but he was defenseless against the overwhelming new self-confidence I felt. He didn't believe me about PSA either. I did lie somewhat: I told him PSA lived in Brooklyn Connecticut instead of Brooklyn New York. But everything else was true.

I didn't know what to make of Bill. Was he unused to girls not responding to him, not being interested? Who knows. Was he stupid and bullheaded? Yes. Was I an irresistible creature? Maybe. Yes. After a few abortive phone calls, in which my tone ranged from disinterested to disaffected, I thought I was rid of him. I wasn't. I worked at the library throughout high school; and there, as I shelved books in the mystery alcove one day, Bill appeared.

Phoebe not only was my place of employ but also is my lifelong sanctuary and sacrament. His presence was sacrilege. If he left with any doubt of his status or chances, then at least he didn't intrude on my life with further visits or phone calls.

Until November. My mother looked up from the New London Day one evening to inquire Bill's last name. I told her and asked her why. "His mother died."

I wrote him a note of condolence. I can be that civil. His mother died, and a girl he knew slightly and briefly four months before wrote him a note for civility's and humanity's sake, and what did he do? Called her up and asked her out.

Thirteen years later, I don't regret writing that note, because if I hadn't perhaps the rest of this amusing story wouldn't've happened. At the time I was shocked. Twenty-two months after that incident, I began my sophomore year at UConn. I slung all my gear in my room, unpacked enough to find my message board, and hung the board on my door before trekking out to find all my friends' message boards (this was in the old days, before everyone had a phone along with electricity).

When I returned, a friend accompanied me; college was a wholly different experience to high school. I was glad SEB was there; she was a witness. There on the board was my first message of the year:

"Hi Lisa
-Bill"

After screaming up and down the corridor to get over the worst of it, I dragged SEB off with me to the nearest student roster (available in a building a ways away) while telling her the whole story. Yep. He was a registered student, though as far as I could tell not a resident at Storrs. Whatever administrative business had brought him up there that day had spared him the time to find said roster, look me up, ascertain what dorm and room I was in, run that elusive building to earth, and knock on my door.

(And yes, I'm sure it was he. I possessed no sample of his handwriting, but that message on my door looked like it would belong to such a vole-faced cretin as he. I knew no other Bill. If it had been just a random lecherous cretin, what were the chances of said cretin choosing my name instead of my roommate's or that of any other woman on the hall?)

This concludes the story of how I first saw "St. Elmo's Fire" and why it had better be a damn good movie, for me to have gone through all that.