I am already
going to qualify the title of this post. 1980-81, my junior year in high school
was not so much lost as it was introspective. After a sophomore year that was –
at least for me – rather eventful in terms of social relationships and school participation,
I withdrew to a great extent the following year. There are probably some
standard psychological templates that one could apply in order to dig up the
reasons for this but as I have no background in that discipline I will turn
solely to my thoughts, feelings and actions as I recall them at the time.
There are
two things I remember about the first week of my junior year: The first was
briefly having Mr. Cross for my history elective, Conflict in America. He was
my world history teacher in ninth-grade (which was still junior high). It was
kind of strange (in a good way) to have him again, however the school
rejiggered the schedule and gave him another ninth-grade world history class and
Conflict in America was taken over by Mr. Shelton. They were both great
teachers, Shelton was a little more traditional in technique but very knowledgeable
(and nice). The second memory is one that sort of put the cap on the events of
my sophomore year. While walking across the campus (torn up as it was by
landscaping) I thought I saw Stephanie Smith (see older post “Everything I
remember”). She had very short, buzzed hair and it was dark not bleached as it
was the year before. She gave me kind of a strange look that I assumed was due
to the fact that my hair was really
long then. When she was interested in me six months previous I had just cut my
hair for the tennis team. The weird thing is that I never saw her again except
in the LA Times picture (again see older post) and in retrospect it might have
been her sister Skipper in which case I probably read more into her look that
was warranted.
This was also
the first school year since 3rd grade that I wasn’t involved in
school band and/or orchestra. Band had been, apart from John, Rob, Eric, and
Steve, my main social outlet since junior high, the band crowd also overlapped
with the Dungeons and Dragons group (no surprise) although with Tal (the main D & D guy) going to Millikan
High that group pretty much ended after junior high. However, I my involvement
in music in general actually increased during my junior year. I still took private horn
lessons, I started taking piano lessons again and I began guitar lessons from
my mom through the local park and rec. I didn’t register for school music
because I wanted to take drafting and electronics. I thought I would be doing
something in the electronics industry as a career and those classes conflicted
with band and orchestra. I also had only
6 classes and, since I had just been hired at Nevin’s Donuts, took “work
experience” for the seventh class.
Music was a
huge part of the tapestry that was 11th grade. My infatuation with
all things (Todd) Rundgren that began the year before continued to grow. Todd
can be a fairly lonely pursuit as his music only seems to connect with a small
segment of the population and none of my friends really liked him (Well, Rob
actually liked some of his solo albums). However, those with whom he does
connect become fairly rabid fans (just go to a concert, you’ll see), following
him on all his divergent career-defying paths. Rob and I though had a lot of similar
tastes in music. We were both really in to Pink Floyd and we continued to
expand our respective Floyd collections throughout that year. We also became
fairly heavy Rush fans. Rob was introduced to them by Darren R. in history
class the previous year. Rob was still at Oak Jr. High and at the end of each
year Mr. Cross taught a music unit where everyone had to analyze a song and
bring it to play for the class. Darren brought in Rush’s 2112. Soon after, Rob bought the album and brought it over to my
house and I was equally enthralled.
2112 is in particular an ideal album for teenage
boys. It combines heavy metal, sci-fi and a mock-philosophical depth (courtesy
of Ayn Rand). So we ended up collecting the entire Rush catalog between us and
I spent many an evening digging 2112
and Hemispheres in particular. Some
of their music from that era is still fun if you ignore the lyrics. We also
attended our first-ever rock concert which was…you guessed it…Rush! Spring
1981, I think at the Fabulous Forum. We even spent $30 (!) on tickets from a
scalper (Murray’s Tickets) to get seats on the floor. It was an ok concert.
They were touring the Moving Pictures
album which I think is actually one of their best. No more “middle-brow philosophizing”
and a less pretentious musical stance helped matters, though at the time I was
a little disappointed that it didn’t have any +15-minute epics.
Rush started
us in a general “proggy” direction as we both got in to Yes, Rick Wakeman,
Jethro Tull, ELP and the like. But we also started exploring blues (see “Winter
in Socal” post), heavy metal (Black Sabbath primarily) reggae and a bit of new
wave/punk. We had been into Elvis Costello for a few years and I think 80-81 is
when we started liking X. It is hard to overstate the importance of music
during the teenage years. There is a sense of wonder associated with each new musical
discovery and it reaches deep into the same neurons that are receptive to
religious and spiritual experiences. Those of us who were located at various
points along the Freak-Geek continuum found the solace and transcendence that
was missing in the rest of our world in many of the messages conveyed by these
bands whether doomy, universalist, angry or phantastic.
My exploration
of music led naturally into an exploration of spirituality. I grew up in, and
still attended, the United Church of Christ. Rob and I were both confirmed and
attended the high-school Sunday school class along with Shauna, Jeff, Julie,
Cathy, Joe, Holly (not the former girlfriend), Lisa, and for a while another
Cathy (my informer from 7th grade) and another girl. Cathy #2 and
the other girl left at some point for a more conservative denomination. The UCC
was, and still is, a pretty liberal church. I find myself missing that aspect
of Christianity now that I attend a more traditional church. Our church school
leader, Mike, allowed us to discuss all manner of things from spirituality to sexuality
to social issues, and tried to facilitate an atmosphere where we would be
comfortable expressing anything with confidence that it would stay within the
confines of the class. I don’t think we fully took advantage of the situation
but I think a lot of good came out of it regardless.
On my own I
was becoming interested in Eastern religion as part of a continuing search for
truth and transcendence so I read up on Buddhism, Hinduism as well as Native
American religion…including Castenada. I burned much incense (no pot yet),
listened to Floyd and read a lot of books. An interest in astronomy went
hand-in-hand with these explorations as did a liberal political sense that I
have since regained after an unfathomable dalliance with the “other side.” The
wonders of the physical universe met up with the wonders of the spiritual
realms. Both infused my growing political awareness and in the throes of it all
I thought I was very close to figuring it “all” out. This state of affairs
almost compensated for the fact that I had no girlfriend, nor even any
prospects. I do miss the excitement of discovering, or thinking I had
discovered great spiritual truths. Somewhere along the line I have lost the exhilaration
that contemplating the unknown can bring. I am reduced to ingesting espresso a
few times a week in order to recover a modicum of that sensibility. I hope it
is just a stage and that it will return at some point.
This period
of navel-gazing intensified my innate introversion to the extent that most of
my classmates saw me as the “loner hippie guy,” if they noticed me at all. One English
teacher, Mrs. Busenkell, told me that she felt bad seeing me sitting so quietly
in the back. She was so happy one day when I made a jokingly negative comment
about the police (see older post), “Steve, I’m so happy you finally said
something!” My electronics class was different, though. First of all, John was
in it with me and you can’t remain quietly in the background if John is there. Second,
we had quite a group of characters at our table, Jon D, Chip O, Richard G and a
couple freshmen one of whom (I’ll remember his name at some point) I met at a
party a year later: we were both crazy drunk after slamming a pitcher and we peed
in a neighbor’s juniper bushes. Of all the things I have done drunk that is the
one I’m most ashamed of. Anyhow, we had fun; that was when Frazer Smith was
really popular as a KLOS dj and we would always discuss his antics in class. I
really dug that class in general. I learned a heck of a lot, much now forgotten.
Work was a
minor social outlet for me, at Nevin’s I worked with several people in my
grade, Valerie, Steve, Charlie and this guy whose name I forget. He was a
Mormon and a burgeoning John Birch-er (yeah, scary) but we had great
conversations about music. He was really in to the Beatles, Badfinger, that
kind of thing. He convinced me to buy George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass and Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band and I certainly don’t regret either purchase. Nevin’s
ended up closing for remodel at the end of 1980 and I got a job at Hanrow
Industries assembling the “Airlift Agitator” which was a device that cleaned
grease from auto parts. I was the only employee of the owner, Dick Hanning. He
was a cool German guy but the job was rather boring. The hours became
infrequent and I used that as an excuse to quit and look for something else.
Just before Summer I got a job as Tobin’s Draperies which turned out to be
really cool because the owner encouraged me to bring in my guitar and practice
when it got slow. I could even sit and read while waiting for phone calls.
Pretty dang cool! Unfortunately that job had to end when I began my senior year
because I went back to seven classes which meant I got out too late for the
job. However, Nevin’s reopened that fall so I started working there again. But
that is another story…
Probably the
most obvious indication of my social state-of-mind that year is that fact that
I didn’t have anyone sign my yearbook. It’s not that people refused to sign it;
I just didn’t bring it to my classes. I had been so quiet all year that I just
couldn’t see bringing the yearbook and asking anyone to sign it, or at least
anyone other than my friends who didn’t include any girls. It’s pretty lame to
have a yearbook that only dudes signed. I don’t remember if anyone asked where
it was, but I would have just told them I didn’t get one that year.
All in all,
not bad, not bad at all (God, I’m paraphrasing Reagan!). I had fun listening to
music, playing music, playing baseball with Rob, Eric and Kurt, and trying to
figure out the meaning of life. I didn’t come within a mile of having sex,
which was a major bummer, but we were all in that boat. At least there was Penthouse.
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