Sord in Prosperity - Hope Beyond the Apocalypse

EP. 154 - ELENA

I'M HOLDING BACK ON describing all the adventures, as the youthful and sometimes dangerous happenings of one kid are far more relevant to that kid than to anyone else. Yet I've hardly touched on the energetic vault of memories from my teenage years, that vault being mostly charged by the electricity of the opposite gender.

As stated previously, the desert was almost always unobserved, unsupervised, and delicious in its abandonment. The only reason for an adult to be out in that wasteland was to hunt for critters, but there was so little to hunt. And the ground we trod upon was owned by many different people, most of whom had the foresight to invest in it for the long term but never had reason to set foot there. It was a magnificent, quiet haven, the perfect place for sexually inquisitive teens, parties, and general carousing.

One fine, auspicious fall morning in 1973 before the first bell, I bragged to my friends that I had surreptitiously acquired and stashed a full six-pack of sixteen ounce malt liquor in the desert flats east of the high school. In those days, it wasn't that hard for a high schooler to acquire alcohol of any kind in Arizona.

The drinking age had recently been lowered to nineteen, and you only needed a friend with a manly beard and a small pair of cajones to confront a barely drinking-age employee at the cash register with an air of extreme certainty. At least half the alcohol my friends and I imbibed was courtesy of one upper classman who looked the adultish part and knew an unquestioning young acquaintance clerking at a local convenience store.

Malt liquor, the lesser of all brews, was the easy choice for most of the guys. It got us tipsy quicker due to its higher alcohol content, was cheap, and tasted a little heartier than piss water. The girls, on the other hand, tended to go for sweet, cheap wine. Vintage it was not, usually running a buck or so per quart, though choking down that poorly manufactured swill tended to hammer down a worse aftereffect than the malt liquor.

In high school, most social actions I engaged in were done in some context of girls, and the intended purpose of this six-pack was no exception. My plan was to drive my girlfriend Elena to the desolate hiding place one evening after her pom-pom practice, drink the brew, loosen both of us up sufficiently, and pursue the usual follow-on events.

Elena. What a beauty! Unblemished olive skin, long black hair and the most perfectly kissable lips. At the start of our extended high school relationship, we'd kiss for hours in my car, often in the high school parking lot.

I couldn't get enough of her. Here I was, this scrawny, lightweight, wimpy runner and wrestler. And there she was, a gorgeous Greek goddess in her ebullient, pom-pom perfection.

"Why pick me?" I'd wonder. "She could have any guy. Can you imagine what our kids would look like?" Of course, that's a dangerous thought for any teenager to entertain, male or female, but it's a natural one.

Her father was a full-blooded, robust, and friendly second-generation Greek-American. Although she indicated he worked a normal job, she constantly teased that he was also a silent member of the "Greek Mob.' She always followed that tease by a laugh and comments about my needing to treat her with proper dignity, and to definitely avoid getting her pregnant under penalty of severe torture.

Setting aside the malt liquor desert adventure for a moment, you can imagine how I felt when facing her father and mother the night of 'Wake-up, little Elena.'

Like the song about Suzie, Elena and I were at the drive-in, probably the best place next to the open desert for teenage sexual escapades. In the desert, you weren't concerned about passers-by, though the drive-in was somewhat different. Kids and families might saunter by with sodas and buckets of popcorn, and the curiosity seeker might even inauspiciously glance inside your car to get a view of activities.