You'll Just Know

Chapter 8

            There are few milestones in Modern American culture that mark the transformation from a boy to a man. The days of putting on war paint and going alone into the woods to kill a wolf or a bear are long gone. Things are much less defined now. You have boy, you have man, and you have this big gray uncertain area called “adolescence” (which I believe is Greek for “What the Hell is happening to me?”).

            There’s no sudden metamorphosis. There’s no straight path to manhood. It’s a fumbling, blind, awkward series of advances and retreats. You ask a man when he became a man, and you won’t get an honest answer because he honestly doesn’t know. It’s a bunch of little things.

            Like... stubble.

            Stubble is a big one for the guys. That time when shaving moves from being a bi-monthly ritual into a necessity. Facial hair! Physical proof that you indeed have your fair share of testosterone. You’re one of the guys now! I think that the term “baby smooth” says it all. If your face is smooth, then you’ve still got some growing to do, but if you have stubble... well, then it’s about time people start calling you “sir”.

            So, that last week in August of my seventeenth year, probably unnoticed to everyone else but me, I moved one step closer to being a man. I woke up with an invisible blonde stubble on my upper lip and the tip of my chin. I judiciously studied it from all angles in the bathroom mirror and even considered keeping it... but I couldn’t deny myself the pleasure of shaving it. What an awesome feeling.

*               *               *

            That day, the day of the Stubble, was the day Wendy and I discovered Norma Marie Marks in the attic of my home.

            It was a furiously hot day. Far too sweltering to venture outside anytime between late morning and early evening. My parents (accustomed to an eight-month Jersey winter) had overreacted and cranked up the air conditioning to a frightening level. It was a wonderful relief.

            Wendy came over that day and (unable to come up with a better plan) we’d just decided to hang around a do a whole lot of nothing. The best thing to do on such a day. She’d curled up in my window seat with a copy of Lord of the Flies and had become entirely enthralled with it. I sat on the hardwood floor beside my bed losing my fifth game of solitaire. It was relaxing, shared company.

            I remember that Wendy was wearing cutoff denim shorts and a dark purple tee shirt that day. Now… confession time. Although it was true that Wendy and I had grown to be really good friends, and that rarely a conscious romantic thought entered my head anymore… it was also true that I was seventeen and Wendy was extremely attractive in so many ways. Being around her so much, it wasn’t always easy to keep my thoughts at an entirely neutral level. At that moment, for instance, it was very hard to keep my eyes off of her slender, tanned legs as she lounged in the sunlight streaming through my bedroom window. It was a mighty battle of willpower over hormones to keep from looking too much. (Besides... I really would have hated to been caught staring!)

            It was looking as if I might actually win at solitaire for the first time in my entire life when suddenly there was a faint metallic rattle above me and I was showered with a trail of fine, white plaster dust. A screw clattered to the hardwood floor beside me, hopping off in a tangent direction.

            What the...?

            Wendy looked up distractedly from her novel and her eyes went suddenly wide. “Casey! Look out!”