WE FINALLY MOVED AWAY from that small Northern Arizona town. My mom had been a widow for a few years and gossip about her marital status and dating habits traveled like wildfire. She hated the unwanted attention.

Besides, she had lost a husband to heart attack and a son to drowning within a span of two years. It was time to seek less intrusive, warmer, and hopefully more fortuitous climes.

Northwest Phoenix in the late 1960s was comprised of thousands of flat, undeveloped acres of scrub Sonoran desert – mostly cacti, heaven-scented creosote bushes, and the occasional palo verde and mesquite trees. It lacked the stunning beauty of the higher altitude desert miles to the north but was relatively devoid of humans, save for a smattering of 1950s housing developments. Because of its unsupervised nature, the desert was an ever-present lure to every kid seeking risk, fun, and adventure.

And risk there was. Beautiful, unsupervised risk.

With no father to provide an income, my mom took a day job to pay the bills, working at that savings and loan, the one with Eddie at the helm. She had started in the teller profession, to use the term loosely, twenty years earlier in post-war Los Angeles. Then marriage and kids happened. At forty-plus and weathered by years of child-rearing us monsters, she lacked the youthful attraction of typical bank tellers.

“When can I get you to do other things like backroom operations work?” Eddie would constantly ask her. And they both knew the truth. He believed she didn’t have the looks, not any longer, to interact with customers at the teller window. He wanted someone more attractively pleasant to chum with customers, and it riled her to hell.

Given her forty-five minute work drive into Phoenix proper, and a nine-hour workday including lunch, she was typically not home during our most sinister hours. And in eighth grade, there were lots of opportunities to be sinister. My testosterone had just rocketed to ‘go crazy for it’ mode, yet I was too uninformed to understand what was burning in my veins.

“Did you hear about Patrick and Stacie?” a friend asked me one morning. I shrugged and walked into class as if it didn’t interest me but sensed something sordid was in the offing.

Being somewhat new, I was barely familiar with the two kids, though many held them in high regard since they were the class troublemakers. They smoked cigarettes in the restrooms. They never finished their homework or in-class assignments, and they were the first to guffaw or moan at the teachers’ slightest requests.

I waited anxiously the entire period to hear about the mystery. What could they do that they weren’t already renowned for? Vandalism? Called the teacher a bad name? Wrote graffiti somewhere? Hit another student?

Both were in my home room class. Aware of their penchant for trouble, our teacher had placed them at the front rows. I watched them during that class, snickering together as if only they were clued-in to the deep, dark secret.

“So what did they do?” I pleaded with my friend after class was dismissed.

“They ‘did it,’” he whispered, his eyebrows raised in amazement.

“Did what?” I begged in all innocence.

“You know. They did the nasty thing.” Then he placed his index finger on one hand through a circle he’d created with his index finger and thumb on the other hand.

Uninitiated to such things, I was flummoxed. Given his hand signals, I imagined one of them defecated outside the restroom. “Did they poop or something?”

He laughed and began to realize I didn’t fully understand. “Out in the desert, I guess. Yesterday. No blanket or anything.”

I was now getting the picture but it was still confusing. I probably wasn’t the only eighth grader who didn’t understand a thing about sexual relations with women. Sure, I’d seen a number of girlie magazines my friends stole from their father’s stashes, but I never came across anything that fully explained how things actually worked.

My only reference was one day in sixth grade, back in Williams. We watched a half hour movie, an elementary school version of ‘the explanation,’ but nothing was mentioned about a penis penetrating a vagina. No visuals were provided, and there was never a direct reference. Just cartoon drawings of the respective externalities of girls and boys. As far as I understood, some mysterious thing would crawl from my stuff to her stuff, then a pregnancy would occur, and that’s why we didn’t want to ever engage in sex.

The girls watched one movie, the boys another, and the teachers made us swear, in some weird scholastic secrecy, not to divulge our movie’s contents to the other sex.

During the twenty minute explanation, we boys were generally not paying attention, anyway. We used most of that time to express ‘disgusting’ and ‘gross’ commentaries amongst ourselves, joking and teasing each other.

Later that day, my poor little sister unfortunately transgressed the assumed girl-boy secrecy barrier in the biggest way by telling me about ‘administration.’ Once she described to me such an unbelievable physical phenomenon, I instantly informed my friends about what the girls had watched.

“Yeah, they talked about administration,” I explained. “The girl bleeds from her crack every month, then they have to use cotton bandages to clean it up.” Word quickly spread among all the sixth grade boys, and my poor sister was railed by her teacher for exposing the deepest, darkest secrets of womanhood.

By eighth grade, that rather confusing sixth-grade movie was the limit of my knowledge base. When the ‘they did it’ desert adventure happened, I was entirely unprepared to understand. But once my friends described the lurid details later that day, it quickly made perfect sense. My primitive brain now understood one thing: these feelings I was experiencing had a purpose, and that purpose was girls.

I’m not saying at the time that I only saw girls as a potential means to satisfy my hormonal lust. Indeed, that was a key incentive, and such a need for experimentation seemed to be equally met by the girls on the other side. I also assumed sex would be likely intermixed with a lot of other things, but it just wasn’t clear at the time what those things would be.

***

Too quickly, the remainder of elementary school sped by, and my eighth grade class graduated. Where we were once the top dogs in school, the campus giants, we now were cast asunder on high school as tease and taunt fodder for upperclassmen. It was such an abrupt change to suddenly be tiny, witless grunts at the base of the four-year totem pole. But driven by hormones, I came around to certain things fairly quickly.

One of those things was more serious girlfriend-boyfriend coupling. Valerie, Val, caught my eye within the first few months of ninth grade. She and I started a conversation one day after discovering our fifteenth birthdays had just occurred within a few days of each other. Gleaning some sort of kismet in that, we both felt an undeniable, immediate yearning to fawn over each other and engage in constant physical contact.

Val made my gut burn with desire, and I had to be with her at every free moment. ‘Just out of class. Where is she? Oh, here she comes.’ Holding hands for five minutes and risking tardiness to the next class. Asking a friendly teacher to move our lockers next to each other.

After four intensive weeks of this intermittent, school-only contact, we had not yet found the opportunity for more than a moment’s kiss, which was disallowed on campus by mandate. She had cheer, I had cross-country, and our schedules never seemed to match, not even to grab fifteen minutes alone and out of sight.

And there were so many possible, convenient places to go farther if the occasion ever presented itself. Under the bleachers. In the desert. Behind the wrestling gym. We had multiple friends who were actively consummating their physical desires to varying degrees in these concealed locations and bragging about their exploits. But we could never find the chance.

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Then one day, it arrived.

“Greg, a friend of mine is having a birthday party at her subdivision’s rec area on Saturday,” my youthful darling divulged, her blonde hair waving in the warm desert wind. “It’s a big place on a hill, and about forty people will attend.”

“Really? Who else that we know?”

You were never completely yourself at a teen event unless your best friends went along.

“She’s from my church but goes to a different school, so it’s nobody you know. She said I could bring a guest, though. Do you want to come? We’ll get to . . .”

She stopped talking and smiled at me. We both knew what this meant. More contact than a few fleeting minutes with each other, always in the presence of others. Better yet, we might be able to mosey off somewhere and let our powerful passions take flight.

I nodded vigorously. “To be with you? Any day, even if I don’t know anybody. You’re enough for me, girl.”

After much hopeful anticipation, Saturday finally arrived. With a 7 p.m. start and the fall sun setting earlier each day, Val and I both understood that all good things we wanted to happen were most likely to occur after dark.

And there she was. Shining. Smiling. Purple earrings hanging down to match her sparkling, purple and blue, ankle-length party dress. I wore a mother-requested white, short-sleeve shirt with a skinny black tie of my father’s, straight from the 1950’s and utterly bereft of style.

I grabbed her hand. “My God,” I exclaimed, gawking at her slim figure in the dress, “you have the most magnificent waist.”

And she did. The sight of this beauty put all my senses on high alert, particularly the most devious ones. I only needed to apply my best teenage coercion tactics to make things happen per my plan, and likely per hers.

Valerie peeled my hand off. “Not yet, Greg. We need to meet people first.”

I was a bit put out at the delay but obliged, understanding fully that ‘not yet’ actually meant that. Things would happen, just ‘not yet.’

She walked me through the requisite introductions to people I would never see again. After a half-hour of dancing and making our presence noticed by the few supervising adults, she grabbed my hand and led me to a quiet corner of the venue, well beyond the line-of-sight of other partygoers.

We sat on a soft fold-down lounge chair in a dark and quiet corner obscured by walls and bushes, drinking punch.

“What is this place?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I’m guessing someone comes here to sit and get away from everyone else at the pool. Before you got here, I searched around and found it, hoping this spot wouldn’t be taken by another couple. I was even thinking about putting a ‘reserved for Val and Greg’s smooching and stuff’ sign on it.” She laughed.

I was a dense kid, but that sentence, I perceived, was a clear signal to fulfill our mutual intentions.

Just as she was about to take another drink, I whisked the half-filled paper cup from her hands. This was our time. Nobody else’s. No class bell. No nosy teachers watching us stare lovingly at each other, but only holding hands. No cross country. No cheer. Our time.

I was wondering, “Is it possible to kiss each other for the next two hours and do nothing else?’ I was pretty certain it was not possible and had previously concocted a ‘theory of natural progression’ where activities would simply naturally progress from kissing. Where we’d gradually move forward with other things until one of us felt the need to stop. That baseball base analogy we all were well aware of.

My hormone-fueled mind was singularly focused. Just one anxiety-provoking impediment stood before us that prompted due consideration. Anyone might stroll around the corner at any minute.

Another couple, perhaps? A snooping adult? Adding to that, Val was in a long dress, not easily removable in part or in whole. It was not something she could slap back on in an instant and pretend as if we were only kissing.

It was obvious to us that we had but one alternative – that pelvic hip grinding we tried to get away with at school dances when teachers weren’t looking. For high school freshmen, this activity may seem inappropriate to many, and I now clearly consider it as such. But it was the late sixties and all kinds of norms were being broken as the ‘free-love’ hippie movement was hitting its full stride.

I was also a year down the road from the first knowledge of classmates who ‘did it,’ the full deed, and many of my friends had experimented well beyond first base by that time. And it wasn’t like I’d have my pants off. It was just Val and me. Kissing. Pelvic pressing. As anxious as hell to do more but also fearfully cautious.

After a half-hour of this vigorous kissing and grinding, someone called out her name. “Valerie? Val? Where are you? We’re going to open presents and blow out the candles. Are you and your friend still here?”

Val bolted straight up on the reclined chair, and I lurched over the side of the chair onto the deck’s wooden planks. “We have to go. Now!” she demanded. “Are you okay? No issues?”

Fortunately, I had no unresolved issues. Unresolved physical demands? Yes. Embarrassing evidence? No.

We waited a moment to gain composure then emerged from our hiding place. As we exited, her hair disheveled, the other kids immediately understood we were off in a corner doing things inappropriate for the time and place.

The party soon ended, and we both went home in parental taxis. However, Val and I never had a chance to repeat a similar activity. In fact, we never had the opportunity to touch each other again.

The following Monday morning, I arrived at the science buildings a minute before the first class bell. There was Val, standing on the grass with three cheer friends, her face red and wet with tears. When I stared at her with surprise, she immediately turned away.

“That’s it,” I thought. “I went too far, and I’m getting dumped.”

Carolyn, one of her friends who possessed the most vivid blue eyes, approached me with a grave frown, grabbing my arm.

“Let’s go around the corner of the building,” she demanded.

“I’m a bit stunned, yes, but I’m not going to cry about getting dumped,” I pondered. “No way I’d do that. Not in front of my classmates.”

“Did someone die?” I asked Carolyn.

“No,” she whispered. “Look, I don’t know how to tell you this without scaring you, so I’ll just say it. Her father found her diary yesterday.”

Scare me? What would scare me about a diary?

“Diary?” I repeated. “I didn’t know she had a diary.”

“Well, she did, and her father found and read it.”

“Why? What was in it?”

She stared at me as if the diary contained the worst possible thing one could imagine. “You know what you two did at the birthday party on Saturday?”

“Uh-oh,” I thought. Not wanting to jump the gun and expose what happened, I feigned ignorance.

“She wrote about it, Greg. She wrote everything that happened. About you and her on the chair, and what you guys were doing for all that time.”

Then she spoke the words, almost imperceptibly. “Hip grinding.”

I started backpedaling. “What? We didn’t do anything bad. We had our clothes on. We were on the chair. There were people around the corner. We’re not that stupid.”

“Well,” she said, “apparently she was stupid enough to write about the entire event in her diary, then leave it out in the open on her dresser.”

“Who found her diary and read it? That’s kind of mean. Aren’t those private thoughts?”

“Her dad found it first. Look, I do a lot of things with Val and her family. Her dad is a strong, tough, and very rough kind of guy. He’s a hunter with lots of guns in the house. I’d say he’s not somebody who would appreciate anything like this, especially when it involves his only daughter.”

My response was the classic kid regurgitation, acting as if it was nothing important. Overblown.

“So?” I mumbled.

“So,” she see spoke louder so that I could understand the full implication of what I was about to hear, “he said that if he ever sees you, he’s going to kill you.”

I was flabbergasted. Some old father kills his daughter’s boyfriend because he laid on top of her fully clothed one night?

It took only a few seconds for the stun to subside and the fear set it. Immediately, my brain plotted an exit, a spur-of-the-moment, careless, save-your-skin exit. As it just so happened, and despite my attraction toward Val, I’d been pondering another female alternative to her the previous week. One with vivid blue eyes. Sparkling personality. Radiant positivity. Naturally tanned skin. Standing before me was that woman of uncanny beauty and sweetness.

“I was going to tell her anyway,” I blurted out unconsciously.

“Tell her what?” Carolyn wondered.

“I was going to tell her today that I was breaking up with her.”

Her eyes grew wide. “You can’t be serious. Do you want me to tell her that?”

“Yes,” I nodded, glad that I would not have to face her. “Please.”

Carolyn quickly ran the ten yards around the corner to the spot where Val was still crying. The first bell was just about to ring, and most kids were at their desks. The doors to all classes were still open, the pre-bell conversations had subsided, and the cool morning air seemed unusually quiet.

Suddenly, Val burst out. “What? He’s breaking up with me?” she screamed at the top of her lungs.

I remained around the corner of the building and was not willing to face the poor girl. The next thing I saw was Val’s back, hunched over. She was sobbing uncontrollably and stumbling toward the girl’s restroom with Carolyn doing her best to keep her walking steadily.

As happens in high school teendom, word of the event spread immediately, even in that same class, and it was one tough hour to sit through. Cold stares from the girls. Head-shaking from the boys, including my best friends. I was now a first-class cad, persona not grata. Not famed for my exploits, but instantly infamous for my cowardice and lack of consideration.

My diminished status endured for a few weeks thereafter until Carolyn, her vivid blue eyes ablaze, agreed beside that same building to become my new girlfriend. Given that she was also a freshmen cheerleader like Val, my class social status was immediately reinstated.

Years later I still carry, in the shame recesses of my mind, a hefty dollop of guilt and remorse for having hurt Val. It seemed the convenient thing to do at the time, but convenience is often a rationale to obscure underlying fear or cowardice. If I ever see her again, I’ll ask her forgiveness for my thoughtlessness.

One dim light illuminated in my brain as a result of the incident. I realized that, as a result of my own actions, I could die. That I was responsible for certain things, including the feelings of others around me. This lesson was repeated in different ways, time and time again, before it infused more completely in my ever-resistant, puerile mind.

Treat other people decently. Understand they’re not always where you are. They might be ahead, might be behind, or on another mental planet altogether. They may have had a really bad day, week, or year. They may carry other significant burdens. Whatever the situation, treating them well usually doesn’t hurt things.