The Night After Never Again
Every spring, graduation season stirs something ancient in me—ghosts of choices, absences, and half-formed goodbyes.
We went for a walk tonight through the university. It’s graduation season. Alumni had decorated the lawns with oversized numbers, photos, and balloons, celebrating the next generation of hopefuls.
I stood here 35 years ago too, for my own high school graduation. But the lawn back then was bare. No clever signage, no inflatable pride. Just a ceremony I didn’t care much for.
Truthfully, I held a low opinion of high school—and about the same for college. I felt under-challenged, bored, and often disappointed by the smallness of it all. That applied to my social world too. My peers seemed obsessed with drinking, dating, and status. I couldn’t find a way to care.
I was friendly. I could float through most groups, but I rarely felt truly accepted. A recurring theme in my life.
I spent my time reading, drawing, painting. I volunteered—construction work and teaching, work I loved and enjoyed. I had little time or interest in the typical teenage rites of passage.
But I wasn’t uninterested in girls—far from it. My yearning felt deeper, more profound, or so I believed.
So deep, in fact, that I avoided the courting rituals of high school altogether. Where there are no cattle, the manger is clean... but the strength of an ox yields an abundant harvest.
Still, there were crushes.
One was KB, a Norwegian exchange student—brilliant and striking. She had a soft round face that was very kind with eyes whose lids drooped a little, giving her a dreamy look all the time. We shared art and English, and in time I became her regular ride home. I was certainly drawn to her, but couldn’t believe someone so radiant would see anything in me beyond convenience.
I’ll never forget that March in the front seat of my blue Oldsmobile sitting in her driveway when she turned to me and said, “I really like hanging out with you. Would you like to go to the dance next month with me?”
It felt like getting punched with a velvet glove. My head spun. My heart sprinted. Of course I wanted to go.
But in that same moment, I believed I could be a danger—to her purity, our friendship, to the version of myself I was trying to protect. I wanted to preserve something more than I wanted to have her.
“Oh, KB. I’d love to. You’re such a dear friend.”
And I absolutely wanted to walk through that door. Instead, I shut it.
“I made a deal with myself not to date in high school, and I need to stick to that.”
She understood. But she was disappointed. Our friendship cooled almost immediately. That said everything.
There were others—less formal rejections, but the pattern was similar. Afterward, the girls grew distant. It made sense, but was difficult for me. I was sure if I was just kind and brotherly I could enjoy their company. But it always grew past what I thought it could.
Kostanza was another I found quite fetching. A blunt German girl who wore her long, silky mane of blond pulled up and back in a perpetual ponytail. I can only recall ever seeing her in form fitting black slacks and clingy knit turtlenecks that flattered her shapeliness.
She was a stunner that all the boys lusted for. But her German bluntness shot them down like a Luftwaffe ace, a wake of the rebuffed wide and deep.
Surprisingly, she liked me. Tolerated is probably more accurate. I wasn’t hounding her for dates. I just enjoyed her company.
And so we ended up going on dates. Not the kind that Stacy and Mark go on in Fast Times—the sort two friends do. Football games and pizza. No romance, just hanging out.
Though the perception of my friends was quite different. They all thought I was up to typical teenage boy lust. While lust was no doubt part of the equation, I was anything but typical.
I had an amazing ability to pretend to be a reliable, stand up guy. And it turns out faking it till you make it is a real thing. Cardboard boys can standup too.
Graduation shifted all of those relationships. As high school isn’t the real world, the people we are and the friends we have aren’t either.
I didn’t understand the concept of such vast change when we walked the stage that spring. I thought I’d always know these people in some capacity. But today, I couldn’t tell you where an anyone is with certainty.
Maybe that’s just me. But I don’t think so.
People change. Things change. Places change. Life changes. None of us are the same we were yesterday.
The night of graduation, there was a massive party rumored to be at an old abandoned hotel out on the edge of town. No one was really invited, we just all knew about it.
So, that night after spending a few hours with family and friends, I climbed in my car and headed for Kostanzas.
“You’re late!” Was her greeting, never one to mince words.
“I know.” I replied. “Family stuff, you know.”
We drove with the windows down in the cool spring air and she smoked a cigarette as ‘Need You Tonight’ by INXS played brightly on my Krako.
It was packed. There was no way this was seniors from one high school. I started having visions of catastrophe.
“K, this is making me nervous.” I told her. “You know, I thought this would be really cool, but this… doesn’t look cool.”
She rolled her eyes. “You said you wanted to come! You growing chicken wings now? Don’t be baby!”
I resisted and she insisted. We had come all this way. What harm could come from just checking it out?
The party was lame. 😒
I know, you probably though it would go something like:
It was magical. We danced under disco balls and glitter to the soulful sounds of Richard Marx and made out as the sun rose.
But, kids were drunk, it was dark and damp and loud. People were just lounging. One group was cheering on a guy trying to rip a water fountain from the wall.
Kostanza was not impressed. I was more than a little disappointed. I had built these kinds of things up in my head, but the reality was just empty.
We ran into Fernando, Joe and Christy who were equally non-plussed at the festivities. So the five of us retired to Dennys for fries and soda.
We talked about what we planned. Europe, California, New York. College and good paying jobs. No one said, ‘I’m getting pregnant and taking the first steady job I can to support my budding family.’ But that’s what most of us did.
Fernando didn’t end up going to college. We both ended up waiting a decade. He waited for family, I because in my fifties I’m still waiting to start my life.
Kostanza and I didn’t end up making out, but she did give me a kiss on the cheek when I dropped her off, well before dawn.
And never saw her again. We spoke a few times, but she left for another city with her family and we lost touch. She is probably a highly compensated CEO of a German multinational today.
Joe I heard works as an AC technician somewhere. Twice divorced and struggling with middle age.
Christy went on to suffer one miserable man after another before getting sent to prison for breaking and entering one of her exes houses to collect some items she felt were hers. Free today, she’s a faded flower of her former glory, her exterior matching the broken person she was on the inside.
Fernando and I did stay in touch many years. We were childhood best friends. But eventually even he drifted away to a marriage, then another and a big catholic family and a career in Alabama.
And the hotel?
We drove by it today and saw it was collapsing and rotted. 35 years ago it had only been empty for less than two. Time is unkind to us all, but it is more so those of us who lack love and care.
Even the school we and tens of thousands of others sweated out for four years is now shuttered and slated for demolition, replaced with a more modern and less attractive structure on the edge of town not far from that hotel’s rotting corpse.
I do hope tomorrow’s graduates enjoy the day and make the most of their lives. It changes fast in ways they’ll never predict. I pray they make good decisions, ones they can live with for a lifetime. For life is never as long as it is when you are young.
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Thank you for coming here and walking through the garden of my mind. No day is as brilliant in its moment as it is gilded in memory. Embrace your experience and relish gorgeous recollection.
Into every life a little light will shine. Thank you for being my luminance in whatever capacity you may. Shine on, you brilliant souls!
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