Being Twenty-One by JF Chavoor

Being Twenty-One

J.F. Chavoor

It was dark, even for a bar. But that was ok, that was good, that hid me as well as it hid her.
I was drinking Wild Turkey on the rocks, or Seven and Seven or gin and tonic because those
were the only drinks I could call out and not sound foolish. I wasn’t having beer though. Beer
was recreational, to relax and laugh. Beer “took the edge off” as I heard so many people say
when I got a little older. All I knew at the time was beer took off, or erased or smoothed over
my angry dad, my underachieving, underwhelming grades, my silly sense of style and
coolness, along with my cowardice, fears, insecurity, dishonesty and almost complete
unawareness of anything and everything regarding my life, the immediate world around me,
the larger world and myself and my relationship to people, school, work, bars, drinks, faith
and cynicism. Once all that was evaporated with the first sip of beer, then I could be free and
move about and speak, laugh and enjoy life unencumbered. There were occasions when I got
drunk, but I had no need to because everything I needed was in that first sip; in that moment
it felt as though my soul exhaled after holding its breath for much longer than it should have. I
mostly got drunk only if I wasn’t paying for it. It seemed to me at the time somehow less
stupid to get drunk if it was at someone else’s expense. I wasn’t a complicated kid; it would be
doubly stupid to a) get drunk and b) spend money to accomplish the goal. At a party or a beer
bust in a dorm at least it wasn’t my own parent-funded dough.

But this wasn’t beer, this was Wild Turkey, or Seagram’s or any old generic gin, it was a
different set of circumstances. Drinking liquor, knowing the names of drinks, drinking the
drink, recognizing the flavor of the drink and being familiar with it—these were all things that
I was young enough to believe made me look older, which is to say made me look like I had
lived a life without having lived one, and it was something done not at all consciously, but
innately, with the same instincts that drive every twenty-one year old to declare and express
his individuality by dressing just like every other twenty-one year old in a particular corner of
the world in a particular time period, deep inside the bowels of a particular zeitgiest. At the
time it was a leisure suit, a puka shell necklace, bathed liberally in any current aftershave
which made you smell like a candy store, two-tone shoes, and the hair was to be styled by a
stylist, not merely cut by a barber. I bought it all. I wasn’t entirely or even remotely enamored
with any of it but it was the ticket for admission and I wanted in. I was jazzed, elated,
overjoyed that I was entering the world, that I was in the world and the world was in me,
regardless of what my church and Sunday school teachers told me; I knew there had to be a
little of both—heaven and the world—in order to human enough to be spiritual, and it didn’t
bother me in the least that I looked ridiculous in a brown leisure suit.

I wasn’t dressed the night I met the girl I knew nothing about. I was out of uniform, well, I was
in my day uniform—sweatshirt, jeans, and tennies. Lenny and I were out just prowling around
in the weather beaten ’69 Chevelle with the bad muffler, the missing hubcap, the rust spot on
the hood like an open wound, the radio that only worked occasionally, the smell of dirt, sweat,
sunflower seeds and hormones, not to mention the broken glove box that regularly fell open,
hitting me on the knee.

Lenny had heard of a party somewhere near Westwood. He had heard of it but didn’t know
who was hosting and we didn’t know a single person there. He heard it from someone who
knew someone. Maybe he overheard it, I don’t know. But Lenny always functioned best when
his mind was running one way, focused on the target, like he was engaged in some unnamed,
unknown sport that required intense, singular concentration. We were going to this party of
Polo shirts and Porsches and that was that. I didn’t want to go, wasn’t interested in going,
even if I had the clothes and the car. Even if I knew some of the people there, I still wasn’t
interested. But I wasn’t driving, I never drove and that seemed to preclude any input on my
part regarding where we were going and what we were doing. We got there, got stared at, got
spoken to in snarky tones and headed back to the car before we even made it to the front
door.

We were purged, cast off, sent packing. We drifted off in the unsightly Chevelle, moving away
from Sunset Boulevard as if it were to blame. Lenny went east, then north. We were silent
while the radio faded in, then out, then in again. Eventually Lenny spoke, choosing a topic as
far away from our fiasco as possible. He explained that Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and Leonard
Cohen were great because they were Jewish.

“What about Neil Diamond? He sucks.” I said.

“Yeah, right. He sucks so bad he’s a millionaire ten times over.”

“What about Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Lennon and McCartney?”

“What about ‘em?”

“They’re great but they’re not Jewish.”

He didn’t answer but instead abruptly flipped a u-turn.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re going in there.”

And that’s how I ended up in the bar. I lost track of Lenny, ordered hard liquor instead of
beer and met Mary from Mount St. Mary’s. I couldn’t see her, couldn’t gain insights into who
she was by her voice because the music was so loud I couldn’t hear the tone, modulation or
nuances. And it was dark but not a foreboding dark, just a plain, run of the mill dark that was
darker than most bars I had been in. I didn’t know where we were, didn’t know the name of
the bar, and Mary from Mount St. Mary’s may not have been the girl on that particular night
because that name was tossed around for a long time after Lenny and I first heard it, just for
purposes of amusement. Mary from Mount St. Mary’s might have been that night that Lenny
drank peppermint schnapps and tried to hurdle a bush, failed miserably and either bruised or
cracked a few ribs in the process. It might not have been Mary at all, it might have been
another different night involving that Armenian girl who seemed unimpressed or even
remotely interested with the fact that out of a roomful of unknown "Odars" (non Armenians) I
was Armenian and we found each other. I began to doubt that she was even Armenian. How
could she have been? We are a crazy, elated, enraged, people full of life, with strong disparate
convictions. But this girl was deflated and nearly motionless. There was no life in her, as a
matter of fact life had been kicking the crap out of her and she had this sense of defeat and
humiliation that was so strong that not buying her a drink was not enough; I felt obliged to
have her write down her number on a cocktail napkin and then tell her I wasn’t going to call.
She accepted this as the norm. She looked and acted as though her friends had talked her into
this talking to strangers in a bar and she thought it was idiotic and was doing it against her
will. It was idiotic to me as well but I was doing it gleefully, wholeheartedly, enthusiastically. It
was part of being twenty-one. If this was the game to play then I would play it and later, when
I was old and mature and responsible I would remember my twenty-first year in the world
and all the idiotic, wonderfully foolish things I had done.

But the girl in the bar didn’t know any of that. She was already drunk when I found her, so
while we sat on the barstools trying to talk, I waited for a slow song to invite her to dance. I
was going to do everything and nothing and it would be fantastic and very, very foolish. When
“Ballroom Blitz” ended, Art Garfunkel’s dreamy version of “I Only Have Eyes for You” poured
out like molasses. I leaned close so she could see me nod my head in the direction of a glass
paneled door that led to a small patio outside. I knew exactly what I was doing and I had
absolutely no clue whatsoever. And so we danced.

There was no dance in the dance though, no touch to the touch, no souls glowing together. In
Armenian you could say “Pon chee ga,” or nothing there. There was nothing; it was less than
nothing, that’s all. But I wasn’t going to let nothingness get in the way. I only had to get her
attention.

“This is a great version of the song. It buries the original.”

It was a completely reasonable thing to say to someone I didn’t know, wouldn’t know and
wouldn’t care if—when she got over her hangover late in the afternoon the next day—she
had no memory of me. I looked at her while we danced without dancing. She looked left, right,
to the floor, like parts of her were falling off, all very slowly, slower than the pace of the song
that was too slow, even for slow dancing. I was thinking “though she feels as though she’s in a
play, she is anyway.” She looked at me for a second; apparently temporarily forgetting that
someone was in close proximity with his arms around her waist. She wasn’t alarmed though
and she readied her face to speak.

“Mmmurff.”

Which I took to mean, “Why don’t you kiss me already,” so I did.

“Idina glergum,” she said, a little more assertively than whatever it was she had just said the
moment before.

I never understood a single word she said but my eyes were opened and I immediately felt
ashamed and relieved. The song ended and we walked back into the bar, to our barstools,
stood by our barstools saying nothing, thinking nothing or maybe saying simple niceties and
thinking everything. It was a time of testing yourself against the prototypes of the day. I may
not have known who I was at the time but in that moment I knew who I wasn’t. We looked at
each other and somehow became unacquainted strangers again, and I walked away as if I
were just passing by anyone, any stranger in a bar that was darker than usual. I didn’t worry
about her, in a hour I wouldn’t think or talk about her, and I had no doubt that she wouldn’t
remember much of anything, maybe someone she couldn’t see or understand, saying
something, hanging around for a while and then walking away. I went to find Lenny and we
headed for the parking lot. He didn’t get anywhere and when I told him my story he just lau!
ghed. It was drizzling rain but perspiration was rolling down the middle of my back. I peeled
off my sweatshirt, flung it over my shoulder and stood in the middle of the parking lot taking
in the cool, wet, night air. I felt good, felt alive, felt brand new.

“Come on, Jake, let’s go,” Lenny called as he got in the car.

“Ok, ok.”

We found Sunset and headed to Hollywood to go up Highland to Barham and back to
Burbank. I started singing quietly to myself.

“What the hell are you muttering?”

“A Dylan song.”

“Which one?”

“And if anybody asks me, is it easy to forget? I’ll say it’s easily done just pick anyone and
pretend that you never have met.”

“It’s not easy to do but you sing worse than Dylan.”

“Shut up, man.”

“Let’s go to Seven-Eleven and buy a six of Michelob.”

“Sounds good.”

By the time we passed Hollywood High we were far enough from L.A. and close enough to
Burbank to feel like we were back home. The next morning I woke up with the story receding
from the front of my head to the back; I was ready to move one day closer to being twenty-
two.

© J.F. Chavoor.

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We like this story because:
It reminds us of those crazy days when
the nights were the most important
hours, when most experiences were
new and the prosaic was more
meaningful.

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