I was talking with an old friend on the telephone about his recent trip to Chicago when the name Roxana Chase came up. My friend bumped into her at a bar in Chicago last week. Did I remember Roxana Chase? She was a year ahead of us at high school. "You remember, the tall girl with long black hair? You remember – she went out with Ken's older brother. She and her husband were in town for a convention. We had drinks. The husband even showed me a picture of their two kids. She's changed. She gained some weight but still looks good. Her hair is really short too. Her husband is a restaurant manager in Colorado Springs. She said if I ever vacationed there, I should stop by. Roxana does the accounting. She loves it and seems happy. She said she got divorced – or did her husband say that? You can't believe what she remembers." He started laughing. "We talked about Mr. McDonald" (a crazy teacher we despised)." She said Mr. McDonald dated her mother for a few months. Can you believe that? And – "(he started laughing) – "She remembers the bomb scares. She tells her friends about the day our school had three bomb scares in a row – how after the third one, everybody just went home. She remembers you, I think."
And I remembered her, of course. She was the most beautiful girl in our high school. Her body had blossomed before the other girls, and her blouse always had the top two buttons unbuttoned. It drove guys crazy, especially when she bent over to tie her shoes. She dated several guys, and I can't say I had anything to do with her except for the greeting I gave her every day in the hall. She always said hi back. She was a junior, and I was a freshman – only two years, but in high school the difference was insurmountable. I once contemplated sending her an anonymous rose for Valentine's Day, but lost the nerve at the last minute. To say I had a crush on her was an understatement; it wasn't love or even infatuation I felt but an inability to tear my eyes off her whenever she was around. Once I saw her sunning on the front lawn of somebody's house. The image of her feminine figure peeking out of her bikini while she chatted with friends enchants me still.
She went to college, and I never saw her again, though I pictured her in countless situations and positions of pleasure. Yes, I lost my virginity several thousand times to this seventeen year old girl. When I recall her limbs and spritely smile, I recall my youth, my childish fear of her, the silly teenage imagination. I see her shedding clothes for the first time before a man; details of that occasion are unknown, but it must have happened, so I try imagining it. I try to be there. I see before my eyes a sarcastic bikini-clad girl of sixteen in the front yard, lying on her towel, relaxed, giggling, self-absorbed and totally unaware of her effect on teenager boys. I can see my hand on her stomach, inching towards her bosom – would she allow that? I'm sitting in the car next to her kissing those lips – looking into her eyes (was I ever really close enough to notice them?), moving my hands down her back, and Roxana smiling – not laughing or moaning or panting – just looking at me in that half-mocking way (did she even know my name? ) Her face becomes less innocent, more aware of sensuality – a shadow of past loveliness. An older version of herself straddles my supine body with her back to me, breathing hard, rocking my body as I hold her moving hips. She cries and settles onto my chest. I give her a kiss, and notice that nothing was the same; her body had more bulges, her breasts were sagging with age, her skin was less smooth (but still sensitive to a man's touch). The galloping caresses continued; then with a whimper and a sigh she expires, shaking and shaking still, closing her eyes and sighing a long sigh, lying back and facing the sky as if placed inside a coffin.
And where was she? Where was she?
Written, June 1996
