First date with a girl, spring 1985. I’m 14, a freshman: she’s 16, a junior. An embarrassment to date an underclassmen but there you go. She’s in the band, but beautiful. Mom says you need a “good haircut” which means a salon. So she takes me to see her guy downtown, the first time I’m knowingly with a gay man. All I can remember is he looked like Kenny Loggins. There is something not right about men’s beards in the 80s. It’s like they’re painted on, too prim.
So the getting ready part. How much time can I spend in the mirror taking poses? And thinking maybe I should try shaving for the first time but that’s ridiculous. I could go another ten years.
Because it’s spring and I’m now a young man it’s the peach-colored Izod and a pair of cream-colored trousers with docksiders and no socks. It’s my best Don Johnson, Miami Vice. If only I could pull off a blazer and the Wayfarer sunglasses. There is nothing better than this feeling on a Saturday in April when it’s starting to get warm again and the trees are leafing out and I’ve got a date. Except my parents are driving.
So we pick her up—Melinda LeCount, her real name—and naturally she lives on the west end because her dad is a professor. We’ve got a Ford Thunderbird, newish, respectable, the same one I’ll sell for a pittance in Pittsburgh ten years later.
I ask the AI what films were released in the spring of 1985 and there it is: The Breakfast Club. We saw The Breakfast Club. Melinda’s silhouette by the light of the screen smiling and eating popcorn. We held hands. She smiled, nervous. Mom and dad picked us up by the theater at the mall and then the drive home as the sun set, this is the best part: the windows rolled down and the first time I heard Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side.” It’s a nice time with Melinda but that moment with Lou will live with me forever too.
The first time kissing Melinda at the park in the afternoon on Easter Sunday with it being unseasonably cold and trying to hold back the snot that’s backing up in my nose from leaking onto her cheek. Love isn’t pretty like this but it’s real. It will end in flames and she’ll go on to date a senior and not really say hi to me in the halls. But I’ll have the start of my own history too.
Bill Pearse 
Hello Bill , love your first love story , which a lot of us can relate to. How awkward It was. Thanks Luther
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Thank you Luther for reading and commenting! Here’s to awkward…
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My 14 year old first date was with Clara Chambers. I knew her from county orchestra where we made up 67% of the violas. We did not hold hands or kiss, and I ruined the banter I had with her ever after because I was so shy and nervous on the date that I felt like an idiot. We saw Stephen Kings Carrie, unaware that the first ten minutes would be slo-mo full frontal nudity. God that night was a flop. Ah, memories!
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That’s awesome, the pig blood scene must have been romantic too. Thanks for sharing Jeff! I wonder if somewhere in this galaxy or another Clara is blogging about you right now too.
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For me, that night was memorable (in a bad way) from beginning to end. I wonder if even remembers my name or the date.
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It was a stretch for me to reach back to 1985. Kind of a fun exercise. Memories like photos really fade with detail over time.
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You capture this moment beautifully, Bill.
BTW
My ’80s beard was a wild auburn beast bristling with long-haired nonchalance. (It hid a lot!)
Cheers,
DD
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Your 80s beard! That sounds like the great title to a story doesn’t it? Wish I could see it! Perhaps the imagination is even better 😀
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My first we saw Peggy Sue Got Married. Mom drove, date sat in middle of the front seat of our Monte Carlo. It was one long seat side to side and to move it forward or back we had to work our butts and legs in tandem. That’s about all I can remember of it, other than the takeaway which was that it none of it went all that great. Very squirmy and awkward. We were both freshman at the time, but she moved on to a junior who could drive.
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She moved on to a junior who could drive. Isn’t that the way? It’s your first foray to adulthood to get that license. I love that image of butts and legs moving in tandem. I don’t know that I’ve ever thought about that, just done it. I love that image. Reminds me of a similar car my grandparents owned. All those kinds of cars from the late 70s/80s are always the same shit brown in my memory.
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“She’s in the band, but beautiful.” Ha! As if those things are exclusive…
A universal tale if ever there was one. Mine was the first of three Debbies. She was older too. My first real kiss, in a field in the spring at night. I got bronchitis. She would describe Garfield comics to me over the phone, and that was about as intimate as we got before she moved on.
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Phone romances were the best. The love of the voice, staying up together all night without hanging up. Kind of funny and sweet. Debbie! What a name for the 70s, 80s. Debbie and Paula.
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The Breakfast Club. Perfect.
“Walk on the wild side” perfectly imperfect.
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