Kings

Twenty years ago this fall, I began an intense, deep, and eventually fucked-up friendship with an intense, deep, and eventually fucked-up boy. We went from adolescent simplicity to the death of a parent to kissing on the hood of a car to rejection in the form of lack of commitment. We lasted this way for 9 years. The death of his mother scarred him and taught me, the kissing progressed to twice-in-a-lifetime sex, and the rejection was completed in his would-be wife requiring his severing our relationship.

We, like those in the high school generations before us and surely the generations that followed, were somewhat obsessed with The Catcher in the Rye by Salinger. I hung on the beauty of Holden’s hesitation, his exterior confidence so deeply intertwined with his inner self-doubt, as it reminded me so much of myself. J fixated on his risk-taking, his cavalier attitude towards his own safety, and his complete rejection of authority. He spoke of the Rye, of being the Catcher, and identified with Holden in a way that both enamored me and scared me.

J began calling me Jane. Remember Jane? She is the next door neighbor-girl who appears for only a page or so, the one with whom Holden played checkers. We know from clues in the context that she’s suffered some trauma at the hands of an adult male. We know that she would watch her checkers kinged, and would then leave them in the back row, where they would be protected – not risking their capture.

It turned into something of a nickname, although nobody else invoked it or understood it when he did. He kept it in his back pocket to use when he was attempting to goad me into doing something I didn’t want to do. He would yell it out the car window while driving off to do whatever thing I’d refused to accompany him in doing.

We bought each other books with ridiculous frequency. He often inscribed them to me as Jane. In 1994, for Christmas, he bought me Sailor Song by Ken Kesey, having moved on from the comfort of Catcher to the more college-like Kerouac and Kesey. He wrote, in part, “…have the courage that is truly within you to move your kings from the back row, Jane…”

I reveled in it. I was needy enough, especially of his attention, to enjoy that he noticed my nuances enough to liken them to a literary character and then take the time to dub me with her name. I felt special. I was a little bothered that he saw me as someone so cautious, so unwilling to take risks. He saw all my kings; in fact, I set them out for him to see, and he extrapolated that they were in the back row. I think, actually, he helped to keep them there, in a non-malignant, yet still manipulative way.

For a long time now, I’ve not had even one king remain in my back row. My kings were set free, slowly at first and then in a great rush seemingly all at once, as I refused to retake the GREs, moved across the country to Los Angeles by myself, quit my job, travelled across the planet, learned a new trade, lived barefoot in a bungalow, boarded buses on mountain tops, arrived back home in the US without any money or anywhere to live. I was a ski-bum, have had only $4.20 in my checking account, prayed a job would come through in time for the next school year. I’ve cut up vegetables, slung pizza, supervised six people, balanced a half-million dollar budget when I had no real idea what I was doing, left my field for another. I am always organized and usually know where my kings are, but they most certainly are not in the back row.

Occasionally, one has been captured. I moved one king to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and it was promptly jumped; this set me on my ass, wondering what to do now that I was living somewhere I hated in a job that was a bad fit. Another was hauled in by my formidable sometimes-opponent, the Universe, when I found myself in Paraguay, more miserable than I’d ever been and admitting I’d made a rather large mistake in entering the Peace Corps. I’ve missed those kings as they’ve gone, but after the fact, hardly noticed, because when your kings are moving around, you always know you’ve got another move to make.

J? Not sure. Last I saw him in 2004 at a mutual friend’s wedding, he was married to his wife and they had three kids. They live one town over from where we grew up and he teaches at our high school. If there was a map to the back row, I think that might be it.

Just today, driving down the highway on a blue-skied, yellow-leaved, unbelievable gift of a chilly fall day, I made this connection. I’ve not considered, ever before, that my kings are running about willy-nilly. I know what the years have felt like, how wonderfully rich and full they’ve been, and how much I enjoy each new adventure that presents itself as an opportunity to me. I know how little I hesitate before I say yes – to myself and others – in essence risking another king each time. But I’d never thought of it in the context of J. I think of him so infrequently these days that it surprised me to have the thought at all.

I don’t give him any credit for my kings hitting the red and black road. I actually think, after all this time, they weren’t ever relegated to the back row to begin with. He just wanted me, for whatever immature, semi-controlling reason, to think they were.