Part XXXVI

The week started out rough as it was. Mom had to go down and pay a couple of hundred dollars to the school just so I could graduate. I had kept my football jersey; had done a candy drive, and spent the money; as well as a couple of other things I did not hold up my end of. On Tuesday she told me I had to be out of her house by Saturday, two days after graduation. I mentioned this at school and people asked what I was going to do and I said, "I don't know." I wasn't really thinking too clearly, but as far as Naomi was concerned, it was unimportant because I was moving to Honolulu with her. On Wednesday night they held our Baccalaureate service at Stanford University Chapel. My brother and his girlfriend came into town that day and we all drove to Stanford together. For those of you who don't know Palo Alto in the 80's, it was an interesting ride. You see, if you turn one way off the freeway, you are in the Palo Alto people think they know...multi-million dollar homes, high end shops and the like. But, if you turn the wrong way, the other way, you end up in East Palo Alto. During the 1980's many people thought South Central Los Angeles, or South Side Chicage or some other area had the highest murder and crime rate. Well, they were wrong, it was the tiny third-world region in the midst of great wealth known as East Palo Alto. We went the wrong way and had an adventure, but I will save that story for another time. Eventually, we made it to Stanford.

After the service, two sisters I knew from Choir and their mother walked up to me and offered to let me move into their house for the summer. I responded by telling them I would get back to them. Naomi was right next to me, but it did not occur to me that this would be a problem. Well, it was. When we got home, she started the conversation with, "I don't want to make you mad, but F%#$ You!" There were so many problems with this statement that it mad my head spin. First of all, "I don't want to make you mad"? Tell that to the next phrase you utter. Also, save the F You for later in the argument when it can punctuate your point. I just didn't know what to do with the curse that early in the conversation. I wasn't even prepared with a F you too. Instead, I grabbed my brother and told him I needed a drive to calm me down and he and I drove around for an hour or so and then headed back so I could deal with whatever her problem was. When we arrived, Naomi was gone. She had called my friend Mark and he had picked her up. I did not know until the next day that she was not coming back, so I waited up the night before my graduation to have our talk. I was less than pleased in the morning.

When I got to school, Mark came up to let me know it was not his idea that she did not come back and I told him it was a bad idea to get in between our spat. That was it, no more problem with Mark. Guys are so shallow that we can forgive some pretty big things, so long as there is a guy explanation. He had taken her to his girlfriend's house and she stayed there. I did not see her again until she came over for my graduation. Since I did not want to discuss it during my celebration, we really didn't talk much. I have pictures of the two of us together at graduation but I don't remember saying a word to her. We had dinner and presents afterward, and then I went to my grad night, all-night celebration. I got home about 4am and slept on the couch, while she was asleep in my bedroom. I guess my brother went to play golf and sometime around 11am I heard my Mom and Darin's girlfriend leaving and telling Naomi to let me sleep. About one minute later, she said, "are you awake?" Of course I was so I said yes. She asked to talk about what happened and I said I had nothing to say. She said she didn't want to end that way and I told her she should have thought of that the other night. I didn't see Naomi again for over a year.

That evening, I threw all my stuff into a friend's car and moved into the house of the family that had invited me. They had a celebratory end of school pool party and I found an interest in a girl named Julie, who I hooked up with at the party. I was quite the guy for a rebound, and though Julie did not know me yet, all my friends saw this as my pattern of skipping from one romance to the next without a care for the one I left behind. I would say they were accurate at that time of my life.