It’s not that I don’t want to remember those times. I couldn’t forget them, even if I wanted to. Among my peers, I had only two friends. Both are long dead. Most of my “social” time was spent among adults: two of my mother’s friends and some teachers, including one whom I hated at first but who influenced me in ways I didn’t realize until much later.
I wasn’t exactly “date bait.” To my knowledge, none of my peers considered me physically attractive. I had no social skills. (Sometimes I feel I still don’t have any.) I was bookish, but not in the way I am now: My energies were directed, mainly by my father, toward subjects and pursuits that would help me get into West Point, Annapolis, one of the other Armed Forces academies or an ROTC program.
And, even if I were less nerdy, I wouldn’t have wanted to date. Like every other LGBTQ kid in that place and time, I was in the closet. Other non-confirming kids might’ve “come out” if the social environment had been less hostile. But I couldn’t have: I didn’t even have the words to express how I felt about my gender and sexuality and knew of no-one who could be a model for me. So, dating anyone, whatever their identity or orientation, wouldn’t have felt right.
About my only solace was cycling: up the Atlantic Highlands scenic route; along the ocean from Sandy Hook to Long Branch, Asbury Park and sometimes beyond; out past the farms and horse ranches in western Monmouth County. That, of course, made me even more of an oddball among my peers, nearly all of whom discarded, abandoned or handed down their bicycles the moment they got their driver’s licenses.
So, if I have no plans to go to my class reunion and make no effort to recall those times, why am I talking about them now? Well, the other day I was in a store when Janis Ian’s “At Seventeen” played on the PA system.
I hadn’t heard it in a long time, but it was all over the airwaves during my senior year—when I was seventeen. It, of course, is about not “fitting in” because of one’s looks, personality or socioeconomic class. Some, including yours truly, have also heard it as a song about being “in the closet.” That makes sense, especially when you realize that she “came out” a while back.
As much as I appreciate the songwriting talents of Joni Mitchell, John Lennon, Laura Nyro and the Bobs (Marley and Dylan), none of their works, or those of any other tunesmith, has ever meant as much as Ms. Ian’s anthem did during that year. And I daresay that even now, almost no other song can move me, again, the way “At Seventeen “ did (to tears) the other day. For that, I will always be grateful to Janis Ian.
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