Coming Of Age In 1950s America- With Moonrise Kingdom In Mind

 

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin

Every heterosexual boy (other sexual orientations and identifications can speak to their own dreams, and chaste lusts), every heterosexual boy in Frank Jackman’s  old corner boy working- class neighborhood anyway in oceanside Hullsville just outside of Boston, when he came of age, maybe at twelve maybe a little older  (rule of thumb for coming of age: when he saw those same elementary school classmate girls, or a stray girl or two around the neighborhood who went to private school, hell, really Catholic school in that neighborhood and thus even more exotic, that the previous year were nothing but distractions and nuisances to a corner boy orderly world had magically become, well, interesting) had his dreams of  finding his fair Rosamund and taking her, and them far away from the dreary day to day madnesses that they both faced. Taking that fair damsel drenched in some Sir Walter Scott medieval knightly romance saga from, you know, the endless parent civil wars traps, the other guys, your so-called best corner boy friends, who had no time for girls trying to cut your time trap, the school madnesses and assorted villainous teachers and other authorities trap, and worse, worse the raging hormonal (homicidal?) madnesses trap. And while in those days, those halcyon 1950s days, when it was a very close thing indeed whether we collectively of the earth would blow ourselves to kingdom come that dream, that Frank Jackman dream, looked and felt something like this:

Jesus, Frank said to himself, distractedly, that Rosamund (not the real name of the former girl stick figure turned object of devotion but he used that name above and so it has enough medieval enchantment and adventure to it to be dream-worthy here) sure has changed since last year. Last year she was nothing but a stick (of course Frank, if pressed would not have been able to use that term last year,  last year when, at best, girls were not on the radar, or at least had no reason for commentary by Frank and his corner boys) you know all straight lines and right angels, kind of looked like a boy except goofy and was a girl and now she has some curves, little curves, that made her, he guessed, a woman (although coming from a three boy household he wasn’t sure and he wouldn’t dream of asking his mother, his high holy Catholic mother who would have just kept saying don’t think about that now, or ever, and just  do your schoolwork). He wondered where did she get those ruby red lips (he, endlessly, was clueless about the very busy cosmetics and undergarment sections of the local department store where such doing were a rite of passage of their own for the other gender aged twelve or thereabouts) and those flashing blue eyes surrounded by some penciled dark lines that made those blue eyes even bluer. And, and, well, he wondered why did he keep peeping over to her aisle and her seat two rows in front in class every chance he got. Every chance he got once he was told, told in the infinitely complicated intelligence boys’ “lav”-girls’ “lav” grapevine that would have put the old time slavery underground railroad or the modern CIA to shame that one ruby-lipped, blue-eyed, soft-curved Miss Rosamund Kiley “liked” him. And also through that complicated network Frank sent the war drums beating that he “liked “her too, kind of.              

[And the basis of the she “liked” information? Well she was ahead, way ahead of Frank in her cunning maneuvers, since she had tried , tried in vain to draw his attention last year (of course these years, last or now, are driven by the school term year not the silly lunar calendar).  Last summer she had set her eyes (blue eyes remember, ocean blue he thought for a further description) for him when he and his corner boys had started to sing the new rage doo wop like Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers on Why Do Fools Fall In Love and that music had drawn (and the summer heat) her and her girlfriends into the back of the school playground where they practiced one night and that was where she spotted and stayed fixed on Frank, and no other. She probably had her own chaste Galahad dreams but she can tell her own story in her own voice sometime because this is strictly Frank’s dream.]  

And that “liked,” even if not couched in less definitive and more satisfactory “kind of” like his was all it took for “reborn” Frank (or any boy if that corner boy night comparing notes then and later had any cache) to decide that he must take his Rosamund far from the madness, far from the humdrum world of school, parents, church, boy scouts, and other drudge matters now that she “liked” him. And so he lined up a dream adventure one night, one restless midnight when he couldn’t sleep. It was all about going, just the two of them, just them, up to Rock Island and starting a little household of their own, just them, where they could talk, and walk around the stony beach, and fend off whatever Mother Nature threw their way. If anybody came looking for them, as they surly would, well, they would keep ahead of that easily enough. And then after a while, after he was sure that he “liked” her, more than kind of, and she still liked him more than kind of too, they would, ah, explore each other, kisses first, not big ones like in the movies but sweet, and fondles later (he was mad to find out about those curves, about how soft she was, about that bath soap smell when she walked within two feet of him and that disturbed his sleep). Yes, he would put his hands softy there, softly on those curves. Then Frank woke up with a start, sweaty, a little confused, and a little flush…