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That was how we heard about black lights. It was the 60's, and fluorescent colors and black lights had met each other at a love-in, and had really hit it off, particularly in any situation where the newly created "peace symbol" was involved. Suddenly it was incredibly cool to own a black light and some posters the black light would affect, which were simply called "black light posters."
But I wasn't interested in the posters. My imagination was completely captured by the light itself, by its name. Black light. Without anybody explaining it to me, I understood immediately what it was. It was so simple, and so clear to me. A black light must be the opposite of a white light, right? Following this logic--the solemn, plodding logic of an eight-year old--if a white light made things light, then a black light must make things dark.
It was portable darkness.
If you pointed this black light at something, it would be enveloped in darkness, as if the black light functioned as some sort of light vacuum. You could literally shine a beam of darkness, obscuring any object at will.
All this was clear to me the moment I heard the term "black light." So sure was I of this, so captivated by this abstract yet urgently tangible concept, that I completely tuned out any explanation of what a black light really was. When somebody who had actually seen this mythical object in a "head shop" tried to describe it to me, I quickly dismissed him, saying, "I know what a black light is."
I was so sure.
It was months before I actually saw one. The disappointment was crushing. It looked like a regular fluorescent light, a long glass tube of similar shape and size, but with an odd purple glow. Not black. Purple. And it didn't make things dark. In fact, it had to be dark for the thing to work. This was all wrong.
I couldn't even get excited about the funny way it made my older brother's Keep On Truckin' poster glow in such odd colors. Even the peace symbol poster--which, if you looked closely, was made up of lots of cartoon people who were naked for some reason, all grappling in a variety of anatomically challenging positions--even this failed to titillate me.
Black light? The name was a lie. There was no real black light; no beam that cast darkness at the whim of the light-bearer (or would it be dark-bearer?). The technology did not exist. I even asked around to confirm this, drawing some odd looks from those I queried. But no, the technology did not exist. And it still doesn't.
You might wonder why this would upset me so. I was an odd boy, a thinker, who tended to obsess over random and often rather abstract concepts. I could entertain myself for hours just thinking about things, the more circular or open-ended the better. For instance, I found it fascinating to contemplate what the color "clear" would look like. No stranger to crayons, I believed every conceivable color must have a name, and clear was no exception.
My interest in clear stemmed from the Saturday catechism classes I was forced to attend by my very Catholic parents. Catechism is sort of the Catholic equivalent of Sunday school, but was scheduled on Saturday mornings, apparently to ensure that in addition to school and church, there was at least one unpleasant thing you had to do on every single day of the week. A very Catholic sentiment, from which I'm still scarred--over the years, the gap in my knowledge of Saturday morning cartoon lore has caused me repeated embarrassment.
Back to clear. We were taught that God created everything; that before him there was nothing. No life, no Earth, no light. Nothing. This fascinated me, and I strove to envision how things looked before God had gotten creative. I asked our catechism teacher many questions.
"So there was nothing?"
"That's right, Ryan."
"No light?"
"No, Ryan. That's why God said, 'Let there be light.'"
"No darkness?"
A pause. "I suppose not, Ryan. There was nothing. Now let's look at page 21--"
"So He hadn't invented colors yet, right?"
"Ryan, we know it's not polite to interrupt, now don't we? But no, there would have been no colors."
Before the aging nun could continue I forged ahead, an unstoppable little choo-choo train of logic. "So there was no light, and no darkness, and no colors, so everything must have just been . . . clear, right? 'Cause there was nothing there, right?"
"I suppose so, Ryan. Now, let's move on to page 21."
Clear.
What did clear look like? In hindsight, I think I was old enough to understand that clear wasn't really a color per se; that instead you could see the color of other objects through the clearness. But there was nothing to see through the clearness, because God hadn't created anything yet. So I guess I was actually fixated on what nothing would look like, but my Crayola-oriented brain sought to categorize what I'd see in the pre-let there be light era as a color. And that color was clear.
I'd think about it, lying in bed with my eyes closed. I honestly believed that if I thought hard enough, I would ultimately be able to see it in my mind. But the vision hovered deliciously just out of reach, on the tip of my mental tongue. Why I found this entertaining is something I've never managed to explain to anybody in a way that didn't draw a rather condescending "Uh huh . . . well, that's . . . interesting" from my listener. Go figure.
Oddly enough, my church--the same church that found it necessary to encroach on both days of my weekends in the interest of my spiritual fortification and redemption--never brought up the notion that I should actually read the Bible. In their defense, they didn't discourage it either--the subject just somehow never came up. Instead, my knowledge of the Bible came from listening to somebody else read passages from it during church, or from my catechism teacher telling us tales of Samaritans, prodigal sons, and the ever-fascinating lepers.
It wasn't until high school, when I was dating a girl whose religious fervor grouped her among what we then called "Jesus freaks," that I first opened up a Bible and read it. I admit my motivation for reading it might have been influenced by some less-than-holy inclinations I had towards this voluptuous but pious girl, but the bottom line was that I was reading it, right? God couldn't have disapproved entirely, I thought.
It was illuminating. As far as I could tell, virtually none of the rituals we observed in the church had anything to do with anything I could find in the Bible. Nowhere could I find mention of altar boys, rosary beads, the smoking incense dispenser that the priest would wield over the congregation's heads like a giant salt shaker. Who came up with this stuff?
And wait a minute. Turns out it wasn't clear back then--it was dark! In disbelief, I read:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.
God didn't invent darkness. Or maybe He had--they didn't elaborate on that, but the upshot was that things didn't start out all clear and vacuumy. It was dark. And wet, too. And nobody had bothered to tell me, even when directly asked.
I never went back to the Catholic church after that.
Instead I began going to church with my newly acquired girlfriend, who had indeed been impressed by my newfound spiritual curiosity. And I actually enjoyed her church, an open-minded group that was given to warm hugs and lots of "sharing."
I'm not bitter, at least not anymore. After all, I had genuinely enjoyed the time I spent contemplating clearness, so it's not a total loss. At least it wasn't as big a letdown as the whole breast milk thing.
A few years after the black light debacle, I became aware of breasts. Roughly the same time I discovered where my father kept his cache of Playboy magazines, girls my age began sprouting these fascinating new extremities, as if by magic.
Like most boys, I wanted to touch these magical objects. Their pull was tangible, far stronger than any lunar tides. I wanted to kiss these magical objects, ignoring the fact that I had not yet succeeded in kissing any other portion of any female, lips included. And I wanted to suck on these magical objects, which from what I gathered was not an uncommon ambition.
But I wanted more. I wanted to drink from them. I mean, wasn't that the whole purpose of sucking on them?
As my adolescent fantasies grew in my hormone-addled brain, I focused on my ultimate scenario: being a grownup. If I were a grownup, I could get married. If I were married, I could have sex. Which meant I could be naked. Which meant I would have access to breasts. Which meant I could while away my days in a state of lacto-marital bliss, drinking at will from the breasts of my beloved.
You'll notice that in this flow of logic, having sex was not the ultimate goal; rather, it was a means to an even greater end: suckling on the full ripe breasts of my wife (who in my mind bore a striking resemblance to Miss February of either 1971 or '72--I forget which). Some might suggest that this represents a skewed set of priorities.
But I had bigger problems.
Nobody had bothered to let me know that breasts were not stocked at all times with milk. Nobody had bothered to hip me to the whole pregnancy/childbirth clause in this mammarian contract. How could breasts that looked so full and ripe not be filled with milk?
It might have been nice to know this before my first encounter with a real live breast. During my eighth-grade year, I was fortunate enough to find myself at a makeout party with a fourteen-year-old girl who allowed me grudging access to her breasts, first manually then orally. Seizing the opportunity, I nearly gave her a nipple hickey--repeatedly adjusting my embouchure, increasing the intensity of the suction I was applying--all to no avail. Finally cut off by a sweatshirt abruptly pulled back down over her budding breasts, I saw discomfort, confusion, and perhaps some revulsion in my partner's face. And I hadn't managed to drink a single drop. I must be doing something wrong.
When I related my complaints to my older brother, the scales fell quickly from my eyes. But not until he was done laughing.
It all seemed so unfair. I had to get her pregnant just to drink this stuff? We couldn't do that--we were far too young. I didn't want to marry her, after all. This was back in the day when if you got a girl pregnant, you married her. Period. And I wanted none of that--hell, she wasn't even my girlfriend. I just wanted to drink. To nurse. And now I was finding out I couldn't do that.
So what do you do with these things? Well, my brother suggested, you play with them. Girls like that, he said. I was not yet old enough to have acquired the sensitivity needed to actually care about what girls liked. I knew what I wanted, and that's what counted. And now that I found out I wasn't going to get what I wanted, I grew petulant.
I became anti-breast.
Thereafter, the girls I was interested in or attracted to were those with no discernible breasts with which to frustrate me. This set me apart from my male friends, who operated on the bigger-is-better principle, but endeared me to the teenage girls to whom puberty was not being generous or punctual.
But sometimes it was a matter of timing. My ninth-grade girlfriend, who was suitably flat-chested, went away to camp for the summer, only to return to start her sophomore year with a stunning pair of peach-sized bosoms, which she eagerly flaunted with the tightest knit clothing she could find. Although all my friends' jaws dropped when they saw my new-and-improved girlfriend, I found myself breaking up with her two weeks later. I forget what reason I gave her, but she'd never believe the real truth. Looking back, I feel bad, but she quickly became popular, and I've got to believe she's long since forgotten me.
I served the remainder of my sentence in that four-year holding cell we call high school, dating sporadically and dodging my girlfriends' pubescence when necessary. Then I heeded my parents' wishes and went off to college, where I changed majors five times, and girlfriends, nine. I finally left school after six years, with neither a degree nor a girlfriend.
Okay, so I had some issues.
And a psychologist would probably have a field day with my fixation. I found out much later in life that I had not been breast fed as a baby. I came into the world about the same time giant strides were being made in the production of baby "formula," and the medical thinking of the day suggested that actual breast milk was grossly inferior to the modern formula. This was also the age of Thalidomide, a sedative given to pregnant women, which left thousand of babies horribly deformed. Historically, medical science has often managed to advance the health of the species while simultaneously culling the herd. Happy Days indeed.
Anyway, years have gone by, and I like to think that I've worked my way through these issues--well, most of them, anyway. After all, I did eventually lift my ban on bosoms. While I never did rekindle the obsession with large breasts that is so common among men--an obsession that has driven so many women to augment their physiques with bags filled with either silicone or saline--I've finally learned not to be turned off by breasts, either. One small step for mankind . . .
And I finally did get to drink some actual breast milk, although it wasn't until my mid-thirties. And no, it wasn't when my lovely wife was pregnant with our first child. (I had no lovely wife; I still don't. Big surprise that such a sensitive and insightful guy is still on the market, eh?) Instead, it was a cocktail waitress who gave me my first taste. But it didn't happen the way you'd think.
Lisa waitressed at the little dive where I worked as a DJ. She was a single mother, the father of her new baby having fled upon learning Lisa was pregnant. With the help of her mother and assorted relatives, Lisa was going to raise the child on her own.
She came back to work at the bar only four weeks after the baby was born--no maternity leave (or any health benefits) in the nightclub business. One night after the bar was closed, we were cleaning up the place--a nightly group effort--when she stopped for a moment to fuss with her bra strap. She complained to all within earshot that nursing her baby was leaving her sore and uncomfortable.
Sensitive guy that I was, I offered to "kiss it and make it better."
The look she gave me would have withered a lesser man. But I continued unfazed, four Heinekens into a buzz that left me feeling uninhibited and witty. And darned good looking, too. "I've always wanted to taste breast milk," I said, my voice laden with all the sincerity and seductive charm one hears in every nightclub DJ's voice.
Lisa ignored me.
"No, really," I persisted. "I've never tasted it, and have always wondered what it was like."
"That's disgusting," said Bobby, our bartender. He shuddered at the thought, saying, "That's just . . . I don't know . . . gross!"
"Why?" I asked. "What's gross about it? It's the most natural thing in the world."
"Yeah, for a baby," Bobby said. "You're a grown man."
Lisa chimed in, saying, "I don't know about that. Grown, maybe. But a man?" She paused to look me up and down. "Face it," she said, "he's a child." Lisa was not without insight, I realize as I replay the conversation.
I said, "Wait a minute, Bobby. You're married. You've got two kids. You mean to say you've never tried breast milk?"
"No way!" Bobby looked appalled at the idea. "My wife wouldn't let me anywhere near the twins, as she calls 'em. Said she was way too sore, and I better keep my hands off. And who'd want to drink that stuff anyway? It's disgusting!"
"But how do you know it's disgusting if you never tried it?" I asked.
Bobby's response was quick and logical. "I've never eaten anything out of my cat's litter box either, but I feel pretty safe in assuming it wouldn't taste good." He was pleased with his analogy, and nodded triumphantly before returning to the task of wiping down the bar.
"Babies think it tastes good," I said. I was sounding a little childish now, and knew it. I took another swig of Heineken, before grabbing more chairs and placing them upside down on the tables.
Lisa looked at me and said, "So you're serious. You actually want to know what it tastes like?"
"Yeah . . ." I said, not sure where this was going. Despite my jokingly sleazy tone, I wasn't coming on to her, and I meant her no disrespect. I was sure she knew that. At least I think I was sure. I mean, I'd always found her attractive--hell, at closing time every woman started looking good to me. But I'd never considered Lisa to be my type. She was too . . . grown up for me. She was out of my league--she actually had her shit together. I mean, look at what she was doing, raising her own kid. That was inconceivable to me. I didn't even own a pet. And probably never would, after a particularly discouraging incident with a goldfish, which I do not care to recount here.
Lisa brought me back from the tunnel my train of thought had led me into, saying, "Well tonight's your lucky night." She hung up her bar towel, gave me a knowing grin, and then stepped into the kitchen, where I knew she kept her purse.
What had I done? She had obviously become desperate: an unwed mother reaching out to a man--any man--in a moment of loneliness. Needing to feel attractive to someone, needing to feel sexy. And fate had brought her to me. But was it the right thing to do--to take advantage of her in her time of need? To--
"Ryan? Did you hear me?" Lisa interrupted my moral debate, having returned from the kitchen to stand behind the bar. "Man, you always do that--one minute we're talking, the next, you just drift away somewhere. Where do you go when you do that?" She was still smiling, but not in as sexy a manner. More like a patient older sister dealing with a little brother who is not too quick on the uptake.
I was flustered. "Sorry," I said. "I was just--um--thinking."
"Having second thoughts?" Lisa asked. Her smile had turned playful again.
My god, she was actually serious. What had I gotten myself into? The reasonably nice guy that I like to believe lives inside me was looking for a graceful way out of this unwanted rendezvous, while the sexual opportunist that also comprises a big part of me started thinking that the evening was looking up. (Yes, I do hate myself sometimes, for those who are curious.)
But this time the nice guy was winning. I had to let her down easy.
"Lisa, I don't know if this is such a good idea . . ." I began.
Bobby's voice came from behind me. "What--are you chickening out? After all your talk?"
Jesus--now Bobby knew that Lisa wanted me to go home with her? I couldn't believe she was being so indiscreet about this. She must be more hard up than I thought. And now I'd never hear the end of this from Bobby. This was looking even more like a Very Bad Idea.
Lisa said, "Come on, Ryan. It'll be fun."
I couldn't believe they were talking about this so openly. I was no saint, but I was shocked to see that everybody in the bar seemed to be simultaneously setting aside their moral compasses. I knew for a fact that Bobby never cheated on his wife, and I never saw Lisa leave the bar with anyone. My own slate was not so clean, but hey, I was unattached.
But then, so was Lisa, now more than ever. Uh oh.
Bobby joined Lisa behind the bar, also grinning. "Yeah, Ryan, give it a try. Be a change from your usual nightcap." He lifted a shot glass containing a pale translucent fluid, and said, "Bottoms up!"
Nightcap? Bottoms up?
"What is that stuff?" I asked, pointing to the shot glass. Heineken was doing my powers of deduction no favors. I walked up to the bar to take a closer look.
"It's breast milk, like I said," Lisa answered. "I went in the back room and squeezed some into this glass so you could try it." Seeing the look on my face, she quickly said, "You didn't think I was going to let you . . . you know . . . drink it the same way Zoë does, did you?" Zoë was Lisa's baby, and at four weeks old, probably more intelligent than I felt at that moment.
"No, no," I said hastily. "Of course not! I was just kidding--you know--messing around. No offense, right?"
She turned to Bobby, smiling. "Yeah, like I'd let Ryan anywhere near--what does your wife call them--the twins?" She had emphasized my name with a sarcasm that stung, no matter how well-deserved.
"Yeah, right," Bobby said, high-fiving her.
Lisa turned her attention to me. "Ryan, you're supposed to drink it while it's warm. You know, to get the full effect." She giggled, while Bobby nodded his head like a dashboard dog.
It was time to belly up to the bar.
The glass was about half full (a perception that should demonstrate my optimistic nature), and the milk was a pale and murky gray in the barroom light. I could feel its ebbing warmth through the sides of the glass.
Bobby leaned in close to watch the spectacle, whispering his words of encouragement: "If you puke, you gotta clean it up." I ignored him.
Lisa was appraising me with a bemused smile. "Well?" she said, prodding me, seeing if I'd finish what I started.
This was SO not going the way I had envisioned my first taste of the fabled fluid. Instead of this being an erotic milestone in my life, I suddenly felt like a little boy on a school playground, with a gang of kids double-daring me to do something either highly inadvisable or downright dangerous. But I had never walked away from a dare, particularly a double-dare. Not when I was ten, and not now.
So I drank it.
Watching me intently, Bobby clowned around, making gagging noises. I ignored him and drained the glass, banging it down on the bar like a judge's gavel.
The lukewarm milk was thin and watery, and noticeably sweet. And while not disgusting, it was nothing I'd ever want to drink again. Ever.
"Well?" Lisa said again, an expectant tone in her voice. In a brief (and all too rare) flash of insight, it occurred to me that it would not be a good idea to criticize a woman's breast milk. That would be hitting a little too close to home. No, some form of praise was in order.
Lisa's smile was showing signs of strain. "Well?" she said a third time, her voice betraying her impatience. "Did you like it?"
Bobby grabbed the glass, examining it to make sure I'd drunk it all. I continued to ignore him, and turned to answer Lisa.
"Uh--yeah, I did," I said, groping for something to add. "It was . . . nice."
Lisa beamed at me, her smile staying in place for the next few minutes while she finished her chores. Bobby just looked disgusted and took the glass over to the dishwasher.
When Lisa wasn't looking I grabbed my Heineken and did my best to wash the taste out of my mouth.
After she left, it took me two more Heinekens to finish the job. Two more Heinekens to wash away the wreckage of another juvenile dream, dashed on the jagged rocks of adult reality. I tried to bolster my own spirits: maybe the milk would be better in a romantic situation, coming straight from the source, as it were.
But I doubted it.
I wrote it off as another step toward becoming a grownup. I've concluded that this means accepting the notion that some things simply are not possible--they're just not going to happen. Or even worse, they may happen, but they won't even begin to live up to your expectations.
That's just the way it is.
I get it. Even if I get it slower than most people, I get it.
I mean, I understand that I can't leap a tall building in a single bound, that I can't shine a beam of darkness, and that I'll probably never be able to fly (although I still harbor hopes for one of those jet-engine backpack thingies promised to us by the sci-fi of the 60's).
So I deal with it, just like everybody else has to. But I can't help but wonder whether anybody else shares the kind of disappointment that I experience when faced with some of life's seemingly arbitrary but ironclad limitations.
I accept these limitations, but deep inside I'm not letting go of The Dream.
For example, I still think that a black light--a real black light, the way I envisioned it as a kid--would be a really cool thing. Not sure what I'd use it for, but come on, wouldn't it be cooler than, say, those little penlight laser pointers that people like to use these days? In fact, you could probably use its beam of darkness to cancel out somebody else's laser pointer--think of the fun you could have in a corporate meeting with a deftly concealed black light!
Calm down, Ryan.
I'm okay. Really. I'm getting by just fine, even if I'm apparently doomed to take the slow road to maturity. Somehow, some way, I manage to do what that poster urged me to do, some thirty-odd years ago.
I keep on truckin'.
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