Hippie Highway

High School Reunion, August 18, 1977

This girl I barely knew in high school,
her name was Mary,
had a boyfriend who always said, “Righteous, man,”
so we called him Mr. Righteous.
That was half a lifetime ago,
other side of a continent.
Today is my last day as a twenty-something
which I spend getting a blood test, urine test, EKG, the works,
ace the tests and feel like a million bucks.

At my cottage door, the window is broken.
Mary and Mr. Righteous are in sleeping bags on the floor.
Screwing, actually, as I walk in.
“It’s great to see you,” Mary says, dropping a gingham
dress over her head. She explains, sort of:
    “We were in the Sierra in a cabin, living
    there, it wasn’t exactly ours, and we came
    home and somebody had dynamited it.
    Really rude. So your name and address
    were in the Reunion Directory.
    We need to stay for a couple of weeks.
    I’m gonna get a job and Jim’s gonna take a class
    in boat repair. We’ll help with the cleaning.
    You can borrow our car sometimes
    if you want after we get it fixed.
    Then when we get to Hawaii you can
    stay with us whenever you want.”
So…
I enter my thirties with the word “No.”
Repeat: “No.”
Again: “No.”
Mary says, last thing, I grew up to be a mean person.