La Isla Bonita
I couldn’t have been older than thirteen. Maybe even twelve; old enough to figure out that the thing between my legs had capabilities other than pissing.
I was intensely aware of my body — still am, sorry; I was the fat kid, never quite good enough at playground football (American style). I was deeply in love (still am, in ways) with the girl from the other side of the tracks — the more I learned about her, the more I wanted to know. Teenage romances never work out, and ours didn’t. My fault on that. But the moment I return to in my memory is sitting in the back seat of the Chevrolet Caprice her older sister drove, coming to pick her and me and her best friend (who in turn became one of my best friends) up from Magic Waters — as you may surmise, a waterpark on the outskirts of our city, a Chicago satellite. For some reason, Madonna’s “La Isla Bonita” was on the radio — remember when radio had that possibility to alter a universe?
You’d had to have been there.
