AIDS 1- Senior Year. Part Two. Two lives continue.

Please be sure to read AIDS 1. Junior year and AIDS 1-Senior Year. Part One prior to this entry. It brings my story all together. You may also want to watch my short It Gets better video which is also a blog post on here as well. Then, you will have my years as a teenager, the fun, the sad, the good and bad. The collection of these posts bring together a formative part of who I am, as it is an important period of growth for all of us. You will likely find some of my story shocking, some entertaining, interesting, doubtfully boring. I didn't overall spend time writing about time on swim or soccer teams, or even much about going to school except a bit more in this last one. I wrote mostly about what you aren't expecting to hear from a teenager.

My girlfriend Laura and I will also spend a great deal of time in New York City. Because Laura lived down the shore in Toms River, she was about 90 miles away. Getting together was never running up or down the street and usually meant a coordinated weekend, most often at my home. If she took the bus up, which was most often the case, she would come up to either Newark or Secaucus (I think, it's been a very long time) and once in a blue moon directly into the city.  No matter where she arrived, it gave us excuses to be in the city as we were closer than Morristown.

The Playboy Club tried to make a return in the 80s. I joined using my fake ID. Evidently, they tried to make a third run at it a couple years ago but as Robb Report is quoted in a NY Post article, "For a mere $5000 you can step back into the early 80s and thumb your nose at the 21st century." My card had to have been issued for nothing more than the price of admission. I certainly was not joining clubs. I was very proud of membership card. This was something my Father was very proud of having in the 60s. He had very fond stories of his time at the Playboy Clubs in Chicago, where he lived in the 60s and I was born at the end of them, in NYC and I believe in LA as well. My Dad was a Mad Men who worked on the Chevrolet account for a number of years and did a lot of getting around... Now I had a card following in his footsteps, which I got going to the club with Laura, but I couldn't really show it to him. I was after all, 17 years old. I seem to recall we only ended up there a couple of times before it was closed, so that probably explains why they were handing out memberships. I remember one day we were walking around New York in the early evening, like 5 or 6 PM, maybe even in the afternoon, and we wanted to go dancing. We came up with this idea that what New York was lacking was a club for people to go dancing in the daytime. Luckily neither of us poured our heart and soul into seeing if that could be our dream come true as I don't think it would have been a particular winner. The 80s were a period of excess which included excessive working as well. New York to this day everything is later. Happy Hour is later. People eat dinner later. Since over 50% of millennials quit their jobs due to stress perhaps this generation might try such an idea.

Laura really wanted to go to FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology). Her drawings always demonstrated quite a talent albeit I am jaded in my opinion and I was not a professional to judge. That said, I comfortably could say she had talent that could be trained, educated. Her dress for my senior prom certainly proved it. She went into the city and bought a cocktail dress some sort of either set sale or something where she was able to buy a dress she could never afford otherwise for very little and then bought the fabric to design it into a full length gown which took quite a bit more than just extending the length. Honestly, she was the best dressed at our prom. She looked more like she should be at an inauguration ball, but best dressed. But that fit both of us just fine.


The Jersey Shore has 144 miles of coast line from Perth Amboy to Cape May. I made it a goal to visit every one of the shore points (roughly 60) at least once. Laura living just outside of what really are multiples of them, helped as a "launching pad" and certainly provided excuses to visit and tackle my mission. A shore point differs from a town or village or township. Basically, they are names of beaches or communities within a given town, township or borough (I don't recall NJ having villages). I used to keep a map and check off the points as I visited them. I not only hit every one, but some as many as 5 or more times. This was a particularly notable accomplishment considering our family spent our summer vacations at the Delmarva Coast in Bethany Beach.  But I would often cut school and go sit on a beach and study there instead. I was constantly bullied at Morristown High School, not only by students, but in some cases by teachers, and the beach has always provided me solace.

St.Patrick's Day is huge in New York City. I remember it being a rare day when I had my mother's coveted LeBaron Convertible and listening to Z100 and they were having some party. On a whim, I cut school and went into the city with my mother's car. She is probably yelling down from heaven at me now. For a brief block or so, I accidentally ended up in the St. Patrick's Day Parade at the misdirection of NYPD. Sort of my Ferris Bueller moment though I didn't sing, but I didn't have the top down and waved at people.

I wanted to do my part to leave a legacy at Morristown High School. Shit, I wanted to get into a half ass decent school and had a bordering 2.0 GPA leaving Cranbrook with my internalized issues and then my disinterest in Morristown High and subsequent lack of participation I never really reached a 3.0. That said, I could be an A or B English student and a D science student. I only paid attention to what interested and mattered to me. I have 3 teachers at Morristown that stand out to me in different ways. Ms. Murphy, also a field hockey coach I believe, who made it clear if I stayed after class each day with her in Geo Algebra or whatever it was called, I would pass; if not I was sure to fail. I did and I came through. I hated it but it was the only way I was going to get there and she gave me her time as well. Mr. Elmi was Teacher of the Year and adored.  I was a straight A student in his writing class. He was arrested and went to prison for carrying on a sexual affair with an underage same sex minor. It was not someone at our school, but where he lived a few towns away. This really fucked with me given my own history. At the time, I somewhat blamed the boy. "He wasn't locked in a closet for 2 years after all." Just as I wasn't and it has taken me decades to realize how many ways it has fucked with just about everything of my own being. Mr. DeChairo used to have people come over to his place to smoke pot and drink. I would not do so. I subsequently barely passed Chemistry, total bimbos did quite well. He also went to jail. His Father was the former mayor of Morristown. Sadly, the family are also friends of my Mother's but Ralph severely impeded my future because I didn't want to smoke joints at his place. It is no wonder I attended only 100 days or whatever the minimum allowed that I could still graduate that year. I basically had FMLA protection before there was FMLA and even though doesn't apply to schooling.

During all this though, I created a Safe Rides Program. The term, based on what I just looked up, has changed over time, but the idea then came from MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving), was for sober students to provide others with a safe ride home. Here is a generational difference. I don't even think most state laws would allow this arrangement now and even then it was QUITE CONTROVERSIAL. I started with Morristown High School, which responded positively, then went with the Catholic schools, Villa Walsh and Delbarton, which are closer to upscale private schools with lots of crosses and extra church funding but steep tuitions, then Morristown Beard (a prep school where my Mother taught). I believe Delbarton sent me a polite no thank you which was particularly short-sighted considering they held the biggest dances in Morris County where students from schools all over would attend (but of course nobody ever drank🙌). Sister Rosenthal (there has to be a story behind the name) from Villa Walsh met with me and was positive of my goal but her girls would not be participants. I can tell you they were "clients." Keep in mind it was ultimately a free taxi, we didn't require you to be drunk! Then Morristown High School and The American Red Cross, which was essential as we had to have a call center and cars other than our own stepped in with interest. Thus, Safe Rides was born. I honestly don't recall what happened with Morristown Beard. I hated the school as they offered for me to attend if I repeated my sophomore year when we arrived in Morristown. The Daily Record, the local paper, contacted me for a story. It was the first time ever I had been asked to be interviewed for anything. I still have it framed (albeit right now in storage) in my home. Then some bitch, perhaps a board member from the Red Cross (?) put up some girl in my class who I had never heard of and how she was leading the charge on the Safe Rides program and had it in the paper. I never once saw that "proud crowd" (what we called a select group of students at Mo-town High that were the best of everything group) princess working a Saturday night. Actually, I never saw her at anything related to Safe Rides. She just got a news clip for her college applications.

My reasons for creating the Safe Rides program, however, were not just to leave a legacy, not just to prove a point. A couple of friends, likely some combination of Jim and Andy or Jim and Oleg and I were heading off from Jim and my neighborhood, Fosterfields, to go into the city. We were not even a mile from our house when we encountered a horrible accident. We learned the next day it was a drunk driving accident, albeit not even 9pm and one of our fellow classmates was killed in the accident.

I did have a high school graduation party. My Mother conveniently left town for the evening with my younger brother; I have no recollection where, probably just 20 miles up the road to my Grandmother's or something. She was simply able to proclaim innocence by absence of being there. My Father was there, along with a woman that was both a friend and client of my Father's at the time. He would not buy me alcohol but also did not stop us from having it. We just had to make it disappear by the end of the party. I recall that when my Father felt it was "closing time" he simply started washing off the deck, the patio below it and our garage, which was being used for the party as well (our garage was spotless, painted with swimming pool paint and you could sit on the floor).  We had one "proud crowd" girl that did discover alcohol that evening and needed a walk home, a couple of people were sick and I ultimately passed out on the island in our kitchen. But, overall, it was without any major incidents. Thankfully, my girlfriend and a couple friends cleaned up most things while I was passed out and after my Dad went to bed. Have times changed and largely because of our idiotic generation!

Ling-Ling  had baby panda bears at the National Zoo at the end of or just following my senior year of high school. My girl(friend) Beth and I ditched life and drove 5 hours from New Jersey to go see them. This is ludicrous, other than they ended up dying, so it was a limited sight to see, never mind you really didn't see them. I don't remember if we suddenly called up and stayed with my cousins in Virginia, though I have no idea how we explained that to either of our parents, or if we literally trekked down the Jersey Turnpike, across the the brief but expensive Delaware Turnpike, through Maryland into DC and back again. Actually, I might have by then known our family short-cut that involved some more state routes and "country roads" of what was left of them in NJ to 95 into Pennsylvania and down by then as it was how we went to visit both my Grandparents in Philadelphia and my Godmother in Baltimore from Morristown, NJ. Either way, it was insanity and equally inexplicable that neither of our parents really had any idea we made a 245 mile journey each way across multiple state lines all while they went along with their day. There was not tracking device on my car nor the cell phones we did not have at the time. But, whatever we did do, I seriously don't ever remember somehow getting in any trouble for it. Maybe I was honest? I did do that on occasion. It worked best with my Father who would then bail me out of most things and tell me I was an asshole half laughing along the way. My Mother, a regimented private school English teacher, took going to school a bit more seriously. However, her supervision of me was more than lacking.


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Be sure to continue learning about my story as I depart for my Freshman year of college. I assure you will find it interesting.