The Scar Boys

Hello, I Love You

I arrived at Johnny's house on Halloween night 1981 decked out in my dad's tattered cotton trousers, faded button down shirt, threadbare suit jacket, and old fedora.

I was sporting the costume of choice for discriminating suburbanite teens: I was a bum.

I'd even burnt a piece of cork and smeared it all over my cheeks, nose, and chin.

Everyone was already outside when I got there. 

They were all dressed exactly like me and all holding pillowcase sacks filled with eggs and shaving cream, ready to battle each other, mailboxes, cars, or anything else that got in our way.

We looked like a pack of short, skinny 1940s hobos.

I'd expected to find Johnny and a few boys I from school. Instead, it was Johnny and a whole lot of kids I didn't know, including a bunch of girls from the Our Lady of the Perpetual Who-Can-Remember-the-Name Catholic school.

Girls.

Catholic school girls!

"Harry, I want you to meet someone."

I froze.

"This is Gabrielle Privat."

My tongue tied itself in a neat little knot and a bowling ball dropped from my esophagus to my stomach.

MY fingertips and toes went numb.

"Harry?" Johnny asked. 

I finally managed to mutter a sheepish hello back, though I said it more to my shoes than Gabrielle's face.

Right from the start, I was smitten with Gabrielle. 

I was a gargoyle around girls on a good day; hideous, mute, and petrified.

And this wasn't a girl, this was a goddess. She was my age and even with her own smudged face and porkpie hat, I could see she was beautiful. 

The softness of her skin, the delicacy of her features shone through the smeared ash.

The way I remembered it later, she was glowing, literally glowing.

I'm surprised I didn't pass out. I secretly cursed Johnny for turning the night into a disaster before it began.

But that's the funny thing. It wasn't a disaster at all. It was one of the best nights of my life.

For reasons I've never fully understood, I stepped outside of myself that night. 

I was possessed by some holy spirit, speaking in tongues and walking on water.

I was my wittiest, funniest, and most charming self.

Maybe the burnt-cork-soot on my face was a mask, a safe place to hide, a place from which I could finally venture forth.

But I think the real reason was Gabrielle.

She and I spent most of the night talking and laughing. 

We covered every topic held sacrosanct (SAT world alert!) by white, middle-class thirteen-year-olds:  Our favorite TV shows, like Taxi and WKRP; the classes in school we didn't totally hate, like English or history; and MTV, the newest, coolest thing either one of us has seen.

We ignored our solemn egging responsibilities and existed outside the group, out the world.

We were lost in the sphere of each other.

Our friends, boys and girls both, recognized what was going on, and other than the occasional squirt of Barbasol on the back of my head, left us alone.

As the night drew to a close, Gabrielle and I offered each other a nervous half-wave, our face ready to crack from suppressed smiles.

I head home with no candy and with no mischief accomplished, but with a strange and wonderful fluttering in my heart.

When I visited Johnny the next day---the visit pretense to see Gabrielle--it, of course, all came crashing down.

She was disappointed to see me in the light of day. 

With no soot on my face or hate on my head, my disfigured skin was revealed in all its gruesome glory.

And with my mask gone, I reverted back to my shy awkward self. 

We spent a few uncomfortable minutes chatting before she made a weak excuse and left. Johnny walked her to the door.

I didn't need to read between the lines of Johnny's white lie---about Gabrielle not being allowed to date, about how sorry she was---to know the truth.

She saw the real me, a scarred little boy, scarred on the outside and scarred on the inside. She turned tail and ran.

I would learn later, on a class trip to the Bronx Botanical Garden, that Gabrielle Privat was the name of a species of rose.

Its flower had a delicate, fleeting beauty, its attraction one of form over substance. I guess that sounds kind of petty, but hey, it's the truth.

Anyway, I must've folded myself up like an envelop, sealed with no way in or out, because the next thing Johnny said was, "We should start a band."

It was a strange thing to say. He could've said, "Don't worry, there will be lots of other girls," or "Let's go listen to some records," or "How about we walk down the hill and get some ice cream."

But no, he said, "We should start a band."

I could only guess he was trying to distract me, trying to stop me from falling down a well of self-pity and self-doubt.

It was either an act of kindness or sympathy or both.

Whatever it was, I should've just walked away.

But Johnny was Johnny. He had a knack for knowing the right thing to say, the right joke to tell, the right expression to wear on his face at just the right moment.

Neither one of us had ever touched an instrument or knew the first thing about playing music, and none of this was going to erase Gabrielle---even time, healer of all healers would do a half-assed job with that one.

The only thing I could think to say was, "Sure, let's start a band."

And that was how it all began.