“Losing My Religion” was the song playing on the radio when Brenda Walsh and Dylan McKay went through their first epic breakup on Beverly Hills, 90210. Brenda fought back tears as she sat in the passenger seat of Dylan’s convertible, parked on a cliff overlooking the Pacific. And I did the same, alone in my bedroom in a night shirt and boxer shorts, wondering why my favorite song at eleven-years-old had to signal the end of something so magical. Oh no, I’ve said too much. I haven’t said enough.
As fifth grade at St. Margaret’s ended, the seventh and eight graders you were friends with—the Bobby Bailes and Kristine Browns—let you in on a little secret: sixth grade was going to be the best year ever. There was no clear reason why it was going to be so special—the girls would still be contained by jumpers and access to youth group dances was denied to us for another year until seventh. But they swore that you’d have to trust them: sixth grade was when it all happened.
Not long after New Year’s in the midst of “the big year,” I took my fist stab at having my own journal. It was triggered by a weekend that felt both monumental and yet totally ordinary. That Saturday, I had cried twice: once when my newfound favorite football team, the Atlantic Falcons, had been eliminated from the playoffs and once when Zack and Kelly had broken up on that morning’s Saved by the Bell. Kelly sobbed as she asked, “Can we still be friends?” Zack somehow held it together as he responded, “Forever.” Slater and Jessie terribly lip synched in the background. And as I watched in that same bedroom, I lost my shit. I wasn’t even 11 1/2 and here my heart was being broken left and right.
That weekend was one of the first times I remember feeling unsure just what to do with myself. It was the annual St. Margaret’s Holiday Invitational Basketball Tournament up at the gym, a major event on the social calendar. But that Saturday, face full of tears and it barely noon, I couldn’t bring myself to go. As of a month before, I had been expecting to play in the tournament with the rest of the St. Margaret’s Junior Varsity squad—well if not play, at least warm the bench and clown around for a packed gymnasium during time outs and halftime. But that was no longer an option since Coach Hanley had kicked me off the team for goofing around too much.
Did he kick me off or did I quit? I’m still not sure. All I know is that I got kicked out of practice one day for showing up in roller blades and then throwing a behind-the-back pass to Robbie Abdelaziz during drills. I was too shaken and guilty to go straight home, so I waited for the guys to finish up practice over at Evelyn’s, the bodega across the street from school. When practice got out, Kev Brown and some of the other guys came over and told me that it sounded like Hanley wanted me off the team. After feeling stuck in a state of limbo and unsure what to do about it, eventually a few days later Kev Farrell came and talked to me. His brother Brendan was the assistant coach of the team (and no fan of my antics). I told Kev that I wasn’t sure if I was still on the team or not. He said that the coaches had heard from the other guys that I had wanted to quit (stupid Telephone game). So I told Kev that I guess I should give him my uniforms to pass along. Breakups and job endings have always seemed to follow this route ever since. “You can’t fire me cause I quit.” “Oh, it was a mutual breakup. I’m just not sure who gave up on who first.”
So by Sunday of the tournament weekend, I was too antsy about feeling like the odd man out and decided to face the embarrassment of showing up at the gym. I don’t think that I stayed very long. I mostly remember staying close to the baked goods table in the back where Mrs. Downey was selling brownies. That seemed like a good combo for feeling safe. The only member of the JV who crossed paths with me was Dave Hannon, a fifth grader who neither really liked me nor hated me. Thus he probably didn’t care enough to think that it was weird that I would show up to watch the team that I didn’t want to be a part of.
The only reason I remember a figure as neutral as Dave there is because I know that I mentioned it in that first journal entry. The only other line I remember was a play on words off a 3rd Bass song: “It’s ‘92, Jew. So something’s gotta change.” That may have been what was so special about sixth grade for me. It was the first time that I started feeling like all this wasn’t enough.
After my first breakup, right around that same era, I found myself in front of St. Margaret’s, sitting against a wall alongside Petey Donoghue. The other young couples of the time were doing their thing on the nearby steps. The only song that seemed to fit the moment was Roxette’s “It Must Have Been Love,” incidentally the epic breakup song from Pretty Woman. Petey sang it with me, making it more funny than sad. And yet it also felt pretty forced. What made the endings of those teenage television romances so hard to take was not just letting go of these couples that I had invested so much of myself into. It was knowing how badly I wanted the chance to have my own heart so tremendously crushed.
