President Clinton

It was summer of ‘98, years ago, hot as blue blazes and dry too. Dry enough to burn and it did. President Clinton had his ass in a sling from fooling around on his wife and lying about it or something. Lenny Kravitz released chart topper, American Woman, and it seemed kinda ironic, topping all the charts like it did. It was a real big deal but I didn’t give two beans about the whole thing. America was up in arms about this being their president and all but I had two best friends, a bike and ninety-four summer afternoons of freedom to fill with mischief. Clintons affair didn’t effect me none.

I pretty much lived at Amy’s house that summer. She was the tallest of our threesome and blonde. Her parents owned an organic dairy farm and they were about the best parents any kid could ask for. I wanted them as my parents that’s for sure because they never cared what we did. Me and Sunni, we were there all the time, all day, every night, and Amy’s parents never cared none. The only time we ever really saw her parents, either of them, was late at night when we would creep into the TV room where they watched SNL poke fun at the Clinton Lewinsky affair. That humor was way far over our heads and we never got what was so darn funny but we would lean against each other on the old futon, laugh when they laughed and fall asleep with bowls of popcorn spilling across our laps.

Those were about as close to the “good ole days” as I can remember back and boy did I ever have some fun. We were a few scrawny little girls, but healthy for sure from all that sunshine baking us brown as mud and all that exercise climbing trees and playing hide and seek in the hay bails. We had some record big bruises and slivers all up in our callus peeling hands. Our hair was always ratty, snatched back into ponytails. We had homemade popsicle juice dried to our cheeks and we never wore no shoes, not one day that whole blistering summer.

We’d gone and did some of the craziest stuff, life threatening stuff and we thought we were really living. I remember climbing out Amy’s bedroom window just for the fun of it and sitting on the roof watching the sky go by. We would chase and tease the bull, Shorty, till he was blowing steam and spitting fire and so mad he would have killed us for sure if we weren’t so fast and dodging. It was our job everyday to round in the cows for milking and we would grab some long sticks and a few dogs and Amy would yell “Round ‘em up Champie!” And I would laugh but I would yell it too, “Round ’em up Champie.”

We would grab right onto electric fences just because we dared each other to. Some days we would go out into the field where the lonely tractor butchered up the season crop and ground the soil until it smelled so rich and the alfalfa would be growing so high it was way over our heads and we would get lost and turned around to high heaven with only our voices to find one another. And some days we would just lay up on that roof and talk and talk and watch thin wisp clouds pass by the sun. We were wild as wolves back then, roaming all over every acre of the farm. We were fearless back then, really living back then.

I’d guess that was the funnest of all the fun I’ve ever had and it was also the end of the fun but I didn’t know it at the time. Or maybe I did know in the way that kids pick up on that kind of stuff. I’d never known any city life, didn’t know any gang, never heard a gunshot. My bare foot soles never ran across nothing but squishy manure and bouncy grass. I was still naïve to the wild world of skyscrapers and rush hour, I guess the world that President Clinton was off living in. But that wild world was creepin up on us because Amy’s parents, while never caring about what we did, were having a full blown affair in their marriage just like mister Clinton. I remember when Amy’s mom had to finally tell her about it and me and Sunni were there through it all, sitting right there on the staircase and watching through the railing Shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh, bony scraped knees touching, we heard Amy’s mom say that they were going away. And after that, after we sat on the roof for the last time and patted Amy while she cried, there was a divorce and so many more tears and just like that our fun was over. Amy moved away with her mom, off to a place where she had to wear shoes because there was more concrete than grass growing.

That’s when I finally knew why people were so up in arms about the Clinton scandal. It had meant something to me after all. It’d gone and snuck up on us and boy that kind of thing can really go and ruin something good. The backs of our minds picked up on it. We really didn’t want to know, we didn’t want it to happen, just wanted to keep having fun like we were meant to. But it happened the way it happened and sometimes when I think back to those times when we were wild and free and so young I miss it like the way I think homesickness would feel.