Coming of Age

By Sean Phelan

Maynard and Seamus. Sea and May. Wolfman and Sundance. This is a story that can, May and will change the World!

This is a story told by a Child full of Silence and Peace. This is a story of two young people driving away from the Rock-like locus of Youth, while still retaining part of Youth's Golden Vision in their rearview mirrors (and dashboard Sun visor). This is a story that concerns the Search for God and Self, which one finds, at the end of the Odyssey, are All One in the same sacred place. This is a cautionary tale that concerns America's Sunday-morning's-everyday-for-all-I-care youths, and their quick, cynical, unfulfilling, and inevitable descent into solipsistic/nihilistic adulthood. This is a story that reminds that Youth (and, perhaps, America) is a bildungsroman that must topple before being reborn. This is a bittersweet, tragic comedy of Transformation, in which the changes in Maynard and Seamus mirror a coming cultural Revolution. This is a story of Truth planted firm - born of Fire, surrounded by Water and spread by Air. This is a story of Jungian, (and near Almagestian), breadth, full of Music and Movement and Love and Faith. This is a story whose Time has come. . . .

Maynard and Seamus. Sea and May. Wolfman and Sundance. This is a story that can, May and will change the World!

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 14, 2009
• ISBN: 9781440178993

Sean Phelan

Sean Phelan is a practicing attorney (the nice kind), and proud graduate of Villanova University and Villanova University School of Law. He has previously published two other books, Coming of Age and Staring at the Sea. He lives in Philadelphia, PA and is the increasingly patient owner of a black lab rescue pup named Jimbo.

Book preview

Coming

of

Age

Sean Phelan

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Bloomington

Coming of Age

Copyright © 2009 by Sean Phelan

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN: 978-1-4401-7897-9 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-4401-7899-3 (ebook)

ISBN: 978-1-4401-7898-6 (hbk)

iUniverse rev. date:10/06/2009

Contents

CHAPTER 1: ARBOR REALITY

CHAPTER 2: LOCO MOTIVES

CHAPTER 3: CARMEN’S CHARM

CHAPTER 4: THE CEMETERY OF EDEN

CHAPTER 5: TEXAS NEVER WHISPERS

INSTRUMENTAL QUOTATIONS

FROM MAYNARD’S THOUGHT-NOTEBOOK:

CHAPTER 6: THE ETERNAL UNSEEN

CHAPTER 7: INCARCINOGENATED

CHAPTER 8: THERE’LL BE PEACE

IN THE SHADOWY VALLEY

CHAPTER 9: YOU CAN’T GO HOME ALONE

CHAPTER 10: LIKE PERFECT STRANGERS

CHAPTER 11: THE SUNDAY OF THE MONTHS;

OR SURVIVOR’S GUILT

To my mother and father – for providing me with the Love and repose to compose – whatever good things I am I am because of You.

And to all my friends, of good and ill, alive and dead, you are all in here.

"Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets …

Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’

Let us go and make our visit." – T.S. Eliot

Chapter 1: Arbor Reality

Maynard parted the fingers covering his face and opened his eyes just in time to hear the golf ball come swooshing overhead. Of course looking only did more harm than good, as his eyes’ ability to detect a golf ball traveling upwards of two hundred miles per hour, hurdling through the summer twilight, was about as good as Stevie Wonders’. Looking was also against the rules of the game. But he was the type of person who had to know. The name of the game was Hole-in-one. The game’s other participant, standing about a hundred and fifty yards away, atop the tee box’s gradual uphill incline, just about to line up another five-iron, was Seamus Sea (pronounced Shea) Connelly. The alloy shaft of Sea’s upturned club, thrust downward from its momentary apex above his sun-bronzed right shoulder, glinted in the last of the day’s dying rays. When up, May at least covered his face with his hands. Seamus, on the other hand, would stand as tall as a statue, eyes closed, his handsome face seemingly courting the prospect of being cracked by a Titleist.

The aim of the game, obviously, was to hit your opponent, but short of this, the penalty for flinching was that you’d have to purchase the case of beer or bottle for the night. Neither of them had been stupid enough to flinch in years. The times when there would be a direct hit, (probably accounting for how crappy of golfers both of them were), was about once every summer. But, the thing was, you never knew when your time would come.

You flinched on that one that almost hit ya’, Seamus shouted, as he finally migrated in, awash with sweat from the vigor with which he’d been swinging his drives.

Oh, right, like you could really see me from all the way up there through the dark, Maynard responded.

The boys picked up their golf bags propped upright on the fringe of the green, and started trundling through the thick Bermuda rough towards the wooden deer fence and swinging gate separating the Hopewyne Valley Country Club golf course from Maynard’s yard. Fuzzy little yellow jackets buzzed around the honeysuckle on the golf course fence. The August dusk smelled ripely of freshly cut grass and apple blossom trees. And then, moving closer towards May’s house, the piquant aromas of the trellised hyacinth, verbena and nasturtiums, so meticulously planted by Maynard’s mom, in her Tuscan garden encircling the outdoor swimming pool. But May’s undisputed favorite was the God-planted butterfly bush, filled with purple, almost blue, ambrosial-scented roses, overhanging the deep end of the pool.

The boys were a study in contrasts - Maynard long, dark, and angular, though with a slight paunch from majoring in Budweiser his first two years of college, and Seamus, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and boyish-faced, with a quick, cantering gait that typically ran circles around his buddy. May wore a dark polo shirt and finely pleated Bermudas (both which were raided from his father’s closet), while Seamus went shirtless, (in ludicrous contravention of the Country Club’s guidelines), with board shorts.

What’s the plan for tonight?, Sea asked, as Maynard plucked up a dandelion in his back yard.

A little blow?, he replied, puffing the seeds out on the wind and down onto the lush green grass.

No, we’re saving that for the trip.

Sea and Maynard walked in through the sliding screen door leading to the kitchen, off the back stone patio. May’s mom, Mary Lou, chatted away on the telephone. Her hair in pink curlers, with two tufty Betty White buns framing her ears and sharp-featured face, she looked cuter than even the cutest Golden Girl. The topic of conversation seemed to be some upcoming high school reunion: And did you hear there are four gay students from the class? … Yes, there’s Bobby Bordeaux, Dick Elcock, Ace King, and one other one, who nobody knew…

The boys laughed uproariously upon hearing the recitation of names, setting down their clubs on the hard wood kitchen floor and waiting for Mrs. D’arcy to get off the phone. Alright, Patty, well I’ve gotta’ go. There are some hungry boys who just walked in my kitchen. I’ll talk to you later. Bye now! She beeped off the cordless. Boys, can I fix you a plate of Veal Parmigiana?

We thought you’d never ask, Mrs. D, Sea replied, in his best Eddie Haskell impression.

At least once a week, one could always depend on a hearty meal of frozen Encore Veal Parmigiana in the D’arcy household. Like its breakfast counterpart, Creamed Chip Beef, it was one of May’s mom’s favorite meals to fix him to get him to stop looking so waifish. Little did her sweet, angelic heart know, but most of the time his pale slenderness was the result of ingesting either the Celexa happiness pills she herself took for depression, or Seamus’ Adderrall, which, although prescribed to Sea for his own blatant case of attention deficit disorder, May used to write and feel energetic. After watching the boys gobble up their cheese-and-tomato sauce-smothered cutlets, and before shuffling off to bed, Mrs. D’arcy kissed both boys on the cheek. Be safe on your trip, boys. Don’t do too much drinkin’ and druggin’. And be home before school starts back up! Mary Lou had always understood her son’s personality way too well. She had once told Maynard that the perfect profession for him would be either as a lighthouse keeper or a librarian, (obviously not thinking very highly of his people skills). She had also told him that his relationship with Seamus was like that of fire and gasoline.

After sharing a little less guilt-obsessed goodbye with Maynard’s jovial dad – Have a great time, boys! - (in his stentorian, litigator’s voice, sipping on a highball of Dewar’s and water in the den, (watching Jim Kramer, with tiny dollar signs revolving like dancing Franklins in his warmly expressive, emerald green eyes)) – the boys were off. May had already packed his mattress and other belongings in the trunk of his car, (folding down the backseat), so as to leave little else to do but venture out. It was a weird feeling to know that he would not see his parents for at least another two weeks. But in some ways this was refreshing. As much as he loved both of them to death. He stared in the rearview at his parents’ domicile of hearth-red brick and Monticello-like symmetry. A mansion finely wrought of his father’s wildest dreams and even wilder work ethic. May felt like the prodigal son, who, after twenty-one long and luxuriant years of living the sheltered life, was finally unloosening his berth.

Hopewyne, the town in which May’s parents’ home was located, was a place filled with people isolated by their own wealth. A place of wide lawns and narrow minds, as Ernest Hemingway once said. It was hardly a community, (in the traditional sense), but more like a smattering of secluded compounds, separated by acres of land and millions of dollars. (Rich people don’t come out of their houses - it doesn’t make for a good community, as Seamus Connelly once said). For instance, the 72-acre estate of former International Peace Mission founder, Father General Jealous Divine, a man who once claimed to be God and commanded what Time Magazine estimated to be two million followers worldwide, was located just up the street from May’s. Maynard’s own home was a perfect embodiment of the other mansions in the town, situated atop a grassy and windswept hill, looking down on the rest of the world. The no outlet cul-de-sac on which the house was located was actually named Sentinel Lane. The environment obviously affected the detached way in which Maynard viewed life; a detachment only further compounded by the young man’s introverted disposition.

It had been a strange summer on Sentinel Lane. His neighbors on one side, the Greenes, were in the midst of an acrimonious divorce; and, to make matters worse, their twenty-seven year old son, Matthew, (who had recently caused quite a stir in the neighborhood by taking up falconry and housing the majestic bird in a small shed in their yard), had committed suicide. His neighbors on the other side were a young wealthy couple who had just recently moved in. Some concerns had arisen in the neighborhood about how the husband earned his income, especially after a series of parties he had thrown over the course of the summer, entertaining his clients, (all of whom shared their host’s affection for flashy, expensive cars), blasting the best of Cypress Hill and Snoop Dogg until the early hours of the morning. And as for the one other house, in the rear end of the cul-de-sac, a sprawling, iron-gated chateau wherein portions of the film Rocky V were filmed - it was anybody’s guess what went on there.

Seamus’ father (a world-renowned architect) also lived in Hopewyne, although Sea lived with his mother, on the calculatedly removed, less moneyed outskirts of the Main Line, in Berwyn. May was a much more frequent visitor of Seamus’ home than Sea was of May’s, due to the relative laxity of Mrs. Connelly with respect to matters of the boys’ youthful carousing. Mrs. Connelly had in fact smoked pot with them on more than one occasion, and was known to indulge in some prodigious upper taking and wine drinking, as well.

Seamus and Maynard were somehow both the black sheep and golden children of their respective families - the blonde, mischievous babies in clans full of hard-line brunettes, (May wasn’t anymore, Sea still was). However, their personalities were as dissimilar as could be. Whereas Sea was the Dionysian wild-man, loved by the ladies and loathed by most of his friends’ and girlfriends’ parents, Maynard was the Apollonian, rational-minded soul, who, though generally quite timid and well-behaved, was easily led astray. They had been friends since the sixth grade, went to the same high school together, and planned on getting an apartment together for the upcoming school year, (as Seamus was transferring to the local college which May had attended the past two years). Never one to hold many friends at the same time, Maynard’s friendship with Seamus was one of the few he’d managed to maintain throughout the years - which was surprising, given Sea’s most capricious disposition, (and May’s most captious and lymphatic one). Like a song that you wanted to keep playing over and over because it made you feel cool and alive, Sea was that friend who had always awakened in May a new sense of possibilities, bestowing a groundswell of energy. He was Tigger to May’s Eor.

The boys decided to spend their last night in Pennsylvania together as they had spent so many summer nights before. They went fishing on the Schukyll River.

Not quite at that point of summer when fun sets and doom rises, but close enough, the next morning the two friends would be leaving on a journey of epic proportions. Their dream of driving cross-country – one which had been so long in the making, (but slow on the uptake), fostered by countless readings of Kerouac’s On the Road, Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Woody Guthrie’s Bound For Glory - was finally going to be carried out. Their summer had been like one long drinking bout, followed by mornings and afternoons of struggling to get sober again. May had spent the summer cutting lawns and endeavoring other odd jobs, including working for two months at Riverrun Environmental Education Center (a summer camp right down the hill from his house), so as to have as much time as possible to write and party with Seamus. Incredibly, Sea worked even less, contributing part-time at his father’s construction company. Thus, due to their lack of funds from lack of work, they would have to be most scrupulous about how they spent their money on the trip. Of course, Seamus had also allegedly once made it all the way from Philadelphia to Mountleboro, New Hampshire, with nothing more than a $5 in his pocket, (selling himself to a 200-plus pound female cab driver on the way), but that was a whole ‘nother story. Sea had been in and out of the hospital over the past three weeks for what he mysteriously described as a gnarly rash. But now that he appeared convalesced, it was time to set off.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the friends’ often deviant drinking and carousing, committing chemical warfare against material welfare, it had been a summer of careless innocence/insouciance. May loved his short-lived job at Riverrun, serving as a camp counselor with a bunch of Phish-loving, Dayglo-wearing, hippies, acting more like a kid than some of his 5-14 year old campers. The days passed so sweetly, laughing with the children, going on nature hikes, and playing duck-duck-goose in the tall green grass. He remembered fondly one memory in particular that he shared with his favorite camper, an eleven-year old, black-haired angel named Hannah. How To Write A Poem?, the little girl asked, after peering over May’s shoulder at the title of a book he was reading during his lunch break. Isn’t it easy to write a poem?

No, May replied, turning around to look at Hannah, as she sat down on the bench right beside him. Writing a poem is hard. Writing a poem’s like saying a prayer to God. Do you ever say prayers to God before you go to sleep?, he asked her.

"Yes, of course.

And you don’t you think saying your prayers is hard?

No, silly! Saying prayers isn’t hard, the young girl laughed. Saying a poem or saying a prayer’s like a lullaby. Roses are red and violets are blue, and now I lay me down to sleep! It’s so easy!

Well, yes. I suppose that’s true. But when you have to make up your own poem or prayer, don’t you think then it would be a little harder?

I guess so…With prayers, I think it all depends on how much you want God and the saints and angels to hear. Like I know, sometimes, I like to say long prayers to God, like the night before I have a big test or basketball game. But other times, I really don’t have much to say and I just thank him for taking care of me, my doggie, and my family.

You know what?, May asked her.

"What?

I think you’re a very smart and poetic little girl.

Ew, I’m not poetic!

Hannah then proceeded to do one of the sweetest things any girl, of any age, had ever done for him. After spotting a stray black hair on the back of May’s neck, she proceeded to pull out all the hard-to-reach little devils across the backs of his shoulder, leaving him back-hair free for a date he’d informed her he had later on that evening. May knew right then that he loved her holy spirit, even though she was only eleven. A daughterly love. A love which far surpassed any sexual, brotherly, or filial love he had ever felt for another human being.

The boys pulled into the gravel parking lot off River Road, parallel to the rushing Schukyll, which was rife to its banks from the month’s rainy first week. The river was also so full of pollution and litter, the boys were more likely to hook an abandoned tire than they were a fish. But they came more for the scenery. Situated at the foot of a small waterfall, with plenty of large boulders to cast from, and just a stone’s throw away from a seldomly used train tracks, (the only trains that ran through were unscheduled freighters, usually after midnight), the area in which they fished was a little slice of heaven. Much more heavenly, at least in Maynard’s mind, than any of the palatial mansions and estates of his Hopewynite neighbors. It was a place where man, machinery, and nature converged, in seedy, seldomly-seen harmony. A place filled with symbols and images intuitively selected for himself. Sea and May took up their rods, (which, along with his surfboard and cache of tennis rackets, pretty much never left Maynard’s trunk during the sweetest season), along with a case of Keystone Light beer. It was to be a night of deep contemplation – the calm reserve before the wild effusion.

The two friends first met one another ten summers ago. A decade. It seemed like a lifetime. May imagined what it was going to feel like after he had lived seven or eight of them, (each likely less intriguing than the last). The night he first became acquainted with Sea was a poignant one. It was the night of a big swim meet at Hopewyne Valley Country Club. After the meet there was a raft party for the young teenagers, (the boys were then twelve), with a D.J. and catered treats. May lay atop his raft, with his head partially submerged in the chlorine water, staring up at the stars. He listened to music and felt totally at peace. The Gin Blossom’s Until I Fall Away, a song which was all the rage that summer, circumscribed the sweetness of the moment. It was funny, but May knew right then, while listening to that song, that the night would be one he would look back on later in life. Feeling completely alone, even amongst the throng – experiencing the ultimate melancholic serenity that defined him. But just as this thought came, he felt a powerful thrust come surging up from below, sending him flying. Seamus had propelled him off his raft. What the f&#$ was that for?, the propellee yelled upon reaching the surface. (May was fluent in French even then). Seamus, who had been grinning deviously from ear to ear, feigned solemnity upon seeing that Maynard was really upset. I’m sorry, man. I just wanted to introduce myself and see if you wanted to talk to these girls with me. You know, Grayce and Daisy and those girls? He spoke so fast, (like a mumbling magpie), that Maynard could hardly comprehend him. After repeating his greeting about three more times, Maynard finally understood, and his stomach fluttered. Should he say no and hence lose the opportunity to meet some new girls and become friends with a kid whom, (in his shy vigilance), he had always admired from afar? Or say yes and seize the chance to gain it all.

He said no.

But Seamus later brought the girls to him.

With females, Seamus was usually the shark, and May the bashful suckerfish, willing to take a nibble at whatever his best friend refused. But at that time, probably due to the fact that Sea had yet to be diagnosed for his extreme case of A.D.D., (and Maynard had yet to go through puberty), May was the real ladies’ man of the two. That night he met his first girlfriend, Grayce Bateman, with whom he would share his first kiss later that summer. And May had no one but Seamus to thank for it. It was the first in a long history of nights when Seamus had forced him out of his comfort zone. Out of the shadows and into life’s spotlight. It was the beginning of a friendship that would survive the untold vagaries of the years.

In order to keep the beers cold, the boys just dipped them underwater. The cans bobbed in the water above the mossy rocks. Outside of the casting of their lines, the steady lifting of the cans to their thirsty lips constituted the greatest (and only) physical exertion of their fishing expeditions, (as it was almost a foregone conclusion that neither of them would catch anything). But on that night, as was usually the case, their mental efforts more than made up for the inertia.

The friends talked sporadically, largely admiring the tragic stillness of the suburban landscape. The foliage behind them soughed in the green, gentle breeze. Nature verdant in roof and shawl. The waterfall crashed boisterously to the left of them. But even this, like the persistent, monotonous din of the crickets and cicadas, seemed to be submerged under the ambient, Om tranquility of the river’s current. Maynard cast his lines of thought out onto the Castalian Spring that this particular section of the Schukyll had always been for him. It had been a place he often visited by himself over the course of the summer, to read Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, (that inexhaustible book), and drink cheap red wine in the late afternoon. A magical place, where inspiration was easy to come by. Watching the water, he contemplated the supernatural. May’s mom spelled God, G-U-I-L-T, (myopic to the point of blindness), but Maynard thought of Him (or Her, or It) as nothing but the Giver Of Definition, for whom everyone could have their own, if he/she so decided. Like with so many mystical spirits before him, nature was where Maynard discovered his Definition. The water looked so clean and serene on its surface. It was hard to believe such disease metastasized underneath.

Did you ever stop to think why humans listen to music?, Seamus asked him, tinkering with his pole (taking a piss) and crunching another can of Keystone Light against his boulder.

Yeah, it’s because silence makes us uncomfortable.

Well, why does silence make us uncomfortable? Silence should be the most comfortable thing there is.

It’s because silence reminds us of loneliness and our own impending death. May winced at his careless choice of words. Sea, thankfully, broke the awkwardness.

Well, why doesn’t music remind us of those things when we listen to it alone?

I don’t know. It’s probably because so many songs are written by people who want to escape those thoughts themselves. And by them singing, and playing about how they feel, it somehow makes us feel less alone.

Maynard was certainly one of those lonely people. Seamus as well. As much as his demonstrative, extroverted personality let on otherwise. This loneliness was little assuaged by the young females in the boys’ lives that summer. Sea’s girlfriend, a beautiful sixteen year old high school junior named Mandy, was little more than lace curtain, high maintenance, eye candy, whom Sea feared would soon land him in jail for statutory rape. And Maynard’s relationship, (somehow), was even shadier. He dated the former girlfriend of a psycho asshole the boys had known from high school who, over the course of the summer, had gotten herself dourly addicted to cocaine. Thus, not only did Maynard have to be on constant alert for her bellicose ex, but also ever-vigilant to make sure that she did not end up snorting herself to death.

Like a Barbie doll clad in teal, with teal eyes and Barbie brain, Sally Jean had certainly kept the boy’s hands full over the course of the summer. She was the first girl that May was attracted to who he had not (a) tried to have make out with on the first date; (b) told that he loved on the first date; or (c) treated so frostily, (out of indomitable, tongue-swallowing fear), that she did not even know he cared for her. Of course, playing it slow worked to his advantage at first, until he became so infatuated that he simply could not contain himself. Then she had him. Never one to experience much long term success with serious relationships, (previous to Sally Jean, May’s longest relationship had lasted just under three months), his bond with Sally was no exception. Her sophisticated drug use notwithstanding, the girl made Sea’ sixteen year old seem quite mature by comparison, making him jealous by flirting with every guy she could lay her luminous blue eyes on, and then sobbing in fits whenever May ignored her. But her Locklearesque looks kept him coming back for more. (More emotional, physical, and spiritual abuse, that is). Their disastrous last day together, which was a story unto itself, was one that ended with Sally Jean getting checked into rehab by her parents, after Maynard drove himself home from the Jersey Shore, in her father (Hap’s) Cadillac, (at Hap’s incensed request). She had imparted to her elders that May was at least partially to blame for her demise: "Look at his hands –