Voenix Rising

As a brief follow up to this post:

As I wrote, when I was in high school and an aspiring architect(ural student), I’d often spend time wandering through the homes under construction just to the west of our house. One afternoon, while I was checking out the house at the very end of that block, I heard a truck pull up outside.

That in itself was kind of odd considering that the rest of the crews had long since left for the day, yet here he was: a guy with a truck full of aluminum windows. He brought the first one in and I guess my presence startled him. He clearly wasn’t expecting to arrive on an otherwise empty job site and find this teenage kid standing there. Fearing he would think I was up to something nefarious, I hastily explained myself. “I’m going to be an architect, and I love seeing how all this comes together.” He nodded. “I understand,” he said. And then kind of sadly, “I had aspirations once too.” As I walked past him and was halfway out the front door he said, “Hey, you make some money?” I turned with a questioning look on my face. “I’ve got a bunch of these windows to bring in and some are really heavy.”

Now in the context of what he was doing—as odd as it was that he was there so late and for some reason by himself without a helper to assist with these “heavy” windows—that may seem like an innocuous question under the circumstances, but the vibe that he was now giving off in that unfinished house was obvious —even to a mostly naive seventeen year old—was anything but innocent. I don’t remember him being bad looking, and if I’d had a few more years under my belt I might’ve taken him up on what he was so clearly offering, but as it was, I made some excuse about having to get home for dinner, and as they say, skedaddled out of there.

Even though I knew exactly what I wanted at that young age, he was not going to be my first.

That would come a few years later in my dorm room at the University of Arizona…

(to be continued)

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