Marked for Life: First Love and the Summer of Magic (1991)
(Tracy Robinson, Summer Splash, 1991)
This past week marked an anniversary, of sorts, for me: the 30th anniversary of my first girlfriend asking me out—and the 30th anniversary of the Summer of Magic, which every teenager experiences in his or her own way in the course of growing up.
June 19, 1991 is a date that will forever be burned in my memory like it was yesterday. My first girlfriend, Tracy Robinson (later Tracy Hernando) was the younger sister of the wife of my church’s youth pastor, Paul Sanchez. Tracy was adorably cute, witty, snappy, irrepressible, and irreverent—and I utterly adored her from the first moment. Vladimir Nabokov wrote in his seminal work, Lolita, that “Whatever happens to a boy at 14 will mark him for the rest of his life.” No disrespect to Nabokov’s keen insight and authority on the issue, but Nabokov was off by a year, at least for me, as the summer that marked me for life was the summer I turned 13—the summer of 1991.
Those of us who were there, attending the Vaca Valley Christian Life Center’s youth day camp, Heatwave, think back on that particular summer as the Summer of Magic. A group of us became absolutely inseparable that summer—my still-dear friend Nikki Reardon, her then-boyfriend Darren Dellinger (RIP), our friend Jimmy Rose and his then-girlfriend Sarah Dellinger (Darren’s younger sister), Craig Farris (one of the older youth group members), my girlfriend Tracy Robinson, and I. For at least a couple of us, the summer of 1991 marked us for life and changed us forever.
I still have my journal from that summer, in which I recounted the elations and the struggles of myself as a teenager and my first love—well, maybe not my first love, but my first girlfriend at least. Reading over those puerile journal entries again now, I’m struck by how little, and yet how much, I’ve changed. I have the same swelling elations at every hint of true love and romance, the same deep-set insecurities at every little up and down of a relationship, the same descent into the depths of despair (to borrow a phrase of Anne Shirley’s from Anne of Green Gables) at every hiccup and stumbling block, the same unabashedly romantic worldview, the same self-reflectiveness and insatiable need to write it all down—whether as a form of therapy, for posterity, or for my own philosophical and existential reflection on what it all means.
Much has changed with me, of course, with increased wisdom and experience, not the least of which is my stance on religion and its dumbing down of America—my stance today being closer to Nietzsche’s critique of religion as promoting and capitalizing on the herd-like elements of humanity in direct opposition to the human spirit. But the core of my personality, my approach to life and love, and the deep longing for love and togetherness and transcendence that the journal entries contain hasn’t really changed in me, even after 30 years and despite the many disappointments I’ve experienced in life and love along the way. Despite it all, I’m as hopeful and optimistic and irrepressible about the future and its prospects for true love and fulfillment as I’ve ever been.
Even though this is a philosophy blog, I’ve always given myself the liberty to weave my own personal experiences, memories, reflections, and even my hopes and dreams, into the fabric of my own philosophical reflections, taking to heart the idea that philosophical reflection should not be so abstract or universal that it fails to capture the lived reality of one person’s actual human experience.
At the risk of boring you, my readers, to tears with tales from long ago—well, 30 years ago—I thought I’d take the time to transcribe my journal entries from that summer and share them here, so those of you who know me now, and perhaps even history itself, can be the judge about whether, and the extent to which, these formative experiences shaped my overall personality, and perhaps even my philosophical worldview, to this day:
June 14, 1991
School is finally out!!! On Monday “Heatwave” starts. I can’t wait. I wonder how many kids will go this year. I hope that a lot go so that they come to know Christ.
June 17, 1991
Today’s the fist day of “Heatwave.” We went bowling and to Peña Adobe to swim. We got in free because the person that runs it goes to our church!!! Pat [Vandenburgh] is the leader and we beat his team at bowling and wiffle ball.
June 18, 1991
Today we went to Lake Solano and Tracy came with us. I like her a lot!!! We went swimming together and sat and talked. Jimmy and Nikki kept asking me if I liked her.
June 19, 1991
Today we went to Rio Vista and went swimming. We played SPUD but never finished because the water was too cold and we ended up splashing each other. After I got out Tracy asked me if I would go out with her and I said yes!!! Nikki knew I liked Tracy and she was trying to get us together but we told her not to tell anyone. We have a lot of fun at camp and just hang out together. If anyone reads this but me, they are going to get it bad.
June 20, 1991
We went to Sausalito and Solano Mall today. Tracy and I walked around together and had a great time. In Sausalito all we did was walk around all the stores and we did the same at the mall. I hope we do this again this summer.
June 21, 1991
At Marine World Craig, Nikki, Darren, Tracy, and me went around together. The whale show was bad. It was funny because at the fist show Tracy didn’t want to get wet, but at the second show she couldn’t wait to get wet, and she did!!! We haven’t told Paul or Robin yet because they might think she’s not old enough to have a boyfriend or to go out.
June 22, 1991
Today I’m just staying home alone and watching t.v. I can’t wait till Monday comes because I used to like weekends, but now I don’t because camp has started and I want to see Tracy again.
June 23, 1991
Today I went to church with Grandma and Grandpa and went to youth for the first time in a long time. I saw Tracy there, but we didn’t sit next to each other because only a few people know that we’re going out. The only people that know are: Jimmy, Nikki, Paul Barber, Craig, and probably a lot of other people now, too, because if Nikki knows something, she’ll tell people like Paul Barber, and he was surprised that “I” said yes to a date.
June 24, 1991
Today at camp was fun. We went to go bowling again and then to Pat’s dad’s house to swim. I think Tracy might want to break up with me. She kept saying that she has to talk to me after we got back. I hope she doesn’t want to because I really like her. If she does, I think Craig convinced her to because he kept saying that you shouldn’t be tied down to one person.
June 25, 1991
Today we went to the mall all day and to Toys “R” Us. Tracy wasn’t there today. I wonder why. At the mall it got boring after a little bit.
June 26, 1991
Today at Rio Vista Tracy was there and she doesn’t want to break up with me! We played SPUD and kickball together. I think she likes me a lot, too. Today we were in the van together in the back talking and Pat came up to us and said, “You know what they say about boys + girls + vans.” So we’re going to Kangaroo Court him for getting into other people’s business.
June 27, 1991
Today we went camping at Desolation Wilderness. All of the girls slept in the van. We played Capture the Flag in the forest and a game called Hug the Potholder. We also played Charades and did impressions. After that we all went into Jimmy’s tent and played Truth or Dare.
June 28, 1991
Today we didn’t do much. We packed up and left. We stopped at Tracy’s house and watched Top Gun. Tracy and I are getting really close. I can’t wait till our first date. It might be a little while because Paul might not want her to go out.
June 29, 1991
Today I just stayed home and watched t.v. I moved the VCR back into my room. I hate weekends, now.
June 30, 1991
Today I went to church. I was really praising God. Craig said that Paul found out about me and Tracy. He didn’t say anything to me about it today, so I guess that he doesn’t mind. He knows I wouldn’t try anything on her. She wasn’t there today; maybe it has something to do with Paul finding out.
July 1, 1991
Today Tracy was flirting with other guys. I was getting mad. When we got to the Munozes’ she said that she was sorry and I know she meant it because for the rest of the day she only hung around with me. Paul found out about us and he was teasing Tracy about it. I could see Paul doing something like that. He said it was only obvious because we always sit together and flirt so much.
July 2, 1991
Tracy wasn’t at camp today. Nikki said she told Brandon [Farris] to break up with his girlfriend and to go out with her on Monday. I don’t want her doing that. If she’s going to I’m going to have to break up with her even though I don’t want to. I like her a lot. She’s my first girlfriend and I wouldn’t know how to break up with her. Hopefully she was just joking around. I hope Brandon doesn’t come to camp anymore this summer. Tomorrow I’ll talk to her about it. I don’t want to make her mad and break up with her.
July 3, 1991
Today at Rio Vista Tracy and I had the best time. We built sand castles and buried each other in the sand. After that we wrestled in the water. Nikki was bugging me because I haven’t held her hand yet. That’s because she would get in trouble with Paul + Robin. Tracy said she picked up a box and Paul walked in saying, “What’s that, something Zach gave you?” Tracy asked me if I would have asked her out if she hadn’t asked me out. I said I probably would have but she said I wouldn’t have the guts.
July 4, 1991
Today I slept till 2:00 and then went to Grandma and Grandpa’s for a swim party. After that I climbed a hill with Mike [my uncle—Mike Green] to see fireworks, but we couldn’t see anything. Yesterday I asked Tracy if I could go to her house to watch fireworks but I was just joking.
July 5, 1991
Today at Great America Tracy and I went on all the rides together. We went to the movie there and we held hands through the whole thing. She said she wanted to see Problem Child 2. I’m going to ask her if she wants to go with me. The Vortex was the best ride there. Tracy and I also held hands on the way to the Demon.
For some reason I stopped journaling after that last entry, sadly leaving much of the magic of that summer undocumented—from epic trips like our weeklong waterski trip, Summer Splash, to countless other day trips and day-to-day pieces of drama, from genuinely transcendent experiences like singing worship songs in the woods to the heartache of that first late-summer breakup.
Needless to say, things didn’t last with Tracy that summer. For a time she steered her attention toward our friend Jimmy, thus disrupting Jimmy’s own nascent relationship with Darren’s sister, Sarah. (Oh, the summer teenage drama of it all!) Tracy and I, however, remained fast friends for several years after that summer. Even after she moved to Southern California I took several trips down there, sometimes flying (my first commercial flight was to Los Angeles to visit Tracy) and sometimes begging my mom to drive me to Santa Barbara for a visit. We spent many a summer night, even years later, playing Monopoly on the floor of her room until the wee hours. I once told her that I very nearly woke her up with a kiss, to which she replied, “Why didn’t you?”—why didn’t I indeed?
Sadly things didn’t always go well for Tracy. She got into drugs and crime and even spent some time in prison, although we reunited briefly some years ago for a time. It was lovely to reconnect but sad for me to see the various turns her life took after that. Still, though, she could always make me smile and laugh like we were 13 years old again, even decades later and despite the many differences between us that had cropped up in the years from then to now.
What consequence did this Summer of Magic have for my life, my love life or otherwise, and what affect did it have on my overall worldview? To me that summer represented a kind of pinnacle duplicated by no summer ever since. Those of us who were there used to say that we got through the rest of the school year just so we could get back to our real lives at camp—Heatwave, formerly called “Cram Camp” (cramming all the fun into one summer!).
I was bitten by the love bug that summer, a bite from which I never truly recovered. I gave myself permission to soar to the greatest heights in love, even in its nascent 13-year-old form, and to internalize the drama and the heartache of the ensuing lows, a direct analogue to the roller coasters Tracy and I once rode with such fervor that summer at Great America and the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. What comes up must come down. And perhaps my whole life since then I have been in search of highs that never turn to lows, romantic peaks that never descend to plateaus or (heaven forbid!) valleys. Romantic mediocrity has thus become anathema to my very essence and being.
Like Plato and his lot, I long to soar to the greatest heights, not only in the mind and soul, however, as Plato held, but in the heart and body in this earthy existence like the Epicureans, Hedonists, and even Nietzsche, suggest we mortals should aim to do instead. I have never been content with mere shadows and forms of romantic love—or lust for that matter. I want the genuine article in all its uncompromising, authentic, holistic and dualistic (mind and body, heart and body, and/or soul and body) perfection. Nothing less will make my heart soar, even if the quest to obtain it has been fruitless thus far, despite many attempts and despite the occasional taste of the fruit of the tree of love whose image I see so clearly in my mind but which has proved to be frustratingly elusive in the three decades since the Summer of Magic and the first seductive taste it gave me of what my heart has craved ever since.
There is so much more to say of that one special summer, and perhaps of my experience with Cram Camp / Heatwave / Summer Splash in the other years before and after 1991—and of my experiences growing up in an evangelical/pentecostal church and youth group in general. For now, though, I couldn’t resist marking what, for me, is a special occasion and the 30th anniversary of one of the most meaningful and special times in my entire life, a time that shaped my relationship with the opposite sex, that shaped my romantic worldview in general, that made me the self-reflective writer/philosopher-type that I am today, that showed gave me a tantalizing first taste of the objects of my desire—and the highs and lows they would subsequently cause in the years to come—and that made me uncompromising in my vision of romantic perfection but sadly all-too-willing to compromise and settle when faced with the choice between imperfection and being alone.
Perhaps in my own twisted parody of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, I have always only ever been between imperfection and nothingness, while my heart continues to yearn for and strive after after romantic and hedonistic perfection like the wildflowers reach for the sun on a midsummer day, very much like those hot summer days from that one Summer of Magic, all those years ago.
