Consider the iconic film Stand by Me and the losing your virginity.
These two subjects came up independently in conversation today. A seemingly light conversation about the dangers of wearing skirts around men (quite dangerous according to my informal poll) eventually found itself in loss of virginity territory.
What is a girl to do when her first becomes world famous and cryptically mentions her in press interviews? This is surely a plot for a novel, but it is also my friend's reality! When another friend mentions her first, she speaks of him as a long-lost friend even though he is her husband. I pointed this out to her. She argues that they are both different people now. She has one partner but thinks of him as two different people in this completely reasonable way.
People change. Our firsts can become famous or infamous, familiar or strange, Nobel prize winners or the perpetually overlooked man.
Attitudes change. Most in my (albeit small) circle of friends cried after their first time. For reference, we are in our thirties. I have no idea if this is the norm or if I am simply drawn to a bunch of women who cry. In talking to the younger generation, we find that teenagers today find our tears to be strange. These teens didn't cry and can't imagine why we did. We can't imagine why they wouldn't.
Pressed to explain, we can come up with partial explanation at best to explain the tears. But some part of the motivation for the tears is terribly elusive.
Until today!
Don't read that as some arrogant proclamation of "Eureka!" The fortunate juxtaposition of our Stand by Me conversation with the conversation on virginity revealed the obvious.
Why does Stand by Me speak to so many? On a literal level, the film centers around four boys who set out to see a dead body presumably at the end of the summer. On the symbolic level, the film's literal journey represents the journey out of innocence and into experience. (I'll spare you an in-depth analysis of the archetypes and references to Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell.)
After you have seen the corpse, the journeys change. Singing songs while walking the train tracks become seemingly inappropriate when they once surfaced organically and with a carefree spirit.
And that is worth a few tears.
It isn't that innocence is better than experience. Both obviously have their virtues and pitfalls. As we become experienced, we cry because we can't have both the experience and the innocence. We cry because we can't go back.
There is something magical about those transitional times--those summers which precede the inevitable death and dying in the autumn. You are on your way to seeing the corpse. You know after you see the corpse everything will change, but you have to see the corpse. Your curiosity overwhelms you.
Just like Gordie Lachance wistfully remembers the friend he had when he was twelve, we all wistfully remember those last moments of innocence that we shared with the boys before they became famous, or our husbands, or complete strangers.
