Chapter 1: Get Back To Where You Once Belonged

OCTOBER 2nd, 2007

I sat in my bed, in my tiny apartment, wondering where it had all gone off track. I'd been doing that a lot lately. I was 42 years old, and I couldn't help but think they were 42 wasted years.

It hadn't always been so. I was an academic prodigy. I blew it--I didn't even have a college degree. I had no social skills as a kid, and while things were better in adulthood, they weren't great. All I really had going for me was my brains--and I'd squandered them.

I was, as I said, 42. Living by myself after my wife had left me for another woman. Working in retail, of all things. Management, yes, but retail. 1400 on my SAT's and I was a retail manager. As a kid, people had predicted great things for Ed Bovilas. They were wrong.

I thought things were looking up when I got married. I was wrong. Things were fine at first, better than fine--I thought I had finally found a woman that could live with my complete lack of social skills. But things were never perfect. We couldn't have children. Our sex life was frequent and passionate, but there were problems. She found out what they were when she had a lesbian 'fling'--the problem was that I was a man. The breakup was amicable. And I'd had a couple flings myself since she left, so I did find out that I was a perfectly decent lover when I was with a woman who wasn't a closet lesbian, so that was good--but love seemed out of my reach.

I mean, who would want me? 42, overweight, a smoker, I live in a hole, my job sucks... what did I have to offer?

I lay there, thinking about all this, pretending to read, when I felt it. At first, I thought it was heartburn, something I get regularly. Then, I realized it might not be.

The pain started on the left side of my chest, and traveled down my left arm. I started having trouble breathing.

A heart attack? Well, what did I expect? I was in horrible shape. My diet sucked. I smoked two packs a day. I was a heart attack waiting to happen.

I was still with it. I could call 911, get some help. Then I thought, what would be the point? I mean, who would miss me? My parents, maybe, but they're getting up there themselves. My brother? Yes, but he lived cross-country. My sister and I didn't get along.

Maybe it would be better this way. Maybe it was time to go. I closed my eyes, and even as the pain increased, managed to drift off. Finally, the end of this miserable life.

OCTOBER 3rd

I woke up.

OK, so maybe it was just heartburn. I guess it wasn't my time after all. I opened my eyes, and looked around--and realized I wasn't in my room.

Well, I was in my room, but it was my old room. My childhood bedroom--that drafty attic room at the old house on Hereford Street, in Cabot, Massachusetts. What the hell?

I'd never believed in any sort of afterlife or anything like that. I didn't believe in God. I believed that when you were dead, you were dead. So what the hell was this?

I looked around. It still looked like it did when I lived here, not how it does now. But there were no Beatles posters on the wall, those had been there since eighth grade. And the LP collection seemed a bit threadbare.

I looked down--and JESUS!!! I was skinny! I'd only been skinny for a couple years in my life--the couple years immediately following my major puberty growth spurt. I had baby fat before then, and pudged out again after I 'caught up' to the extreme height change.

This had to be a dream. Didn't it?

I heard the door open down at the foot of the stairs leading from the third floor. "Eddie!" I heard. "Get up, you don't want to miss the bus to school!"

"OK, Mom," I grumbled, almost automatically. School? Mom?

Where the hell was I? Or, more accurately, when the hell was I? A part of my brain supplied the answer: October 3rd, 1977, a Monday. Jesus Christ, that was 30 years ago!!! I got up, stumbled over to the mirror in my room, and took a look.

What looked back was me-when I was about 12. Yup, late '77, that's exactly what I'd be-12.

This had to be a dream. It just had to. I tried slapping myself, pinching myself, anything to wake myself up. Didn't work. Fine, then--I'll just go back to sleep. When I wake up, everything will be fine.

I drifted back to sleep...

... the alarm went off. "Eddie! Get up! Breakfast is almost ready!" Mom yelled up the stairs.

Well, if this was a dream, I was still in it.

I got up, found some clothes, and chucked 'em on. Gathered up my school books. 77, what grade was I in? Eighth, a part of my brain supplied. Eighth grade. Oh shit.

I was beginning to realize something strange, as I did all these tasks that almost seemed automatic. It was almost like I had two sets of memories. The first one, the prominent one, was the memories of the life I had been living up until that day, the memories of my 42 years on earth. The other memories were in the background, ones that I could access almost like a database or something--the memories that this body must have. Stuff that I wouldn't be able to remember over 30 years' difference, like where I kept my clothes. What day it was. I sat and thought, and was able to remember my class schedule. Stuff like that.

I sat in my bed for a while, thinking. And wanting a cigarette. This was all psychological, of course This body had never had a cigarette at 12 years old, so it wasn't a physical craving. I was just used to it. I was determined not to go looking for a cigarette, though. This body didn't smoke, and I aimed to keep it that way. I could deal with the psychological cravings. I hoped.

I headed downstairs.

Mom and Dad were there. I took one look at Dad, and realized that this was before he lost the eye. I didn't remember exactly when that had happened, but knew it was in eighth grade. Mom looked--well, young. She would've only been, what, 34? And I was looking at her with eyes that had been 42 since yesterday. No, not that way. I hadn't ever been one of those guys with a hard--on for my mother, and that hadn't changed. Nope, it was just her youth that smacked me upside the head. Dad, too--he was actually not gray. He'd been gray for as long as I could remember.

I saw my brother, Declan, who'd be, what, 9? Yeah. And my sister Erin, who was six. Mom was spooning out bacon and eggs.

That 'other memories' database seemed to keep me running on autopilot throughout breakfast. I instinctively knew how to act, what to say, what the current jokes were passing through the family.

After breakfast, I trudged down to the bus stop to catch the bus to school. I instinctively remembered where that was, too. This was so weird. I mean, I kept asking myself--how can this be real?

Quite honestly, if someone had decided to send me to hell, this might be a reasonable facsimile, plonking me down back at the beginning of eighth grade at Cabot East JHS. Now understand, grammar school--which had been grades one through six--had been no picnic. But junior high was when it really started to go downhill--and eighth grade was the worst. A lot of the shit I'd put myself through in my life, had started in eighth grade. A lot of it I couldn't even pick out distinctly in my memories--it was all just one big unhappy blur.

As I stood there waiting for the bus, a lot of it came back to me. The loneliness. The isolation. The fear. Eighth grade was the year I went to school every day knowing I had about a fifty-fifty shot of getting the living daylights beaten out of me. I had few friends. Though I wasn't as small as I had been, due to that growth spurt the past summer, now I was skinny. I wasn't physical, I was uncoordinated. I also wrecked the curve in all my classes. I was a complete geek with absolutely no social skills. It had led to a whole lot of pain throughout my schooling, but eighth grade was the worst.

I sat there on that bus, by myself, and it came back to me. I felt thirty years of despair creeping in. I remembered how horrific this year had been. And I was going to have to live it all over again? Whose idea of a sick joke was this?

As I thought about it, I started to get angry--really angry. Angry at having been put in this position. Angry at these little shits that were going to torment me. I was a 42-year-old man, not a 12-year-old boy! Well now, I guess I was a little bit of both--but the 42-year-old man was bitter and resentful.

I didn't get beat up that day, but I got pushed around a little bit. I also got taunted. But the pushing around really opened my eyes. I hadn't really realized it when I went through this for the first time, but I was very weak. I mean physically. I had really filled out in college, and didn't get pushed around any more after that. But here, back being 12, I was confronted with my weakness.

You know, you can do something about that, the grown-up part of my brain supplied. It was right. I could. Thinking about it, I realized I could also do something to stave off the weight problems that were in my future. Hmmm, that would take some thought.

Anyhow, I went through my classes, reminding me how bone-numbingly boring they were. They were boring the first time, and now I could teach most of them so you can imagine the boredom increased exponentially. Health class--which is where sex ed was taught--was just laughable. I mean, the things they tell kids about sex, no wonder kids are so screwed up. It was so damn clinical.

After lunch--eaten alone--I got to English. Now, English in eighth grade was a decidedly mixed blessing.

The bad part was the teacher, Mrs. Sinclair. She was the most incompetent excuse for a teacher I encountered throughout my entire school career. She was also a blatant sexist. Her idea of grading compositions was to give all the girls A's and all the boys C's. I went from my sixth grade teacher thinking my writing was good enough to be published; to this bitch giving me a C on it. If things held true to form, there was a run-in coming between her and me; futile, but satisfying.

The good thing about the class was the students. Well, there was Christine Seneca, and that turned out to be not-so-good, but it started as good. Chris was smarter than I was, which immediately made me like her. We'd had a little romance--which, my 'current-life' memory told me had just ended. So I knew that now she was going to start trying to avoid me. But the month we spent together was fun. She was my first girlfriend. It never went anywhere, but I liked her. We were both insecure geeks, so it probably wasn't a good match, but I never forgot her.

Also in that English class was Stan Murvetsin, a guy who was about to become one of my few friends. I think the time was right--Stan was about to do something for me that would change my life, and in a good way.

And then there was Kara Pocharsky. Sigh.

Kara Pocharsky. I'd known her since kindergarten, but it was in sixth grade that she became the object of my affection. I was infatuated with her from sixth to eighth grade. I asked her out twice in eighth grade. One, my memory told me, had just happened--she turned me down because she was going out with this guy named Don Nixon. The other one would happen later, and I'd get turned down just because. Of course, none of this stopped me from mooning over her. Damn, it all came back to me like that. After eighth grade, I never saw her again--I went to North Shore Prep, a local Catholic high school. Kara went to Andrews Academy, a ritzy boarding school that she got into on merit--Kara was a smart cookie herself. So, eighth grade would be the last time I'd spend any time with her.

Damn, I had to relive all this!

I made it through the school day relatively unscathed, and got on the bus to go home. Kara took that bus, too. Sitting with her was just not going to happen, of course, but I got to see her walk in with her friends.

I got home knowing I had something to do--and then I saw the papers stacked on the porch. That's right, I had a paper route. So, I said hi to my mom, dumped my books, and headed back out.

I was towards the end of my route, and realized that there was another person I was looking forward to seeing--Cyndi Gagnon.

Cyndi and I had also known each other all through grammar school. If things went the way they went before, we were about to start dating--which was an exercise in frustration. Cyndi gave a whole new meaning to the word 'prude'. We're talking about a girl who swore she wasn't going to kiss a guy until she was sixteen! That was beyond the pale even in 1977. But I liked her, we dated for three months or so. I was allowed to hold her hand and put my arm around her but that was it--until I finally broke it up in sheer frustration.

Cyndi was on my route, and she invited me in for a bit, as she often did. I was chatting with her. I had been considering not asking her out this time. But, chatting with her, I realized something--I really liked her, just as I had back then. And she really liked me.

Of course, something I had always suspected back then was even more apparent this time. Her little sister Dina, who was a year younger, really liked me.

Maybe I should change what Gagnon sister I asked out! Nah, that would just be opening up a whole new can of worms, wouldn't it?

Anyhow, I left and headed off for the rest of my paper route, and then home. Did some homework before supper. Not that I had to do much--I got straight A's the first time around without cracking a book. I did that the first eight years of my schooling--something that later came back to haunt me.

After that, I looked around the room.

I checked out my record albums--ugh. This was when I was in my wimpy period. John Denver? The freakin' Partridge Family? The beginning of eighth grade was before I became a rock and roller. Damn, I needed some tunes. Of course, I realized with a laugh, a lot of stuff I liked to listen to hadn't been released yet! But a good deal of it had.

I put on the radio, good ol' WBCN, before it went downhill in the late 80's. One of the first things I heard on it was Born To Run. There's an album to buy!

I decided to read something. To my delight, I found this book--one of my favorites in my childhood--a large history of the National Hockey League. I hadn't seen it in years. It was a lot of fun to read it again.

Then I went to sleep, wondering where--or, more accurately, when--I'd wake up

OCTOBER 6th, 1977

It was a Thursday, my fourth day 'back'. I think, by this time, it had sunk into me that this was real--or as real as reality gets, anyway--and I was stuck here.

This day, the 6th, started out very interesting. I re-lived an episode that, at the time, had just been another bit in my long line of humiliations.

It happened in Mechanical Drawing, a class I hated. I hated all those 'shop' classes-wood shop, metal shop, that crap. I would've much preferred to take Home Ec, but I would've been the first male ever at Cabot East JHS to take it. Since I was already getting teased and beaten for being a 'fag', that wouldn't have helped, so my parents convinced me to drop the idea. I just didn't conform to a lot of expectations for 'masculinity', and that was even more apparent in 1977, when the gender lines were drawn more rigidly. In my 'time', everybody, boys and girls, would take a little of everything--but not in 1977. Girls learned to cook and guys learned to build stuff, period. Forget the little fact that I'd much rather have learned how to cook (which my mother was teaching me, anyway).

Anyhow, Roger Herren--a complete asshole who I'd have a run-in with later on in the year--decided to add to my humiliation. Grinning along with his chuckling buddies, he asked, "Hey, Ed. You ever have a woman's cunt over your face?"

When this had happened the first time, I had absolutely no idea what a 'cunt' was, and despite my bluffing attempt, it was obvious. Just more ammunition for them. Of course, now, I knew better. "Nope," I said nonchalantly, "not yet, unfortunately."

"What about when you were born?" he asked.

I grinned. "Well, if you're going to count that. I don't quite remember it. And actually, that wouldn't quite be true--I was a C-section baby."

"Ah, you don't even know what a cunt is," he accused, just as he had the first time around.

"Sure I do," I said mildly. "Though that's not my favorite word for it. Pussy is better. Even cunny is better. Then again, there's honeypot..." They looked at me in amazement.

"You ever see one?" Roger asked.

I laughed. "Not unless you're counting my Dad's Playboy collection." They laughed at that. One thing I'd learned in adulthood is that self-depreciating humor, delivered right, always got people to accept you better.

"Well," one of Roger's acolytes said, "I heard you were taking Cyndi Gagnon to the dance tomorrow." I nodded. "Maybe she'll show you."

I laughed. "Boy, you don't know Cyndi very well, do you? Nope, Cyndi's a Good Girl. If I get a good-night peck on the cheek, I'll consider it a major victory."

"You might get lucky," Roger said.

"There's a difference between lucky and miraculous," I grinned, walking away to them laughing--with me, not at me. Jesus, what a difference. That's when I first had a glimmer--maybe I could change some things. Maybe I was being given a second chance.

And then there was Cyndi. I had decided to ask her out again. I had seen her yesterday, and asked her to the dance tomorrow, Friday night. She had happily said yes. Just like it happened before. I knew I was about to get the 'no kissing' lecture. I wondered what I'd do about that.

At lunch that day, I ate with Stan Murvetsin. He invited me to his house after school. The day I remembered. This day I'd happily revisit.

Afterwards, later that afternoon, I got an unwelcome reminder of my status. I got punched. One of the school bullies whacked me in the chest.

In analyzing what had happened afterwards, I was able to see things that I didn't see the first time around. I saw him coming, knew who it was, and cowered. It was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. That's when I discovered the biggest problem I'd had in those days--I was scared. Of everything. Now, I knew at least part of that was how I'd been treated by my so-called peers. Some of the fear was because I had good reason to be scared. But, that was a vicious circle. They fed off my fear.

And it wasn't just fear of being beaten--it was fear of everything. The one single area of my life I had any confidence in was academics.

One thing I realized about that incident with the bully punching me is that I reacted like my 12-year-old self. My memories were of the 42-year-old man, and I had experiences I could draw on, but my first instinct was as a 12-year-old.

But, like I said, I did know better, not actually being 12 years old. If I had to relive this hell, it was time to make a few changes.

Not this afternoon, though. Stan had invited me over, and this day, I wanted to re-live. I was able to do it since it was Thursday and I didn't have a paper route to do. The Cabot Gazette, the paper I delivered, only published three days a week-Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. So, today being Thursday, I was available to head over to Stan's.

Y'see, this was the day that Stan was going to introduce me to his favorite musical group-The Beatles. It was a day that was etched on my memory with perfect clarity.

Discovering the Beatles, courtesy of Stan, changed my life. Music ended up being the only good thing--certainly, the only good constant--that I had. The Beatles started it all, and Stan did that. Because of what happened on this day, I started playing guitar, singing, writing songs. I never did anything with it, but it was a constant source of solace. And The Beatles led me to all sorts of other things. When I 'came back', my CD collection filled a rack that took up an entire wall of my bedroom. And that doesn't count the MP3s I had on my computer.

Shit, I missed computers. For that matter, I missed CDs.