"Are you Catholic?"

The music class that started it all

I had this music class every week during my first semester in ninth grade that was for intermediate students or those who wanted to play non-traditional instruments. I started off in the marching band that year but, after about a week, it became clear that I hadn’t touched my clarinet in two years and the teacher moved me to her intermediate class to brush up on my very dusty skills. This intermediate music class is where I met Chad Michael, Clifton, and Jeff.

Chad Michael was a piano player and also the school’s most sought-after hottie who was unbelievably ignorant of his own status among the school’s young women. I didn't actually speak to him for another fifteen years or so during a rather amusing experience that you can read about here:

You never really know what people think of you

Anyway, Jeff was the other piano player in the class. I did not think much of him at first; he was talkative and funny, but I wasn't terribly interested in him at that point. Clifton, on the other hand, was an intriguing fellow who played bass guitar. He caught my eye immediately, but not because I thought he was hot; rather, because I thought the man was terrifying.

A pretty good AI approximation of Clifton’s hallway presence, although the bag isn’t black enough and all of the hairs on his head should be much longer

The year was 1998 and Columbine wasn't scheduled until the following year, but Clifton was dressed for the occasion every day in his black jeans, black combat boots, black metal band t-shirt that had “666” written across the back, and black trench coat.¹ He was well over six feet tall and the boots only made him tower over everyone even more. His hair was long, dark, and wavy, and he already had a full beard at 17. His facial hair covered most of his mouth, hiding any facial expressions that might betray him as a nice guy with a good sense of humor and romantic nature, making him look stern and mean and intimidating all the time, instead. Clifton didn’t really talk to me much in class, from what I recall, and we didn’t seem to have any friends in common, so imagine my surprise when, on my way to my next class after Intermediate Music let out one day, Clifton stopped me in the hallway by the cafeteria.

“Hey, Lirpa?” I look up… and up, and up, until my eyes reach Clifton’s face approximately 2 feet above my head. I probably cower a little.

“…um, hi,” I squeaked at him.

“Uh… do you want to like, go out to a movie or something sometime?” he asked me, surprisingly shyly. Internally, I was screaming: what does this guy even want with me? Is he some kind of “goth”? Why is he even interested in me? Why doesn’t he ever wear colors? Does he really worship Satan?!

I had so far never been asked out on a real date before, only having been on one to a school dance earlier that year — the Sadie Hawkins dance, where I had asked my date, not the other way around. This was different and I had no idea how to respond to such an absolutely unexpected question, even though I immediately knew that I did not want to go on this date with this quintessentially scary-ass dude.

“Um, sure?” I responded, instead, apparently so nervous that I forgot my words.

I secretly hoped my mom would say I wasn’t allowed to go so that I could let him down easy, later, but instead, she shocked me by saying that I could. Since he was so much older than I was, though, we had to make it a double date.

I decided to ask Nick, my best dude friend, and Helen, one of my best girl friends, to come with. While Nick’s and Helen’s mutual hatred for each other had long been previously established, they agreed to go, anyway. I was hoping I’d somehow become more attracted to Clifton and start to think he was really cool because, at this point, I had put a lot of effort into going on this date that I didn’t even mean to say yes to in the first place.

Looking up shit like this makes me feel extremely old

Nick, Helen, and I were waiting at my house when Clifton pulled up in front of the house. He had his license and would be taking us all to the movie we were going to see, The Wedding Singer, in his giant, rusty, gray conversion van.² He walked up to the house and knocked on the door. My mom followed us out to to the porch to meet him.

“Hi,” my mom said, extending her arm to shake his hand, “I’m Kathy.”

“No,” Clifton responds, a confused look on his face. We all look up at him, displaying equally confused faces. My mom finally breaks the collective bemusement: “no what?”

Clifton paused and then realized what’d happened. “Oh,” he said, laughing a little, “I thought you asked if I was Catholic.” We all chuckled nervously, the tension cracked a little, and we head to the movie theater.

As we’re walking through the parking lot up to the building, Helen and I are in front and Nick and Clifton are behind us somewhere. I find out later that Nick was informing Clifton that if he ever hurt me, he would hang him from the nearest tree by his balls.

No wonder my mom wanted him to come with.

The rest of the date was as awkward as you can probably imagine: Nick and Helen bickered throughout it and I spent the bulk of the movie squirming away from Clifton, who was just trying to kind of lean closer to me once in a while, but even though he was actually a perfectly nice guy, he still seemed so different from me and intimidating at that point and I knew I wasn’t going to warm up to him like that.

I told Clifton a day or two after the date that I wasn’t interested in going out with him again, I’m pretty sure in note form, and that was really it. Despite not going on another date, he and I ended up hanging out in the same group of people pretty often over the next two years, and we ended up actually going to prom together the following year… with other people. I ended up dating Jeff,³ the other piano player from the Intermediate Music class, that year, and we all shared a limo and went to dinner and the dance with a third couple.

Prom, 1999. Clifton, his date, Jeff, me, and those other two people. tbh Clifton was much nicer and more attractive than my date (he eventually cut his hair and shaved so I could actually tell) and I should’ve gone with him instead of Jeff, who honestly just kind of sucked as a person.

Clifton, despite his initial scary-looking exterior, actually turned out to be one of the friendliest guys at our school once you broke through the shyness he displayed at first. He and I would stay friends and continue to hang out with the same people throughout my time in high school and after, the “are you Catholic?” moment becoming a recurring joke between us. He and his big, rusty van carried many of us all over the city and usually to one of its various lakes or wooded areas or maybe the mall we all worked at at some point or another. Once, I hid with a bunch of other people in the back of it to sneak into a drive-in movie and we climbed up the ladder to the top to watch.

We eventually drifted apart, as old high school friends are wont to do, and at some point in the past decade or so when I was at my most politically annoying, he unfriended me on Facebook, but that's okay because so did just about everybody normal back then.

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Thanks to

Worst Boyfriend Ever

for editing advice!

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You might also enjoy:

1. I’m beginning to understand why he started wearing colors the following year

2. Isn't it funny how people's vehicles seem to take on personalities of their own in high school? Besides Clifton's van, I also clearly remember a girl’s gray pickup truck that got broken into at a track meet (the only thing stolen were tampons) and a boy's rusty brown Jeep as having particular notoriety. They were effectively our Hogwarts pets.

3. Someday, when I’m already in a bad mood, I’ll write more about Jeff