Where Are You, Billie Jean?

A million years ago when I was in high school, there was a girl in my grade level (I don’t think we shared any classes) named Billie Jean. She was a knockout. A babe, a looker, a stunner. A pretty, blond-haired fox. You get the idea. Now, keep in mind that I’m giving you her description as perceived by a shy, 17 year old boy. I didn’t have a crush on Billie Jean; she was too far out of my league for that. I may as well have dreamt of having my own atomic submarine. Billie Jean was a clear-skinned goddess of hotness and I was a lowly, cash-poor, acne-plagued teenage boy struggling both at home with an alcoholic parent and in the high school trenches with their buttoned-down cliques.

In my high school days, I was always looking for ways to make money – I mean, in addition to the meager amounts I made at after-school jobs. So when a beauty contest was held in the high school auditorium my senior year, I was there with my 35 mm camera and flash unit, and I took a picture of each girl as she walked down the runway. (Billie Jean was Miss Jaycee.) I could take only one picture of each girl; the flash took so long to recharge between pictures that it was barely possible to get even one photo. I took the camera home and developed the film and printed the photos in my basement (a hobby that brought brief respite from the conflict usually going on upstairs). Then I put the photos in cheap frames and knocked on doors where the girls lived, offering the parents a framed photo of their little darling on the runway at the beauty contest. I didn’t ask for a lot of money – I think it was five bucks for a framed 8 x 10 black & white photo. They usually bought the picture, though I don’t know if it was my fine photographic technique and darkroom artistry that prompted them to buy, or if it was simply that it creeped them out to think of a strange boy walking out of their house with a photo of their daughter in a swimsuit. I really hadn’t considered the creepiness factor, but it worked in my favor, monetarily speaking.

Graduation Day came and went and scattered my high school classmates in various directions near and far. I saw Billie Jean one more time, about eighteen months later. It was a chance encounter on a street in Richmond. She was talking with a couple of people, and I stopped briefly to say hello. I heard her say she was going to enlist in the Air Force.

I walked on, shocked. The Air Force? The flippin’ Air Force? This young woman who so clearly had big-screen Hollywood-esque beauty – beauty that needed, that demanded, to be exposed to an adoring world – was joining the Air Force? I could see her going to college to study acting. I could see her going to L.A. to become a starlet. But enlisting in the Air Force? It was like stashing the Venus de Milo in a closet. I was so disappointed.

I never saw Billie Jean again. Many years later, after my parents passed away, I was cleaning some clutter from their house and I found, amongst other old photos I had printed in my cellar darkroom, a picture of Billie Jean walking the runway at that beauty contest. Maybe her parents didn’t want to buy it; maybe I couldn’t catch them at home; maybe I couldn’t find her address. Or, quite possibly, they did buy a photo and this is an extra print. I often printed several copies of a photo using different exposure times or with different Polycontrast filters, to get the best print possible. Or – and I’m throwing this out as a remote possibility – maybe I made an extra print because she was a pretty girl and I was seventeen.

This week I learned a few facts about Billie Jean’s life. She retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force. She has been married, apparently more than once. She worked for four years as a legislative aide in the South Carolina House of Representatives, and when she left, the House passed a Resolution to thank her and to recognize her as “an exceptional woman.” I found out she is an avid golfer and devoted horse owner with a love for the outdoors. She left South Carolina to begin the next chapter in her life in St. Louis, Missouri.

Why did she join the Air Force? Maybe she wanted adventure in her life. Maybe she wanted to get out of the little town where she lived and away from the mundane jobs that were available to her. Maybe her family didn’t have the money to send her to college and her choice was the Air Force or the kitchen at HoJo.

I don’t know her address, and I don’t know her last name now. But I bet she’d love to have this old photo of herself walking the runway in that beauty contest. Maybe she has grandkids who’d like to see what their grandmother looked like back in the day. I’d be happy to send the photo. But send it where? Where are you, Billie Jean?