Scags at 18

by Deborah Emin

  The restaurant was up a long flight of stairs. When Charles opened the door, the sound of quiet eating and drinking greeted us. No loud laughing and shouting like at the Commons, though lots of kids from the College were there.

  The waiter took us to a table near the fireplace, it was really quite cozy and beautiful. He treated us both as if we were there every night. I pretended that was true and now hope that it might be.

  As beautiful as the place was it made me nervous. I wanted to ask the waiter for help. I wanted to ask him why there were so many pieces of silverware on the table, so many glasses too and then why so much of it was removed as soon as we ordered our meals and drinks.

  In the end, none of that was the real problem. The problem for me was I didn’t know Charles and I didn’t know how to talk to him. We kept trying to talk and interrupted each other. I listened to the crackling of the wood in the fire and waited for the first warmth of the wine he ordered for us to help me find something of interest to talk about.

  I tried to conjure Aunt Money and have her fill me up with smart, funny things to say. Charles, it turns out, doesn’t like to talk that much. It seemed like it was going to be my job to make our evening interesting.

  At first I said the strangest things, things I had never said before. You know that stupid stuff we say when only cliches will do. I didn’t know how to stop this avalanche of inanity. Charles was no help.

  What saved me from total humiliation was Odessa’s appearance at the table. She stood over us with her hands on her hips smiling at me. When she said, “Are you ready to make some sense now?” I knew the smartest thing I could do was to ask Charles about himself. After all, no matter how quiet a person is, he will gladly answer questions about himself. Charles was no exception and I finally sat back and let the man speak.

  The fire was quite warm and it played along his cheekbones making him look a bit sinister one minute and then sad the next. Neither was true but he spoke softly, slowly and I can’t say I paid close attention. I couldn’t take my eyes off his face and the way those blue eyes worked. They are enormous, protected by these lusciously long eyelashes. It hit me that I had met a man who is beautiful, more than handsome. Sitting so close to him, I could finally see what he looked like and how his mouth moved while he spoke and what the texture of his skin was.

  In the midst of answering my questions, he turned to me and asked, “Are you nervous?”

  “Of course I am.” I thought how obvious it must be and how nice of him to notice. “Thanks for noticing.”

  “It’s okay. I don’t bite.”

  He took my hand for a moment and looked at it.

  “My what long fingers you have.”

  “All the better to scratch your eyes out with if you don’t ask me out again.”

  We both laughed at that.

  “I guess the ice is broken.”

  With that, we talked about things I rarely get to talk about with anyone. Like what it was I really wanted to do with my life and why. Charles was good at asking questions too and as I relaxed into the night, as dinner came and went (I can’t remember what we ate, dammit) and as the coffee and brandy sat before us, I knew this was how I was meant to live.

  Charles had been a theater major and then dropped out of school to figure out if that was what he really wanted to do. Then he came back, this fall, to be a political science major with a minor in economics.

  “Now that’s a radical change.” That was all I could say. But it was so radically different, such a different course he now charted for his future.

  My plans sounded vague and fanciful, even to me. As a freshman, I am entitled to such vagueness, I told him. I had a bit more time to figure things out. The scholarship gave me the time to figure things out too.

  He looked surprised when I told him I was on scholarship. I don’t know why. From my clothes and all it ought to be obvious. In any case, once the surprise left his face, we continued talking about what we wanted to study.

  He was full of ambition to do something more substantial with his life but felt that the war stood in the way. He is opposed to it, he told me, and wanted to work for a society that wouldn’t ever choose to go to war again. He asked me if he sounded naive.

  I couldn’t believe he thought I would have an answer to that question. Talk about naive. I smiled and held onto his hand that he hadn’t taken away since we finished dinner and gave it a squeeze.

  It felt wonderful to feel so grown up. To have such a wonderful night that I hoped would never end. But of course it did. It had to.

  The restaurant cleared out and we remained. The fire didn’t get replenished with logs. Eventually, Charles asked for the check. I breathed a sigh of relief as he took out his wallet without even looking at me. He put a number of large bills on the table and we stood up to leave. I wanted to ask him if he didn’t need to wait for the change but I kept silent and followed him through the door and down the stairs.

  The night was still cold but clear. The number of stars in the sky made me realize that so much was going on as the two of us sat and talked the night away. A half moon hung right near the horizon and I wanted to go sit in it with Charles. I smelled magic and wood burning stoves in the air.

  The best part was as he drove me home, he didn’t speed up. He took his time. He cleared his throat and turned to look at me a lot. My eyes were on him and on the road (you can’t ever be too careful).

  When we got to the dorm building, he stopped the car. He said, “Don’t get out yet. It’s too cold to stand outside.”

  I let go of the door handle and sat back. He leaned over and put his face near mine, looked into my eyes and then kissed me. He did. He kissed me with his lips only and then his tongue played at my lips. Something inside me knew what to do and I responded to his kiss as if I had kissed someone every night all my life long. We kissed for a long time.

  When I got out of the car, my cheeks felt reddened by his cheeks. I also had another date lined up with him for Friday night. We are seeing another film, “Brief Encounter.” That’s what they’re showing. I don’t know anything about it.

  Charles said he likes that they are showing these older black and white films. I didn’t care what they showed at that moment so long as it meant that I would see it with Charles.

  I’m so tired now. I barely slept on Saturday night. All that food and the coffee so late at night. Then today I had my work to do for the coming week. It is a special week now. I know at the end of it, I will be seeing my Beautiful Charles.

  Date: Wednesday, 9/17/69

  What a week it’s been so far. I wish there were time to write in here every day, but there isn’t. I am both pleased with how well my work is going but upset too

  On the one hand, my ability to stay focused on the work has improved after getting the week off to a bad start.

  Monday, I woke up still tired from the weekend. I almost fell asleep in my classes. My runs weren’t all that phenomenal until today’s and that made a big impression on Alex who I think had begun to suspect that I wasn’t really as good as I had said I was.

  Fresh from feeling better about everything and getting closer to the time I would see Charles again, I had coffee with Eileen. That just happened by luck, but what she told me about Charles wasn’t as fortunate. I had been so pleased to see her and then I was so displeased by what she told me.

  Now that the two of us have something else to share with each other—our boyfriends—Eileen wanted to have a long, intense talk about Philip and Charles. Today’s plan was to go over whether we were wise to hook up with these two guys. The way she talked about Philip, there was no question at all that he was Mr. Perfect. I don’t believe that he is all she says he is, but she knows him and my only evidence is having seen him walk across campus holding her hand as if he owned her.

  According to Eileen, both these men are “filthy rich.” Sh
e has dug out information on their fathers. I have no idea who Charles’ father is but Eileen informed me that he’s vice-president of an oil company and is therefore, “really, really wealthy.”

  What other news she had to give me about Charles contradicted what he said about why he had left school and why he returned. Eileen said that Charles had been suspended for doing drugs and maybe selling drugs too. The fact that his family is so rich is why the College only suspended him for one semester.

  I didn’t ask her for proof. I also didn’t tell her what Charles had told me. Stacked up against Eileen’s Mr. Perfect, my handsome Charles isn’t quite so wonderful, as Eileen sees it. Her parting words were for me to be careful and make sure he is clean before hopping into bed with him.

  She walked away happy with her choice of Philip. I was left worried and alarmed. Now that I know how Eileen operates, though, I can see I have to be careful of her too.

  Pops is right, some people may say they are your friend but they aren’t. They are just out to see what of your soul they can steal. I’m not saying Eileen is that sort of person yet but I must keep my eye on her.

  Date: Friday, 9/19/69

  I had a dream last night and I must sort it out quickly. It really upset me.

  In my dream, that didn’t start out frightening but inched its way to that state, I am in this large circus tent. All of us from the College are in the tent. It is made of this opaque white material that allows lots of white light to filter in.

  Charles and I are sitting on the lawn inside the tent. It is a brilliant green colored lawn that breathes as if it’s breathing for all of us inside the tent. The main tent flap is tightly tied shut, from the inside.

  All of a sudden, the tent flap is torn open and in step my parents. They act as if they have been invited, but I know they haven’t been. Charles stands up and pulls me to my feet too.

  He throws a rifle to me. He yells, “Kill them. Kill them. Now.”

  I don’t know what to do. I look at my parents and point the rifle at them. “Why?” I ask Charles. He looks at them and back at me and says, “You know why. Why do you ask these stupid questions? Just kill them. Now.”

  I put the rifle up to my shoulder and look down the barrel of it. At the end of it, I see Mama and Pops back at home sitting at the kitchen table. Odessa hands them their coffee just the way they like it. I know that killing them is wrong but I want to kill them and not because Charles tells me to but because I want to kill them.

  Then I shook myself awake.

  I was inside the covers of my bed as if the room were freezing cold but I was so hot I thought I could set the sheets on fire. A guilty panic charged through my whole body, following the blood down every vein to the tips of my toes. The alarms in my body went off. I couldn’t breathe but I had to get out of bed to end the crisis and make sure no more damage was done.

  I don’t remember ever feeling this amount of anger before.

  I felt like a monster. I went for a run alone in the dark. I don’t need bread crumbs to find my way back anymore. The faster I ran, the harder I pushed myself, I couldn’t outrun the guilt. I’m really not a very nice person. I didn’t know that about myself.

  Date: Saturday, 9/20/69

  I’m at Charles’ apartment. We had sex last night and he is still asleep. I couldn’t sleep anymore. It was fantastic. I am so happy but inside me I hear these little voices going on and on about what will Mama and Pops think. That’s what woke me up, this worry.

  What confuses me, though, is I wasn’t raised with any imposition of a specific moral code. Yet, these voices in my head make it sound as if I were.

  My parents never told me not to do something because it was morally wrong. Not once did they say like the other kids’ parents did—you can’t do this, don’t do this.

  I liked Mama and Pops so much for not behaving like that. So why do I feel so guilty about sleeping with Charles? Why does this guilt feel like it could come between Charles and me?

  Every cell in my body loved having sex with him. The part that isn’t physical is having a harder time accepting that I’m not a virgin anymore.

  It can’t be because we aren’t married. I’ve never thought about sex and marriage at all.

  If I don’t let the guilt take over, I know I could fall in love with Charles.

  Last night, Charles and I saw “Brief Encounter.” Charles thought it was a silly romantic film. Perhaps. To me, it was so poignant—that’s the word—poignant. I couldn’t find it last night when we came back to his place and started talking about the film. I tried to explain to him how having to live a lie can be both painful and necessary.

  It’s like when I read Mama’s letters to Pops from when they were first dating. I know that I never should have read them. I learned things I didn’t want to know. Mama’s gushy pleading with Pops, for example, to be honest with her and tell her why he would be so upset for no reason at all, at least for no reason she could understand, made me watch them more closely after that. I understood how Mama could have been frightened by Pops and wonder if he was the right man for her.

  Now, that I am away, she writes to me about wanting to return to that golden time when they first fell in love and I can’t say anything. My most honest response to her is that I understand how something can be wonderful and awful at the same time.

  I understand Mama. She thinks I don’t or that I’m upset about her telling me how my being away is such a good thing for her and Pops. I’m not upset. It’s just that I wish she weren’t involved with making Pops out to be someone he never was. If she could be a little more realistic, I would feel comfortable asking her for some help with what’s going on in my life.

  For the first time, I want some motherly advice about sex. I sure as hell don’t want to get pregnant. I must be like my Pops and think that for me too having a kid would destroy everything I’m working towards now. Wow. I’ve never thought about those letters like this before. I never saw me struggling with the same things that got my Pops so worried and then into trouble. I don’t want to be like my Pops.

  No wonder I can’t sleep tonight.

  Did I ever think about becoming pregnant before tonight? Oh Scags. What world have you walked into?

  In “Brief Encounter,” a married woman, Laura, meets a married doctor, Alec, at a train station. They fall in love. In this movie too, love is seen as something different from what I want love to be. I mean that just the way I wrote it here. I want this time with Charles to be wonderful and fun and tender. I don’t want all that pain and worry and fear and guilt.

  Yet, here I am starting out that way and we have only slept with each other once.

  Charles and I had a heated argument last night about that movie. I couldn’t get him to see my point. Instead of going over and over the same thing with me, he made me get up off the couch and follow him into his bedroom. By moving into that room, we finally could be loving with each other. It was really beautiful. I know what a banal thing that is to say, but having never slept with anyone before, it was like getting inside my body in such a new way that made running seem pointless. In bed with Charles, I experienced all the parts of my body without having to worry at all about getting injured or pushing myself too hard. It wasn’t about my body either but about the two of us having bodies. I never realized that was what sex was like. I have to think about this more so I can describe it better.

  I think I’m also afraid that just as easily as I am beginning to fall in love with Charles, I could just as easily fall out of love with him. It’s not him I don’t trust, but me.

  These are among the things I’d like to talk to Mama about. The myriad things that are happening that I don’t understand and make me question what I’m walking into. I require balance in my life and this is certainly about to take that away.

  I want to tell Mama about how I rolled over in bed the other night and almos
t fell out of it, because I was grabbing to hold onto Charles but he wasn’t there. I caught myself and didn’t fall flat onto the floor. I want her to tell me why these things are happening to me.

  Mama could tell me why falling in love is so troubling while being fun too. Why must everything turn into a trial? Am I being tested to see if I am good enough to love someone? Did she feel that way when she met Pops?

  Okay. I hear Charles getting out of bed. I’m going to stop writing now.

  More later. I promise.

  Date: Sunday, 9/21/69

  I’m at the library now. I spent most of this weekend with Charles.

  What’s going on? It doesn’t matter. Just listen, if you don’t get your work completed, you will fail and lose this glorious scholarship and have to leave College and Charles. So buckle down and do your work.

  I’m promising myself that right now. First I must write this down: Charles and I are going to a doctor so I can get a prescription for birth control pills. Being Charles’ lover got complicated quickly.

  Okay. To work or else.

  Date: Monday, 9/22/69

  I’m pleased to report that I’m back on track for now. I stayed until very late at the library last night and caught up with everything I wanted to work on. Since two of my classes are purely academic in structure, I know how to study for them. It may be a bit time consuming but at least I am clear about what needs to be done and how to get it all done on time. I enjoy both the Psychology and Philosophy courses.

  They’re not as challenging as I thought they would be. I assumed that my classmates’ private school educations would trump my public school one. But my formulas keep me always ahead and aware of what needs to be covered. I give myself plenty of time to digest it too.