Scags at 18

by Deborah Emin

  Now it bothers me that I’ve not asked Charles about the drugs and if that was why he was away from the College. No one has ever said a word about it except Eileen. Not even in the conversations Charles and Tony have when I’m around is there any mention of that. I wonder though where all the money comes from for us to do what we do or for the presents and the apartment.

  I didn’t know what to say when Eileen told me about Charles’ drug use.

  I didn’t take drugs at home and I don’t intend to take many here. I tried pot with Eileen and smoke it occasionally with Charles. He and Tony take drugs, I’m sure of that. However, if Charles had been suspended for drugs, would he be so foolish as to continue once he returned to school?

  I know that the two of them worry a great deal about the draft, about having to go to war. I imagine if he’s drafted, I’ll need to take something to deal with my anxiety about him being killed. I don’t even know how to write these thoughts down. It intersects too with how Virginia Woolf wrote about the changes that occurred after the First World War in the way men and women talked to each other. Somehow everything she wrote about matches what I am dealing with now.

  My imagination is fragile tonight. It wants to run away with stories of death and destruction. If I let it do that, by the time all his guests leave and he comes to bed, he won’t recognize me. I know I’m capable of transforming myself into an awful shrew who wants to chew up all the good feelings and spit them in his face. Inside of me, there is that constant tug of war between needing him to assure me that he loves me and me not wanting to discover that I may not love him.

  At home, these rages came upon me when I worried about leaving Skokie. I needed reassurance that I would indeed leave. That this wasn’t a cruel hoax being played on me. One night it got so bad that Mama made me take one of Pops’ sedatives so I would go to bed and leave her alone.

  That experience taught me a lesson. The first thing I discovered was how hard it is to get out of bed when I have taken a sleeping pill. I thought I had exiled that person for good after seeing what it took to quiet her down.

  Now she turns up frequently as I fall in love with Charles. If I’m going to succumb to the drug culture because of these feelings for Charles, then I must find some other way to get through this or I will be a mess.

  Midwesterners, I tell myself, don’t need drugs. We are made of a sturdier form of molecular composition that allows us more resilience than these East Coast snobs.

  Like Bartleby, “I prefer not to.”

  Now I understand why I got angry about this party. I associate The Beatles with drugs. I do. Sitting up all night listening to their new album means that they’ll all be taking drugs. I know that’s what makes me upset and at the same time, I really don’t want to know about it. I have gotten to this place due to my hard work and I can’t let this love affair or the drugs or anything side track me from the goal—four years of a free education.

  For now, I am going to lie here waiting for Charles to come to bed. If I’m asleep, he’ll wake me up and we’ll make love. I know that. I’ll fall back to sleep in his arms and worry less about things until I wake up. I sleep so well in his arms.

  Charles and I are going to the doctor tomorrow to get birth control pills. I’m nervous about that too. For one thing, I can’t afford them so Charles is paying for everything, including the doctor visit. This is Scags Morgenstern’s new life. I have really left Skokie far behind.

  Date: Friday, 10/3/69

  Yesterday seems like a long time ago. Time stretches back to a point right after we left the doctor’s office and drove to the drug store to buy the Pill. Previously, the Scags who was in love with Charles, was a student at the College and had been a daughter in the Morgenstern family, her life has now taken on new dimensions. It’s like that image in my head of Odessa kneading dough to bake bread. How she has to stretch the dough in all these directions and how it stays dough but is altered. It is going to be made into something greater than the uncooked dough that has to be kneaded to be baked.

  In a sentence, If ever there was a day that made me see the difference between my old world in Skokie and my new one here—yesterday was that day.

  When Mama handed me this diary as I got on the train in Chicago, she never could have foreseen the enormous changes that would occur and how quickly.

  If she could have hidden secret messages inside these pages about what my new life would be like, could she have written what it’s like to go to a gynecologist for the first time and to be put on the Pill? Would she have been shown the materials this doctor had in her office documenting the horrors of illegal abortions and the resulting deaths?

  I would have been so grateful had Mama written in here: “Scags when you find your new boyfriend, make sure he takes you to the doctor so you can be on the Pill. Those nasty condoms are messy and can break. You’re a lucky girl, my darling daughter, you can take the Pill and never have to worry again that your fun with Charles will be interrupted by an unwanted pregnancy.”

  I don’t want sex to be about having fun or even mostly about having fun. I worry what would happen were I to become pregnant. Reading Virginia Woolf’s description of Mrs. Seaton’s life and her 13 children made me realize that one can’t contribute to the world while worrying about all one’s children. If there is one thing Charles is teaching me it’s that I want to use my time on Earth to contribute rather than to only succeed.

  The doctor I saw is one of the only doctors here in Town. She’s an older woman who has been in this community all her professional life. Evidence of her involvement in the community was posted on all the walls along with her diplomas and degrees and licenses.

  In the way she examined me and in her questions, I saw how limited her time must be with all her “well” patients. She was abrupt, yes, but also gentle. Having a waiting room filled with patients, you can’t spend endless time gossiping with each patient on your examining table.

  The doctor told me I was in perfect health. I knew that. She prescribed a birth control pill for me and told me to come back if I have any problems with it or in 6 months to refill the prescription. She also warned me to remember to take it faithfully or that it wouldn’t work. I wanted to tell her that was going to be the only problem I would have—remembering to take it. I zipped it, though, as Goldie would have advised and left her office with a clean bill of health and a prescription for the Pill in my purse.

  Charles took my hand as we walked down the street to the drug store. I felt awkward being with Charles after the examination. All of a sudden, it became real to me that being in love with him had consequences. I never thought that falling in love would also feel like that, that I had responsibilities. In the drug store, it felt like everyone watched us go to the pharmacist to have the prescription filled. Having all eyes turned to us, made me feel like petal after petal was opening on a flower and I wasn’t going to ever arrive at the center of it and be able to experience its core.

  I am relieved to have gotten that examination out of the way but I still worry about having to tell Mama and Pops at some point about Charles and me.

  It feels like I’m whispering as I write this but Charles was very tender with me last night when we made love. It was as if he knew that a milestone had been passed. We came home and he had set up the bedroom. Candles waited to be lit. The bed had been heaped with many pillows. A bottle of wine sat on the bedside table with two glasses waiting to be filled.

  After we made love, he fell asleep. I pulled back the covers to look at his naked body. It looked so vulnerable lying next to me not knowing how I was examining it. In the glow of the candles he looked sculpted and bronzed. I ran my fingers down his long back and across his small buttocks and down his legs to the ankles. He never moved. I wrote on his back with my fingers messages of how I felt from moment to moment. I wanted to believe these messages passed through his skin and into his psyche, received w
ith all the love and trepidation with which they were sent.

  I know that melancholy after lovemaking. I like it but it keeps me awake. When I don’t feel it, I fall asleep in Charles’ arms.

  Tonight, I am awake and thinking and worrying about what I am going to do with my life. I won’t be pregnant now unless I choose to be. I almost didn’t have time to worry about that. Everything happens much faster in my life now.

  Date: Sunday, 10/5/69

  Alex is the best running partner. In a way he is slow. I don’t mean that he can’t move quickly but that when he runs, he isn’t working out so many things in his head at once that he feels speeded up like so many of us do.

  He and I never compete. Though sometimes I want to challenge him. But as I speed up my pace, he tells me to slow it down. No sense getting hurt. For me, this team work is going to be for fun. I haven’t had the heart to tell him yet that I can’t join the team but I decided today to tell him. I didn’t like having that indecision weigh so heavily on me.

  I signed up to run with him today and it turned out to be just the two of us. No one else wanted to run in the rain. I never mind running in the rain or the snow. It is always a great challenge and it makes me aware of things I never would know if I didn’t run.

  Alex has also become this wonderful resource. Running with him can be like a way to map what is happening in my mind by popping up a word between us as we follow the paths and see where it leads.

  Another cool thing about Alex is his sensitivity to women runners. He has coached so many women that he understands better than we do at times how our menstrual cycle affects our performance. He’s never embarrassed to talk about anything that pertains to running. He knows how that strange weight in the center of a woman’s body can alter how we are. He knows that has to be dealt with. No matter how lean we are, we have that womb and our hormones. Our bodies work different from mens. He is very helpful. I never knew how breathing could help me overcome menstrual cramps during a run. With the amount of pain I occasionally have, I have always stopped running. Now I know what stretches will relieve the pressure in my lower back.

  I have come to depend on him too to help me with some of my problems because he seems so capable of understanding what I am going through.

  First he helped me with the food problems. There is so much food served to us every day that I feared blowing up like a blimp. He taught me how to dish out servings to myself that I needed rather than just eating because it was fun or tasted good.

  Then there was the menstrual problem and now it is needing to be able to run with the team without any expectation that I will compete.

  I didn’t want to let him know that something bothered me. Though he’s quite intuitive.

  “Isn’t sex a funny word?” he asked me before I could pop up the courage to explain to him why I couldn’t be part of the team. We were running uphill, past the faculty housing and then into the woods.

  “The way it sounds or what it means?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. What do you think?”

  I had to think through why he began our run with that question. I hadn’t thought of anything other than what I needed to talk to him about so his question threw me off guard. I remained silent.

  We ran side by side on the trail. This section is that wide. It made talking much easier.

  He said, “I used to think that having sex was what it meant to be in love with someone. If you fucked, that was it. That was what anyone wanted and that was enough.”

  Wow, I thought to myself, has he been reading my mind?

  “I really didn’t know what it meant to be in love until I really fell in love. That changed everything.”

  We kept running. Neither of us spoke. I wanted to tell him that I was in love.

  “Are you in love?” he asked me.

  I told him I was. I told him about Charles.

  He shook his head and turned to look at me. “You sure know how to pick ‘em.”

  I asked him what he meant by that. I realized that he was about to tell me things about Charles I didn’t want to hear. I wanted to stop the conversation at that point but in the rhythm of our run it was difficult to change the topic as difficult as it was to change our course.

  “I don’t want to make you unhappy. You are a great kid and you are so smart. How the hell did you fall for that guy?”

  I didn’t expect to hear him say these things. Tears weren’t going to dissuade him from continuing this talk.

  “I love him Alex.” That was all I could say.

  “Yep. love,” he said. “It’s a killer. Not at all what you think it is going to be. Sure as hell not like in the movies, is it?”

  “Even though we want it to be.”

  “You got that right.”

  I finally got Alex to tell me why he didn’t like Charles. The damn drugs issue came up again. I swore to him that Charles wasn’t like that anymore. Yes, he smoked some pot and dropped some acid from time to time but he was basically clean.

  Alex looked at me as if he couldn’t possibly explain to me what he was thinking. He made me feel like I didn’t know what I was talking about. I did know. I practically live with Charles. I would know if he was really that involved in drugs again.

  When we ended the run, I walked away without saying another word to him. He waited for me to say something but I refused. On the one hand, I didn’t want to defend Charles and on the other hand I was worried that I might be wrong.

  Date: Sunday, 10/12/69

  Charles, Tony and I spend more time together now. We’re a threesome. How quickly Charles and I moved from being together just the two of us to this threesome. The three of us eat together. We go to the movies together. We go to parties together.

  I’m not angry at Charles about that change. In some ways, it is good, because now there is another voice to listen to when it comes to the political discussions we have. Charles is adamant about what he believes the truth to be. Tony has a more middle of the road attitude and is willing to listen to both sides of an argument.

  The three of us were talking the other night about how women deal with things. Charles mentioned how I not only read Virginia Woolf but had also stolen one of her books. He was trying to make fun of me and my feminist ideas. But the joke backfired because the only way he could have known I had stolen that book was to have read my diary.

  As soon as he spoke those words, my face went completely red. So did his. He knew he had been caught.

  The competition inside me for words to shout at him caused me to say nothing. I didn’t have anything to say. He reached out to me, we were sitting on the couch in his apartment. I moved away and went into the bedroom. I needed to resolve the war inside me before looking at him again. I knew I could either be insanely upset and leave or I could stay and try to salvage from this what there was. In either case, I knew I had to put the diary in places he didn’t know about.

  At that moment, I tried to remember how much I had loved him in the split second before he announced he had betrayed me.

  All the fights we hadn’t had about my suspicions about the drugs were sure to come up now. All my fears of being in love were known to him.

  Even those areas of my life he isn’t in were going to be up for discussion. I could see the whole cascade of problems about to begin and I wondered if I would have the energy to keep up with it. It depended, I realized, on whether I wanted to stay involved with him.

  In so many ways that has been my problem all along. I don’t know what it’s like to really be in love with someone. I don’t know if I need Charles the way Eileen seems to need Philip. I don’t even know what love is supposed to be all about.

  I don’t know. I’m watching myself in a movie. I’ve come to a fork in the road and I have to choose which way to go.

  The first choice is to go off alone and say fuck it all. I don�
��t need this shit. I can be alone now and be lonely.

  The other choice I can make is to continue seeing Charles if only because I won’t be alone. My character may need to use Charles to keep me company. But a more sinister side opens up on that road. I know that by choosing to walk down that road with Charles, he offers me a way into his bounteous world and that world has more than I can ever offer myself.

  I see no reason not to be an opportunist. I hear these kids talk about this way of life all the time and know I have no other way into it. Why shouldn’t I want to have and do things like the students all around me have? They can go into New York whenever they want to. I am stuck up here like in a prison due to my poverty. I’m sick of the jealousy I fight against. I’m even tired of not saying I am jealous.

  I stayed in the bedroom for a long time. I heard Tony and Charles whispering to each other and then Tony left. Charles began cleaning up the living room and then started washing the dishes we had left in the sink. I sat upright on the bed trying to figure out what had happened and why.

  It got late. I picked up my book bag and my overnight bag and packed them. Time to head out to the library, and that was in the plans all along. So it wasn’t as if I was just walking out on him.

  I opened the bedroom door and saw him in the kitchen, wiping down the counters as he does when he finishes the dishes. He looked at me. I tried to smile but couldn’t. My mouth refused to curl upwards. In as few motions as I could take, I put on my jacket, zipped it up and flung my bags over my shoulder and walked out the door.

  I left him standing in the kitchen. He didn’t say a word.

  I went to the library and worked most of the night. It wasn’t as easy as I hoped it would be to concentrate on my assignments but eventually all thoughts of Charles receded so I could finish the work left for the weekend. Knowing I was completely up to date was going to help me get through the week.

  I was pleased with how much I accomplished. Not anything more than that feeling went through me. I had blocked all thoughts of Charles from my mind. I had to or I would have been sitting in the library foolishly wasting my time.