Love, Carry My Bags

by Everett, C. R.

  “Not really.”

  I watched Casey on the dance floor. And I watched fifteen guys watch Casey on the dance floor. She could have a date with any one of them without even trying. She had an aura.

  “Wanna stop by Ted Drewes on the way home?”

  I wanted to scream.

  “Are you nuts?” I said incredulously. “I just got done telling you I wasn’t hungry, and you just got done telling me I was fat. Now you want me to eat frozen custard?” My face and body and tone added, you moron.

  “Well excuse the hell out of me. You seemed a little quiet and I thought ice cream would cheer you up.” He slammed his napkin down on the table. “Let’s go.”

  As Glenn squealed the tires pulling out of the parking lot, he said, “And I didn’t tell you that you were fat.”

  “What do you call asking me why I don’t look like Casey, and that tight pooter comment?” By this time, tears of frustration fell from my face.

  “I didn’t mean anything. You should just work out a little more. God! You are so sensitive!” He pounded his fist on the steering wheel. “You know what? I can’t do this anymore. Every time I have a suggestion, you blow it all out of proportion and start to cry. I’m only trying to help.”

  Help what? Help who?

  I cried harder, unable to verbalize anything I felt, wishing I could bail out of the car right then and there. We drove home in angry silence.

  Glenn turned off the ignition, then paused, not getting out of the car right away. “We need to take a break,” he said calmly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Not see each other for a while. Break up.”

  Tears rolled again, emptying my mind. I rubbed at the drip spots on my lap as if to clean them up. He didn’t like me. I wasn’t good enough, even though I tried to be what he wanted. “Mmm,” I mumbled, looking his way with pained eyes. I nodded agreement even though that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted him to be my boyfriend.

  * * *

  Trying to escape the hurt, I agreed to go out with the girls to a new club the next day. Neon lights flashed to the beat of AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long.” The spotlights, high up in the smoke-shrouded rafters, focused on the cat walk where a fast machine wearing next to nothing except legs and spike heels gyrated to the beat. The music blared so loud, I had to scream across the table for anyone to hear. What am I doing here, I thought, feeling alone amongst ‘friends’? They weren’t friends. They didn’t know me. They were just college kids I happened to be with.

  I sat by myself at a table watching everyone else on the dance floor pounding their heads in the air. An olive-skinned, dark-haired young man approached, attempting small talk.

  “You look like you just broke up with your boyfriend,” he said in a smooth voice that seemed to know my heart. Unable to help it, I started to cry.

  “It’s okay, whoever it is, he’s missing out on a special night with a beautiful girl.” He wiped the tears off my face with his thumb. I wouldn’t normally let a stranger stroke my face, but I didn’t reject his gentle touch. He stopped a passing rose vendor, then presented me with a blue battery-operated artificial light-up rose. “Here,” he said, sliding a slip of paper my direction. “If you ever get over him, give me a call.”

  I never called.

  * * *

  Three days passed, which seemed like months. The phone’s ring blasted me to the ceiling, I was so empty.

  “Camryn, I was wondering if you wanted to come over for supper.” Glenn sounded nervous about my pending answer. Why wait for supper? I’ll come right now, I thought.

  “Yes, I’d like that.”

  “Good.”

  Glenn had grilled cheese and tossed salad ready when I arrived. We ate in front of the TV, but it wasn’t on. We talked, not mentioning the other night, and not acting like it had happened.

  “What are you doing this summer?” I asked.

  “Going to school.”

  “I can’t afford to stay. I’ll have to go back home.” I felt sadness, more for giving up my independence than leaving Glenn.

  “Speaking of school, would you mind typing up my term paper tonight?” Glenn asked like he had a standing offer to cash in at any time.

  “You haven’t started it?”

  “I have most of it written. Please? You type better than I do.”

  I didn’t answer right away, turning it over in my mind.

  “I’ll owe you,” he said, a hopeful smile on his face. It was the closest Glenn ever got to begging.

  “I have a test Friday. I need to study.”

  “You can study tomorrow. You’re smart.” His head sunk. “If I don’t turn this paper in, I’ll fail the class.” His desperate, pleading eyes looked sheepish, yet he knew his success was as important to me as my own. Guilt wore away at my misgivings. I felt selfish to turn my back on him when his deadline was imminent and mine was still two days away. I said yes.

  * * *

  Thursday, Glenn bounded over to my apartment, light with relief, his term paper behind him.

  “You didn’t stay over last night,” Glenn said, surprised.

  “I thought we were just friends. You broke up with me, remember?”

  “That doesn’t mean you couldn’t stay.”

  “You let all your just friends stay overnight?”

  He reached for my hand and held it.

  “No, only the special ones.” His eyes twinkled, giving me the feeling that maybe we were still together. “Come on over.” He led me to his place, yet again, where we flopped onto his bed. “How about a nap?” The question was Glenn’s euphemism for ‘I want to have sex.’

  “I thought just friends didn’t have sex.”

  “I just wanted to thank you for helping me out yesterday,” he said with a grin. Glenn traced the edge of my breast with his finger.

  I pushed his hand away onto the mattress. “I went off the pill.”

  “Why?” he asked, shocked.

  “Why?” I asked back, perplexed by his question. “Why would I need it if we were just friends?”

  He softened, and rubbed me just the right way. “We could do other things,” he said seductively, while unbuttoning my blouse. He nuzzled my breast. His hands wandered. Turned on and hopeful we weren’t over, I didn’t stop him.

  * * *

  He invited me to the year-end formal the next week. I went back on the pill.

  CHAPTER 17

  “It’s not so much about saving yourself for the one you marry as it is about saving yourself for the one who won’t break your heart.”

  —M.B. Cahill, PhD., McKinney Girl’s School

  I worked in the card shop again that summer, terminating my lease, leaving things in storage. Saying goodbye to Glenn wasn’t the sorrowful departure it should have been. It was taking a break. I didn’t cry.

  Sarah’s family was in full swing, so I didn’t see her much. Kate and Kurt all but disappeared. Chris was the only friend I saw.

  “I’ll pick you up at your house after work,” Chris said when he stopped to see me at the store, “and then we can take a walk on the river.”

  “Sure.”

  Chris and I went to movies, took walks, and talked, mostly hung out and talked, even to the point of mall security kicking us out of the parking lot because we were still sitting there in Chris’ car two hours after the mall had closed, deep in discussion.

  “What should I do?” I asked Chris after telling him my woes with Glenn. “Why does he tell me he loves me and then stop? Why does he want me to be and act and look one way, and then that’s not enough? I don’t get it.”

  “Sounds like he just needs some time. You’ll be back on track in the fall,” Chris said, culminating many hours of me crying confusion on his shoulder.

  There was no black-and-white answer.

  * * *

  I returned to Cahokia on a Friday afternoon, bearing homemade chocolate cheesecake. Glenn tasted it, then made ejaculatory noises of appreciation. Sp
urt, spurt, spurt.

  “That good, is it?” I asked, unaware of its aphrodisiac qualities.

  “Good. It’s great!” he said, then smothered me with a welcome home kiss. “You’re just in time,” he continued excitedly. “There’s a race tonight.”

  “A what?”

  “A stock car race. Casey told me where they were. We’ve been going all summer. She loves them.” He sat, then bounced up again, eating cheesecake. “I couldn’t wait until you got back so we could go together.”

  A gut bomb dropped in my stomach at the news of Glenn and Casey going to the races. She liked them? I could only count a few things less interesting.

  “We’ll give it a try,” I said, forcing a smile.

  “You don’t like them?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never been to a stock car race.”

  We parked ourselves on the bleachers, watching time trials. One stock car roared around the track, kicking up mud turds, which flew into the stands, occasionally pelting spectators. All thirty cars took their turns, one at a time.

  “I like the white and blue one, #67.”

  “Oh, that’s Ricky Stormdale. He’s no good. Second to last in the standings. Thompson Evans, that’s who you need to go for, #33.” Glenn shot up and hollered, “Go Thompson!”

  The Thompson flock, seated one bleacher over, shouted agreement.

  The main event started, creating a haze of dust particles which remained suspended the entire race with the exception of caution laps when there was enough break in the action to clear the air.

  “Black flag him!” Glenn yelled, pointing to 54.

  A man in a Team 54 baseball cap stood up and said, “Fuck you.” The whole Team 54 nest of supporters turned around and glared at Glenn.

  “He cut him off!” Glenn said, raising his arms in anger. We watched the cars drive around in a slow line, careful to skirt the parts that were torn from number eight. Debris is what the announcer called it. I called it the whole front bumper.

  I wanted to crawl away and go home. “Sit down,” I said, pulling at Glenn’s arm. “It’s only a race.”

  He jerked it away, then sat down in a huff. “He was in the lead!” Glenn said, justifying his outburst. He seemed pissed at me.

  The field thundered around the track again. I wondered why the little boy next to the big mouth behind us didn’t have earplugs. Five cautions and two crashes later, it was over. I didn’t know who won.

  “Let’s go to the Blarney Stone. I’m hungry,” I said while we idled in a line of cars waiting to exit the track. Every other car was revving its engine, the euphoria of the race still fresh in their minds. The race was still fresh in my senses, the scent not going away, my ears still recovering. Oily black dust covered my T-shirt, and a noticeable grit stuck to my face.

  We settled into a booth, sitting side by side on the same bench facing the Irish band.

  “I’ll have the beef dip sandwich,” I said.

  “Me too.”

  The beef dip sandwich with its savory shreds and au jus was the reason we came. Comfort food. We talked between warm bites just as we had many times last school year, catching up from the summer apart, the most enjoyable part of the evening. Then we walked the cobblestones and kissed as a barge glided by, nearly silent, causing ripply reflections on the water.

  “What’s your fantasy?” Glenn asked.

  “My fantasy?” I echoed, surprised by the question, which seemed out of place. My fantasy was for Glenn to want me, marry me, love me, but I knew that wasn’t the kind of answer he was looking for. He was looking for a more recreational, superficial type of fantasy. My fantasies in that department were not all that fantastic. “I think it’d be fun to take a shower together.”

  Glenn tried to appear excited, but I could tell he thought otherwise.

  Back home he started the shower.

  “Wear this,” Glenn said, handing me my white, dirt-speckled T-shirt.

  “We’re taking a shower.”

  “I know.” He gave me google eyes.

  Reality fell short of my fantasy when I felt put on display rather than partaking of an intimate communion.

  Between my unfulfilled unfantastic fantasy and finding a lipstick-marred drinking glass by the sink that wasn’t mine, I couldn’t sleep that night. The lipstick scene thrashed about in my head.

  “What’s this?” I had asked, holding my find.

  “What’s what?” Glenn hadn’t noticed anything unusual.

  “I don’t wear lipstick.” I had examined the glass in front of him.

  “Oh, that must be from the other night when Casey came over. We watched a movie.”

  I felt sick.

  “What movie?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Oh,” I had said, doubtfully.

  “Come off it. We’re just friends.” Glenn had gotten huffy, doing nothing to secure my feelings.

  I’d spent plenty of time with Chris over the summer, watching movies at his place, drinking from his glasses, not mentioning it to Glenn. Chris and I were just friends. Maybe it was okay, but I still felt unease. I tossed and turned, mulling it over, tormenting myself. It seemed like he was closer to her than he was to me, like he made more of an effort for her, had more fun with her. It didn’t dawn on me until years later that the reason he liked her more was because he didn’t like her as much.

  * * *

  Two mornings later Glenn said, “When are you going to find your own place?”

  I had enjoyed the oneness of being together in one apartment and wished it could stay that way. The only good thing I could find with living somewhere else, another apartment complex perhaps, since I couldn’t live with Glenn, was the elimination of my clear and present suffering every time I heard footfalls rumbling up or down the apartment stairs. No more peeking through the blinds to see who he was with or wondering where he was going.

  “I’ve been looking. Soon,” I said, hating the answer. I had gone by myself—wearing shorts too short—the day before to answer a Room-For-Rent ad. When the man opened the door, a warm, foul odor rushed past, warning my feet to turn around and leave, quickly; but, so as not to be rude, I followed the man through a dark ‘70s style house with the original shag. The carpet appeared orange in some rooms, mottled purple in the dungeon that would be mine. What were the lampshades made of? One trip down the hall was enough to be polite, no need to see the rest of the house. I told the man I’d be in touch; my feet were, thankfully, walking away to the car where I got in, locked the door, shivered, and shook, keys trembling in my hand.

  My previous plan of sharing a house with two guys, friends from Jamaica, replacing their old roommate, fell through. Glenn had protested when I first brought it up.

  “They’re nice,” I had said.

  “So.”

  “I need somewhere to live.” Keep my stuff. Shower.

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Then let me live with you.”

  “No.”

  But Glenn wasn’t the reason my plan fell through. “Camryn,” Toby had said, in his thick Jamaican accent, “I’m sorry, but it won’t look good, two black guys living with a white girl. Clifton and I talked. We don’t want any trouble.”

  They didn’t want me either.

  The next day I found a small house to rent in a neighborhood I could afford, two miles away. Calling it a house was an exaggeration. Most garages were bigger. It had one bedroom, a living area about the same size, and a hallway for a kitchen. The air conditioner was broken, but summer’s end was near—just a handful of sweltering days left. I couldn’t afford the luxury of AC anyway.

  “I’ll help you move in,” Glenn offered. “Can I store a few things at your place? I don’t have enough room for everything. Too claustrophobic.”

  I let him. I had next to nothing. The vast open space of my home would be empty without it.

  “We need to break-in the ‘new’ house,” Glenn said, rubbing his hands down the front of me. Playfu
lly, Glenn threw me onto the unmade mattress, although his throw was harder than playful to me. The stifling heat made sitting motionless miserable, let alone playing indoor sports. He tickled me slightly below my armpits and into the side of my ribs.

  “No!” I shrieked, then vocalized an involuntary laugh. “Stop!”

  “You like it.” He laughed. “You like it, you’re laughing.” He kept on tickling, harder.

  “Quit it!” I screamed some more. Something like a laugh came out. I didn’t know why, it wasn’t a laughing matter, no fun at all. “Stop it,” I yelled, again. This time it was more of a beg, or maybe a cry. I felt tears form in my eyes.

  Sitting astride and pinning me down, he continued, poking and tickling as if I had said ‘more, give me more, harder. I like it.’ Sweat trickled down his face and beaded onto me from the end of his nose.

  An uncontrollable instinct took over. I tried kicking, tried throwing him off, struggled to get away, and then finally, like a threatened animal, bit his arm. Hard.

  “Ouch, what’d you do that for?” He was mad.

  “You wouldn’t stop. I told you to stop.” I felt bad when I looked at the tooth depressions in his arm. I nearly drew blood, the top layer of skin scraped away, almost falling off.

  He rubbed abraded skin pieces from the bite.

  “I was playing. You were having a good time,” he said, frustrated, sure I was toying with his head.

  “I told you to quit it,” I said, seriously. “Do you really think I was having a good time if I was kicking and screaming?”

  “You laughed.”

  “So, you were tickling me.”

  “I don’t get you.”

  I didn’t get him either. This wasn’t the first time he had tickle-tortured me, but it was the first time I’d bitten.

  He got off of me, then lay by my side on the mattress.

  “Does that tickle?” he asked, drawing a line with his fingers from my chin down to my navel.

  “No,” I said softly, looking into his eyes, still feeling ashamed I had bitten him. An apology was in order. I reached for his zipper. “I’ll give you one for free,” I said, immediately forgiven.

  “Nothing’s ever free, especially when dealing with a woman.” Glenn joked, smiling. “Oh, you’ll make me pay.” His imitation humor wasn’t funny.