by Louise Kean
Joleen looked at me in sheer horror at the audacity of my even saying his name in her presence. Seconds lapsed but time stood still, and then she hit me with the full verbal force of her startling originality: ‘You fucking bitch.’
She glared at me, and I half-expected to see venom fly from the sides of her mouth. This was all a real shame, as despite the hate campaign waged against me since day three, I didn’t dislike her … that much. I felt sorry for her, I wished she’d go out more, I wished she’d see Dale for what he was, but I didn’t hate her. How can you hate somebody that fucked up? Everything she did to me, every perverse stab in my direction, was fuelled by jealousy, and jealousy is a terrible affliction. It hurts its victim most, and I was getting the easy bit compared to what must have been going on in her head. The room was quiet, but the silence itself seemed loud. The threat of impending noise seemed to hang everywhere, in the air around the two desks, our beds, our book-filled shelves, the wardrobes on either side of the door, my shoes kicked off under my bed, the papers on my desk, the photos of her naked scrambling up a tree (I know!) on her desk, everywhere.
The phone began to ring, and we both jumped a little. She was nearest, with her back to it. I didn’t move to answer it. Joleen stared at me, daring me to grab for it, so in one swift movement she could get me in a head lock and flash her blade in front of my dying eyes while blood oozed from the slit in my throat; she’d claim it was self-defence because I ‘lunged’ towards her. I decided not to move, and let the answerphone get it. It was, after all, exactly this kind of situation that answerphones were created for. The phone kept ringing. We both waited for the sixth ring and the click. We stared at each other and mentally counted, although I swear I saw her fingers folding in one by one, and her lips moving. At last, the answerphone kicked in. A male voice, young but gruff. It was Big John from the dorm upstairs.
‘Dale, if you leave one more death threat on my answerphone, I swear to God I will kick your ass. Get a fucking life!’
Joleen and I both turned and stared at the answerphone incredulously for a moment, before she turned back to face me, but a little less angry, a little more concerned. She was worried for Dale and rightly so. I don’t know what the sick little shit had been up to but, by the sounds of it, it was no good. And more frightening still, for Joleen and Dale at least, Big John’s nickname was not ironic.
‘Don’t do it again,’ Joleen hissed at me, turned and grabbed her keys. I flinched and covered my face – oh the vanity! – but I don’t think she even noticed. She snatched her coat and goose-stepped out the door.
Joleen believed that deep down Dale loved her too. She would come up behind him and hug him, the only real outlet of affection I ever saw her indulge in, at which point he would push her away with absolute disgust. It takes real love to keep coming back for more of that kind of treatment. She saw a twisted black prince – I saw a pretender, intent on making everybody feel as bad as he did about his failed notions of poetic greatness, about rejection from a father who wanted a son with a crew cut and a football in his hand.
And despite his sexual indifference towards her, Dale had long since convinced Joleen that she needed him like oxygen. Every time it started to dawn on her that he was a destructive force in her life, and in fact scaring away any new friends she seemed on the verge of making, he sensed it, and offered her some weak branch of hope that he might actually feel something for her too. She was hooked again. The previous year he had changed his surname from Woodfood to Curse for the devilish connotations. I don’t need to say ‘wanker’, but I will.
I shared my room with Joleen, not through choice, but through a complete lack thereof. I had requested a smoking room, and I had got hers. This was America, after all; they weren’t all lighting up down the corridor. We were a grim novelty at the end of the hall, hippies or beatniks or freaks or arseholes, depending on who you asked. Smoking was our badge, and we wore it like a cloud of smoke around our heads at all times. Nobody had a single room; they were like gold-dust. I was obliged to stay in halls of residence and I had nowhere else to go. It was a battle of wills, mostly. I didn’t realize she was a fruitcake on day one. Maybe day three, when all my pictures got mysteriously smashed during dinner. It was about the same time that Dale started to make advances towards me. He was in our room twenty hours a day and I literally had to ask him to step outside while I changed my clothes, which he found amusing more than inconvenient. I broached it with Joleen.
‘Dale’s here a lot, isn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s his roommate like? Don’t they get on?’
‘He’s a moron.’
‘Who, Dale or his roommate?’ I laughed, but Joleen didn’t get the joke.
‘His roommate of course.’
‘So do you think he might mind not coming round if neither of us is here – I don’t know, it just makes me feel uncomfortable if you’re not here and I come back, and he’s already hanging out here.’
Joleen stopped sorting her socks, and was completely still. I seriously thought she had slipped into a coma. Or was suffering some minor epileptic fit at least.
‘Joleen?’ I edged forward.
‘He’s got nowhere else to go.’
‘What about his room? He could hang out there, I mean, until you got back at least.’
The conversation was starting to make me fell uncomfortable. Joleen was not being as receptive to my feelings as I anticipated.
‘Joleen?’ I asked again, as she fell silent.
‘Dale stays.’
‘Oh come on, don’t you think you’re being just a little unreasonable?’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Sorry?’
I heard her the first time. I shouldn’t have asked her to repeat it.
She leapt up from her bed, dumped the basket of freshly washed clothes on the floor, screamed ‘Fuck off’ at me again, and left the room. I was a little shocked if I’m honest.
I stayed, because it was my room too. In this land of democracy, I wasn’t about to surrender my rights. But mostly, and despite my political high-mindedness, I stayed to prove I could. I should have asked for a transfer in week one, but some weird sense of determination and fairness kicked in, and I decided that I would not be driven out by a fruit loop and her twisted sidekick – Batmad and Dobin.
Whether Dale was actually attracted to me was up for debate, but he feigned it regularly and I admired his persistence at least. I could see it was about Joleen and not me, but this was unfortunately only clear to the sane. He just delighted in pushing her to the edge, and she hated me for it. As is often the case, instead of naming her enemy ‘man’ she named it ‘woman’. On the third day of my stay at the University of Illinois, about an hour before dinner, as the sun sank like an American football behind our halls, Dale sat in a chair in the corner of our ten-foot by fifteen-foot room, and Joleen sprawled across her bottom bunk. They were both seemingly transfixed by a re-run of The X-Files on TV, as I attempted to put the cover on my duvet. Is something really out there? They were hoping it was their mother race. But I noticed Dale staring at me, giving me sideways, strange, twisted smiles, and pointing his winkle-pickers in my direction. I pretended not to notice. But Joleen noticed. Eventually, as Mulder and Scully took a break for the adverts, he piped up,
‘Nicola, can I do that for you?’ Dale gave me a nonchalant sneer accompanied by a nasty twinkle in his eye that he labelled ‘mischievous’.
‘No, I’m fine thanks,’ I replied, attempting to deflect his attention back to the TV, and simultaneously ignore the scowl that was threatening to make Joleen the ugliest woman I had ever seen, as opposed to just one of the top ten. She was scrawny, and ratty-looking, with dyed black hair and brown roots, curling and kinking in the strangest, driest places, and with a front tooth significantly more brown than the rest. She was pale in that unwashed way: she looked like she needed to be taken outside and hosed down with disinfectant.
‘Nicola, I’d really
like to do that for you though.’ Dale continued to leer and Joleen’s face morphed into rage.
‘Why, Dale?’ I asked, feigning innocence.
‘So that I can say I’ve at least done something in your bed.’
‘Funny guy.’
I looked away and carried on struggling with my duvet, Dale turned back to the TV with a grin, and Joleen broke a cigarette in half. After another ten minutes had lapsed, and I had finally dealt with my bedding, I jumped down and admired my handiwork. I was wearing battered old Levis that I had triumphantly paid thirty dollars for and an old T-shirt that said ‘Cuba’ across my chest – I was dressing the part of an American student. I turned to pick up the discarded packaging and Dale muttered, just loudly enough for us all to hear,
‘Hmmm, Cuba, I’d like to go there.’
I ignored it, but Joleen couldn’t manage the same restraint, and kicked over her Coke can with a scream. The room went silent, and then we all carried on as normal. I headed for dinner in the canteen pretty much straight away, and it was only when I returned to our room that I found my pictures, previously hanging innocently on the wall, smashed on the floor with glass everywhere. Joleen and Dale were top and toeing on the bottom bunk, seemingly asleep. There had been no effort made to clear up – my mum and dad, my sisters, my friends, all covered in shards of glass on the floor.
It got steadily worse from then on. I tried to talk to Joleen about the fact that his advances towards me, which went so far as trying to lick my shoulder after I’d had a shower, were not genuine affection, but a twisted theatre on her behalf. But again she would hear none of it.
And her fury only grew.
The room itself was the usual testament to the authorities who believed that if they treated us like kids we’d act like them and not have sex. We had bunk beds.
The beds were ‘debunked’ upon my request – they were too high to jump down from, particularly if, like me, you have weak netball ankles caused by a thousand sprains from the ages of eight to eighteen. Besides, I just don’t think bunk beds are dignified at twenty-one, especially if you have an overnight guest. The likelihood of serious injury during any kind of sexual experimentation is increased at least tenfold. Joleen grudgingly agreed. My bed was still higher than hers, as it was the top bunk, the one with the longer legs, the one that would have suspended me six feet in the air given the chance. Now I could jump easily down to the floor by putting my foot on the wood of the end of her bed. This was the piece of wood where the metal rod would slot in a hole in the centre to connect the two beds when they were in their naturally ‘bunked’ state. This was the hole I stepped on nearly every day with bare feet as I climbed out of bed. This was the hole that Joleen chose to put an upright compass in, without my knowledge, which I missed by a fraction, and at the very last minute, one day while she was at lectures. I don’t need to say the word ‘freak’, but I will.
I tried to talk to Dale about it as well. One afternoon, early in my stay, I arrived back at the room to find Dale lying seemingly asleep on Joleen’s bed. I tip-toed across the room, annoyed at myself for not confronting the situation, for being quiet on his behalf, and in truth I just couldn’t be arsed to wake him. But he wasn’t asleep.
‘Hmmm, you’re back, I knew I could smell you.’
‘Dale, it’s not Joleen, it’s me,’ I laughed, pretending he’d made a mistake.
I saw his lids open slightly.
‘Joleen doesn’t smell like vanilla and baby moisturizer.’ He was speaking so quietly that the air in the room was suddenly saturated with an intimacy I didn’t like.
‘Oh right. Sorry.’ I was becoming increasingly cross with myself for not telling him to stop, but I didn’t want an argument.
Dale’s half-open eyes closed again, and I kicked off my boots. I decided to go straight back out, to my friend Jake’s room, and reached under my bed for my slippers.
‘I can’t think of anything more wonderful right now than if you just curled up here with me, pressed yourself into my chest.’
He was testing my limits. I took a deliberate step towards the door, to put a decent amount of distance between us, and turned to fiddle with something on my desk.
‘Look, Dale, I don’t really appreciate you saying stuff like that.’ It sounded half-hearted, but I still barely knew him, and you don’t shout at people you barely know. I was interrupted.
‘I bet your neck tastes like ice cream.’
‘Dale, enough!’ I turned to face him, but he kept his eyes closed. ‘I’m serious, stop it! You’re being a prick. I don’t want to have to get you banned from the hall, but I will.’
‘I’ve stopped. I’m just trying to get some sleep.’ And somehow he made me feel like the fool.
‘Oh whatever.’ I dumped the contents of my bag onto the bed to find my keys and cigarettes. The room was quiet now.
He mumbled and I ignored it. But then I heard it again, a little louder, and I distinctly heard the word ‘nipple’.
‘Jesus, when do you stop?’
‘Can I help it if I talk in my sleep?’ His eyes were still closed, but there was a smile creeping across his face.
‘Who says they talk in their sleep, in their sleep?’
‘Touché.’ He smiled. And I erupted.
‘I will never be interested in you, you tiny little man! You’re making me feel uncomfortable in my own room, and that’s not fair! Why are you being such an arsehole?’ I stared at him until he was eventually forced to open one eye.
‘Because, Nicola, Nix,’ he propped himself up on one elbow, and spat my name out like a joke, ‘other men just don’t understand you like I do.’ He stared at me intently. It occurred to me for the first time that he might seriously want to add me to the menagerie of feather-brains that fell for his routine.
‘You don’t even know me, for God’s sake. You don’t know anything about me. I’m not bloody interested. Get it through your head.’
‘Nobody gets your sense of humour, how much passion you have.’
‘How would you know?’ His flattery meant nothing given that he couldn’t possibly know after such a short amount of time and no decent conversation how funny and passionate I considered myself to be.
‘I don’t think you understand how beautiful you are, Nicola.’
He stared at me, and I finally lost it.
‘Don’t try your twisted shit on me, Dale, I’m secure enough, thanks. I don’t need your nasty little routine, I’m not Joleen!’
Something in his face hardened as I said the words. I wasn’t scared, but nervous maybe.
When he spoke, it was quietly, but with a controlled anger:
‘Other men might think your ass is too big, but I can see its merits.’
‘Oh, touched a nerve have I, Dale? Well, merits or not, if I see you looking at my arse again, I will report you to the Resident Tutor and have you banned from the hall. And I’ll get Jake to kick your skinny arse, an arse that, by the way, I see no merit in whatsoever.’
I stormed out of the room, shaking, and slammed the door behind me. I went straight to Jake’s room, and forced him to stop snogging his new girlfriend and listen to what a dick Dale was. He offered to do the arse kicking straight away, mostly to impress his new girlfriend, but I decided not to take him up on it just yet.
But Dale didn’t stop, and Jake never got round to kicking his arse. If he was in the room when I got there, I would sigh and swear under my breath, and he would just sneer, turn back to his battered old typewriter, and start typing furiously. Sometimes he cried out, as if in pain, and then scrambled for a piece of paper to note down some thought or other. Sometimes it was just a word on a page that I’d find lying around the floor, discarded. ‘Brambles’ was one, ‘Pigmy’ another. I accidentally found and looked at (purely by mistake) some of his poetry, while he and Joleen were, for once, both elsewhere. I accidentally found it in his plastic bag that he carried with him, which I happened upon, purely by coincidence, at the back of Joleen’
s wardrobe where he always stashed it.
In Autumn,
We dance around the leaves,
Until she comes.
Not exactly Wordsworth. And given how long he had been working on it, not exactly a masterpiece. I asked him after some petty jibe in my direction if his poetry ever rhymed, and how could it be poetry if it didn’t rhyme? He looked at me like I was the fool. I asked if he ever wrote any limericks, at which point he pretended not to hear.
Despite her almost fatal self-esteem issues, maybe because of them, Joleen didn’t seem to realize that in the twisted world that was her and Dale, she had the power. He relied on her completely. If he left, she’d be sad for a couple of weeks, maybe even months. Maybe she’d muster a half-arsed attempt at suicide, but only then with pills, and eventually she’d be fine. But Dale would be the one out on a ledge, with nothing to cling to, nobody to validate him, nobody to assure him that he was the thing that he wanted so badly to be – a poetic, sexually liberated soul: a ‘character’. If Joleen left and he didn’t have her adoring looks and unfaltering declarations of his massive talent supporting his ego, reality would slap him so hard in the face he’d be bruised for life. And he’d look in the mirror and see what the rest of the world saw – a guy who was a disappointment to his father, a guy who had never fitted in, who had been bullied at school. In short, a guy who felt unloved. Dale was so desperate to prove how he could never have been that thing that his father wanted, that he persisted in acting out a fantasy that didn’t even make him Happy. He had enough intelligence to know he’d been hurt, yet he had spent the last ten years hurting other people because of it. Joleen would eventually be fine. Dale, on the other hand, would fall apart at the seams of his replica Bryan Ferry suits.