The gift-giving season
I’m willing to admit it if you are: neither of us are particularly interested in my sordid dairyland past, or my complaining about a lousy childhood that everybody else had too. It’s a good thing that Jack History Month is almost over, even though it’s an extra-long leap year edition.
But studies show that, failing Paul Tsongas references, my most popular posts are the ones in which somebody has sex with me, for inscrutable reasons of their own. Let’s then set the Wayback Machine for an important milestone in my growth as a confused, but sexual person. Not my first sexual experience, of course, because that would be too maudlin. But the first related event that taught me A Great Lesson.
Back in high school, I was in gigolo training wheels. I had a sort of “girlfriend”, who used that term to describe herself, but there were limits to our intimacy. I think as we had grown up Stephanie and I had liked each other less, but nobody wanted to mention it. So when other couples were sneaking off into the bushes to be together, we were just sneaking away from each other. I thought I was pretty slick because I was getting laid sometimes by a couple of other girls, and of course it never occurred to me that Stephanie might be up to something similar. I hope for her sake that she was. The only thing I can be proud of is that I wasn’t her “first time” so maybe she can forget about me.
So Stephanie — or “Steph” in the style of the day — and I put up a good front, and we still entertained each other a lot, distracted each other, stayed up late on the telephone, and it was all comfy and cozy. And of course I wanted more, but it didn’t seem like she was the one to provide it. Steph was smart, funny, cute, and friendly. But Sharon was smart, funny, cute, friendly, and had giant breasts. And so did Cynthia and so did Stacey. Somehow that sounded important. I wasted a lot of time pursuing those girls to not much result. I did manage to meet a girl at a football game, from the other school, and we flirted a bit in the bleachers, and she became my regular mistress in the backs of cars, etc. I feel so proud to inform you. Of course, I also had a Mrs. Robinson thing with a shopkeeper in town. This is all so sordid but it’s only a backdrop for what I want to talk about, which is worse.
I wasn’t on the football team, or any team, but I was friendly with those guys. I was strictly nonaligned, a difficulty in high school, so when necessary I sided with the winners. This was purely for self-preservation. I actually thought the punker girls were kind of hot. But it was sort of a teeter-totter. If you hit on the punkers or any unpopular girls, the jocks would think you were a freak. But if you hit on the cheerleaders or any popular girls, the jocks would think you were muscling in on their harem. You can see why my solution was to choose abstinence. Abstinence from the politics, I mean, by fucking people none of my friends knew. I was so confident in this approach that I hardly even paid attention to the girls in my school anymore. Until one afternoon.
But I was reminded of that afternoon, and its lesson, just this week. Recently in our bar, in our home, in our soap opera, one of our regular fellows had acquired a new ladyfriend. What was remarkable about this was that the fellow in question is somewhat notorious for spending all his spare time attempting to get girls by giving them drugs in the restroom. And while he’s successful at giving drugs to girls in restrooms, he isn’t as successful at getting laid. But when he does, there’s usually a catch, such as the girl not being a catch. But this girl seemed charming, friendly, and able to fit on one barstool. “She’s certainly the thinnest girl you’ve seen me with,” he remarked to me with too much self-awareness.
So on perhaps the fifth day of their great affair, the gentleman and his lady, whose name was Cheryl, arrived at the bar, where I was already perched on one end, making nobody’s trouble. The nameless gentleman, or sucker, got into a pool game and his lady fair wandered off into that gravity well, the stool adjacent to mine. There she drank in abundance, as did we all, and every now and then the gentleman came calling, groping her territorially, smiling at everyone, and then going back for another rack-up. On occasion he’d also come to take her into the restroom for what everyone now calls “a bump” because it’s less than “a line”. These are hard times.
The gentleman said to me, “We’re going to do a bump. Do you want to come?”
I said to him, “Have your romantic time to yourself. But thank you.”
He said, “Anytime you want to do some, you tell me.”
I don’t normally partake, but I said, “All right, thanks, maybe I will, later.”
So they did their line — or bump — and the man went back to his manly game of pool and the woman came back to sit next to me. And we continued to chat, and drink, and she said, “You’re cute,” and I said, “Thanks, you’re cute,” and the man came back to handle her for a while. I said, “All right, next time you go, I’ll come with you for some of your poison.”
In a ridiculous development, the man said, pool cue in hand, “I’m shooting right now. Cheryl can give you some, though.” And Cheryl said, “Sure! No problem!” And I said, “Well, okay.” I figured it’s better to do lines with girls than with funny-looking men. So Cheryl and I tripped into the ladies’ room/cocaine parlor and locked the door. She pulled out her little envelope and some keys, and we did some cocaine. Not very much. I’m careful.
“You’ve got some on your face,” she said. I wiped my nose and looked into the mirror. The coast looked clear but the mirror was pretty dirty. I turned back to her and asked, “Did I get it all?” And she kissed me.
So I kissed her back for a moment, which is the polite thing to do, and I noted that her lips were completely cold, an experience I never had before. Maybe she had been eating her cocktail’s ice, but it was a little creepy. We stood around for a moment and spoke quietly, and did another little bit of cocaine, and I kissed her again, and we went out into the world. We sat back down and our mutual friend came back and squeezed on her and I kept drinking and we all talked like friends, which we mostly were. And I thought, well, I guess that was nice but I’m certainly not going to do anything about it. This guy has labored enough to net his girl, and I’m not going to try anything. I continued to be respectful of them both, and then she had to go home, get up early, and he put her in a cab and the fellow and I had one more for the road.
So I saw him last night and I asked, just to be sociable, “How’s Cheryl?” He grinned at me and said, “We broke up.”
“What? Really? I’m sorry, man. How — how long were you together?”
“Seven days.”
“Wow. Well, hey.” I raised my drink. “She didn’t understand you. She was no good.” I rolled through as many of those as I could think of, and we laughed.
But let’s face it, after meeting me, what else could she do? I sure hope she doesn’t call.
And I sat there, a bachelor among bachelors, thinking about the high school afternoon and its applicable lesson.
TO BE CONTINUED.
by Jack, February 23, 2004 4:10 PM | More from Jack History Month | More from Women
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