A Leak In The Safe

So beginning, middle – I guess we all know what comes next. Kathy and I certainly did, and were aware of the inevitably of the end from the first words of our relationship. I’d given her my ususal speech at the start, the one about how neither of us should be thinking about anything permanent, how we should enjoy the moment and not get entangled in the future. One day she’d no doubt be happily married to a nice guy in the suburbs, and we both knew I wasn’t that guy, so there was no use in complicating our relationship by pretending I was. There was a whole life ahead of us destined for at least trying for fidelity and ‘til death do us part so why play at it prematurely now when we had the opportunities of the freest time and environment we’d ever know?

But all that was more in the nature of a pre-arranged alibi than a consolation when the time came. It’s easier to think you understand the necessarily temporary nature of things than to actually see them die. It’s really kind of cruel that we humans are so predisposed to thinking about forever when we live in such a manifestly temporary world.

After being so fascinated with Kathy, I gradually found it harder and harder to focus on her the way I wanted to. Maybe it was the spring and the rising sap and all that manifesting itself in a fresh compulsion to really get to know another girl, but with our hard won sympathy I was sure she was feeling a similar dissociation. We both knew our season was over.

I wish I could offer a more dramatic closing to our little love story – one of us getting a fatal disease or shooting the other perhaps – but I’m afraid it ended not with a bang but a whimper – mostly Kathy’s, but even those were few and pro forma.

It’s always uncomfortable to pull away from someone you’ve worked hard to get close to, and our relationship wasn’t by any means casual or disposable. I felt as strongly at the end as I had at the beginning that Kathy was someone it was vital I know and encounter, however brief that encounter might be. But I also think that I was someone she had to know and encounter on her way to suburbs and husband, and even if that worthy gentleman remains ignorant of it, he still owes me a debt of gratitude for the lessons she learned from me in that bed of hers.

We had a brief period of slowly diminishing contact and enthusiasm, as if acclimating ourselves to the break, but none of the raging rows I’ve known in other romantic end games. And it was all done more honestly than cynically, mostly because Kathy didn’t have a cynical bone in her body (whereas my whole body was jaundiced), finishing where it had begun, with just the two of us at a table in the dining hall.

She could tell right away just by looking at me that once again, to paraphrase Mick Jagger, that evil life had got me in its sway. "Don’t you look awful," she said with more asperity than sympathy.

"That’s because I feel awful." I collapsed in the chair across from her and lay my head on the table.

"Then what are you doing here? You should have stayed in bed."

"Yeah, but I just…" A wave of nausea prevented me from continuing for a moment. "I mean, I just had to…"

"UBU, is something wrong? I mean besides the obvious." Her disapproval was almost palpable. There’s a moment in every relationship, isn’t there, when that loving compassion becomes something more like disgust.

"Yeah, Kathy, I want to – I’ve got to tell you…" Keith had often ridiculed me for my unwillingness to embrace the duplicity inherent in sleeping with two women at the same time, but it was one of the few standards I still clung to. "I was with Ellen last night. And…"

"And?"

"And I think tonight, too."

"Mmmm…." She didn’t react much, taking a carefully measured sip of her coffee, but I could tell from her rapid blinking that she was holding back at least a few tears.

"I’m sorry."

"Don’t be sorry," she answered quickly. "After all haven’t you always said…"

"Yeah, I did, but I mean…" What did I mean? "Crap."

"Besides," she said with a hint of malice. "I’ve been meaning to tell you. Paul’s been asking me out."

"Paul!" Now it was my turn to get upset. Paul was big and placid, tolerable enough for a Deke, but entirely unoriginal, his appreciation of Kathy no doubt derived from my own. "That jerk." But then I realized that he was really much more suited to her than I was, the kind of conventional boyfriend she’d always wanted, my altruism strengthened by the thought that his presence in the wings would make our break up a little easier. "Ah, I guess he’s not that bad."

"He’s a nice guy," she said, leaving her opinion of me and my new inamorata Ellen, the infamous dragon lady of Pierce Hall Dorm unsaid.

We were silent after that, as silent as we’d ever been, what was left of our passion now too feeble to blow up or storm away, only the condensed habit of sitting there together remaining.

"Oh, well," I said.

"Yeah," she said. "Oh, well."

It was the increasingly colder weather that finally got us out of that doorway and into the living room, and the critical scrutiny of her roommates (who approved of me about as much as my friends approved of Kathy) that got us out of the living room and into her bed – but even there we started out with way too many clothes on. We spent many hours, nights even, under the covers, half dressed, forehead to forehead, toes to toes, kissing, our hands playing over each other in the pitch dark. Kathy preferred clutching and touching to any more systematic movement toward fulfillment.

But ideals will stifle nature for only so long and one night, inevitably, it happened, and when it did it was something along the lines of the John Dryden poem we studied that semester:

And it was good, even the first time, not a cataclysmic dividing line, but just another step.

Like a character in a bad porn novel (as opposed, I suppose, to all those good characters) – whether from the novelty of the language or the sentiment I don’t know – she liked to hear me articulate what I was doing and wanted to do to her, which made for some interesting gasps as the moment of truth.

So gradually we found our footing and became intimate, not just physically, though being young and randy that was rightfully a large part of it, but emotionally and intellectually as well, and she didn’t disappoint me at any point along the way. Kathy was quite simply an exemplary person, and if I, as I hope I did, helped her loosen up and become less of a goodie-goodie, she helped me realize that there was a lot more to that goodie-goodie stuff than I’d thought.

I certainly didn’t lose interest in her after we’d become lovers – if anything my interest intensified. Because we had so little in common I had to engage her on a deeper level than the usual facile group think affirmation of trendy values and opinions my clique indulged in. It was precisely her difference, her unfamiliarity, that motivated me to learn more from her and about her in a short period of time than I’ve learned from almost any other woman. February was generally known as suicide month at our college, and there were many cold, gray Ohio mornings when the thought of being with her (and, yes, lying between those magnificent bare legs of hers) was the only thing that convinced me there was any reason to get up at all.

"UBU?" To her credit Kathy only asked it once, and then in a secure, non-confrontational position as we lay snuggled in her bed.

"Yeah?"

"I was just wondering – is this about Virginia?" she asked, a fair enough question considering that my obsession with Virginia was no secret, and she’d been (and still was at a distance) one of Virginia’s best friends. Kathy made it sound as if it would be all right if I answered yes, that whatever had brought us here, so close together under the covers, was acceptable to her. On the other hand, I’m sure she waited until that moment to ask because she wanted to be sure she had a pretty good idea of what I’d say.

And I said it, "No, no, of course not," sticking to the close truth, which, as anyone who has read this can tell, is that it is about Kathy and not Virginia. But yet, like everything else in my life, it’s finely peppered with Virginia, and, given the murkiness of human motive, I can’t say with certainty that Kathy’s close association with Virginia wasn’t one of the reasons that made me want to get to know her so badly. But we were there and Virginia wasn’t, which was good enough for both of us.

And then? Well, to quote Dryden again:

Ah what a joy to hear, Shall we again?

Much to our mutual surprise, I was able to rouse myself early enough to join Kathy for breakfast the next Sunday, and we had another pleasant, relaxed conversation free from the erotic tension of the Friday before.

And so began an odd bifurcation between nights spent as would be lovers and mornings met as dispassionate friends. On date nights the final kiss became more important – and often lengthier – than the movie which proceeded it. That lighted entranceway to her apartment became the scene of our little drama as kiss followed kiss and she pressed grudgingly ever closer to me. Our bodies would wrestle like the possessed on Friday, often surprising us with what they would and wouldn’t do, and then our minds would calmly discuss it over breakfast on Sunday.

It seemed as if we were in constant physical negotiation – concessions granted one evening would be withdrawn the next. Like a dough boy whose whole world consists of one small plot of no man’s land endlessly contested over, it only made me more aware and appreciative of every inch of her.

Complicating things was the fact that, unlike most of the other college girls who wore t-shirts, jeans and as little else as possible, Kathy dressed traditionally, archaically even, adding extra challenges as I groped over, under and around various unfamiliar garments – blazers, sweaters, blouses, slips, complicated bras – which created a greater surface area, more room, more material, as it were, for sensual play, an enlargement and elongation of erotic possibility, more veils to pierce, more mysteries to solve, and beneath it all burrowed that final layer of fantastic, hungry young flesh, itself warring with the even more archaic notion that maybe she wanted to remain a virgin until she married.

It was ironic because this college relationship with all its awkward groping and slow progress through contested territory resembled what you’d expect from high school, while my actual high school fling with the equally virginal NC had been much more typical of college, where the women were just as often the aggressor, and the jump into bed that transformed friend (or even stranger) into lover casual and quick.

Unlike NC who was afraid I’d lose interest if she didn’t immediately show she was eager to go all the way, Kathy was afraid I’d drop her once we did. But they were both wrong – what’s important to me is the knowing, the sheer, intimate experiencing of another person, body and soul, not the notch on the bedpost – which isn’t to say that Kathy didn’t render me highly horny in a short period of time.

But despite any degree of frustration, I’d never do anything to a woman that I wasn’t absolutely sure she wanted me to do. I really wouldn’t have been devastated if our relationship had ended without me making love with her – but I knew that, despite her protests and evasions, SHE wouldn’t be. In her milieu and at her age it was absolutely freakish to still be a virgin, and I knew she saw me as a way to lose it with honor. We were both aware that not only wasn’t our relationship going to last forever, but that neither of us really wanted it to, so she was, in fact, as is so often the case, accusing me of wanting to do the very thing she wanted to do – consummate at last and then break up.