A Leak In The Safe

Convocation

The first day back from summer vacation is the best day, really, despite all the complaining we feel compelled to do about it. It’s kind of like the big bang, the first second of creation, the primal instant of unique energy from which the entire high school year unfolds. And we’re all here, the stars and planets, fresh from a summer that, admit it or not, was starting to get a little stale, together again in an atmosphere of pure adolescence, freed from our forced immersion in the "real" adult world which has so little regard for us, back to a universe that, despite those ever pesky teachers, coaches and administrators, really does revolve around us, and in the initial flush of creation it seems as if anything is possible, as if this will be the year we’ll do all those things we’ve fantasized about, scoring touchdowns and hitting home runs – and not just on the playing field either.

Pure illusion, of course, but that’s what keeps the cosmos spinning, isn’t it, and before the opening convocation we mingle giddily in the commons room, intoxicated by the heady atmosphere of pure teenage hormones, burning with hope and energy, not yet dragged down by the gravity of the daily grind, careening around colliding with the people we’ve forgotten in the brief respite of summer, and, more importantly, those we’ve been unable to forget.

And at this moment it’s Heather who catches my eye – literally from across a crowded room – and what’s more she catches it on purpose, grinning and acknowledging me with a toss of her head even as she talks animatedly with her cohort Teckla. Then, to my surprise and the thunderstruck amazement of the friends around me, she strides purposefully over and throws her arms around me Charlie! and, being the horny teen I am, for a moment all I can think about is the press of her legendary breasts as they flatten against my chest.

I gasp finally. I wasn’t sure if you were going to say hello.

We’d spent a fair amount of time together that summer while working at the shore and, Heather being Heather, things had occasionally gotten physical, but I didn’t set much store by it, knowing only too well from bitter experience that those summer conversations don’t always translate into the quite different syntax of the school year.

, she says, releasing me only to wack me on the arm playfully. Hey, I was thinking, maybe we should have dinner again sometime – wouldn’t that be great?

Eating dinner together was how we’d realy gotten to know each other, huddling on our break at a corner table in the "doghouse," the shabby, dingy employee dining room at the hotel we’d both worked at, able to talk for once without the frenzy of work or the even greater frenzy of the never ending post-work party.

And it’ll drive Pam crazy, Heather whispers gleefully.

I follow Heather’s gaze. Pam’s twisted her head to glare at us over her shoulder, her habitually severe face even more pinched than usual – and realize that with a woman’s perspicacity Heather’s picked up on something I’ve missed. But is it really possible that my old adversary Pam has her eye on me this year? Even though we’d butted heads as usual that summer, for the first time our clashes had produced sparks of genuine attraction, once even igniting into a hot make out session in the hotel linen closet that Pam (of course) had immediately disavowed.

And thinking of Pam inevitably leads my thoughts to Virginia, the mutual friend in whose orbit Pam and I collided, the one person I’d set out (and largely failed) to get closer to that summer. She’s nowhere to be seen, no doubt catching up with the Neanderthals, the jock elite who prefer to congregate in and around their beloved Trans Ams and Corvettes in the parking lot, far from the annoying hoi polloi.

Heather’s voice brings me back, but somehow the image of Virginia out in the parking lot has shadowed everything and I feel disoriented and confused. I know there’s a restaurant that would be perfect for us but I can’t quite put my finger on which one.

Pam turns away and I look back to Heather’s smiling face, which, despite all its beauty and familiarity now seems faded and unreal to me. I don’t know, I say finally. Let’s decide later.

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?