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This story originally
appeared in Open City 19 in the spring of 2004 but was written
long before that, sometime I'd say in the spring or early summer of
2002 back when it was part of the original Grab On to Me Tightly
manuscript (which had a different title then and was a whole different
thing). It was originally a long flashback to the end of the summer
before Vim's senior year and I was flying along as I wrote it not really
thinking or paying much attention but then at some point I got really
hypercritical and realized it flashed back to not even a year ago and
went over a lot of the same ground I was covering elsewhere in the book
(it was meant to be the first instance of Vim fucking up with a girl
and the girl telling him to get his head out of his ass but how many
instances of that does one need in a coming of age tale?) so I cut it,
then shortly thereafter cut almost everything I'd written for the better
part of a year, almost a hundred pages, keeping only the scene where
Vim meets Helene. Later I unearthed this in a pile of discarded drafts
on my floor and started reading it and thought it was pretty good and
changed it into present tense (that first version of Grab was
a drab past-tense "this happened, the next day this happened"
narrative) and amped up the language a little and made it its own story.
One interesting behind the scenes type thing is that in this early version
of the Sweeney Legend my own youthful obsession with the Doors manifests
itself in the character of Molly whereas in the version of Grab
I started writing afterward Vim is the one who confesses his fandom.
I also went back and stole a couple of lines from this story and put
them in Grab. I think it was Raymond Chandler who referred to
this practice as "cannibalizing" or it might have been Fitzgerald.
DOLLAR
MOVIES
It's early senior year,
still pretty much summer, a Saturday night. The Judy Lumpers have just
finished a set at Dick's Basement, the little club in Quincy, and I'm
sulking in the shadows, agonizing over the usual botched chords and
some of my more embarrassing un-reached vocal high notes, when a girl,
a stranger appearing from nowhere, tells me how much she likes my band.
Here's a first, I'm thinking. If you believe mythology, or have read
the biographies, every guy who picks up a guitar is only trying for
the snapper. But really, groupie-fucking is the province of the more
decadent hard rock and hair bands, from Guns N' Roses, say, all the
way down every aspiring burn-out who plays Peppers, the venue for shitty
metal in Kalamazoo. Anyway, the girl introduces herself as Molly and
says, "What's that one song, the one about, like, the tattered
tongue of an otter?"
"That's
called 'Tongue.' But the line you're thinking is really 'the tender
tongue of autumn heat.'"
"Oh,"
she says. "I like that one."
"Thanks,"
I say.
"Tongue"
is okay, not one of our finest hours, the riff lifted almost whole cloth
from the Sonic Youth song, "Sister." Plus, I never believe
anyone except Jake and Wheeler - the Judy Lumpers' bass player and drummer
- who says they like our songs.
The only
beverage Dick's sells is Faygo Red Pop, so Molly and I tip a few and
shoot the shit while the next band sets up. She goes to Quincy High,
the Grand Lake rival in matters of sport, and she loves the Doors. She
shows me a small tattoo on her ankle, the initials JDM, meaning
James Douglas Morrison.
"I got
it last year. My parents don't know yet. This summer I covered it up
with Clearasil and my Doc Martens."
"Then
what's the point?"
"Well,
just to know that Jim's here, that he's a part of me. Do you think that's
corny?"
"No,
not at all," I say. This is the heart-shaped erection at the center
of my brain talking.
The band
starts playing and it gets too loud to talk, so we go for a walk on
the train tracks that run through Quincy, follow them past the edge
of town, out into nothing, out where it's like Molly and I are the only
two people alive, wandering the earth just because. A breeze rolls in
off the cornfields all around us and the air goes from mild and a little
muggy to cold and crisp. The temperature drops ten degrees in one second.
I've never felt anything like it. Molly stops and crosses her arms.
"Where'd that come from?"
"I don't
know, but it feels good."
"Do
you want to hug for a second, just to warm up?"
"Okay.
But I was sweating at the show. A little warning," I tell her.
"That's
all right."
I take a
deep breath, put my arms around her. The silence that follows makes
me self-conscious, so I say, "Like this?"
"Yeah,"
she says. Then, "Wow, you really do stink."
"I tried
to tell you," I say, pulling away. Molly pulls me back.
"But
it's not terrible. It smells like, what, like fried onions." She
moves her head so she's looking up at me, the eyes saying, Do it, fool,
but I can only stare dumbly at her mouth. I need clearance, a guarantee.
To go in for a kiss and have the girl pull away is one of my most crippling
fears.
"Can
I kiss you?" I say.
She smiles
and nods, the green light, and I'm grinning back, still as a fucking
statue. Molly says, "Were you going to do it tonight or . . . ?"
"Yes,
tonight." I lean in and we do it, we kiss. The styles are nice
and soft, no forceful probing tongue. Her fingertips brush against my
cheeks, my heart stutters, charges faster, like being shocked back to
life on the operating table.
Five minutes
later we're dry humping in the grass by the train tracks, and I'm picturing
gruesome war photos, like piles of bodies in the Nazi death camps, like
the Vietnam guy taking a bullet in the brain, to help contain the explosion
forming below. When it gets really close, I stop humping and say, "Let's
take a little break."
This works
okay until we roll over and she's on top. Now I'm helpless, almost a
spectator, watching her move against a backdrop of ice-chip stars, the
big black sky, the universe expanding around us, her long brown hair
falling across my lips, eyes, nose. And then it happens, what feels
like every second of human existence charges out of me and into my underwear.
I stop moving
again, too embarrassed to say why.
"Are
we taking another little break?" she says.
Luckily,
a train comes along, a speeding Amtrak, its horn blasting away the question,
and I don't have to answer. I get so scared when it roars by that I
jump up and sprint into the woods, tripping over a dead branch and falling
on my face in the process. It's kind of nice down here among the dirt
and the ancient leaves and I contemplate not answering when I hear Molly
call my name. But she finds me, she looks down at me and says, "How
could you be so afraid of something you knew was coming for miles?"
When I stand
up she takes my hand.
*
For our first
real date we rent The Doors, which Molly says she's seen at least
ten times, four on video, six in the theatre. She tells me it's the
sexiest movie ever made.
"There's
something about Oliver Stone movies. They radiate sexiness. With Jim
Morrison it's easy, because he's so fucking sexy, but even something
like Platoon has erotic qualities."
"Platoon?"
I say. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm
talking about the part where Willem Defoe dies. It's so tragic that
it actually ends up being sexy, the way his body shudders when he gets
shot. Very orgasmic. Plus there's a little glimpse of Johnny Depp during
the village massacre scene."
I think of
my anti-coming death fantasies and say, "What about Born on
the Fourth of July?"
"I know
it's not cool to like Tom Cruise, but I think he's really sexy, even
in this. He's in a wheelchair, he's got a mustache, he's an alcoholic.
But that part where he's screaming the word penis at his mom. Look out."
"Wall
Street?" I say.
"Wall
Street is the least sexy Oliver Stone movie, if only because it
stars Michael Douglas, who I've found repulsive since Fatal Attraction.
God, his flat, flabby butt when they're in the kitchen."
Her house
is small and her bedroom is between her parents' and little sister's
rooms. The make-out options aren't great. There's the basement, but
the walls and floors are paper thin and I haven't felt secure there
since the time we heard her parents whispering through the vents about
what do you think they're doing down there, why are they being so quiet?
So we go
to the East-Towne 5, the dollar theatre in Kalamazoo, and we buy tickets
to random movies, kissing and groping in the back row like desperate
middle-schoolers, hardly glancing at whatever's on the screen. And it
hits me at some point that this is where I want to be when the world
ends, here with Molly in the dark, dust rising through the projector's
beam, listening to some lame comedy or second-run blockbuster while
our hands get sweaty from constant holding and I taste her lips, her
Junior-Minted lips.
Times are
so fine at the East-Towne, our secret haven, that I leave the movies
insanely depressed, I cling, sit through every word of the credits to
the copyright date, then stumble back into the world like a coma patient
who wakes up wishing he'd stayed asleep, or better yet, slipped away
forever. Then it's off to the Denny's on Sprinkle Road, for black coffee,
for french fries with guacamole, and no matter how long we sit there,
Molly and I, free associating on caffeine highs, the end is always the
same, a little kiss in the driveway, nothing heavy, and she's out the
door.
In my secret
thoughts, I feel relief. I don't want the pressure of trying to be a
top sexual performer, someone like my Uncle Bro, who when I was younger
and he lived in our basement, said to me, "Vim, if you ever want
a girl to fall in love with you, you better learn to eat a pussy so
good it sings back 'The Star-Spangled Banner.'"
*
We're parked
in Molly's driveway after seeing What About Bob? for the second
time in three days and the goodnight kiss gets longer and longer until
the windows fog and our seats are back. I put my hand on her belt buckle,
thinking, hoping, she'll stop me, but she doesn't. I undo the buckle
and the top button of her jeans.
Down goes
the zipper.
"What
if your parents are watching?" I whisper.
"They're
not," she says.
I stop and
clear a little porthole in the fog, look through it to the darkened
windows of her house. "How do you know?"
"Because
it's midnight, because they're sleeping."
"What
about your sister?"
"She's
eleven, she's asleep, now come here."
"I can't.
I can't get on top of you, there's the gearshift there, I don't think
my legs will fit."
"Just
stop talking and everything will be fine."
I look at
the house again, then back at Molly. I put my hand on her stomach, move
it to the edge of her underwear, thinking, What now, will someone please
fucking tell me what now?
Her eyes
are closed. When I slip my hand under the elastic, she smiles. It's
barely there, a Mona Lisa smile.
This is my
left hand, my fretting hand. It can form seventh and ninth chords, the
jazz chords, can make beautiful noise without me looking or thinking.
But it's like there's a mannequin hand on the end of my arm now, some
bloodless thing, as I feel, for the very first time, a girl's pubic
hair and the dream underneath.
I press into
the wetness and rub gently around and for a long minute, forever, nothing
happens. Then Molly starts breathing faster. She squeezes the armrest
on the passenger door. I watch her hand squeezing the armrest. I move
my finger up a fraction of an inch and she gasps.
"Shit,
sorry," I say. "Shit. Are you okay?"
She laughs
and the sound of her laughter makes me want to pop a suicide capsule.
"What? What's so funny?"
"Nothing,"
she says. "Shhh."
Her hand
over mine, guiding me back into the wilderness. I'm concentrating so
hard sweat drips into my eyebrows and a mild headache blooms and wild
lightning flashes of the past and future ricochet around the inside
of my skull. I imagine Molly's parents peering out at the car, feeling
helpless and disappointed, imagine being asleep later in my bed and
how I'll think of this moment ten, twenty, thirty years from now, imagine
my father performing similar acts on my mother in the days before they
realized they didn't love each other, imagine almost everything except
what's happening now.
Molly releases
her grip on the armrest and I panic, try frantically to find whatever
I'd found before. Nothing. Her breathing becomes more and more relaxed
until it's like she's watching a filmstrip in science class. I pull
my hand away, she zips and buttons her jeans. We both move our seats
up. "Anyway," she says.
I start the
car and turn on the defroster. "I'm sorry," I tell her.
She shifts
toward me. "What for?"
"I don't
know," I say after a few seconds.
"Sorry
is something you shouldn't say unless you know why."
"What
if you don't know why but you mean it anyway?"
"Then
you've got some kind of a problem."
"Sorry,"
I say again.
In a single
motion she kisses me on the side of the mouth and opens the door. "Call
me tomorrow."
On the way
home I sniff repeatedly at my finger. I roll down the window, stick
my face out, and scream into the early October darkness. I put in an
Afghan Whigs tape and sing along with their songs of sexual conquest,
trying with all my heart to feel triumphant.
*
The next
day, Saturday, Jake and I go to his brother's apartment in Kalamazoo
and spend the afternoon sucking down a case of Old Milwaukee. I was
already feeling blue about my lackluster sex abilities, and it only
gets worse with a buzz. The more beers I have, the more every thought
becomes a picture of Molly's disappointed face, or what I think her
face would look like disappointed.
"The
fuck's your problem?" says Gary, Jake's brother, when he sees me
sprawled on the living room floor.
"It's
chicks, man, the ladies."
"I know
what you need, little soldier." He goes away and comes back holding
two shot glasses of brown liquor. "Down the hatch."
After that
I take a long walk and end up by Waldo Stadium, where the WMU Broncos
play. It's a home-game day and I wander among the big crowds of tailgating
students, feeling like something they vomited out of their happy faces.
There should
be a pill for when you're with a girl and the lights go out. And I don't
mean a contraceptive. I mean something that gives you knowledge of the
tender places and dulls the fear.
Just as I'm
thinking this, some guy yelling "Go Broncos!" shoves a cold
Bud Light into my fist. I drink it down and the world looks stupider.
Back at the
house I take the cordless phone into the bathroom and dial Molly's number.
"Please," I say when I hear her beautiful voice, "give
me one more shit. I mean, chance."
"Who
is this?" she says.
I burp into
the phone. "It's me, Vim Sweeney."
"Vim?
Are you drunk or something?"
"That's
right. Just like Jim Morrison, your favorite poet of the darkness."
Silence. "I am a dark poet," I say.
"What
does that mean?"
"It
means I'm not afraid of death or dying," I tell her. "Do you
hear me?"
"No.
Not really. I'd kind of like to know what the hell you're talking about."
"I'm
talking about can I come over?"
"I don't
know. I guess so. I mean, my parents are here."
"So
let them hear our passion through the vents. I'll just stop off first,
at the place, and I'll get that box of rubbers."
She laughs
uncertainly. "Vim, this is . . . you're being really weird."
"Ribbed,
for her - I mean, your - pleasure," I say.
There's a
long pause. I can hear the party noise below, can feel the music going
into my feet. I step into the shower. "You should try and get some
sleep or something," Molly says. Her voice sounds very far away.
"Try and sober up. You're not driving are you?"
"Not
yet, but I will be as soon as I get off the phone."
"Don't
do that. Stay wherever you are and we can talk some other time."
"Do
you love me?" I say. No answer. I slap the tile and ask again.
"Vim,
I think I'm gonna go."
I sit all
the way down in the tub to stop the spinning. "Great," I say.
"So
I'll talk to you later."
"Great."
The line
goes dead, the dial tone comes on, it's the loneliest sound I've ever
heard in my life and I can't fucking stand it, so I press redial.
"Great,"
I say when she answers.
"Now
you're annoying me," Molly says. "Seriously."
"I lied
before," I say.
"About
what?"
"I don't
really like your tattoo."
"Bye,
Vim." She hangs up again.
I pass out
for a while, until Gary kicks in the door. "There you are, little
soldier," he says over the sound of his piss splashing.
"Where
have you been?" Jake says downstairs. "What are you doing?"
"I'm
making mistakes. I think Molly and I just broke up."
"Molly?
Wow. I didn't even know you were going out," he says.
"We
are. We were." I feel like I've been sleeping in that bathtub all
night, but when I look at the clock I see it's barely ten.
An hour or
so later, somewhat sober after a few cans of Jolt, I get in my car and
drive to Meijer's Thrifty Acres, where I pick out a single red rose,
the best one I can find, from a cooler in the House and Garden department.
Then I take the long way home, Kings Highway, stop off first in Quincy.
I circle Molly's block a few times and finally park down the street.
There's a long row of pines leading up to her house and I sneak through
its shadow, feeling like Ted Bundy, until I'm almost in the yard. All
the lights are off except the blue TV glow in the living room. I stand
there a long time, staring at the spot where Molly and I parked last
night, thinking of the way she breathed during that special little minute
when I'd touched her right.
My plan was
to knock on her window and give her the rose, an old-school romantic
gesture, something I've never tried before, something real, but it's
crumbling inside me. All my fake bravery seeps out into the night. The
mailbox is just right there, at the edge of the grass. I sprint over
and open it, gently lay down the rose, and run back to my car.
*
Sunday comes
and goes. Molly doesn't call and I don't call her. I'm in the middle
of failing a geometry test on Monday when I decide to stop by her house
after school. I drive around the block again, like last time, going
crazy, just like last time. I stand alone on the porch for what seems
like an hour. It's cool outside, and very bright, my favorite time of
year. I ring the doorbell. Molly answers, but she steps out rather than
invite me in.
"There
you are," I say. Where else would she be? Her tight, green and
white striped sweater gives me a little charge, makes me long for the
old times of the East-Towne 5, which were just three days ago. I tell
her I'm sorry and she rolls her eyes.
"Vim,
you say that about everything."
"I do,
you're right, but at least now I know why I'm saying it."
"Well,
that's just great," she says. "Great, great, great."
"See,
I can accept that. I'm trying to be mature." The wind picks up,
just like it did in the beginning. "Are we broken up?" I say.
"I believe
we are." It hurts me, ruins me, to hear this, but I can't show
it. I can't show anything. None of this would have happened if we'd
never left the movies, if we'd died there, like I'd wanted to.
"Did
you at least get my rose?" I ask her.
"What
rose? What are you talking about?"
"I put
a rose in your mailbox."
"When?"
"The
other night. Saturday. After I called you."
She glances
behind me, looking confused. "The mail doesn't come on Sundays."
"That's
true."
"And
I don't think anyone got it today."
"Maybe
you should get it now."
Together
we walk to the mailbox. Molly pulls out a thick stack of mail. As she
does this, my crushed, dead rose falls to the pavement at her feet.
I pick it up and hold it in the air and say, with the sun blinding me
and my hand and that stupid rose both shaking, I say, "For you."
Copyright 2006 by Bryan
Charles
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