THE CRAZY ONE IN THE CAR--episode 11

Going to college 1964-1968

Freshman Year — Spring Break 1965

Carolyn comes home for spring break and we go with Jerry and Jane to Pittsburgh to see Psycho. In the theater Carolyn sits next to me and I try to put my attention exclusively on her. Jerry sits on the other side of me and he talks to Jane on the other side of him. On the way home, we stop at Carlson’s—best onion rings in the world—to eat. Jane is saying, “Psycho is Dave’s favorite movie.”

To Carolyn I say, “The afternoon I first saw it, we were freshmen and you and Patty Carter were leaving the theater as I was going in. I’ll never forgive her for saying, ‘It’s all about his mother’s face.’” 

They laugh. I’m revving up. “Psycho may be my favorite movie, but A Summer Place is the one that made me want to be an actor.”

“He played Theme from A Summer Place all day every day for a year,” Jane says. “I wanted to kill him.” 

“I still love that song.”

“And he loved Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue. He used to cut their photos out of movie magazines.”

“I wasn’t sure which of them I was attracted to more.”

Carolyn rolls her eyes and groans and I say, “Troy’s my type—tall and blond and lanky—like you.” 

Carolyn blushes. “Some compliment.”

I look to see how Jerry—not tall, not blond, muscly—is responding. 

He’s smiling his masking smile.

I want Carolyn to like Jerry and I want Jerry to be jealous of Carolyn. I want him to see a side of me that happens only with Carolyn, because of Carolyn. I want Carolyn to absorb Jerry, to erase him from my heart. I want to feel my heart expand with her. I want her to occupy easily surely truly and fully the place where love is, where, I don’t know, the “Other Who Is the Rest of You” lives. 

I want to want her. I want him to see me wanting her. I want him to fight.

*****

I take a long shower and go to the bedroom in my white terrycloth robe and I lie down in the dark. Yes, I want to get away from everything and everybody, but I want him to come in with me. And he does. He knocks gently and the door pops open and he stands silhouetted in the doorway. He closes the door behind him and he comes to the bed and he sits next to me. 

“You are here.” His voice caresses. “Dressed all in white, I couldn’t see you next to the sheets.” He leans down and turns his head gently onto my stomach, his hands on the mattress to either side of me. I cover his left hand with mine and he laces his fingers with mine; my other hand touches his hair. 

Someone turns the doorknob and the door pops—no one ever knocks in this house—and by the time the door opens and Jane is standing in the doorway, Jerry is sitting comfortably at the foot of his bed, my brother’s bed, an infinity of about three feet from me.

*****

Something’s happening to me. And he knows it. He’s taking me somewhere but he’s not going there with me, as if he’s helped me pack a little rowboat with survival stuff and I’m getting into the boat and we push off, but when I turn around, he’s still on the shore, receding from me and there aren’t oars for me to row back for him and he won’t swim out to join me. Why has he done this? Why is he doing this?

*****

I can feel him lying in his bed, I can hear him breathing, I can sense him thinking. I’m going to explode, to flood the bedroom with tears and blood. I have to get out of here. 

I wait till he’s asleep and I get out of bed and get dressed in the living room. It’s late. Dad’s working the night shift. Jane’s asleep. I know Mom wakes to every creak in the floorboards. We have lived in this tiny house, everybody on top of everybody else, for almost ten years. And now Jerry is sleeping in my brother’s bed. I have to get out of here. I have to get out of this tiny house, that suffocating bedroom. I have to get away from him. And, yes, goddammit, I hope he wakes and hears me and gets dressed and comes out after me. And, no, I want to go out alone. I need to breathe. I need a sky to think in. 

The weather strip at the base of the front door makes a sucking sound no matter how slowly or carefully you open the door, but I have to risk it. The door whooshes as it opens and it whooshes as I pull it closed behind me.

The moon is bright. The air is cold. I should have a jacket. Not going back. I go out to Loretta Street and turn onto Latrobe Street. At the top of Latrobe Street at Center Drive is the entrance to the Carmelite Monastery, hidden by pine trees. Down Center Drive away from the Carmelites at the corner of Monastery Drive is Joe’s Market. At the top of the long incline of Monastery Drive, I’ll be able to see the highway below and beyond it in the moonlight, Saint Vincent Archabbey. 

What is happening to me? Why is it happening? It’s driving me crazy. I love him. I want to touch him, I want to hug him and to hold him. Is that sinful? Is it necessarily sexual? Is it sexual just because it’s physical?

I have to stop it. I have to rip this evil thing out of my head and out of my heart. 

At the top of Monastery Drive I stand and let the wind bite at my face. There are few lights on in the houses up here. It’s late. It’s dark. It’s cold. Everyone is asleep. Everyone sane is asleep. 

Why? Why have You given me so much if You’re going to rip it apart with this?

Somewhere inside, there is a Me who wants to cry out, who wants to help. But I won’t let myself hear what he wants to say. I will make this right. I will make this normal. I will make this something to bring into the sunlight, not something to pace away alone in the cold night. 

I’m broken. I feel like a vampire might as well have fed on me.

And I have to go back to that coffin house. Into that coffin bed. Maybe I’ll go through life like one of the living dead. Not a person. Not a vampire. One of the lifeless ones.

March 25, 1965

Jerry Caraggino—prick of the highest order. He knows exactly what he’s doing.

*****

We take a walk. I want to show him the Carmelite Monastery. It was once a country house—The Murphy Mansion—sitting at the end of a long gravel drive that inclines gently for a quarter mile before it ends in a large graveled cul de sac at the house. Five years ago the property became the grounds of an order of Carmelite nuns. The sign at the entrance to the drive reads: “Carmel of the Assumption, Discalced Carmelite Nuns.”  Tall thick pine trees on each side of the drive muffle any sound from the outside. As we walk, we hear only the crunch of our feet on the gravel.

I don’t know how to start, what to say, so I just let myself talk. 

“Do you think I like you too much?” I look ahead up the drive.

He’s looking at his feet. “I don’t know what you mean.”

I’m keeping my voice low, trying to hide the panic. “I think I like you more than I should.”

We walk a few more steps. He continues to look at his feet. “I don’t know, I think you feel things more than other people do.”

I hold my breath and wait. Just when I think he’s not going to say more, “And you act on your feelings more than most people do.”

“I know I sometimes blurt things out, throw what I’m feeling right out there. I guess I should pull back sometimes. Sometimes I think you’ll—”

“Maybe you think too much.”

“I worry that something’s wrong. That the way I feel….” I trail off a little but he doesn’t interrupt “…that maybe I shouldn’t, that you won’t—”

“There isn’t a problem.” He’s still watching his feet and the graveled road. “I mean I don’t think there’s anything to worry so much about.”

“I worry that you’ll—”

“I feel things. I just don’t talk about them as much as you do.”

“Well, dammit, I have to talk about things.” I go quiet. “Sorry, I’m sorry. But I worry that—”

“Maybe you should stop worrying.” There’s a firmness in his voice, but he’s being gentle, careful. He pulls a twig full of needles from a pine tree. “Try letting it be what it is. Sometimes thinking about something over and over just makes it worse.” Twisting the needles allows him not to look at me. He’s not used to talking like this. “Sometimes you can imagine a problem that isn’t there. I think sometimes a person should let what happens happen.” 

The mansion comes into view. He tosses the twig away and brushes the needles from his fingers. He smiles the way he knows always works. 

“Tell me about how the Carmelites came to live here.”

And I do.

March 26, 1965

I just took a shower—and I feel better—spiritually as well as bodily. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me. I just feel things more strongly than others. Like the day Stef was elected president. When he came in the room beaming and proud I couldn’t just stand up and shake his hand. I ran to him and hugged him and if I could I would have lifted him and spun him around. Is that wrong? When John Fergus left for spring break, I didn’t want to shake his hand. I wanted to take him in my arms because I like him. Is that homosexual?

And with Jerry it’s the same. I like to hug him—like a teddy bear, like a brother. When he comes to me and puts his head in my lap, I want to hold him, to know he is there and that he does like me. Is it wrong to want to know that someone likes you? Is it homosexual to want to hold someone when you feel happy for them?

Anyway, I think I’m almost pretty nearly normal.

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The Crazy One in the Car is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely co-incidental.