THE CRAZY ONE IN THE CAR--episode 16

Going to college 1964-1968

Sophomore Year — Fall Quarter 1965

“I love you,” Molly says.

“No, you don’t.”

“I love you.”

“Not a good idea.” 

We’re walking to South Hall after the Freshmen Dance.

“I’m not letting myself get involved with anyone,” I say, “and I don’t want anyone getting involved with me. I’m independent, I’m whole—”

“Unto yourself.” 

I guess I deserve that; I’m sounding the way I've been writing in my diary. 

“I don’t want to feel that I need anyone.”

“But you do.” Her eyes look up at me with mocking earnestness.

“I’m working hard to be complete…yes, unto myself.”

“I still love you.”

We’ve come to the South Hall lobby door.

“I’m not going in there,” I say, “to hang around with all those quivering people till the last possible second.”

“So needy of them. Good night.” 

She goes through the lobby without looking back.

*****

September 26, 1965

Perhaps I shouldn’t say that last night Jerry came into the sleeping room a few minutes after I had gone to my upper bunk; perhaps I shouldn’t say he stood shoulder-high and leaned against the mattress. Perhaps I shouldn’t say that I put my hand on his shoulder, touched his neck, his hair, his ear. Perhaps I shouldn’t say he lowered his head into my arm. Perhaps I should say that we talked about May. He’s been trying to see her for days but I don’t think she wants to see him. “I just can’t stay long with one person,” she told me yesterday.

*****

Jerry and I are coming back to the house from the library. I’m telling him how hectic my life is becoming. As sophomore class president I have to organize activities and events and I’m meeting with the dean this week about it. I have to rush freshmen; I want to rush freshmen. I’m Activities Chairman for the house and I have to plan our Homecoming float. I’ve been cast in the Homecoming play, The Affairs of Anatol, and rehearsals start tomorrow. And, oh yeah, I have to go to class once in a while and maybe study occasionally.

“Not to mention making primo time for Molly,” he says.

“There is indeed that.”

He looks ahead on the walkway. “Molly will be taking more room in your diary than I do.”

I don’t hesitate a second. “No, she won’t.”

He looks at me with the beginnings of a smile. “I’ll bet last term makes some love story.”

I want to say something, but I’m not sure what.

We walk in silence.

Later that evening, I climb into my bunk. It’s not late but there are a few others in their beds. The door opens. I’m hoping it’s him. He touches the mattress and I turn to him. He puts his hands together on the mattress and rests his chin on his hands. I touch his cheek. He covers my hand with his. I want to kiss it.

Quietly I say, “Dear Molly.”  

He smiles. “I’ve met a new boy.”

“Yes, goddammit.” 

He kind of laughs. “I only do that when I don’t know what to say.”

We go to the study room. I grab him from behind and he laughs and bends at the waist and pulls me to the floor. We wrestle. He’s good, but I’m bigger. I hold on. He breaks free. I stand. He topples me. It goes on.

He’s on his back lying under me and my head rests on his chest. We’re both panting. If someone comes in, we know we’ll go at it again. His left hand is on my right shoulder. We’re breathing in sync and I’m getting hard. His fingers move slightly as he says, “And Caraggino feeling the impulse in Downs’s groin.” I lift my head to look at him. My dick gets harder. He keeps looking at me as he puts both arms on the floor at either side of his head, elbows bent, hands palms up.

I lift up a bit and put my hands on his and lower myself toward him. I’m scared, my lips open a little, and he turns his head away. “Unh unh,” he says. I keep my face close to his, let the sad swell in my heart die. I am close enough to kiss his ear.

“Ah,” I say, “dommage.” I relax—it’s a collapse—and I sit back. Sometime last term I started speaking French to him when I wanted to remove myself from what was happening. He turns his head back to look at me and I get up. “D’accord. C’est tout.”

On my desk is a note from Molly I got today. In the envelope is half a green leaf.

David, 

This is part of a leaf that I wanted you to have. No reason why—I just did. We can pretend that it will always stay green—

As ever,

Molly

*****

A senior I know from the Homecoming Committee asks me to go to an off-campus apartment party with her. My first such party. Lots of people I hardly know. It feels like everybody’s smoking. Senior Mary Lou lights a new one right from the last one. 

I’m sitting in an easy chair and she brings two plastic cups of beer. She sits on my lap. “I told Bridget I’d teach you to smoke.” 

She takes a cigarette from her pack. Marlboro reds. She taps it on her lighter, holds it out to me. I take it between my lips—I’m not going to make a fuss about this—and she takes the cigarette from her mouth and touches its burning end to my cigarette. “Suck in but don’t inhale yet.”

“If you’re going to smoke, you gotta smoke,” I say and I inhale and I cough and everyone laughs.

The next day at the Grill, I bum a Camel from Dan Corse. He laughs in triumph when I light up and inhale and blow the smoke out smoothly. And before we leave, I buy a pack of Marlboro reds. Playing bridge at the house before dinner, I wait till I see Jerry coming in the front door and I make sure the cigarette is in my mouth as I’m playing a card. When he sees me, his face goes blank and his eyes go dark.

“Rag!” I say.

He comes to the table. “No,” he says.

“I am a fallen man,” I say.

He goes up to the study room.

*****

The Affairs of Anatol saves me. For a few hours every day, I stop thinking about him. And Molly. To play Anatol, the Drama Department has brought back last year’s senior who was the Old Actor in The Fantasticks. I’m his best friend Max. I’m discovering how to be a down-to-earth, realistic, worldly man—three adjectives nobody would apply to me—who is the best friend of a man who lives in illusion, in his own fantasy—ahem. It’s intense work, connecting to something important in me and some day I’m going think clearly about what that important thing is. For now, it helps me to stop obsessing about every word Jerry says, of analyzing every look he gives, wondering if that one was meant to be the slight it felt like, if this one means he feels the same as I do.

And damnit, I do like Molly. She has eased herself a few layers under the Dave Downs Act—and I like it. I want to feel for her what I feel for Jerry. 

And in rehearsal for a few hours every day, none of it matters.

*****

I’ve been in bed a few minutes, trying for an afternoon nap, hoping he’ll interrupt it. And as if I had conjured him, the door bangs open and he runs in, “Davie! Davie! Davie!” and he jumps up into my bed. In the voice of a little boychild, curling up in my arms, he says, “M sceered. Greg is after me.” 

Greg “Cakes” Markets comes huffing into the room. “Shoulda known you’d try to get Downs to save you.”

“Davie! Davie! Save me! Save me!” Jerry cringes and I hold him tight.

Cakes stays for a few minutes and jokes about Downs being on the Rag. He leaves and Jerry stays in my arms a minute, then goes to his bed, reaches his hand up and takes mine and he gently bites on my fingers. I reach down and touch his face.

“Kinda silly,” he says and he leaves. 

I hate him. I love him. I hate myself. I blame him. I blame myself. I’ve taken a little affection and fooling around from him and twisted it into something perverted. I’m becoming a stereotype, but it’s new for me so it feels dangerously unexplored. 

I must find a way out.

*****

A letter comes from Jane about a guy she knows: “When he’s in the same room I find myself fighting an imaginary attraction that seems to be pulling me. This has probably happened to you also. You are constantly aware of the person’s presence and there’s not a thing that can take your mind from it.”

Yes, Jane, it has happened to me.

*****

We’re at the sinks in the shower room brushing our teeth. 

“I’m going to take your suggestion,” I say, “and I’m going to quit smoking if you want me to.”

“I want you to.”

“Okay. Nine cigarettes tomorrow. Eight the next day. Et. Cet. Er. A.” 

We shake hands. 

I go to bed and in a few minutes he follows. He taps me and I turn to see him smiling.

“I’ve decided to break my promise,” I say. 

He tries not to scowl. “Why?”

“I’ve decided not to smoke at all starting now.”

He giggles. I lift the blanket. He climbs up and crawls in beside me. He puts his arms around me and he moves against me.

“Have you been drinking?” I say.

“No, but working logic problems all evening has the same effect on me.”

We talk. We touch. 

“Gotta get some sleep,” he says and he leaves.

The next day I buy my first carton of Marlboro reds.

*****

October 9, 1965

AXP showed up in fine form tonight by having the wildest Allegheny All-College party. Even the beds in the sleeping rooms were broken down to make socializing areas. And I’ve never danced so much (or so well) in my life. Miss Molly Doherty proved herself to be a fine date in fine form for anything. I got a little skin tonight. Not much, just a little. Molly got a little skin tonight, too.

The party lasts right up till the girls have to go back to their dorms. I walk Molly to South Hall and Jerry goes with May to Brooks. We meet each other on the path past the observatory to the house. I love the atmosphere in the house after a party when the guys come back to unwind. The stereo is playing The Stones and there’s clattering in the kitchen. 

Huna appears in the dining room entryway and says, “Gornack and I were looking for you two to play some bridge.” I say nah and Jerry says c’mon and so we do. 

It’s 4:30 when Gornak says he can’t stay up any longer and Huna yawns and stretches. I look at Jerry as he looks at me and we both wait till Gornak and Huna leave before we go to the garage tv room. It’s dark and empty. We don’t turn on the lights. I lie on the sofa and he lies in front of it on the carpet. There’s enough light coming through the windows from street lamps for us to see each other, but we don’t need to. I like sensing him on the floor next to the sofa. 

He says, “Do you remember when I stayed at your house spring break?”

I want to laugh and shriek and scream. 

“Vaguely. Somewhere in my past.”

“Remember the night we had trouble going to sleep and you got up to take a walk?”

A little burst of panic. “Were you awake?” I sit up. “I thought you were sleeping. I waited till I heard you breathing hard.”

“When you left, I got into your bed and I waited and waited for you to come back. But you didn’t. So I went back to my bed. I was awake when you finally got in.”

In my guts the kettle drum booms like far-off thunder. 

“What a surprise that would have been,” I say and he laughs his awkward laugh. “But once I was in bed, oh my, imagine the shock you would’ve got.” 

More awkward laughter.

I’ve been thinking lately about chance and randomness in life. And here I am listening to a description of one of those moments where my life might have taken a major turn. Is he giving me a chance now to take us back to that different path? Is there anything I could do to get us back there?

“Well, I gotta get some zees,” he says. “By now they probably have the beds back together.”

He leaves and I don’t go with him. I sit in the darkness for a while.

*****

October 26, 1965

Last night I dreamed about a movie—a nude woman and man in a deep clear blue lake. And all the focus was on the woman’s breasts. I dreamt I was watching it and the girl who sat beside me began to massage my groin. 

For what it’s worth.

*****

It’s late. Is anyone else in the house awake? We’re in the study room. He’s just finished trimming my hair.

“There must be some way I can repay you.”

He hands me the broom. “You can sweep the floor.”

I sweep. “Surely your talent and your generosity are worth more than a dustpan full of hair.“ 

He’s putting the clippers and scissors away. He smiles. “You can put me to bed.”

We go to the sleeping room. Snores, breathing, bodies. I pull back his sheets and whisper, “How do I put you to bed?”

He climbs in and lifts the sheet. I get in. We’re touching. I put my hand against his face, he interlaces his fingers with mine. There’s almost enough light to see his eyes. I’m scared. We breathe together. We doze and wake intermittently. His body is hot. At times my back is to him and at times his to me.

He moves and I awaken. “I gotta get some sleep,” he says. “Upstairs.” 

A few hours later I’m getting dressed in the study room and he comes in looking as if he should be rubbing his eyes. 

“What time did you leave?” he asks.

“About 5:00, I think.” 

He has to know I want him to say something.

“It was nice,” he says and I’m about to say something double entendrey—don’t know what—when, in the way he likes to blame me for something, he says, “At first.” 

And I know what he means. “It’s not my fault.”

“Well, it wasn’t me.” He goes to his dresser.

“I didn’t turn my back on you.”

“As I remember,” he says, “you turned first.”

What does he want me to do? I hear myself say, “So…we’ll have to try again.”

He takes his shaving kit and as he goes out the door he says, “Saturday night.”

He means it.

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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.