Beware of Love in Technicolor (16 page)

             
I was not the only one who had ignored our spending agreement. He reached behind the back seat and presented me with a lapful of gifts.

             
“I told you I liked shopping for you,” he said with a grin.

             
“Where should I start,” I asked excitedly. I felt giddy.

             
“Start with the larger boxes. We’ll save the little one for last.”

             
The larger boxes contained a variety of outfits. He always liked buying clothing for me. He was pretty good at it, too, though I suspect he relied heavily on the help of salesgirls. There were two smaller boxes. The first contained a bottle of Obsession perfume. He persuaded me to spritz some on, and commenced kissing my neck and ears.

             
“Wait,” I giggled, enjoying the affection. “There’s one more box.”

             
He pulled back and handed to me the last gift. Another blue box. I could not help but grin that I might finally get to enjoy a gift from Tiffany’s. I pulled on the white satin ribbon, and gently removed the lid. There was a velvet jewelry box inside. I was expecting earrings, a necklace, perhaps a bracelet. I was not expecting what I saw.

             
“A knife?” I asked, plucking the sterling silver weapon from its box.

             
“A Swiss Army Knife,” he corrected, taking it from my hands. He opened it up, showing me the small but perfect blade. “For the next time you need to peel an apple, or decide to let a strange boy walk you home through the woods,” he said with a grin.

             
“Oh.”

             
“I just want you to be prepared, when I’m not around,” he said, kissing me again. He was laughing. “I figured it was ok if it came from Tiffany’s.”

             
“It is beautiful,” I said, admiring the strange but sweet gift. He had it engraved with my initials. “Thank you. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about that night. I guess I was more upset about things than I thought.”

             
“Let’s just start over,” he said, looking in my eyes. “From today on, we just stop with all the games, all those other people. I want you. Just you.”

***

The rest of the holiday break passed without much fanfare. I worked a few more days at the mall, and spent a traditional New Year’s Eve with Penny, playing pool and watching a
Three Stooges
marathon on TV. We added a fifth of Southern Comfort to the festivities that year.

John spent New Year’s in Albany, with Ben. I never got a clear picture of what they did, but I saw the photos, and not a single girl, so I didn’t care. He spent the rest of the break working for his dad. He promised to spend the money on me.

The only other important event was the day my grades arrived in the mail. My failing mark in my computer class put me on academic probation, meaning I had one semester to turn things around. By some act of divine intervention, it was the day CNN first brought us news that war had broken out in the Persian Gulf, so the conversation with my parents was short and to the point. As Bernard Shaw announced, “
Something’s happening outside,
” from his hotel room in Baghdad, I was quickly advised that another semester of similar performance would earn me a nametag and hair net at the local pancake house.

I considered myself warned.

Chapter Seven

I returned to school for my second semester in late January of 1991. I was glad to get back to my life, my freedom. I had chosen my classes with a bit more care this time, and was looking forward to pulling my GPA out of its nosedive. Two more English classes, a political science class, and an introduction to anthropology. Definitely more manageable.

Molly returned from more than a month at home back in Texas. Her accent, which had mellowed a bit with the coming of the New England winter, was back in full force. Though we had our own lives at school, with not much overlapping, we had found our rhythm, and got along well enough to live in peace. She became more involved with the equestrian program at the university, once they learned of her credentials, and so I was able to let go of the guilt for having a social life founded on the betrayal of her so-called friends.

Second semester did bring a few changes. Both Prim and Julie decided not to return to New Hampshire. Prim, I heard, transferred to Harvard. Julie, it was rumored, found her way onto a pole somewhere in south Florida. I hope, for both their sakes, things have worked out for them.

***

We were back at school in time for the Super Bowl. John and I had been watching Monday Night Football together for a few months, and I had to grown to enjoy the game. Not as much as hockey, but John’s game was football, so it became mine as well. I have a long tradition of hating any team, in any sport, from New York, but it was the Bills against the Giants. What was I to do? I picked the lesser of two evils, and hitched my wagon to Buffalo.

When John invited me to go along with him to a Superbowl party at Ben’s room, I felt like I had received an invitation to some dark and secret club. I was being given access to the innermost cave during a major sporting event? Surely I must have been doing something right to be granted such a rare and coveted honor.

The actual television watching, as it turned out, was located in the bland study lounge just down the hall from Ben’s room. I should know. I spent at least twenty-five minutes sitting alone on a questionable couch while three Star Trek dorks debated the effectiveness of the Bud Bowl advertising campaign in front of me.

Five minutes into the game, John had excused himself along with Jared and Ben and some other random people I did not know. I knew they were smoking pot; I wasn’t dumb. But I felt abandoned and picked over, and not sure at all why he had invited me in the first place. I was lost in my hurt when Ben sat down on the sofa beside me.

“What are you doing in here?” he asked me.

“Watching the game,” I answered.

“Where’s John?” He looked around the room.

“I thought he was in your room,” I told him.

“He was,” he answered. “They haven’t come out yet?”

“Haven’t seen ‘em.” It was hard not to stew.

Ben looked around, and elbowed me in the ribs when his eyes settled on the dorks in the front of the room.

“C’mon Greer, come with me,” he said in a low whisper. “You can’t sit here with these goofballs, all by yourself. You don’t have to smoke, but just hang out with us. We’re really not that bad, I promise.”

He stood up, and extended his right hand to me. He smiled, and his face lit up. It was impossible not to like him. He could charm the scales off a snake, or the panties off a co-ed. I smiled and took his hand and let him lead me out of the study lounge and down the hallway to his room.

John was surprised to see me walk into the room behind Ben, but he smiled. Nobody else seemed to really notice. The conversation continued to flow as John pulled me into a sitting position on his lap.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he whispered in my ear. My hurt feelings slipped away like a bad dream, leaving behind only stirrings in the otherwise thrill to be awake, and wanted.

The room smelled skunky, and they were listening to the Grateful Dead. Visine could have sponsored their half-time show. I was impressed with the amount of ceremony that went into smoking weed. One boy would roll a bath towel and place it at the bottom of the door. Another would open the window and turn on a small fan, pointing it out the window, into the night. Another would sit at the desk, carefully picking through a pile of sticks and leaves and stems, pinching the weed and stuffing it into a small, wooden pipe.

When someone handed the pipe to me, I passed and handed it to John. He took a hit, held his breath, and puffed a long stream of smoke into the fan. It shot out into the darkness like an urgent fog.

***

The subject came up again a few days later as I lounged in John’s room one evening after dinner. I was lying on his bed, looking down on the room from the loft. I had a rare night with no reading or writing to do. John was working on chemistry homework at his Commodore computer at the desk underneath the loft. When I complained of being bored, he handed me a paperback.

There was a knock at the door, and suddenly the little room filled up with Topher and another guy I had seen around their floor on Holt. His name was Patrick, and he was a preppy, chubby guy from the rocky coast of Maine, with ruddy skin and sailing in his blood. He looked like a frat brother, but liked recreational drugs too much to limit himself to keg parties and beer bashes.

When the door closed behind them, Patrick removed a small , rolled up baggie from the pocket of his jeans, and handed it to John.

“Thanks, man,” John said to him, looking up from his computer. “You got a few minutes to hang out?”

             
They nodded and attempted to make themselves comfortable in the cramped quarters. John stood and looked at me. We were face to face.

             
“Do you mind if we smoke?”

             
“Go right ahead,” I said. I really was becoming quite complacent with the whole drug thing. I guess when I realized that its effects were not as severe as I had been led to believe, I dropped my disdainful attitude. Who was I to judge, after all? Getting drunk seemed to mess me up just as effectively as anything else, and that was practically expected of us college kids, with a wink and a nod and a promise to grow up upon graduation.

             
I placed the book down, and propped myself up on one elbow. I enjoyed watching the ritual of toweling the door, opening a window, and propping a fan. John removed a small, ceramic cigarette-looking thing from his desk drawer, and poked a small bit of his new weed into one end. He handed it to me.

             
“You interested?” he asked, hopeful.

             
“Hm,” I said, twirling the one-hitter between my fingers.

             
“C’mon, join us on the dark side,” Topher teased with one of his summer day smiles. He batted his Marlon Brando eyelashes at me quickly.

             
“No,” I said slowly, handing the pot back to John. “I’m already messed up enough, without the aid of chemicals.”

             
They laughed. John lit up.

             
“No arguments there,” he said as he exhaled into the fan.

***

              When Patrick and Topher had left us, John climbed up into the loft with me, threw the paperback to the floor, and began trying to liberate my shirt.

             
“I thought they’d never leave,” he uttered in a low voice, as he disappeared under the sheets, sending my jeans and underwear the way of the discarded book.

             
I did my best to relax. I did not want to be a failure at something so simple and basic as sex. But the more I tried to let go and live in the moment, the more tense my body would become. My mind just could not sit still on the sidelines, watching my body claim all the glory.

             
I liked sex. That was not the problem. I loved the wet, mad kissing, the groping and pulling off of clothing. My underwear went damp at a mere smile from John, and I found myself fantasizing about him during the day when I was not physically with him. I just could not close the deal. And I was ok with that, figuring it would take some time, and frankly, with my limited experience, it was good enough as it was. But his ego was having a hard time handling the notion that he was not the incredible lover he saw himself as. Things were so good, otherwise, between us; I did not think sex was important enough to allow to become a problem. Besides, I had that ghost of a climaxing ex-girlfriend to vanquish.

So I faked it. I did my best
When Harry Met Sally
, and faked my way through my blossoming sex life. It was much easier, it saved us all kinds of time, and he seemed satisfied in the end. The journey to the Land of O would be a bumpier road than I knew.

***

I had great expectations for my first Valentine’s Day with a boyfriend. Unfortunately, so did a nasty little flu virus living in The Pit.

Molly and I both woke up with it on the morning of February 14. I had made the poor decision to eat pork fried rice the night before, and spent a few miserable hours in the bathroom regretting that choice. My insides felt like they were being pulled through a meat grinder. I was sweating and freezing at the same time. My brain had been secretly replaced with a lead weight.