Squirrel Cage (11 page)

“Don’t worry about it,
” he said,
“
I told her before she left that we would not take her collect calls.”

“Okay Dad.”

Within a few days, we were told that Dalene had been found dead by self inflicted gun shot wound. I was the last to have an opportunity to talk to her in her hour of need. I turned it down. It does not matter that I was told not to take the call. I still felt responsible.
“Here is another mark to put in t
he Cindi sin book.”
Dalene, my ow
n sister reached out for help a
nd I turned her down.”

I’ll never forget it. I’ll never forget my sister. I feel a tremendous loss for the love we never shared. Dalene I feel the guilt for turning my back on you.

Please forgive me. Rest peacefully.

In my junior year
of high school
I met Charlene. I saw her first in a politics class as she was delivering a paper to the teacher’s desk. She was cute. Her face had classic lines that would never age, her green eyes had an undetermined depth, and her skin had a perfect glow. I wanted to be like her. Squirrel tried in vain to keep me from her with empty denigration.

“Squirrel, shut up.” I decided I liked Charlene. I wanted to be her friend. “You just want to be HER,”
Squirrel
derided.

And that was true enough. I would have been thrilled to be her for just one day.

It turned out that she was in choir class too.
And before I knew it, we were spending our lunch hours in the library talking and laughing with each other.
I liked Charlene I truly wanted to be her friend.
T
here were
many
times when she faced me across the table; I
wore
my special girl clothes. It was the 70’s and it was so easy to get away with it.

Sometimes she would bring her friend in and we would giggle and laugh requiring the librarian to intervene. I loved her story about submitting an enhancement request to eyeglass companies. She wanted windshield wipers on hers so she could walk home from school in the rain.
She didn’t wear eyeglasses most of the time. She had contact lenses that she could wear.
I
could look into
her eyes
and lose
myself in those emerald pools
.

Our choir performed a concert and she played a Chopin piano solo.
I was mesmerized. I had never heard someone my age play like that. I was so proud of her.
What a wonderful thing to have a friend like Charlene.

Each year there was a girl’s choice dance.
I don’t remember the name of it.
Charlene asked me to go with her. I loved dances. I don’t believe that I had missed a single one in high school. But I didn’t know how to handle going to the dance with my new best friend. It felt odd. I felt like I was betraying her. At the time, I wish that she would have asked someone else. But I agreed to go.

I picked her up at her home. I and met her parents. They were delightful of course.
Her father was a bishop in the LDS church. They showed the careful concern that good parents have when their daughter goes out for the first time. I think that it was the first time for her.

She wore a light green dress and she
was stunning
. I brought her a flower and she gave me one for my
suit
. Fairy tail story for her.
Nightmare for me. I enjoyed taking her out far too much. “But isn’t this a good thing?” I asked
Squirrel
. “I don’t think so,”
Squirrel
answered.

We had a wonderful time at the dance. We went out to eat with several
other couples.
I took her home.

I was hooked.
I
t wasn’t long before she was hooked. We became a thing.

I was only sixteen but before Charlene, I had managed to form a crush for two different girls. Both had ended because I was so immature. I was a handsome kid for sure
in a soft way
. But I didn’t act like a guy. And no, I didn’t act like a girl either. I acted like a true dork, like a 10 year old kid. It turned them off and they would have nothing to do with me.
L
ooks go only skin deep you know.

I did like girls. I loved to watch them.
T
he
Squirrel
ran
the fantasy films every night a
nd quite often during a boring class, I’d get replays. There was a difference between
nighttime
viewings and the matinee’s however. At night I would wake up and have to clean up a mess. I hated it. I hated the pervert within me.

I continued to see Charlene. I wanted to be with her now all the time.
My heart ached to be apart from her. Here I was going to be a dork again and drive her away. There would be some stupid thing that would happen and I’d say something totally off the wall. But it didn’t happen.
Finally, o
ne day we kissed.

She hadn’t been the first girl that I had kissed.
I had played spin the bottle on a double date just a few months earlier. We were at my house under the Christmas tree. My friend from down the block and I both had dates and we were having a pretty good time.
It was fun but there was absolutely no passion.
Nothing happened.
My date was really a lousy kisser.
It was like kissing a salt lick.
“It was that or I just didn’t like to kiss girls,” I thought.

But Charlene.
The kiss was tender and sweet and it burst with raging pheromones. It was like nothing I had ever experienced in my whole life. It stopped the
Squirrel
. Cold.

Magic. Peace. Tranquility. Love.

We spent every hour of every day that we could together. It was truly a most spectacular time in my life. As our relationship solidified though, the
Squirrel
came back to life. I
lamented my situation.

For much of our junior and all of our senior years, we were together.
We did all the things that
high school kids did back then.
We attended the dances, went to basketball games, and attended church together.

The
Squirrel
was back but I felt I could control it. Charlene could make me happy.
I prayed that she WOULD make me happy. I prayed that her goodness would help keep my secret buried.

We took a trip to the LA a
rea with the high school choir.
We would perform at night somewhere and during the day we would
go do all the touristy things. We went to Disneyland
That day would be one of th
e most magical days of my life.
There was one ride we went on maybe 10 times because it went in a building where it was dark and we co
uld kiss. Charlene had lots of C
hapstick and I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t use the whole tube that day.

At the end of my junior year I was elected choir president.
Yes, this is the point at which I am supposed to say that I was a football or basketball jock. Shoot, I couldn’t even fling a Frisbee. Instead, of a letter jacket, I could order a school sweater with “Choir President” tattooed on the pocket somewhere. No thanks. How geeky was that? It would
however,
mean that I’d
be required to stand
before the student body at practically every assembly for the coming year and lead them in the senior class hymn.
Fabulous, no?
Right.

Senior year was a blast
… except for standing up to direct the senior class hymn at every assembly. No, that was truly horrible. I even knew
that
was dorky.

I tried out for the school musical.
I was selected to play the part of Lt. Cable in South Pacific.
Yea, me. Playing the chic magnet of the production, rolling in on the beach with my shirt undone, and making passionate advances to an island girl.
Oh… and I would break out in singing… “Younger than springtime are you,” “Gayer than laughter are you”.
I know that I had a pleasant voice.
I liked to listen to the recording someone made of it.
And it was nice because we had the school orchestra play for us.
It was the first year that I didn’t play
cello
in the pit orchestra. Charlene came to the dress rehearsals and each performance. I was so proud to be singing to her.

One night as we were sitting in my very ugly Chevy Biscayne, Charlotte asked me if I had planned to go on a mission.

“The Mission” is an LDS rite of passage for every young man to volunteer
h
is time and his parents’ money to travel to some far off place (hopefully a foreign country) and preach the gospel. I had told my mother my whole life that I did not want to go. It sounded extremely boring to knock on a hundred doors a day trying to sell religion to people who did not want to listen. Really, I was NOT going.
Besides, how would I ever satiate my desires if I had to spend 24 hours a day with some other snotty nosed kid of 19?
Now seriously, considering my state of mind, was that really a good idea?

“Yes,” I replied to her.
“
What did I say?
”
I said that I was going on a mission.
Crap. “When did we talk about this
Squirrel
?”

“Sorry, you
are on your own on this one,
”
it said.

So now I was going on a mission.
You are called by God through the church leaders to go of course.
I wondered if God was going to put me back on the list of potential candidates because I had told the woman that I loved “Yes”?
T
he worst part was that I really did want to go now. Such a wonderful influence this precious young lady had on me. And Charlotte. If you ever read this… well you’ll know what I’m thinking.

I was 18 now, and finished with high school. I was cramming college in as fast as I could before I left. With the classes that I took along with the College Level Entrance Placement tests (CLEP), I would have a full two years of college finished before I was 19 years old. I was told I was brilliant. Yea, sure.
Who else in the congregation talks to a
Squirrel
all the time and dresses up like a girl? The reason I pushed so hard on college is that I knew
I had to finish it quickly.
T
hat was brilliant
.

The mission call came from God, typed out by a secretary, and signed by some fellow in Salt Lake City.
I would be traveling south to Chile.
Charlene promised to wait for me.
The girl’s right of passage was to see if she could hold out for two years while her young man was away. Usually if she could, she would be dumped two months after her beau returned.

Charlene was making the ultimate commitment. She would wait for me. I knew that would surely mean marriage.
I didn’t mind that thought one bit.

I hope they send me on a mission.

When I have grown a foot or two.

I hope they send me on a mission .

To teach and preach like missionaries do.

When you are a
three
year old boy in the LDS faith, you learn this song.
It’s kind of catchy isn’t it?
I knew it. I knew what it meant at a very early age. When you turn 19 you are called to the mission field to preach the gospel. For two years you spend your entire day, each minute of every hour, with another young man. Young men are called “Elders”.
Women that go are called Sisters. I suppose it would be bad form to call young women “Elders” wouldn’t it? They spend
six and a half
days of every week studying the gospel, learning a foreign language if needed, and teaching the gospel. That extra
half
day is to do laundry and prepare for the coming week.

Dad thought that a mission was the perfect thing to straighten out a troubled kid.
My little brother was definitely in line to go by that reasoning. Dad did not want me to go. I’d already finished 2 years of college. I could have my bachelor’s degree before I turned 21.
I knew that Dad wanted me to be a doctor or something. No one from either side of the family had ever finished college. Dad told me “If you think you are going to go on a mission, don’t come to me to pay for it. You’ll have to go to your mother.”

I did and she paid. She went to work to pay for it. She went to work with runs in her stockings to pay for it, as she
still reminds me after all these years have passed.
She worked in a school cafeteria. Now Mom complains about her stockings.
I’d
be
complain
ing
about the crappy job
she had to take
. The school cafeteria Mom?
You need to change your story. People will really know your true sacrifice. And I’m not kidding on this one.