the day i met her

“I’m not your dad,” I said as nicely as I could.

“You’re right,” she said with a dull glare. “He fucked me better.”

I looked at her, lying in bed covered with my 15-year-old comforter that had been to two colleges and across the country three times. I wanted to cry. Instead …

I left.

Usually, I’m the one who gets left. For whatever reason, I decided to be the leaver this time.

It didn’t feel any better. No matter what the country music videos show or the television commercials imply.

My heart was still broken, it’s just this time it was my choice instead of hers.

I sit in this tiny bar in Eutah, Alabama, still thinking about her to this day.

The first time we met, she told me “You’ll never forget me.”

She was right.

But, I haven’t forgotten a lot of people.

It’s just today, she’s on my mind a little more than usual.

Maybe it’s because I know she’s near.

The modern world allows you to know this. To keep tabs from afar. Tabs without actually travelling to where she is. Well, she’s always in my head, so that’s not true.

Exactly.

The baseball season ended for her tonight. For me, for the first time since 1992, it will continue into October.

I was 21 then.

I’d fucked just three girls.

I’d fell in love just once. Maybe twice, as I told another girl, who left me the next day. I wasn’t talking about her, and I don’t know if she really thought I was. She had that kind of power over me. She made me wonder what the hell she was thinking. All of the time.

I don’t think about her very often.

She wasn’t someone I wanted to grow old with.

Go to Van Halen arena shows and pelt Sammy Hagar with toilet paper with.

Eat peel-and-eat shrimp until we puked with.

Drive the long way, every day with.

Watch people live their lives the wrong way with.

Like I do now.

Without.

I have a life now. But it’s not what I expected. I write for money. Sometimes it’s actually pretty good. Each time I set out trying for it to be, but fall short most of the time. It’s the days when it works that I still smile. My crooked, golden teethed grin. I used to get told I had a pretty smile. I don’t anymore.

I still smile. It’s just reserved.

Unless I’m drunk.

Which doesn’t happen like it used to.

In the past, I’d go to work. Work. Leave work. Then drink.

At a bar. At a game. At nowhere. At home.

Alone usually.

I’d scribble down what other people say to each other.

One night a guy noticed me doing it.

What are you writing? He asked.

Nothing.

Bull hockey. He replied.

OK. I said. I’m writing about everything.

He stared at me.

Pussy. He said.

Nah. I replied. Haven’t had any in a while. So I don’t write about it. Sex. That is.

So then what do you write about. He asked.

A lot about masturbation. I replied.

He laughed.

I expected that.

I wrote it down.

Hey. He said. What are you writing? He asked.

Nothing. I said.

I woke up on the floor.

A nicer looking woman of about 45 years old was bent over me. Her tits were way too tanned. I still liked them. I stared.

You don’t know when to stop. She asked.

I figured it was a rhetorical question.

What were you writing? She asked.

Nothing. I answered.

Well. She said. He took your notebook. She said, pointing at him sitting at the bar.

A brunette was looking at my notebook.

I got up.

Walked over to the brunette.

You read? I asked.

Just your stuff. She answered.

Barkeep! I yelled. Two shots!

John, the barkeep, brought over two shots of Jameson.

I came here often.

Hey. He said, poking me in the back. Where is my drink? He asked.

She’s drinking it. I replied.

I woke up on the floor again. This time, my head hurt.

This time, there weren’t any tits in my face.

That made me sad.

My notebook was on the floor, right next to my blood.

Written on it were just a few words:

“You were rite,” it began. I smiled.

“You write about nothing.”

I looked at John. He nodded.

I struggled to get to my feet. I finally did. There was some blood on my left foot. Adidas Sambas, size 13. A half size too small for my feet.

Feet she called clown feet.

John already had a drink waiting for me.

I drank it.

Then I wrote about nothing.

I sold that story for $600.

Some magazine that doesn’t print anymore.

But what magazine prints anymore?

Mostly now, I dream.

About the day I met her.

And everything changed.

Three memories

Chapter 1

Three memories haunt me like the vision of the man at the stairs in the movie poster for “The Exorcist”, meaning, they just stay there in my mind.

I guess haunted would be the wrong word to use to describe them. The three all represent failure of some sort, but they also represent hope. Why those three memories have stuck, I do not know. They are all of the same person. All from a time in my life when I have almost no memories. And they all bring smiles and melancholy when I think about them, even almost 30 years later.

The person in them is a girl. Her name is Heather. She was quite possibly the root of all my insanity. Not for anything she did, at least that I can remember. Instead, for the sheer magnitude of importance that I placed on her existence at a very young age.

I knew her, or knew of her at least, for three years. First grade. Second grade. And third grade. I don’t remember talking to her. Or hanging out with her. Nothing. But recent revelations about places I’d been and things I said would certainly not rule out that any of those things actually happened at some point. Maybe even in lots of detail. Probably not, however.

Those years of my life were kind of strange. Setting a tone, I believe, for the rest of them to follow.

I was labeled “smart” early on. And it turned out, I was much smarter than almost all my classmates at the large brick monstrosity of a school that I attended, old and full of rot, this thing was built right after World War I. It doesn’t exist anymore, but that’s ok.

My schooling started at a different school. Why? Because mom taught at the elementary school I was supposed to go to, and she did not want me to have the other kindergarten teacher because she sucked. So, I went to a school actually closer to my house, but not the one I was supposed to go to.

I have one memory of that school. Being in the field beside the school during recess. One guy had just bought Zips shoes. In the commercial, the kid who is wearing them can do all sorts of incredible things. One of them is to leap over a large bush. Well, the kid who got the shoes is bragging he can now do all of those things. Me, being the smartass I was, and still am, pointed at a bush in the yard. It was probably three foot tall, but I am remembering it from a kindergarteners perspective, so I could have been inches tall.

“Jump that, Derek!” I exclaimed.

The kid looked at me with shock. He ended up being the quarterback of the high school football team, but then, he was just a little kid.

“I, I, I, can’t do that,” he said.

“But you said you could do what the guy in the commercial does!” I yelled, puffing my chest in superiority. I had a problem with that as a kid.

“Um. Ok. I’ll try.” Derek finally said.

I was shocked. He’s actually going to do it?

Well, Derek ran right at the thing, leaped in the air and landed squarely in the bush. Got stuck even.

A teacher saw all of this. She rushed over.

“Why did you do that Derek?” she shrieked. Derek had ripped his pants a little and also had a little trickle of blood running down his arm from a branch or something cutting him.

“Randy told me to do it,” he whimpered pointing at me.

I was smiling. Looking around at all the kids. They were looking at me too. I wanted it to be awe. Well, whatever feeling a kindergartener would call it. Instead, they gave me looks of scorn.

“He did do that,” one girl said.

“It’s Randy’s fault!” a fat boy said with enthusiasm.

“Randy, did you tell Derek to do that?”

“Well, he said he could do it, because he’s got Zips on. I wanted to let him know that they really couldn’t give you powers like on TV.”

“Now Randy, you should know better than that. Derek was just proud of his new shoes.”

I looked at Derek. He was crying a little. He smiled at me when the teacher turned her back, sticking out his tongue. Round 1 went to me. Round 2 to Derek. I don’t remember if there was a Round 3. Unless being the school jock in high school was his victory dance. I played soccer. Not a lot of fans of soccer back then. Especially females. This was the South in the 1970s and 1980s, you’ll have to remember.

The next year, I was with a whole other batch of kids at the brick school.

That’s where I met Heather. I guess.