Tats

by Layce Gardner

  I try again, “Or we could just sit in the car and get high and eat cupcakes. Make fun of everyone going in.”

  She throws me an exasperated look and says, “I’m going in. You’re going in. End of story.”

  “Are you sure we’re allowed? Isn’t it just for the students?”

  “It’s called homecoming, stupid,” she says. “Alumni come home to visit during homecoming.”

  “Okay,” I say, giving up and opening my door, “let’s go get this over with.”

  “Good idea. You go first. I’ll wait a couple of minutes then make my grand entrance.”

  I cannot believe my ears. All this makeover fantasy hoopla shit she’s put me through and now she pulls this. “You’re afraid to be seen with me. Why don’t you just say that? Instead of this grand entrance shit?”

  I sit back in the seat, close my door firmly and cross my arms over the gooseflesh on my over-exposed boobs. “Maybe I don’t want to be seen with you either. Ever think of that?” I sulk.

  “Better idea,” she says, putting on more lipstick. “We go in together. I always look better with contrast.” She opens her door and hops out like she’s popping out of a cake at a bachelor party.

  I decide right then and there that I don’t like her anymore and I am definitely not going to have any fun tonight.

  Oh my God, I’m not even all the way inside the front door before my nostrils are assaulted by the fumes of sweat, smelly feet and angst. My heart lurches inside my chest and the smells bring back a spinning kaleidoscope of unwanted memories: Mrs. Banana (I don’t remember her real name, just that everyone called her Mrs. Banana) and her one good eye and one glass eye.

  Just like a horse, both her eyes would move independently of each other. One eye would look straight at you while the other eye roamed the room. It always gave me an eerie feeling—like she could see me even when I was standing behind her. And Mark Thompson sat in front of me in psych class and tossed little balled up notes on my desk. I’d put them in my pocket and take them home and read them. His notes read like teen erotica complete with bad grammar about all the things he wanted to do to me in the dark. Little did he know I learned how to please a woman by pleasing myself after reading his nasty confessions.

  I feel like I’m a teenager again, too tall and skinny, trying to crowd my too-long legs under those wooden desks, hunched over my English homework, diagramming sentences with slash marks that ripped through my paper, wearing some of Chopper’s old work overalls for the third day in a row until I could sneak back into my house and grab some clean clothes. I overheard the quarterback of the football team, Mr. Popular, whisper to his friend, Mr. Cool, that he can’t tell if I’m a boy or a girl. And pretty soon the whole class pointed and snickered at me.

  Except for Vivian. Pretty, red-headed Vivian, sitting on the front row, turned and looked at my shamed face and rolled her eyes at the quarterback. That’s all she did. Rolled her eyes and looked back to the front. But it was enough to get me through another day.

  Vivian grabs me by the elbow and pulls me down the empty hallway, talking ninety to nothing, “Was that Sue Anne that just went inside? Christ, she’s fat as a cow. Or pregnant. Maybe both, who knows?”

  “Maybe she has a stomach tumor,” I add.

  “There’s always hope,” Vivian giggles. She stops and looks me up and down, long and hard. I wish for maybe the umpteenth time that I had a shawl or whatever to cover up my tats and tits. “You okay?” she asks. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

  “Go ahead without me, Viv, I’ll catch up.”

  “I’m not going in there without you, you big goof,” she says, giving me a look like I’m being ridiculous.

  “You belong here, Vivian.” I stammer, “Not...me.”

  “You belong here. You went to school here same as me.”

  “You know what I mean,” I whisper to my feet.

  “Uh. No. I. Don’t.” Viv says, looking down at my feet, too.

  “Vivian...you were the popular one. You were the pretty one. Everybody loved you. Me...at best, I was a nobody...”

  Good God, am I going to cry? I can’t cry now. I bite my lower lip, hitch my boxers up a little higher and clear my throat. “I just can’t go in there, okay?”

  Vivian sighs. She plants her feet shoulder-width apart and puts her fists on her hips. She looks at me coldly. “You want to have it out right here? Okay...here’s the God’s honest truth. I moved here when I was in fourth grade. I had a wild orange afro and freckles over my entire body. I had Coke bottle glasses and elephant-size ears. I used to put bubblegum behind my ears to try to get them to stick and lay flat. Between my freckles, my glasses, my Dumbo ears and my home perm, I wasn’t the prettiest girl around. Everybody made fun of me. But what did I do? Did I quit? Did I stand in a dark hallway and cry about it? No. I learned how to do the splits and backflips and I tamed my hair and became the best damn cheerleader in this school. I got even. And so did you. We both got out of this godforsaken town.” She points dramatically to the gym doors. “And they didn’t. They’re still stuck here. And that’s why you and I are better than all of them put together.”

  “I didn’t get out,” I mumble. “I just went to prison.”

  “So what?” she retorts. “I learned to spread my legs and get paid to do it. But we still got out and they didn’t. So, like my football-coaching daddy always told me, ‘Get up and walk it off.’”

  I manage to peel my stare away from my feet and look at her. “You really have big ears?”

  I reach out to move her hair and have a look, but she swats at my hand.

  “You ever mention my ears again and I’ll knock you on your ass,” she says with true grit. And she looks like she means it too.

  I force a small smile. She gives me a little smile back. “Okay,” I say, “Let’s go show ’em what a real football queen looks like.”

  Vivian steams ahead and I’m the caboose. She flings the gym doors open and they both slam against the brick walls and I swear to God, just like Rita Hayworth, she makes a 1940’s style grand entrance. She pauses at the top of the stairs with her arms outstretched just to give everyone the full effect of her dazzling beauty before descending into a bevy of male admirers.

  I pause dramatically at the top of the steps too, but only because I don’t think I can make it safely all the way down in high heels. I slip them off and kick them to the side. I’ll come back and get them later.

  I inch down the stairs barefooted and look around for Vivian. She’s been swallowed by the hordes, so I sidle over to the closest wall and make myself inconspicuous. I’ve never been to a homecoming shindig before so I have no idea if this one is decorated abnormally or if all homecomings look like Martha Stewart threw up in the gym. Probably all of them.

  There’s crepe and balloons and confetti everywhere. Hard, pounding music that I don’t recognize reverberates through my feet and pounds its way up to the top of my skull. I need a drink in a bad way. I wonder if anyone’s spiked the punch yet?

  Everybody’s fat. And I don’t mean the alumni like me that are scattered about the floor; I mean the students. They’re fat and they’re sweaty too. I guess putting those snack and pop machines in the halls wasn’t such a good idea after all.

  I catch a glimpse of Vivian over by the basketball goal. She’s flirting and smiling in such a fake way, but nobody knows that but me. I guess she’s happy. She’s talking animatedly to two women who look like...oh my God, they are. They’re The Pattys. The Pattys were two best friends in high school and nobody ever saw them apart. One was Patty Cooper and the other was Patty Porter and we all just called them The Pattys. They were like Siamese twins, doing absolutely everything together. Well, I don’t know about everything but I wouldn’t doubt it. Patty Porter was the skinny one who everyone called Port-a-Patty and Patty Cooper was the fat one who everyone called Fatty Pooper.

  Vivian finishes talking to The Pattys and swings her way over to Beau Jackson. Beau was a k
ind of quiet little guy back when. He hits Vivian at about chest level and I can see what he likes about being so short. He used to have a big tight afro but now it’s thinned down the middle and it looks more like a Ronald McDonald. Back in high school a story circulated about him on a senior boys camping trip. They said he got drunk and fucked a box of twinkies. That’s why everyone started calling him Twinkie. I never quite understood that whole story. Did he actually put it inside a twinkie or did he just stick it inside the box of twinkies and do it to that? I’ll have to remember to ask Vivian later.

  Vivian and Beau start dancing together. It’s a kind of upbeat song, but Beau grabs her and slow-dances. He lays his face right on her tits and wraps his arms around her waist and she’s smiling down at him and I’d like to punch him right in the gut.

  “Lee Anne?” asks a deep voice. This guy steps directly into my line of vision and...shit, it’s Joey Hanes. What’re the odds?

  “Joey?” I ask tentatively.

  “Yea, damn, woman, you look good,” he says. His eyes stroll leisurely up and down my half-naked body and loiter on my headlights. I wish there was a way to turn them off.

  “Yeah, you, too,” I mumble. My cheeks burn hot. I hope he can’t tell that for all the blush I already have on.

  He grabs my hand and pulls me onto the dance floor. “One dance,” he says, “for old-times sake.” He wraps his arms around me, grabs my ass and grinds my pelvis into his and he’s barely moving and, Christ, he has a banana in his pocket.

  I glance over his shoulder (he’s grown a lot taller since high school) and try to locate Vivian. There she is. I see her red hair bobbing above the sea of bodies. She’s still dancing and talking with Beau.

  “You know we could leave this place,” Joey says. “We could pick up where we left off.”

  “Where we left off? Which part is that?” I ask. “The part where you threw up on me or the part where I tossed you out of your own car?”

  “It’s true, huh?”

  “What truth is that, Joey?” I ask. I look toward Vivian for help. Maybe she can get me out of this mess, but I’ve lost her again.

  He presses his banana harder into my belly and says, “Twinkie told me you were a lesbo now.”

  “Twinkie? How the hell would he know?”

  “Everybody knows. But I don’t believe it,” he says, grinding into me a little harder.

  Suddenly, a hand grabs my shoulder and spins me around. It’s Vivian. I smile for a split second until she rears back and slaps the holy shit out of me.

  “Ow!”

  “You bitch!” Vivian screams.

  Joey leers at Vivian and throws one arm back over my shoulder. “This your girlfriend?” he asks me. “You gals want a third?” he asks Vivian.

  Vivian slaps the holy shit out of him next. He’s no fool. He puts his hands in the air to block any future attacks and backs away.

  Vivian turns back to me and screams above the music, “You’re a lesbian?! I came to homecoming with a fucking lesbian?!”

  I look around and offer an apologetic “I don’t know what the hell she’s talking about, the lady is crazy” smile to all the stares.

  “Ssshhhhh...” I say to Vivian. I grab her hand and pull her off the dance floor and behind the bleachers to a semi-private space. “Don’t just scream that shit, Viv. Not at homecoming. Not in Oklahoma. You want me to get killed by the Baptist Student Assembly?”

  She looks at me stunned. “It’s true? Everybody here knows you’re a lesbian except me?”

  “Well...yeah, it’s true. Of course it’s true. You knew that. For Chrissakes, Vivian, you knew that.”

  “How was I supposed to know that? You never told me!”

  “C’mon, Viv, get real. I talk like a dyke, I walk like a dyke. I’m probably a dyke.”

  Does she ever look pissed. Those little muscles are working in her jaw and there’s a big vein popping out in her forehead. I’ve never seen her this angry.

  “You’re mad at me?” I ask.

  “I could fucking kill you,” she grates and I don’t think she’s lying either.

  I try to defuse the anger with a little humor. “Well, you don’t have to go and scream it to everybody, okay? It’s like the lesbian golden rule. You don’t out somebody without their permission. That’s rule number one. Rule number two is...you don’t go down on a first date.”

  She’s not laughing. I’m so nervous I keep talking, “It’s written down in the lesbian rulebook.” She’s still staring at me like she wants to choke me to death, so I keep rambling, “Just two rules. Pretty easy to remember really.”

  She takes a deep breath and one step in closer to me. “Let me try to understand this,” she says, ticking off points on her fingers. “You had sex with Joey. You had sex with Mark. You’re a lesbian, but you didn’t even try to have sex with me?”

  Oh my God, I should’ve seen this one coming. She’s not mad I’m gay, she’s mad I haven’t put a move on her. How can I be that stupid? All straight women want lesbians to want them.

  “All lesbians want me,” Vivian says, underscoring what I’m thinking. “We’ve slept in the same bed! You’ve seen me half-naked. You were under that desk pretending to go down on me, for fuck’s sakes!” She does a “look at me” gesture up and down her body and adds, “And here I stand looking hotter than I’ve ever looked in my life and you don’t even make a move on me. Why the hell don’t you want me?”

  Are those real tears in her eyes? I can’t believe this. And I really can’t believe what I do next, but I do it anyway before I think myself out of it. I grab Vivian by both her shoulders and pull her to me and right here in front of God and everybody I kiss her. I kiss her like I’ve been wanting to kiss her since the second I laid eyes on her.

  The music stops. The crowd hushes. Everyone claps and cheers and I have the woman I’m desperately in love with in my arms.

  Okay, not really. Everything is just like it was.

  Vivian steps back. She looks a little startled, maybe even a little confused. Then Whack! She slaps me again.

  “What the fuck was that one for?” I ask, rubbing my other cheek.

  “I’m not a lesbian,” she shoots.

  I flinch like I got four bullets, one for each of her words, straight to the heart. It hurts and it pisses me off that it hurts. “I didn’t try anything with you because...because you’re straight and if you told me no...” I shake my head, then say it anyway, “You don’t know, Vivian...you just don’t realize how much I love you.”

  And there it is. Just like that. I didn’t even really know how much I meant it until I said it out loud. So I say it one more time, more for me than for her, “I love you.”

  Then I turn and walk away, leaving those words hanging in the distance between us.

  I don’t get it. I just don’t get these damn straight women. They want you to want them, but then they shut you down. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. My mind is reeling and both sides of my face are stinging and I walk out of this damn place. I walk out the doors without looking back. My tears are so hot, they burn my face and my makeup is running and I just don’t care who sees. I just don’t care.

  Fuck the shoes. I’m not going back after them.

  Vivian has the car keys hidden somewhere down her magic tits and I’m stuck without a ride unless I want to walk but I’m not desperate enough to walk down the middle of town in this god-awful getup. I trudge across the parking lot, not even caring about the gravel biting my bare feet and throw open the door to the Mercedes. I sit in the passenger seat with my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands and my feet on the dash and I cry and hiccup and think about how fuckin’ pitiful I am.

  The driver’s side door opens and I try to turn the waterworks off and come out of this with some semblance of pride, but my damn heart hurts too bad.

  Vivian quietly clicks her door closed and scoots over next to me until our shoulders touch.

  “It’s all like some game to you, isn’t
it?” I finally blubber. “You want me to want you, but you don’t want to want me. I’m supposed to fall in love with you, then you slap me and walk away feeling all good about yourself. Well, it’s not a game to me, Vivian. It’s my life. I have to live it.”

  She reaches down her cleavage and pulls out a tissue. She swipes at my tear tracks and smudges and then tucks it back away.

  “I can’t believe all this time you didn’t know I was a lesbian. I thought you knew. How the hell could you not know?” I ask. “Even Sonja could tell just by looking at me.”

  “Who’s Sonja?”

  “Never mind.”

  “You’ve been a lesbian the whole time I’ve known you?” Vivian asks.

  I look at her straight-on. “What d’ya mean?”

  “I thought maybe you turned into a lesbian for me,” she says matter-of-factly.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “No.”

  “Your ego’s that huge, Vivian? Your ego’s so huge, you thought I actually turned into a lesbian just for you?”

  “Well,” she says, “I’ve had gay men go straight for me. What’s the difference?”

  “Really? Damn...”

  “And who has the huge ego here? You expect me to turn into a lesbian just for you.”

  “No, I don’t,” I explain. “I don’t expect that exactly.”

  “Then what do you expect exactly?”

  “I just want you to love me. That’s all.”

  “I do love you, you big goof.”

  “Physically, too.”

  Vivian shakes her head sadly. “I can’t. I don’t know how to do it and I probably wouldn’t be any good at it. I don’t want to do something I won’t be good at.”

  “We could practice.”

  She laughs.

  “I don’t want you anyway,” I reason. “You’re too high maintenance and you make me wear weird girlie clothes.”

  “You know what your problem is?” she asks. When I don’t answer she tells me anyway, “You have your loves confused.”

  “No, my problem is that I keep falling for straight women.”