Rufus + Syd

by Julia Watts

“No, thanks.”

  She picks up a bottle from the counter—there are a couple of empties beside it. “Well, just let me knock this back and have a couple more hits, and I’ll be good to go.” She picks up a joint that’s been balanced on the mouth of one of the empty beer bottles and lights it.

  “You wouldn’t be good to go without that stuff?”

  Tara blows out a cloud of smoke. “Doll, I’d still be good, but with this, I’m great. Beer plus weed plus you equals euphoria. Say, that would be a cool name for a song, wouldn’t it? ‘Euphoria.’”

  “It would.”

  “Speaking of songs, there’s one I want to play you before we leave. Sit down. Relax.”

  She sets down the beer long enough to put a record on the turntable. “Patti Smith,” she explains.

  The song, sung in a woman’s low, passionate voice, is about how the night belongs to lovers. Hearing it, I know that before the end of the night Tara and I may be lovers—a thought that fills me with fear but also with Tara’s word, euphoria. I’m glad I wore my good underwear.

  “Awesome, huh?” Tara says, once the song’s over.

  “Yeah.”

  “Ready to go?”

  “Sure. I’m thinking maybe I’d better drive, though.”

  Tara drapes her arm around my shoulders. “Now how am I supposed to feel like a stud when I’m not the one driving?”

  She says it like she’s joking, but I can tell there’s seriousness underneath. “Well, you’ll be giving me directions. That’s studly.”

  “And I’ll pay for gas. And dinner.”

  “If you like.”

  Tara grins. “Oh, I like.”

  THE RESTAURANT is a little Italian place called Maria’s. The red-checked tablecloths on the tables outside remind me of Lady and the Tramp.

  “Maria plays for our team,” Tara says after she’s opened the car door for me. “She keeps a little private room in the back where couples like us can have a romantic dinner without worrying about anybody bothering them.”

  “That’s really nice,” I say as we’re walking toward the restaurant.

  “It is,” Tara says. “And it’s good business too. The straight people who come here don’t have a clue about it, but you can bet that every gay couple within fifty miles comes here for anniversaries and birthdays and Valentine’s Day.”

  This makes me think about something I’ve never considered before. “I wonder, how many gay couples there are within fifty miles of Dothan?”

  “More than you’d think,” Tara says, now opening the restaurant door for me. “They just know to keep real quiet about it.”

  I think of Michael Foster, of Cole. There are consequences to not keeping quiet.

  “Tara!” A pretty, olive-skinned woman with long, dark, curly hair gathers Tara up in a hug. “It’s been too long!”

  “I know it has,” Tara says. “This is Syd, the girl I was telling you about when I made the reservations.”

  “Welcome, Syd,” Maria says, showing off her dimples as she smiles. She’s maybe ten years older than my mom and very feminine in a pencil skirt and ballet flats. Not long ago I would’ve said she didn’t look like a lesbian. But I’m starting to figure out there are a lot of ways lesbians can look. “Let me show you to your table.”

  We walk through the restaurant, where a few people are eating—an elderly straight couple and a family with a toddler whose face is stained red with spaghetti sauce. We pass the kitchen where huge pots are steaming and go into a small room with just five tables. The walls are exposed brick, and tiny lights are strung across them.

  “I think you’re going to have this room all to yourselves tonight,” Maria says, handing us our menus as we sit down across from each other at the cozy little table. “Now what can I get you lovely ladies to drink?”

  “I think we might start off with a couple of glasses of the house Chianti,” Tara says.

  Maria cocks a well-groomed eyebrow. “Okay, Tara, I’ll let you by with one glass since I know you’re just one birthday short of twenty-one. But Syd, honey, how old are you?”

  “Seventeen.” I see no reason to lie.

  She shakes her head. “No can do, then, hon. When you’re running a lesbian speakeasy in the Bible Belt, you’ve gotta be careful. How about I get you a nice Pellegrino instead?”

  Pellegrino, it turns out, is fizzy water. Plain, it’s kind of weird, but it’s not bad with lime. I feel sophisticated, sitting across from my gorgeous date in a dimly lit restaurant. I tell her about loving Lady and the Tramp when I was little and how this restaurant reminds me of the one in the famous scene.

  “Well,” Tara says, grinning, “we are having the spaghetti and meatballs, but I draw the line at rolling a meatball to you with my nose.”

  When we’re done laughing, I say, “I don’t know what I’m going to do when you move to Atlanta.”

  “Huh?” she says, sipping her wine.

  “I just mean when you move to Atlanta to try to make things happen with the band, I’ll really miss you.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to worry about that for a while. We’ve still got to get the money situation under control. Besides”—she reaches across the table to squeeze my hand—“there’s this girl in Vermillion I really like.”

  My face heats up. “I really like you too. But I don’t want to hold you back. You’re wasting your talent around here.”

  “What I was thinking was maybe the guys and me would get everything together and move next summer. You’d be done with school by then. Maybe you could come too.”

  I’m so surprised that I’m relieved when Maria brings our food because it gives me a minute to collect my thoughts. I had imagined myself in a big city farther away from Vermillion, but there’s something exciting about the idea of being in Atlanta with Tara, going with her to gigs in clubs and having romantic evenings out. “Maybe I could,” I say. After all, there are plenty of colleges in Atlanta. One might let me in with a scholarship.

  The spaghetti and meatballs are way, way better than Mom’s straight-from-a-jar-and-box spaghetti dinners, and as we eat together, it’s hard not to imagine this being the first of many intimate dinners Tara and I will share.

  Tara excuses herself to go to the restroom, and Maria pops in and asks, “How’s everything back here?”

  “Perfect,” I say. “The spaghetti is delicious.”

  Maria smiles and sets a fresh basket of bread on the table. “I’m glad you like it. So how long have you been seeing Tara?”

  “This is our third date.”

  Maria nods. “Tara’s a lot of fun. Just don’t get too serious about her if you know what I mean.”

  I stiffen. “I don’t think I do.”

  “Well, it’s none of my business, of course, but I get the idea she runs with a faster crowd than you’re used to. And you’re not the only cute little baby dyke she’s brought in here for a third date.”

  Baby dyke? So much for feeling sophisticated. “Why is it that people say something’s none of their business but go ahead and talk about it anyway?”

  To my surprise, Maria laughs. “You’re right. I should keep my mouth shut. But I hardly ever do. You’re a smart girl. You’ll figure things out on your own. Dessert’s on the house, okay?”

  Dessert is cannoli—flaky pastry tubes filled with delicious, sweet cheesy goo—and espresso, which makes even Mr. D’s powerful coffee seem as weak as apple juice.

  “So what did you and Maria talk about?” Tara says.

  “You.”

  “It was all lies.” She gives a nervous grin. “I know what she’s said because she’s said it all to me. That I party too much, that I go out with too many girls. But Syd, there’s never been a girl like you.”

  I guess it’s what every girl wants to hear—that she’s different, special. Clearly it’s what I want to hear because it’s all I can do not to cry. But even as my heart is fluttering, my head is thinking, if I just want to hear what every other girl does, then how am I s
o different and special?

  BACK AT her apartment, Tara grabs a beer and says, “We need music. I’m feeling Marvin Gaye, how about you?”

  “You could’ve left out the ‘Marvin’ part,” I say.

  “You’re funny.” She puts on the record, chugs the beer, then takes me in her arms. With Marvin Gaye’s voice as our soundtrack, we kiss. As our kisses become deeper, Tara pulls down the zipper of my black sheath dress. I pull away from her long enough to shrug out of it, letting it fall in a puddle at my feet. We’re on the bed kissing, her hands touching parts of me that nobody has ever touched before. And now that it’s happening, I don’t feel scared anymore. I want her hands and her mouth to go everywhere.

  She’s just reached around to unhook my bra when the phone rings. “Damn it,” she says, but she picks up her cell phone from the bedside milk crate and looks at the number. “Sorry, doll. I’ve gotta take this. It’ll be just a sec, okay?”

  I nod, but the interruption has made me self-conscious. It’s one thing to be in your underwear while you’re making out with a person, but quite another when she’s taking a phone call.

  “You’ve got it?” she asks. “Okay, well, give me a minute. I’ll come down and let you in.” She looks over at me. “Mike needs to come up for just a minute. Then I promise I’ll kick him out, and we’ll pick up where we left off.”

  Mike is the drummer in Stone Mountain, so I figure that no matter how irritated I am, I shouldn’t get in the way of band business. I get out of bed and pick up my dress.

  When Tara and Mike come in, they’re so busy talking and laughing with each other it’s like I’m not even in the room. “Guess it’s time to get out the Draw the Line album,” Mike says.

  “Hell, yeah, it is,” Tara says. She goes to the milk crates and takes out an album. But instead of taking the record out of its jacket she brings the whole thing to the foot of the bed. “Thanks for upfronting me, man,” she says. “How much do I owe you?”

  “I got you four at twenty apiece.”

  “I think I got that.” Tara reaches for her wallet and hands him a couple of bills, then opens the coffee canister on the kitchen counter and takes out a couple more.

  “You’ll just wanna do one at a time since they’re forty migs,” Mike says, pocketing the money.

  It’s growing increasingly apparent that they’re not talking about having bought guitar strings or drumsticks.

  “So, what are we waiting for?” Tara says.

  Mike takes out a pill bottle and shakes out two white tablets. He goes to the kitchen counter, sets the tablets down, and switches back and forth between using a razor blade and the bottom of a beer bottle to grind them into powder. Tara brings over Aerosmith’s Draw the Line album and carefully scoots the powder from the counter to the album cover.

  It’s strange. I’ve watched Tara drink and smoke pot and have felt only slightly uncomfortable… maybe because she’s been doing things that I might try when I’m older but don’t feel ready for yet. This is different. She’s doing something I can never imagine myself doing.

  She uses the razor blade to shape the powder into lines. Mike hands her a rolled-up dollar bill and says, “Ladies first.”

  She leans over the album cover and snorts the powder through the dollar bill. “Whoo!” she says when she’s done. “I love Oxys better than anything! You wanna try a little, Syd?” Her eyes are hooded, and her nose is red.

  I shake my head no.

  Mike does his line and says, “Hell, yeah!” Then he wipes his nose, looks over at me with a goofy grin, then looks back at Tara. “Well, I guess I’d better be going on about my business. I get the feeling I was interrupting something.”

  “Well, thanks to your interruption, it’ll be even better,” Tara says. “See you at practice.”

  As soon as Mike is gone, Tara sits on the bed beside me and says, “Where were we?”

  “I don’t think we can go back there again,” I say, scooting off the bed to stand.

  She looks genuinely confused. “Why not?”

  “Because I was about to lose my virginity to you, and you stopped undressing me so you could buy drugs.”

  “I wasn’t really stopping. I was just sort of pressing the Pause button. You’ve seen me party before. You’ve never acted like it was a problem.”

  “Yeah, because it’s always been beer and pot. This was hard drugs. And you chose them instead of me.”

  Tara shakes her head. Her reactions are slow, and I can tell the pharmaceuticals aren’t making it easy for her to keep up with this argument. “No, doll, I didn’t choose them instead of you. I wanted both.”

  Hearing her call me “doll” makes me start crying, something I’ve been trying hard not to do. “Well, I don’t think you can have both. Tara, you’re always talking about how you’ll move to Atlanta when you can make ‘the money thing happen.’ Can you imagine how much faster it would happen if you didn’t spend so much on drugs and booze? Can you imagine how many more songs you’d write if you were mentally present more of the time?”

  Now Tara’s standing too, though she’s wobbly on her feet. “You know, all my life people have judged me. I thought you’d be different, Syd.”

  Looking at Tara, barely able to stand, I see that for all her cool, for all her talent, for all her sexiness, she’s not going to Atlanta to make the band happen. She’s not going anywhere. “I don’t mean to judge you,” I say, though I do feel like in this situation, judging isn’t really a bad thing. “I’m just saying what I can live with and what I can’t. If you ever decide you want a girlfriend more than you want to get high, call me.”

  I want to hug her, but I know if I do, I won’t be able to walk out the door. So I walk. She yells my name a couple of times, but she doesn’t follow me. Either she doesn’t care enough to, or she’s too wasted to manage the stairs.

  I GREET the new school year wearing sunglasses to hide my red, puffy eyes. When I see Rufus in the hall, he says, “What’s with the shades? You look like you just walked out of some old Italian movie.”

  “I look like crap from crying. I think I broke up with Tara last night.”

  “You think you broke up? Explanation, please.”

  “I told her I couldn’t stay with her if she kept getting high all the time. She could choose drugs or she could choose me.”

  “Good for you, Syd.” He gives my shoulder a little squeeze.

  “It doesn’t feel good, though. It feels awful.”

  “I know.” He takes my hand and holds it. “But if she has any sense, she’ll pick you. And if she doesn’t, then she wasn’t good enough for you anyway.”

  Some jock walks by as we’re holding hands and says, “Hey, look! Rufus plus Syd—freaks in love!”

  We both laugh, which doesn’t seem to be the reaction the jock was expecting.

  “God, straight people are clueless,” Rufus says.

  It’s then I notice that Rufus isn’t wearing his usual jeans and white T-shirt. His jeans and T-shirt are both black, like he grabbed them out of my closet. “Speaking of clueless,” I say, “I just noticed… you’re wearing black today.”

  “I’m in mourning for the start of school. Plus, it’s kind of an homage to you, Syd.” He says “homage” in a fully Frenchified accent.

  “Merci beaucoup, Rufus,” I say and kiss him on both cheeks.

  Rufus

  SCHOOL STARTED back yesterday, and I wore black from head to toe, both as a tribute to Syd and also because I considered myself to be in mourning. Back to black.

  While all of the usual bullshit that goes with the first day of school was swirling around me, I kept flashing back to last week when Mama took me shopping for clothes at the mall. Is there anything worse than being taken clothes shopping by your mother? The only good thing to come out of it was that after Mama and I had gone several rounds of arguing in the car on the way there—

  “I am not going to let you spend your father’s hard-earned money on all black clothing! You�
�ll look like one of those Columbine boys.”

  “I’m the one who has to wear it, and that’s what I want!”

  —by the time we arrived we had come to an understanding. She gave me some cash, plopped herself down on a bench in the middle of the mall with a magazine, didn’t try to tell me what to buy and what not to buy, and said that she’d be there waiting for me when I was done. It was a strange and wonderful feeling having all that money in my hands, not that it was so much. I bought all black clothes and felt powerful all of a sudden, but that didn’t last long.

  The color orange cleaved my brain when Tyler Thompson slammed his palm against my locker as I stood beside it on the first day back at school. There was a horrible metallic rattle, cold, blue-gray in color, and then he said, “We’ve got our eyes on you.”

  I suddenly saw my painting. And I also thought of Michael Foster. And then, just as quickly as Tyler Thompson had appeared, he was gone.

  So now worrying about what Thompson and company are going to do to me will always be hovering—not that it wasn’t already. And that was just the first day. I don’t know how much longer I can stand it. Sometimes, I hate myself so much and just wish that I were straight: life would be so much easier. Last week, another gay teenager killed himself; he couldn’t take all the hate coming from some of his peers. He lived in upstate New York, I think, and a lot of the harassment was in the form of cyber-bullying. I can’t quite believe I’m saying this, but it’s at times like this that I’m actually glad I don’t have a computer.

  The highlight was running into Syd, as it would be any day, although I realize that probably sounds insensitive since she was so sad, having just broken up with Tara the night before. And I have to say that she looked fabulous in her sunglasses!

  Though it’s not always easy, I try to keep in mind what Syd said the last time we were at Mr. D’s together, about drinking champagne in Paris or martinis in Manhattan: there is a horizon, and we will get out of here—eventually.

  Meanwhile, I can’t believe I still have two more years of high school in this godforsaken town. This year I’m taking, from worst to best, gym, geometry, biology, Western Civ, second year French, English (with Ms. Moreau again!), and art. And I have to say that the art teacher seems pretty cool. His name is Jason Sloane, and I think he’s probably around forty or so. He’s in pretty good shape still, handsome, with salt-and-pepper hair, thick black glasses, while also a little rough around the edges—like maybe he’s had a hard life or drinks too much or has had one-too-many battles with the school board. But better and more important than all of that is that I’m loving him as a teacher so far. Yesterday, in the very first class, he announced, “This is not your father’s high school art class. What do I mean by that?” He asked the question so many of us were thinking. “Well, for example, I believe that Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avigon is one of the greatest paintings if not the greatest painting in Western civilization.” He showed us a slide of the painting and, wow! I could see what he meant—women, somehow abstract and representational at the same time, seemingly moving on the canvas, undulating, in ripe flesh tones and blues…. He said that Picasso’s painting was an important moment in art history. And then he added, “Extrapolate from this, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of where the class is going. Drop out today if you thought the class was going to be about pretty pastel paintings of pears.”