Sweet Tooth

by Tim Anderson

  OK, so we’d go to dinner, chitchat about school and music and movies and diabetes and boys. (No! Not boys!) No problem, I can do that stuff in my sleep. But what would we do after that, after we’d finished stuffing our stomachs with cheesy buttery bacon-and-scallion-covered carbs? I had no idea.

  “Just take her to the record store,” my sister, Laurie, advised as we sat in her room. I’d invited myself in because I knew that she’d just bought Morrissey’s first solo album and I could hear the fey strains of “Everyday Is Like Sunday” moaning gaily through her closed door. In short order, she asked me what I was going to do on my date and I said I HAVE NO IDEA PLEASE HELP ME.

  “It could be a cool way to just, you know, browse around and talk about bands and stuff.”

  “Oh yeah, we could do that,” I said as I unfolded the sleeve of the Viva Hate cassette and looked at the liner notes. “And there’s a Schoolkids Records right down the street from Darryl’s,” I added. It was destiny.

  “It’s a shame about that car of yours, though. Wait, you’re going to Darryl’s?”

  Laurie didn’t approve of my dinner plans, and she definitely didn’t approve of my Plymouth. She had told me long ago, before I started high school, that one thing I absolutely had to do when I got a part-time job was to save money for a decent car, because girls liked cars. But I hadn’t taken her advice. After my grandfather died I got his car—my giant, proud, gray Plymouth Volare—which was good enough for me. I wouldn’t have dreamed of wasting money on some beat-up car when I already had one, and when there were so many albums and vintage threads to buy. And why not wallpaper my walls floor to ceiling with Morrissey, Siouxsie, Ian Curtis, Sinéad, and, I don’t know, a bunch of blue whales? No reason not to. And that costs money.

  “Yes,” I said, defensively, before telling a bald-faced lie. “And guess what, Dani likes my car.”

  “No she doesn’t,” Laurie quipped.

  “Something, something, nuclear bomb,” Morrissey said.

  Friday came, and it was time to step out into the suburban North Raleigh night. It was early October, still sort of warm, but with a slight chill in the air. Perfect weather, in other words, for my new trippy polyester ball-hugging wonderpants. These trousers had a hypnotic black-and-orange pattern that undulated alluringly as I walked and under the right conditions had the power to give kittens the power of human speech and smack Earthbound asteroids back into deep space. It was predestined that I would wear them on this date, along with my green button-up army shirt and my favorite black cardigan. Dani would expect nothing less.

  And what would she wear? I was dying to know. I stepped up to her porch and rang the doorbell. Ashley answered the door and smiled.

  “Hi, Tim! What’s up?”

  “Hey, I’m, uh, here to, uh, pick up, you know…”

  Ashley cocked her head to the side.

  “To what? To pick up whom?” she chirped in an elegant/insufferable Masterpiece Theatre accent.

  “Oh, Ashley, stop being mean,” Dani said as she emerged from behind the partially opened front door. She stepped out onto the porch, and we sauntered to the Plymouth.

  “You kids have fun, don’t do drugs or anything,” Ashley shouted from the doorway.

  “No promises,” Dani said without looking back. Shit, was I supposed to bring drugs?

  My momma raised me right, so I escorted Dani to the passenger side, opened the door for her, and shut it behind her. She appeared befuddled by all this forced chivalry, but she rolled with it, offering awkward “thank you”s as we tried not to step on each other’s feet during the whole clumsy teenage tango.

  As I walked around to the driver’s side, I had to admit that she was a stunner—a vision in a white peasant blouse and some tastefully ripped-up and faded-out jeans. Around her neck hung a necklace made out of apple seeds, and she carried a brown leather hippie/saddlebag purse that, I hazarded a guess, she bought at the Disabled American Veterans Thrift Store. Together we were a late-’80s alternative rocking New Wave power couple.

  I circled my giant gray tank out of her cul-de-sac and started in with the small talk. We established early on that she liked school OK, her classes were fine, she had hated middle school, and she had an abiding love for Don McLean.

  “Hmm, who on earth is that?” I asked, dumbfounded that the breadth of her musical knowledge was larger than mine. I was a year older than her, after all.

  “Oh, you probably know his song ‘American Pie,’” she said. “He’s a big old hippy who got started playing on boats.”

  “On boats?”

  “Yeah, on boats. On the Hudson River.”

  I nodded, clueless.

  “New York City.”

  “Oh, I see. That’s cool. By the way, did you know that ‘American Pie’ is the longest song ever to hit number one?”

  “I did not know that,” she said brightly.

  “It’s true! Very true. I’ve got lots of stuff like that up here,” I said, pointing to my crusty, moussed head.

  “My dad loves him, so I grew up listening to ‘American Pie’ all the time.”

  Wow, such different parental guidance she’d had. Unless she also grew up listening to a lot of Lawrence Welk and Rodgers and Hammerstein.

  We arrived at Darryl’s—“I love their homemade crackers,” Dani said—and I tried to get out and over to her side of the car quickly enough to do the whole chivalry thing again, but she hopped out before I could. Dani was clearly a modern, independent woman who waited for no man and who was also probably hungry.

  We were shown to an intimate table in the corner of a room with only one other incredibly large and loud family present. Our dinner conversation was easy, breezy. We talked about it all: more Don McLean, Janis Joplin (another of her favorites), Echo and the Bunnymen (that’s the stuff), Violent Femmes, how she likes to make clothes out of old upholstery fabric, what it’s like to drive a huge, glamorous Plymouth, what it’s like to have to prick your finger all day, every day, forever, what it’s like to give yourself a shot, what it’s like to give yourself a shot while you drive a huge, glamorous Plymouth—all of it.

  “Do you wanna see how I prick myself?” I asked in a husky, James Bond voice.

  “Of course I do!” Was she serious? It’s so hard to detect sarcasm this early in a date.

  So I happily took out all of my instruments—glucometer, finger pricker, test strips, syringe, insulin vial—and placed them all on the table just in time for our perky waitress to approach us and ask if she could get us started with some drinks.

  “Oh, don’t worry about this stuff,” I assured her. “We’re not doing drugs.”

  The waitress forced a laugh out of her mouth.

  “No, that’s after dinner,” Dani assured her. “Out in the parking lot. Can I get a Diet Coke?”

  “Yes, yes, I’ll have what the lady is having!” Ugh, did I just say that?

  The waitress smiled, nodded, and scuttled away to the bar.

  “So,” I continued, presuming Dani’s unwavering interest in my diabetes, “you just take one of these out, then you take this thing and you cock it, then you place it against your finger, then…”

  Dani was doing a heroic job trying to look interested, but I could tell that, like any good hypnotist, I was making her very, very sleepy.

  “So, how come you think you’re diabetic?” I asked.

  “Well, if I don’t eat for a long time I get all weird and confused and clammy.”

  “Hypoglycemia.”

  “Yeah, that’s what it’s called.”

  “Don’t you get the biggest craving for Pop-Tarts smothered in hot fudge and then dipped in Cool Whip when that happens?”

  “Hmm, nah, I tend to just go for stuff like grapes or something.”

  Grapes? “But there’s no chocolate in those. You know that, right?”

  “Yeah, doesn’t bother me, really. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ll happily dip a grape in chocolate. I just don’t really crave that.”
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  “Amazing.”

  The waitress came and delivered our sodas, and we finally got around to ordering. The lady ordered a French dip, and I ordered a cheeseburger with fries as I sheepishly put my diabetes supplies away into my case.

  As I put it on the chair next to me, I saw out of the corner of my eye a handsome man rounding the corner and walking toward us, his golden, tightly combed locks glistening in the dim lights of the dining room. He was staring straight at me with his bedroom eyeballs, his lips curved into a smile. He approached our table gingerly, looking around at the other empty tables next to us and at the loud family nearby, and knelt down between us as if he were about to whisper into our ears North Raleigh’s sexiest secrets. Who was this mysterious man interrupting our heterosexual date with his handsomeness?

  “Hi, good evening,” he said in a hushed tone.

  “Hi,” Dani and I said in unison.

  “My name is Chuck, I’m the floor manager here. I have a proposal for you.”

  Go on.

  “And I’ll go ahead and tell you,” he went on, “it involves free dessert.”

  It was all I could do not to slap him and say, “We’ll do it!” But I had to give Dani a chance to weigh in. Also we needed to know what the proposal was.

  “We have a large party that’s come in, and this is really the only room we can fit them in. I’d love to buy you guys dessert if you’d agree to move to another table, in the other room.”

  I shot Dani a look that said, unequivocally, “Oh, hell yes.” She shot me a look back that said, also unequivocally, “OK, but aren’t you diabetic?”

  “I can take some extra insulin, no problem,” I assured her. “We can’t say no to free dessert.”

  “OK,” she said. “Let’s do this.”

  “That’s great, thank you so much,” Chuck said, clapping his hands together as we gathered our things, followed him to another room, and sat down at a smaller table.

  “It’s kind of a shame,” Dani said, as we got comfortable. “We won’t be able to hear that obnoxious family all the way over here.”

  As if on cue, the screams of an antsy toddler erupted from the room we’d just been in.

  “Oh, sure we will,” I said. “Now, what should we get for dessert?”

  The date was going pretty well so far. We had an easy rapport with each other, and nothing disastrous had happened. I had gotten on that horse again, and we were trotting around the course and clearing at least half of the hurdles.

  Sometime between the burgers and our free dessert—Charleston Chocolate Chip Pie—Dani said something that shocked me to my very core.

  “Nah, I don’t really believe Jesus is the Son of God.”

  I’m not sure how we arrived at a conversation about the historical Jesus after a discussion encompassing tattoos, Pop-Tarts, and hypoglycemia, but I guess it kind of makes sense.

  “You what?”

  “Yeah, I mean, I think Jesus was great, you know, and he had a lot of good things to say and interesting ideas. But I just don’t buy the whole ‘Son of God’ thing, you know?”

  “But what about…I mean, do you pray?”

  “I guess, in a way. More like talking to whatever’s out there. My mom says I’m just lazy.”

  “Too lazy to believe in Jesus?”

  “Yeah, well, like a lazy thinker, I guess. She says it’s just easier for me not to believe than to have faith.” Dani took a big swig of her Diet Coke.

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Jesus wasn’t the Son of God? He was just some guy? Hanging out with twelve other guys, preachin’? Dani was the first human I’d ever known who had expressed skepticism of Jesus’s divinity. I’d always assumed that everyone just naturally believed this, like they believed in the existence of the moon, or heaven, or the magic of Christmas.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Dani continued, noting my stunned surprise. “I believe that, if he existed, he was a great man. But, you know, I don’t think he was…what is it? Divine.”

  If he existed? She was blowing. My. Mind.

  “Wow, that’s really wild,” I said, thinking that it was absolutely insane. Sure, I had withdrawn from Young Life, and sure, I didn’t spend much (any) time reading the Bible or reflecting on whatever lessons I’d learned at the previous Sunday’s church youth group gathering. But I still believed. In Jesus, in God, in prayer. If I didn’t believe in prayer, what would I do about the weird desires for my fellow man that had been keeping me up nights? How would I be assured that these embarrassing yearnings would go away, or would be conquered, as long as I wanted that badly enough? I would have nowhere to turn.

  I was sure that, eventually, Dani would believe, too. Why? Because she just would—everyone would. Because it was the truth, and it would be self-evident. Wouldn’t it?

  But I held off on preaching to her that night, because no one wants to be saved while trying to enjoy free pie. We continued our complimentary dessert, switching to talk of books. I was currently reading The Vampire Lestat; she was reading the collected works of Dorothy Parker. I complimented her on her taste and made a mental note to look up who Dorothy Parker was at my earliest opportunity.

  I paid the check, and we made our way out to the Plymouth. It was time to do the next thing. It was only eight thirty, the night was young, and we were young and immortal.

  Everyone knows that dates should have three acts. This was taught to us by Shakespeare, or Sesame Street, or maybe Falcon Crest. (Love Connection?) The man and woman go to dinner, the man and the woman do something else after that, during which they might kiss, then the man and the woman either go home together or go their separate ways after an awkward good-bye because the kiss was gross.

  So after a spirited and eye-opening first act, it was time for the second. As planned, I proposed we go record shopping, an idea that Dani was shockingly cool with, so we headed down Falls of Neuse Road to the Schoolkids Records at Quail Corners strip mall, where we could engage in more witty banter as we browsed through all the Monty Python posters.

  I pulled into the shopping center and circled around to search for a parking place near the store, and my heart sank: The store was closed. This was not part of the plan. What on earth would we do now? I had no backup plan. There was an ice cream shop open, but we’d already had dessert.

  “Shit,” I said.

  I circled around again as I tried to figure out what we should do instead—go to the mall? The park? A last-minute movie? Finishing my final lap around the parking lot, I turned to head out to the exit, and all of a sudden brakes squealed, an angry horn blared, and headlights shined into our surprised eyes. We had just almost crashed into a car that had the right-of-way, and now the person in that car was waiting for me to proceed, now that I’d made him squeal to a stop. And he was pissed.

  As if by instinct, Dani looked out her window, lifted her hand up, and flipped the guy the bird with a haughty scowl. “Fuck off!”

  Now he was really pissed.

  I skidded out in front of him and bolted for the exit, turning right onto a back road. My eyes widened when I looked into the rearview mirror and saw that the car had also turned right and was following us.

  “Oh my God, I think he’s chasing us!” I shrieked.

  “Oh, shit!”

  “OK, OK,” I said, breathless with fear. “I’ll just…I’ll just…” I slammed on the gas and skidded down Country Ridge Road until it dead-ended. In the rearview mirror I could see the guy was barreling toward us, probably cocking his firearm with his free hand while getting a hand job from his cousin. I didn’t bother to stop at the stop sign, just swerved to the left to turn onto Tremont Drive, my poor Plymouth’s wheels squealing out in pain. I accelerated again, checking my rearview mirror and, sure enough, the guy was in hot pursuit. Dani sat with one hand over her mouth, constantly turning around and checking to see how close he was to us.

  It was here where my experience driving the back roads of North Raleigh worked to my advantage. Like my
dad before me, I always took the long way to wherever I was going, and I knew these back roads like the front of the back of my hand. I’d be damned if I was going to let some jerk my date had just flipped off punk me on this turf.

  We flew down Tremont until we hit Indian Trail. A screech, some more tire spinning, then it was Hiddenbrook Drive. Hiddenbrook to Hemingway, Hemingway to Quail Hollow, Quail Hollow to Compton, screech squeal shriek, Compton to Latimer, Latimer to Duke, Duke to Sweetbriar, and Sweetbriar to, finally, Millbrook Road. I stopped at that intersection, put the car in park, checked my rearview mirror again, and declared, tasting adrenaline in my mouth, “I think we lost him.” I felt like both Bo and Luke Duke. And how was my Daisy doing?

  “Oh my God, I’m so sorry, that’s totally my fault,” Dani said.

  “Oh no,” I said, trying not to tremble visibly, “don’t worry, that guy was obviously an asshole.” I was still out of breath. I looked over at her, and we both laughed. At this point in a normal date, there would probably have been a kiss, and possibly a major detour into Gropeytown. But we didn’t kiss; I was convinced that a kiss should happen at the end of a date, as a kind of down payment on the next date. Just like they did in biblical times. But that’s because I was not being led around by my pelvis. If I’d been out with a dude I would probably have nose-dived into his lap to celebrate our survival. But poor Dani didn’t even get an appreciative grope of her outer thigh.

  As we both recovered from the scare, it dawned on me how close we were to my house. I checked my watch. It was just before nine now. I really wanted to get off these roads in case we happened upon Night Rider again.

  “Hey, I live close to here—you want to go to my house?” I said.

  “Sure, that’s cool.”

  I don’t know what I was thinking or how she took this proposal. Did she think we would be going up to my room? Did she know I’d never had a girl up to my room? Did she realize how terrified I was of trying to kiss her? Did she know that my mom would probably bring up Jesus?

  I had no answers to these questions just yet. But I had basically decided that we had screeched and skidded our way to the end of the date’s second act. It was time for the hilarious third.