Life As I Blow It

by Sarah Colonna

  If you’ve never had sex for the first time with someone playing trashy rap with a mouth full of chew, keep it that way. I passed it off as fine because I had nothing to compare it to. Now the whole thing reminds me of a crime scene. I still have nightmares.

  From that night on, Bucky and I became a real couple. Much like Ricky Walden, he didn’t waste time telling people at school what had occurred between us the night before. I had every right to be upset with him, but I wasn’t. He pacified the whole thing by presenting me with his class ring. It was about ten sizes too big for me. I wrapped tons of yarn around the base of it so that it would fit my finger. I decided that him giving me his ring meant that me giving him my hymen was okay. We were officially together. The only thing that scared me was that he was a senior and I was a junior. I couldn’t imagine what school would be like next year without him.

  When I turned sixteen and needed my first job, Bucky put in a word for me where he was working, which was at Hardee’s. It felt really romantic to be working side by side with my boyfriend. We were in the trenches together. We already had Friday night football and now we had fast food.

  I started as a cashier. I took people’s orders and filled their bags with cheeseburgers and thanked them for choosing Hardee’s. It didn’t take long for me to get restless; I really wanted to work the drive-thru. Bucky scoffed at me.

  “Everybody wants to work drive-thru. That’s where the respect is.”

  “Okay, well, can you train me? I think I can pick it up pretty fast. I hate working the counter. It’s too much interacting with people.” Later in life, when I had to wait tables for a good fifteen years, this would really wear on me.

  “You’re joking, right?” Bucky asked. “You think you can just waltz in here and work drive-thru? You ain’t even done fry detail yet. Just wait your turn.”

  I couldn’t understand what the big deal was. I wanted to wear that headset so bad. I couldn’t stand having to talk to people face-to-face anymore. Plus, at the drive-thru window you could slip free burgers and drinks to your friends. It was a position of power.

  Bucky wasn’t a ton of help in moving me up at work. He told the manager that I should learn to make biscuits like everyone else. For weeks I had to come in to work at 5 A.M. on Saturdays and Sundays to fill aluminum trays with biscuit mix. It was much worse than the breakfasts at the fire department. At least at those all I had to do was serve. Now suddenly I was a cook, too? This is bullshit.

  At school we had something called “Colors Day.” It was like homecoming, but for basketball. I was voted onto the “Colors Day Court” as a Junior Maid. This was a really big fucking deal in my mind. It meant people liked me. It meant that even though I wasn’t one of the Baptists, I was accepted. I had to buy a nice dress, get my hair done, and have someone to dance with during the “royalty number” at the big dance that took place after school. Of course, I asked Bucky.

  Between the game, having to sit on a makeshift throne for three hours, and the dance, I felt wiped out from my big evening. I went home immediately after the dance, opting to skip the after party at Rhonda Lewis’s house. Bucky said he was still going to go; my exhaustion certainly didn’t need to ruin his good time.

  The next morning Bucky came wandering in to Hardee’s with a giant hickey on his neck.

  “What the fuck is that?” I yelled the second that I saw him.

  “What?”

  “That.” I pointed to the purple bruise. “That hickey. What did you do!” I started to cry.

  “Oh, that. That’s not a hickey. Clint Pearson and I were messing around, and he pinched me.”

  “Clint Pearson doesn’t have a thumb,” I yelled. “You can’t effectively pinch somebody if you don’t have a thumb!”

  I dragged Bucky back into dry storage and demanded the truth. He confessed that he had made out with Rhonda Lewis. I was appalled. Rhonda Lewis was the most unattractive, manliest-looking girl you could ever imagine. Back then she was the queen of the basketball courts and I’m sure by now she’s the queen of some other woman’s vagina.

  I became enraged. I started throwing thirty-two-ounce plastic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cups at him and calling him every name in the book, including Daniel, because I knew that would really get under his skin.

  Having your boyfriend cheat on you at sixteen is devastating, especially when he is your first and you’re still trying to figure out how to get on the pill without telling your mom. You feel like all of the trust and air has been taken out of you. There was no way I was going to be the dumb girl that worked it out with my crappy boyfriend. I was simply going to move on and have sex with another guy as soon as possible to put this whole thing behind me.

  Bucky was not happy that I broke up with him over the “incident” with Rhonda Lewis. Suddenly he was madly in love with me and couldn’t bear to face the idea of losing me. He stalked, called, and wrote terrible poetry that he left on my car. I saved all of them. I was sure I’d need them one day in court, or in a book about how dumb I was. Here’s to the latter:

  I love you very much

  For when we go out we won’t go dutch …

  Don’t eat my shit

  So I can lick your tit …

  I have wrecked our lives

  As if with knives …

  So I depart

  With a Fart …

  Is that an apology? I was sure that he was losing his mind. He called me crying, begging for us to get back together. He said I should be his wife and we were meant to be. I don’t know what turned him this way; I assume it was guilt. I think it’s common for people to take things for granted until they’re gone, which was something I had learned from the band Cinderella and their song “Don’t Know What You Got (Till It’s Gone).” Bucky was also just about to graduate from high school and no colleges were interested in his 2.7 GPA or his barely impressive football skills. He was coming unraveled.

  I was becoming slightly unraveled too, but I didn’t know it. I started paying attention to the Baptists at school. Those girls seemed so happy. They didn’t ever look hungover, and I was pretty sure none of them had ever had a urinary tract infection, which I was certain I had gotten because Bucky had been unfaithful. One Sunday I suggested to Lindsay that we attend the First Baptist Church.

  Sitting in that church was an odd experience. Suddenly all the Baptists were saying hello to me, much more friendly than usual. They were welcoming me and Lindsay and letting us know that if we needed anything, to call them. I thanked them but assured them I wouldn’t need to call. I knew where the church was and as long as I showed up on Sundays, shit would start turning around for me.

  The second time I went, I cried throughout the whole sermon. It felt like the right thing to do. At the end the preacher asked if anybody needed to be saved. I started having flashbacks to my night with Penny. I crossed my fingers and prayed that people didn’t start writhing on the floor. Then I felt myself stand up. I raised my hand and walked toward the front of the church. I needed to be saved. I have sinned. I wasn’t supposed to have sex, let alone a bladder infection. Maybe the preacher could wash all of that away. I turned to look for Lindsay and she was following me. I smiled—we were in this together.

  Getting dunked backward into a tub of lukewarm water was not something I was expecting to do that day. I was definitely not dressed for it. There were plenty of people who I knew that were in attendance, and now I was committing to a religion I barely knew anything about right in front of them. Regardless, Lindsay and I were both officially cleared of our sins and could start our lives over.

  I got home, dripping wet, and told Mom that I was an official member of the Baptist Church. I hoped she wasn’t going to be mad. She was Methodist and I didn’t want her to feel I was going against her, even though I had no idea if I had.

  “Do you know what it means to be Baptist?” she asked.

  “Sort of.”

  She looked like she had something to say, but she bit her tongue. “You’r
e free to believe in anything you want to believe in. But I suggest you put on a new T-shirt before you catch a cold.”

  I went to church for a couple more weeks. I knew that Farmington was a “dry” town but you could buy alcohol when you got five miles down the road into Fayetteville. I also knew that in both towns no liquor was sold on Sunday. I used to solve that by driving to Missouri on Sundays to buy beer. It would have been easier to just stock up on Saturday nights, but that was my way of not accepting the rules. It was not until I went to church and started hanging out with the Baptists that I realized they were responsible for the weird liquor rules. They had a lot of rules that I was not expecting, but I was trying to roll with it.

  One day the pastor told me that I was going to have to quit drill team. I thought he was joking.

  Apparently Baptists in Farmington didn’t believe in dancing. I explained to him that it was my senior year and that I’d probably make captain, which is as prestigious as you can get. Surely he didn’t expect me to hang up my pom-pons for a church, especially this late in the game. He explained that in his religion, which was now my religion, they don’t believe in dancing for amusement; it had to be for a purpose.

  “It is for a purpose. It’s for halftime,” I fired back.

  He wouldn’t budge. “It just isn’t something that we can condone.”

  “But all of the cheerleaders are Baptists. How’d they get around this?”

  “They don’t dance. They cheer,” he said confidently.

  “But they do the splits and climb on top of each other to make a pyramid. Is that for a purpose?”

  He sighed and told me to make my decision. I was furious. I thought about all of our school dances. Those girls were always there, and always dancing. When nobody was watching, they did what they wanted. The pastor didn’t show up for dances, but he sure showed up for the football games. I felt like I was surrounded by a bunch of hypocrites.

  There was no way I was giving up the one thing I loved doing to keep a bunch of people from sneering at me. I was pretty sure that God didn’t care if I did the Running Man. I figured He just wanted me to be a good person.

  I decided that my relationship with God was solid enough that I could dance and believe in him at the same time. I’d seen Footloose and I didn’t have a train yard to run out to and do my routine in in secret, so I just stopped going to church. I didn’t really quit that church just to remain on drill team, even if that is a better story. I quit because I felt like people weren’t honest about what they did when they weren’t in church. I don’t see the point of only believing in something on Sundays.

  My senior year I made captain. My team gave me a whistle with my name engraved on it, which I wore proudly. I was still getting hounded by Bucky, but at least he’d graduated so he wasn’t at school every day. He occasionally left notes on my car, but it was not as frequent since it now required a special trip for him.

  I started dating a guy named Tony. He and I were good friends but he was also close with Bucky. We decided to be together, even though we knew it was going to affect their friendship. Tony told me that our song was “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” by Bryan Adams. It was used in the movie Robin Hood and it was all about how a guy’s love for this woman was worth fighting for, just like Tony thought ours was. I didn’t think it was a perfect song choice but in the romance department it certainly beat anything by Too $hort.

  “Is that our song or is that your song with all of your girlfriends?” I challenged.

  “What? It’s our song. What kind of person would have the same song for every girlfriend?”

  I kissed him.

  Bucky heard about me and Tony, but neither of us would admit to him that it was true. Because of that, Bucky spent his free time trying to prove it. When our class took a trip to the state fair, he tailed the bus hoping to catch Tony and me hanging out together. He was behind us the whole time, thinking nobody would notice him. He still drove an El Camino—everybody noticed. He even went into the fair and attempted to talk to me. Every time I looked behind me, he was approaching. We just kept turning corners to lose him. I’d run into a bathroom while Tony got in line for a funnel cake. I was so embarrassed, and all I really wanted was to ride the Tilt-A-Whirl.

  Finally Bucky’s letters to me became so rambling and off track that I told Tony I thought he might be clinically insane or on drugs. Tony said that he didn’t think Bucky was on drugs.

  “Did he ever do any around you?”

  “No way,” I explained. “I won’t tolerate any drugs.”

  “But I smoke pot,” he said.

  “Oh, pot is fine. I smoke that sometimes when I’m in the mood. I just won’t do drug-drugs.”

  “Like what? Cocaine?”

  “Cocaine is the worst! Have you ever read any of the Sweet Valley High novels? In one of them this girl Regina decided to try cocaine for the first time and her heart stopped. I mean, she died the first time she tried it! I told Bucky about that, so I don’t think he’d ever do cocaine. Did you read that one?”

  “Can’t say that I have read any of those. Sounds pretty intense.”

  “Oh, you have no idea. You can borrow some if you want. I have them all.”

  “I’m good. I don’t really like books.”

  Eventually I broke up with Tony. I knew I was going to college the next year and I didn’t want to be tied down. I had big dreams and I couldn’t let a man stand in my way. I also knew Tony was not going to college, since you couldn’t major in pot. I decided to spare him what I went through when I was a sophomore and Brent Jackson went away to college. We had tried to stay boyfriend and girlfriend but eventually we grew apart. I was not interested in a boyfriend who couldn’t be in town to take me to PG-13 movies and Taco Bell.

  When graduation day finally came around, my dad was a no-show. He had always said that he’d be there, but work was too busy and he couldn’t make it. I was disappointed, but I sort of got it. What was he going to do in Farmington? He wore a suit and tie and was probably afraid of cowboy hats. And it was a long trip for something not that rare; most people in the world accomplish graduating at some point. It actually taught me a good lesson: If you have kids, you may unknowingly disappoint them. It seemed like it was smarter to not overcommit yourself, then nobody could say you’d let them down. If you do what you want to do, you’re the only person who can feel slighted.

  Bucky still didn’t give up when I started college. He heard, most likely through a phone tap, that Tony and I had broken it off. He thought now that I was out of high school maybe we could start dating again. I don’t think he realized that starting college meant I was moving forward rather than backward. He heard I was majoring in theater, so he called me up and told me that he was going to audition for a local production of Romeo and Juliet.

  “They are holding auditions soon. I think I’d be a good Romeo since I have a lot of love in me. Plus I’m good at football.”

  “But Romeo doesn’t play football …”

  “He does now.”

  I don’t have to explain to you what a rather large man with a mustache would look like running around in tights trying to speak in iambic pentameter. But since the only thing Bucky ever followed through on was not leaving me alone, the audition never happened.

  After many phone calls I gave in and agreed to meet him for lunch. I was no longer working at Hardee’s. I had moved on to a respectable job at a real restaurant named Bert’s Grill & Bakery. It was like a chain restaurant, but not a chain. The owner was a recovering alcoholic, so the place didn’t serve alcohol. I always thought that was really selfish of him; it wasn’t his customers’ fault that he couldn’t control himself around tequila. I decided Bert’s would be a good place to meet Bucky for lunch. Since I hadn’t seen him in about a year, a public place where I knew people seemed like the right call.

  When he walked in my stomach sank. He had a big fat gut and his mustache looked like it was growing toward it. I couldn’t remember
why I had agreed to this meeting. He greeted me with a big smile and I attempted one in return. I then told him we should sit down before it got busy, which was code for “Let’s get in and out of here before anybody else spots us.”

  We sat down at the table and one of my co-workers, Logan, came to take our order. He and I were good friends so I asked him to take care of us in case shit started to go south.

  I immediately started to wonder if Bucky had ever been to a sit-down restaurant before. Questions like “What would you like on your baked potato?” and “What kind of dressing do you want on your salad?” threw him for a loop. He looked at me with panic in his eyes. He just kept answering, “Ranch.”

  “You want ranch dressing on your baked potato?” Logan asked with a smirk.

  “Yes, unless you think Thousand Island is better.”

  I took over the ordering. “Just give him a baked potato with everything on it. And see if they can rush the food.”

  I could tell Logan was getting a real kick out of the whole situation. In fact, all of the waiters snickered in the back, asking me who my date was. I should have taken him to a place that was dark and quiet and nobody knew who I was. When Bucky got up to use the restroom, I told Logan that he’d been in an accident and that he had suffered brain damage.

  “I’m so sorry, Sarah. I didn’t realize. But it explains a lot.”

  “It’s fine. Just please tell the others not to laugh at him. It’s rude,” I warned.

  I suffered through the meal, finding comfort in knowing that this would be the last time I saw him. He suffered through his baked potato, uncertain why tiny green things were chopped up on top of it. I attempted to explain what a chive was but gave up when he said he had once gotten the chives from taking medication.

  I guess he didn’t realize how poorly the whole thing went because he still called a few times after. Eventually he gave up, the clincher being when I changed my phone number. He left word through our mutual friends that I was missing out. He was going to be extremely successful with his new venture, which was the opening of a venetian blind cleaning business.