Crush

by Laura Susan Johnson

  He's about to rattle himself right off of Stacy's car.

  "Please, kiss me."

  "I don't know how," he says, his lips trembling, smiling, grimacing in joyous angst.

  "You don't have to know how," I plead. "Just kiss me."

  He touches his mouth to mine, and instantly, fireworks of every conceivable colour explode within me. I can't stay passive for more than a second. My mouth grabs his, and I probe him impatiently, his taste, his texture, his softness, as I suck and pull at his lips with my own. If he's new at kissing, it doesn't take him long to learn how to kiss me back. We converse without words, my deep sighs of bliss mingling with his soft, high cries of shock and delight. I'm already on the verge of popping my cork. I pull away and our lips part with a moist, luscious sound. "Do you remember now?" I gasp.

  "I don't know," Jamie cries, quaking vividly. "I don't know!"

  "Jamie," I whisper.

  "Tammy..." He reaches for me, trying to pull me back.

  "Would you...?" I gulp, disbelieving the diffidence that suddenly steals my nerve.

  We hear Stacy calling out, "Bye!"

  It's too late to dash back to my car. Jamie makes a high sound of exclamation as Stacy approaches. "Hey, Tam! I thought you'd gone home!"

  "We were just talking," I lie, my hands in my pockets pushing my pants away from my body, my cock is like throbbing concrete. "My car wouldn't start for some reason... I saw Jamie and thought I'd come talk to him... the car's okay now..."

  "Crap!" Stacy gripes. "Left my dad's favourite container!" She scurries back to Ray's backyard to retrieve the plastic dish she brought the Chinese chicken salad in.

  Still seated on Stacy's hood, Jamie smiles down at me, reaches for me...

  Like he did in the grocery store...

  I go to him, take his hand in mine. "Jamie..."

  "Tammy..."

  All too soon, Stacy's back. "Okay, I got it! My dad would never let me hear the end of it if I left his salad dish behind!"

  I sigh.

  Jamie sighs with a little smile.

  "Later," I nod to him, and they drive away.

  Once they're out of sight, I drag my feet back to my own car.

  I'm supposed to leave tomorrow.

  I didn't tell him that.

  Maybe I should.

  Maybe I should call him.

  I really don't even want to go now.

  I could apply to UC Davis instead!

  Then I could stay.

  I want to stay, forever.

  But...

  This is too small a town.

  I love him.

  He loves me.

  We could be together.

  But...

  He's been beaten up, twice.

  We're the only two of our kind in this shitty little town.

  I don't want him to be attacked again.

  Because of me...

  Is it reasonable, feasible, to expect to be able to have a life with Jamie? In this town? With these people who don't understand? Who will never understand, no matter how we try to explain?

  I don't want to leave. I want to be with him. I love him.

  My heart bleeds as my mind leaps back and forth between impetuousness and practicality.

  No...

  I have to go. I have to forget Jamie and this pipe dream that has virtually countermanded my plans and ambitions.

  In kissing him, in telling him that I love him, I've given him hope.

  I've been unfair to him, letting him hope.

  It's going to hurt.

  In my bed during the wee hours following, I have the most erotic dream of my young life. We're in Ray's pool. I'm tickling Jamie's feet. We hold hands as we dive, touch the rough bottom of the pool, and then kick our way back up.

  Suddenly, I'm in my bed. My room is dark. My door silently opens, and there he is. "I'm just going to shower," he says quietly to somebody. He's wrapped in a white towel. He lets it fall to the floor. The heavy shadows and sparse lighting play over his exotic facial features and his petite, slim body, his graceful neck, his narrow shoulders, the development of muscles along his arms, his hairless chest, the delicate ridge of his spine, his taut belly, the perfect, subtle curve of his ass, his slender thighs. His smooth porcelain skin gleams as he turns slowly to face me. "Tammy," he says breathlessly. His voice sends my pulse into a mad frenzy. He lets me see all of him.

  "Jamie," I call out softly in answer.

  He pushes his hands through his hair. His eyes are half-closed, his lips parted. "What are you doing here?" he whispers.

  I have the most intense, throbbing erection I have ever had in my life. "It's my bedroom," I say helplessly as he takes a step closer.

  "Then what am I doing here?" He smiles at me. Closer, closer, closer he comes to me, and now he's pulling back my blankets and getting into bed with me. His cool, damp thigh touches my feverish one. His chest presses into mine. My hands cup peaches, round and ripe. "Hmmm? What am I doing here?" His lips graze mine softly, again, and again...

  I wake up coming, my entire body glowing.

  But my bed is cold. My arms are empty...

  My clock says it's one forty-five. I take a leak, flush and lay back down.

  I argue with myself about driving over to Jamie's.

  I want to see him.

  I need to see him.

  I want to go knock on his window.

  I want him to let me into his room.

  But if his dad is home... he mentioned that last night.

  I don't want to get him into trouble.

  I shouldn't be creeping around outside anyone's window at this time of night anyway!

  He's asleep. I shouldn't disturb him.

  At noon, I leave. I don't say goodbye to anyone except my mom, to whom I impart a solemn goodbye kiss. "I'll miss you," I tell her. "I'm sorry about the way things have been with us."

  She shakes her head, "Don't worry about all that anymore."

  I want to tell her how sorry I am that I've always blamed her for what happened with Uncle Price.

  But she still doesn't know what he did.

  I want to tell her how sorry I am about the thing with Cotton.

  But I can't. I can't even think about Uncle Price, or about that sad, scared little dog whose life I probably destroyed, without getting sick.

  I jump into my car and drive, as fast as is legal, to my new life in L.A. I'm going to start school immediately so I can get out sooner, so I can be famous sooner.

  I wish I could have stayed home for a while...

  If I had known all of this was going to happen... but I'm already registered and classes begin in just a few days. I've been planning on this since clear back in my junior year.

  At least they sound like good excuses.

  I should have said goodbye to him...

  Perhaps it's better I didn't. As it is, I'm choking on a lump in my throat and stifling the most exasperating sighs of regret as I merge onto the freeway. I'm on my way. New town, new school, new friends, new fucks, new everything.

  I should be keyed up, stoked, but instead tears are blurring my vision.

  A few days later, settled into my dorm, I find his writing in my yearbook.

  I am his friend.

  I'm worried about him.

  I begin the summer semester at UCLA, financed by a couple of grants I earned with my low A average. I major in Mass Communications in preparation for my shining future on CNN. I take courses in writing and public speaking, along with current events classes in polisci, sociology and psychology, focusing on the mind of the criminal sociopath. Within two weeks of enrolling in the psych course, I'm happy to report that my prior fascination with true crimes and serial killers has vanished completely, replaced by such an abhorrence that I don't even want to do the requisite reading or video watching assignments. I decide to concentrate on sports journalism, but I find that my years of writing sports for the Panther have left me bored with that as well. I decide not to worry about what I
want to specialise in. I have four years to figure that out. As time passes, I am baffled to find that everyday local and nationwide news is what gets my attention now. I join the college rag, and write the same kinds of articles I used to find dull—campus issues, the latest club happenings, pieces about minor crimes on school grounds, etc.

  In my first semester, I get field experience as a DJ at the college radio station, giving traffic and weather reports, which are mind-numbing.

  I get other experience that remedies the tedium. The parties are unbelievable. At first it's the dorm-room keggers at UCLA. Gradually, I make my way up through sports bars and nightclubs, until I'm invited to posh vacation houses on seaside cliffs, owned by the oblivious parents of those spoiled, pretty, vain, over-privileged college girls, the kind who believe that because they're pretty, they don't need anything else. They're not here for an education, they're here to party. I bang every hot chick I can seduce into bed with the promise that they're about to fuck someone who's going to be famous.

  I'm a control freak as much with my sex life as with watching my calorie intake and making sure I put in at least five days a week at the gym. I've learned to pace myself, never getting too drunk to fuck or too high to retain control of my mind. I pick a girl I like and move in deliberately. I choose the kind of girls that have sexuality wafting off of them like steam. I never bother to memorise faces.

  Once I have one singled out, I use everything I have to get her. I give her a false name, staring into her eyes while making pleasant conversation, steadily moving closer to her, swaying my body to whatever crappy slow-dance song is on. I use my fingers to lightly touch the undersides of her arms, my eyes locking to hers. I feel her begin to tremble after a few moments and I know I have her. My system never fails. I make sure the sex is always hot, so that at the end of the night, my victim is exhausted, happy and looking ahead to much more.

  It's so fun that it becomes an addiction. I can't get enough of luring gorgeous women into bed and giving them the time of their lives. I tell them that I live in the dorm and there's no privacy, so we have to go to her place.

  I love the attention, the acclaim spilling from their lipstick-stained mouths the morning after, but when they ask for my phone number, I give them a phony. I make them believe they've got me, then disappear. If I accidently run into one of them at a party or a club, I just tell them that they must have dialled wrong, or that I had to change my cell number due to crank calls.

  My addiction to seduction becomes so that I sometimes have five girls at once, all believing that I belong to them. Some places I learn I have to avoid because I have had too many marks. I'm not looking for love and marriage. All I want is the brief pleasure of their company.

  No, that isn't all I want.

  I want their souls too. I'm not obsessed with violence and physical death like when I was a boy, but I feel the same rage. I'm angry again, and like before, I know what's kindling the fire of my meanness. I don't wish to torture with fire or knives or even elbows, but I use the weapons of my looks, my charisma, and my cunning. I'm unhappy. I've been denied the love I want, and now someone has to pay, lots of someones. I was mad when Uncle Price denied me his love. Now I'm angry at myself, because I've denied myself Jamie's love, and at the world, for making me do it. I can't punish myself; I don't know how to. So I punish others.

  It doesn't concretely occur to me for several years that in having sex with dozens of women I feel nothing for, I am condemning myself to a joyless existence.

  I am punishing myself.

  I'm too ashamed to try to call him. I stay busy with my classes, my writing, my parties, and my innumerable sex partners.

  When I gaze into their eyes, I want to draw them out to me, capture them, hold them fast, take what I want, and then let go. They only know I have them when it's too late for them to do anything to prevent it. They try to go back to their lives, but they realise they are missing their souls. They can't find me to make me give back their soul or agree to a commitment, and it's a heady feeling, having this kind of power.

  The bodies begin to pile at my feet and I'm at my happiest when I'm back in my dorm, laying on my bed, relishing the imagined bewilderment on their face as they dial the fake cell number I've given them and receive either a recording saying, "We're sorry, the number you have dialled is no longer in service" or a Mexican lady's greeting, "Bueno?".

  The fun I'm having stealing and discarding the souls of unsuspecting co-eds isn't enough to stop my fingers from dialling Ray's number every couple of weeks to ask how he, Stacy and Jamie are doing. It's easy to slip Jamie into the conversation since he is Stacy's close friend and Stacy is the girl Ray's dating. I always get the same monotonous answer, "They're fine." The only time I get more than this two word reassurance is when Ray complains that Stacy invites Jamie out with them on every date. "Long as she puts out after, I let it slide," Ray grunts.

  About a year after I move to L.A. Ray informs me that he and Stacy have broken up. Now whenever I inquire about Stacy and Jamie, he mumbles, "Don't know, don't care." He says he no longer goes to The End. "Don't wanna run into her."

  "What happened that you two broke up?"

  "Fucked around on her," he says carelessly. "She got boring after a while."

  I can't talk. I'm fucking around more than anyone. "Can I have Stacy's number?"

  "Why?" Ray asks sharply.

  Why is he being jealous when he just dropped her? "I just want to call her and say hi... say hi to Jamie too. Do you happen to have Jamie's number?"

  "Nope," Ray replies indifferently.

  I call 411 and get the number listed under Lloyd Tafford. I let it ring once before I hang up in a panic. The next evening, I dial again.

  "Hello?"

  My heart is lurching in my throat. "Is Jamie there?"

  "No, I'm sorry. He's working right now. May I ask who's calling?"

  "Is this Mr. Tafford?"

  "Why, yes. Who's this?" He has a slightly twangy accent, like he's from Texas or somewhere over there. Jamie sounds like him sometimes.

  "I don't know if you'll remember me. My name is Tam. I went to school with Jamie last year."

  "Well, hello, Tam! Sure I remember you! How are you?" He really is a sweet guy.

  "I'm alright."

  "I'm sorry you missed Jamie. He's working, taking care of an old couple here in town. Let me get your number and I'll have him to call you as soon as he gets home. You're down south, right? Going to school?"

  I stutter, "Oh, no, Mr. Tafford. I don't..."

  "Yeah, give me your number. I'm going to have him to call you. He was just talking about you the other day!"

  "Oh." So I give Mr. Tafford my number.

  "And let me give you the number over at the Stolpers' house just in case. Jamie's a little shy, you know. He might fight me about giving you a call."

  "I shouldn't bother him over there..."

  "Aw, he'd love to hear from you, Tam. He always thought an awful lot of you. You've been really nice to him."

  Not always, I say to myself.

  "If I remember right," Mr. Tafford drawls, "You're the one who drove him to the emergency after those boys beat him up real bad."

  "Yeah."

  "Well, I know he'd love to hear from you."

  After we hang up, I dial the number of the house Jamie's working in, but I lose my nerve after two rings.

  I wait four or five days, hoping he'll call me. But he doesn't. I try his home phone again, but there's no answer after six or seven rings.

  Weeks pass. I can't get the guts together again.

  I need to concentrate on school anyway.

  Great excuses.

  I left him without saying anything. I just left him.

  As if that last night had meant nothing to me.

  He probably hates me now.

  I couldn't blame him if he does.

  And I'm too ashamed to call him and tell him.

  I'm sorry I left, I'm sorry I didn't say good
bye, I'm sorry I'm such a wet noodle.

  In a moment of carelessness, I acquire the unwanted girlfriend. Her name is Nancy Simpson. My negligence comes from one too many shots of to-kill-ya, and I not only tell her my real name, I give her my real number. At first it's like having my teeth pulled without nitrous, answering my phone. But after a few dates she actually begins to grow on me. She's brunette, smart, pleasant, pretty, very unlike my usual airheads of preference. I try to ignore the nagging awareness that I'm really not as into her as I wish I was. But I stick it out. I meet her parents and everything. Before I know it, we're talking about getting married.

  The second the "m" word crosses her lips, I'm scared shitless and promptly begin to cheat on her. I have no spine. I put a rock on her finger, lease an apartment in Glendale, and call my mom to announce my engagement. She's tickled of course.

  The façade lasts as long as it can. How did I let this happen?! I don't want to get married, ever, to anybody! I finally confess all to Nancy, and the breakup is shockingly graceful in spite of the tears and the profanities she hurls at me for screwing around on her.

  A year passes, maybe two. One day I'm walking through an alley and I see a kitten caught in the tangled strands of a cast-off toy tennis racket. He's making choking sounds as the nylon tightens painfully around his throat. I bend down, in tears as I try to figure out how to help him. I remember my pocket knife that I've had since I was about ten, the same knife I used as a teenager to chop the hair and heads off of Barbie dolls stolen from my cousin Natalie. I slice the strangling wires from around the kitten's neck and begin to bawl shamelessly as I clutch him close to me, listening to him draw his first relieved breaths.

  His name is Bootsy, for he's black with white boots on all four paws. He hates canned cat food and goes through a large bag of dry each month. The day I save him, an onslaught of remorse over long-forgotten wrongs begins to tumble onto me, guilt over beating and molesting my puppy, guilt over killing birds and scaring cats with BBs. I remember the despicable thoughts and desires I journalised in those notebooks.

  Why didn't I throw them away? Burn them?!

  Better yet, what kind of a person shoots at defenceless animals? What kind of monster writes stories about butchering girls? I can't believe myself. The only consolation I have is that I've never actually done anything beyond shooting BBs at birds and cats.