Yeah. And when I say flat? I mean if you jump you can see Dallas.
Lubbock. Great place. Honestly you should save up.
By day I went to swim practice at 5:30 a.m. and breakfast at 7:00 a.m. and classes 10:00 a.m. through 3:00 p.m. and weight training at 3:30 p.m. and swim practice at 4:30 p.m. and dinner at 7:00 p.m. every day but Sunday with a pack of hot swimmer women and then the nights were ours.
All night. Every night. As much night as you could get in you before 5:30 a.m.
I was in love or something like it with my roommate within a month of meeting her. Maybe it was her drinking ability, or her swearing ability, or her rock and roll or her Bose speakers and kick ass stereo or her being from Chicago and thinking West Texans were cretins or her butterfly stud shoulders or her big tits or her bandana or her torn up jeans or her one-hit pipe. Maybe it was just her name. Amy. Amy, what you wanna do. I think, I could fall for you, for awhile maybe longer if I do.
I don’t know how much you know about swimmer partying but, well, it’s formidable. College swimmers are nearly all on some kind of scholarship. That’s money. There were the two British twins with spikey bleached hair. There were endless Barbie Texans with hairspray and drawls. There was a fantastic senior dyke and an amazingly beautiful boy-bodied Asian woman and mystical. Romanian. Of those with peckers, there was a tall lanky tow head with hair as white as mine whose last name was Creamer that I fell for like a blond brick house, there was a surfer So Cal king of Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Costello and beer dude, there was a two-stepping horn dog from Dallas, there was a guy from Amy’s hometown who orchestrated the mandorm parties, and a whole pack of swimmer guys with rockets in their pockets and shaved skin in places regular guys didn’t know about.
When I say we partied, I mean an epic poem.
About halfway through the year my days became swim practice at 5:30 a.m. big melon headed hangover and skip godforsaken cafeteria shitty instant eggs breakfast at 7:00 a.m. and skip classes at 10:00 a.m. 11:00 a.m. 12 noon drink hair of the dog beer eat cold pizza and Haagen Dazs ice-cream and listen to Zeppelin get high take a test once every week or so and weight training at 3:30 p.m. and swim practice at 4:30 p.m. and fuck dorm dinners they taste like shit and you have to sit with a bunch of West Texan fuckwaddery lets go out early and drink lets hit the Rock-Z and dance and dance and dance and drink and barf and screw every day every night.
I lost my scholarship the second year. I flunked out the third.
Love Grenade I
I ALWAYS WANTED TO BE THE KIND OF WOMAN JAMES Taylor would sing: I feel fine, anytime she’s around me now to. “Something in the Way She Moves.” You know that song. Don’t you wish someone wanted to sing that song to you?
Alas, my song would be Blood on Her Skin, Dripping with Sin, Do it again, Living Dead Girl. Yeah. By Rob Zombie. Because in college I was a living dead girl.
My first husband, beautiful boyman, reminded me of James Taylor. Of how exactly like his hands, exactly his voice, exactly his long lean body. Exactly his introverted acoustic guitar genius, exactly his artist eyes, exactly his ego underneath all that thin man. I shoulda been with Rob Zombie but I wasn’t. For a few years, in Lubbock, Texas, where I’d come on a swimming scholarship, I was with a JT man named Phillip.
Me: Doc combat boots. Kohl-a LOT - racooning my eyes. Ripped to shit tights and plaid catholic girl skirt and black leather biker jacket. No hairspray, no fingernail polish, no purse. Utterly out of place in Lubbock, Texas.
Those years were filled with him painting and playing guitar and me listening and getting high and making love and oh yeah, going to school. Which by the third year I’d flunked out of. The only As I received were in Philosophy. And that was because the professor was high every class so we just sat around shooting philosophical shit until we all started coming to class high too. Going to school, sleeping with Phillip. Trying not to fall in love with my roommate Amy. And swimming - though every month of each year the swimmer in me drowned a little more in alcohol and oceans of sex.
It was snowing the night of the first breakup in Lubbock. Snow in Lubbock looks weirdly dumb - Lubbock is as flat as flat gets. No mountains. No trees. No hills. When it snows in Lubbock one must get drunk and drive around. Don’t think badly of me. Remember what I told you - Lubbock is dry. So a woman gets … thirsty. And there isn’t much to “hit” in the dead of night, and even if there was you would see it a mile away.
So it was a drive around night. After a while we stopped. And I was drunk as a monkey, and I climbed up onto the shoulders of the Buddy Holly statue in a cemetery-ish park.
The Buddy Holly statue isn’t all that high, by the way. But I was acting like I was king of the world.
The main event was Phillip. Phillip cut the fingertips out of his gloves and played guitar at the base of the Buddy Holly statue. He played the acoustic opening to “ Wish You Were Here.” Which he’d picked out of the sky by ear. He played “Sweet Baby James.” Then he played “Suzanne.” At Buddy Holly’s feet. With a drunk ass blonde lifting her shirt up to the 30 degree night sky going “FUCK ALL Y’ALLLLLLL. EAT ME. WOOOOOOOOOOO.” To no one in particular except Lubbock.
I’d been with Phillip for about a year. How I fell for him was I heard his voice behind my head right after I walked past him in the dorm hall. He had the deepest voice I’d ever heard on a white boy. It was the kind of voice that curled around the top of your spine and jaw and made your mouth open, wanting. In my head was I am so far from my father I am so far from my father I amsofarfrommyfatherIamsofarfrommyfather.
When I turned around, there he was. With shoulder-length locks of hair, thick as shit eyelashes, Moccasin boots, and a guitar.
There he was that night, down in the snow playing “Suzanne.” Singing the night wide open. Me perched atop Buddy Holly sort of cross-eyed, looking at stars and drooling on Buddy’s bronzed head. Even angry girls can be moved to tears.
There are two reasons for us going busto.
Reason one: I spent the entire year making poor beautiful Phillip break into strangers’ homes at night to fuck on the floor. I don’t know why. It did a real number on him, I can tell you. He’d get so terrified, but he’d do it, and I’d run and turn a light on and he’d nearly coronary leaping with his 6’ 3” lanky ass body to turn it back off. I’d break into whatever liquor I could find and he’d try to fill the bottles back up with water and replace the lids and restore them to their sanctity. I’d scavenge the medicine cabinets and he’d chase me around in the dark trying to rescue little white pills.
And when we’d fuck I’d climb on top of him and ride the art of his cock as hard as I could, wishing I was his guitar and not some fucked up damaged girl so that his fingers would strum me to death, strum me clean, strum me calm, strum me into a woman he’d write a song for. My shirt off and my tits white moons and my head rocked back and my hair crazy. And he’d cum so hard I thought my spine might shatter - because those long and lean guys have huge cocks - and then we’d breathe and look at each other in the dark of a home we’d broken into and entered, and then he’d become terrified again and jump up and zip up faster than the speed of light, leaving me like sticky residue on a movie theater floor. Laughing the laugh of broken girls.
God. Poor Phillip. I wish I could go back and apologize. He was never cut out for a woman like me with a rage in her bigger than Texas. Although I’ve since learned that extreme passivity has its own power.
Reason two: he was too beautiful. Way more beautiful than me and way more beautiful than a beautiful woman. Have you met these men? His too beautiful voice and his beautiful hands and his beautiful cock. But the beauty went all haywire on the inside because he thought he was shit. And that thinking he was shit? It transformed him into the exact opposite of me - the most passive man on the planet. Particularly around any kind of high energy or conflict. Which was basically me, in the flesh.
And when my rage would come, he’d … well, he’d fall asleep.
He’s
the only person I’ve ever met who would fall asleep in the middle of an argument, his chin on his hand, his eyes closing just as you are getting to the moment of victory. I never saw anyone do that but him. Drove me crazy. All my mighty energy with nowhere to go. I nearly imploded or spontaneously combusted dozens of times.
Phillip came from a big ass southern Baptist Christian family, all of whom sang. So there were a great many family Christian hymn sing-alongs on family front porches with family harmony rising and falling in their voices. And his father was the voice of god once removed, and his older brother was the voice of god twice removed, and the other three people besides Phillip were sisters, so that third removed god voice fell upon his slender shoulders. I mean how many goddamn times can you sing “I’ll Fly Away” or the dreaded “Amazing Grace?” No wonder he was so tired.
And here’s why the micromovements of a girl woman’s sexual history matters. Phillip’s older brother had already been through the reject god, leave home, become a pot smoking musician, have a family, return to the fold and take on the man mantle chapters. But Phillip had just hit the reject god, leave home, become a pot smoking artist and carry around a guilt bigger than Texas. He was the outcast son, unable to join the hymns on the porch.
And me, it was a secret shame I was carrying.
When Phillip wanted hand jobs instead of fucking and I couldn’t do it and I couldn’t do it and I couldn’t do it, and when I wanted to suck his cock and he wouldn’t let me wouldn’t let me wouldn’t let me, we met our wounds in each other’s bodies. Guilt in the form of a beautiful gentle man and shame in the form of an angry girl became our sexuality.
The night he finally let me put my mouth on him we were listening to “Comfortably Numb,” which he’d played himself first until we got too high. In my mouth his cock made me feel forgiven. I don’t know why. But once I’d turned him, he went anywhere I asked him to go with me.
There we were that night breaking up in the snow. A still shot of drunken rage looking down on gentle beauty. Well, I went a little wacko, which used to happen a lot back then, and I started a fight with him. I don’t know why. I remember looking at the top of his head and thinking look, it’s an angel, and my very next thought was, spit on his head. I told you, I don’t know why. Why did I eat paper as I kid when I was scared? My panties were sopping and my head was spinning and it was cold and hot at the same time and it was so beautiful there in the snow and flat and quiet and music.
So I went in for the kill. I mean I snatched it out of the cold dark air as easily as he pulled songs from the sky and wrapped it in displaced rage and vodka breath and hurled it down at the top of his unsuspecting head until his neck nearly snapped. The way women in their twenties who are working out their ouch on everyone they meet do. Open wound girls. Swinging fist girls.
And we argued - or I did anyway - Phillip sort of ducked and growled - all the way to the car, a puke yellow beater mobile Pinto station wagon with faux wood paneling, and I kept it up inside the car, and he was having to drive with the window rolled down because we were too broke to get the windshield wipers fixed and it was snowing. In between trying to defend himself he had his head in and out of the window to see the road, but that didn’t stop me, did it, I just got louder and bigger and hornier and more horribly chaotically blond. My father’s rage and trespass in my voice and hands, in my very skin.
Phillip. Which means lover of horses. Or brotherhood. His voice was never meant for yelling.
That’s when it happened.
At the crescendo of my rage opera. In the dumb ass Pinto. Near my anger orgasm.
He fell asleep.
The car sort of slowed and made a limp arc toward the curb, until it stopped, and his head fell gently forward onto the steering wheel.
I remember staring at him for a minute, dumbfounded by the moment, seeing - really seeing - how goddamn beautiful his face, his mouth, his long fingered mesmerizing hands … knowing I could never, ever keep a boy like that because the shear velocity of my anger and confusion would eat him alive … and feeling as sad as a girl who will never have a boy like that could feel… crying… a long mile of greenyellowred streetlights blinking us down … and then snapping out of it and yelling at the top of my lungs “WAKE UP MOTHERFUCKER ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! YOU FUCKING FELL ASLEEP YOU COULD HAVE KILLED US!”
Then I leapt out of the car and slammed the Pinto door and ran down a snow alley behind a stranger’s snow house in my Doc combat boots. Running and running thud-footed how you do in snow and kind of crying so that my Kohl melted down my cheeks and kind of laughing and reaching inside my black leather jacket for my vodka flask and never looking back at him in his beater mobile wood paneled Pinto station wagon, sleeping, or was he singing...
That’s a great line, isn’t it.
That’s a great ending.
But lives aren’t James Taylor songs, and girls like me don’t just run off into the snow and go away.
I didn’t break up with him that night.
When we really broke up, well, let’s just say it wasn’t a James Taylor song. And what we made between rage and love and falling asleep - what lived and died between us - haunts me still.
That dramatic ending was just the beginning.
In the end, I made that boy marry me.
The Other Lubbock
ONE OF THE RED RAIDER SWIMMER GUYS WAS A DEALER. I don’t think I ever saw Monty not high. His skin looked ashen - even stretched as it was over athlete muscles. His eyes always had rings around them. His face had little holes in it. He did not live in the dorms. He lived with two other non swimmer guys in a house. In his house, there was a basement. The basement door had a marijuana leaf on it with a smiley face in the center. And it was locked. To enter, you needed to know the knock.
Two.
Three.
One.
The first time I went down into Monty’s basement I was with Amy. When he opened up, we went in - we were the only women that night. We were fishing for a little danger. Briefly I felt weird. Then weirdly, I didn’t. There were maybe four guys in there besides us. One of those four was also a swimmer. When I looked at him, I couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed, but he smiled and nodded and waved.
The room was dark- and not just because the walls were painted black with all kinds of glow in the dark and neon shit all over them. The carpet was dark red shag. One shit brown old sofa, three lava lamps, three posters: Che and Jimi and Malcolm. A fish tank with a bunch of tetras and a giant angel fish glowed blue green in the corner. A small refrigerator, assorted glass bongs, and a big ass coffee table upon which were a variety of items not so good to name. One Love in our ears.
Monty came over with pills in his hand and said, “Choose one, and I’ll tell you what it does.” I picked a capsule with a red cap on one side and a yellow cap on the other.
Amy passed, shaking her head, saying “ Nuh uh, captain fantastic,” reaching for a bong.
Monty looked at me and laughed a classic stoner laugh - huhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhow about you take two?”
“What’s it do?”
“Don’t you want to know what it is?”
“I just want to know what it does,” I said, feigning bad-assery.
By that time in my collegiate athletic career I could give a shit about good citizenship. When I competed, I didn’t even make the board. No one in the pool turned their head at the finish to see me. I was lucky I hadn’t drowned. I’d become the kind of woman whose mouth was stuck in a permanent “yes” shape. All I wanted was experience - especially if it would numb the fuck out of my brain. My I don’t know who the fuck I am-ism. My I don’t know what’s wrong with me. My couldn’t someone, please, anyone, love me? I would have put anything in my mouths.
“ Well, this particular little beauty will sedate your ass and make you dreamy.”
I opened my mouth and ate it instantly.
He was right, I became sleepy, but not quite dreamy, so I asked for another. Two more w
omen showed up. They didn’t look like swimmers. Too skinny. Long stringy hair. Glitter nail polish. They wore tube tops and Levis and flip-flops and giggled. They ate acid tabs and danced.
Amy tried to get me to go back home that night but Monty talked me out of it. “I’ll walk her back, I’ll walk her,” He kept saying.
The walk back was one of the funnier nights of my life. Oddly, I remember it. 3:00, maybe 4:00 a.m. Black night. Warm. We made a pit stop in the reflecting pool on campus where I laid down with all my clothes on, laughing, laughing. I said, “Look at me! I’m Ophelia!”
Monty said, “Am I Hamlet?”
“Fuck yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!” I screamed, and rolled around in 10-inch deep water illuminated by underwater lights. Campus police showed up and wrote things on small pieces of I’m not really a cop paper and handed them to us and told us to go home. After they left we ate them. Then we bumble fucked on the ground under a tree - my own pants were baffling me and I was too gone to really get it on but Monty didn’t seem to mind. Then we played a game where we would run as fast as we could and dive into shrubbery. The next day at swim practice I was covered in shrub scrapes and scratches and my head felt like cotton.
Again.
I wanted to do it again.
I wanted to eat all the colors and see what I felt. No. I wanted to eat all the colors to get to the not feel. But even that was not enough for a burning girl.
One night there were white lines on mirrors ready for me when I entered. “ Look,” I said laughing, “I’m Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz! Poppies!” Breathing in the white, breathing out comprehension and emotion.
What I learned about Lubbock from the people in that basement was a different brand of education. Someone’s father had been kidnapped and murdered. Police found him in the stockyards under the hooves and shit of cows. Someone’s brother had O.D.’d and killed his girlfriend on the way under with a shard of glass from a mirror. Someone’s mother had murdered his brother and sister - ages seven and 12 - because jesus told her to. They were wicked, jesus had said into her ear. One woman’s uncle was a pedophile, but no one in the family was willing to send him to the slammer, so they gave him an attic apartment. Another woman’s brother hustled coke over the border. One guy’s Mexican best friend had been found with his hands and his dick cut off next to the train tracks - the severed items in a Glad bag. Monty’s half-brother was in the state hospital for repeatedly raping a retarded girl neighbor.
The Chronology of Water Page 4
