Of Snakes Sex Playing in the Rain, Random Thou Read online

  The process of elimination had taken several hours; there had been much teasing, guffawing, and whispered lewd suggestion, but when we finally got down to the magic one—the only one remaining—only silence prevailed between Holcomb and me. We were both thinking the same name at the same time: Caroline Hauffman.

  Caroline was blonde, Nordic blonde—blue-eyed, Nordic blue-eyed—quiet and shy. My old man, according to family legend, had dated her mother, Elizabeth, when they were in high school; and on several occasions I had heard him pronounce whenever Caroline’s mother’s name was mentioned, “Beautiful woman, but no personality.”

  I didn’t know what he meant, exactly, but I did know that Caroline was as timid a creature as I had ever known. She had her mother’s looks and would, therefore, be a prestige date; best yet, no upperclassman had shown an interest in her at all. In fact, so far as I knew, she had never had a date. As we talked around her name and shifted our eyes and attention to my collection of model movie monsters, I mentally measured Caroline’s assets and liabilities and came up with the most important argument in her favor, the one thing that made her a perfect selection for a date: I hardly knew her.

  She was in none of my classes, went to the Methodist Church, and we had no special friends in common. I held my breath and prayed that Holcomb would leave quickly without announcing any deliberate intentions of his own.

  Some prepubescent taboos were still in force, however. He made some excuses about errands for his mother and exited in his usual strolling gait, walking down to the corner where, with a quick glance over his shoulder, he broke into a dead run for the remaining two blocks to his house, his telephone, and a date with Caroline.

  But it was only ten paces to my own telephone. And within minutes, without thinking at all about the momentous nature of the event, I was calmly asking Caroline Hauffman to go with me to the Spring Dance.

  I suppose I should have indelibly etched on my mind the exact content of that conversation, but all I remember is that it seemed remarkably easy, even casual, the way I asked and she accepted, not unlike my asking Holcomb or Jenks to join me for a basketball game. The whole process was almost boring. I do remember wondering afterwards if there was something I should have said or asked or let her ask, but there didn’t seem to be, so I hung up and pranced around my room feeling rather pleased with myself.

  Suddenly, a devilish thought struck me: I called Holcomb’s number and found it busy; then I quickly dialed Caroline’s number again and discovered that my suspicions were true—I had beaten him to it! Now he was going to have to pick between the grossly fat Florence Belcher and Delores Buckman, who had a set of front teeth to match her name. Within an hour he called me, stating that since there obviously weren’t two datable girls available for the dance, why didn’t we simply go stag as always and double date another time. In the ensuing argument, I recall only the names for each other we invented, and that we didn’t plan to speak to one another for at least twenty years.

  Of course, Holcomb’s bowing out presented a problem about transportation. But since I had been using the Chevy on my own quite a bit of late, I was confident my old man would make an exception: just to Caroline’s house, out to the Country Club, and back home, just for the one evening. Unfortunately, my self-confidence got the better of me. Prefatory to asking him for permission to drive alone for the big evening, I began running errands for my mother “solo,” proving that I could be trusted without a licensed driver in the seat beside me.

  I had never understood that requirement, anyway. The theory seems to be that a “learner” would be less likely to plow head-on into a brick wall if someone was in the seat beside him who knew something that the learner supposedly did not. How this miracle of prevention was supposed to come about, I wasn’t too sure, but I demonstrated the wisdom of the requirement on Sunday afternoon—not by plowing head-on into a brick wall, but into the side of our garage.

  The result was less damage to the car or the wall than to my pride and to my expectations when my mother announced that I would not be permitted to drive at all until my regular license came through. Cruel as this may have been, it was refined from my old man’s original sentence, which was to have my right leg amputated at the knee.

  It took me almost the whole evening to work up the courage to tell my parents about my date. They were never particularly sensitive to adolescent needs, and while they surprised me by not being in a mood to tease, they disappointed me by not being in a mood to understand either.

  “Your father can pick you up and bring you home,” my mother chirped as she prepared roast beef leftovers. “What time will the dance be over?”

  The opening she left almost escaped me in the overwhelming panic I was experiencing as I envisioned my old man, in clear view of my friends, carting me and my date to and fro like some junior high kid, but I quickly recovered and answered, “Oh, midnight . . . after midnight!”

  Now my old man was a lot of things, but one thing he was not was a night owl. He went to bed every night at 10:00 p.m., sharp. The problem with my mother’s suggestion was immediately apparent to both of us, but she only said, “We’ll see,” which in motherese means, “You still can’t drive the car, but perhaps something can be worked out.”

  I knew my next move: I went immediately to the phone and called Jenks, who was still working on the Rambler’s reservation schedule. He and Sherry, Caroline and I would double date. When I approached my old man with my “reasonable compromise”—Jenks, not I, would drive the Chevy—he just nodded and asked who my date was.

  My reply elicited exactly the response I expected, “Beautiful girl, but just like her mother, no personality.”

  ###

  The next week progressed through a flurry of anticipation and preparation that rivaled plans for a military operation. On Monday, Jenks and I tuned and worked over the Chevy’s engine so she would be running just right. On Tuesday, I bought a new suit, complete with new shirt, tie, socks, and underwear. Jenks and I added “falsies” to the Chevy’s wheel rims to give her that “whitewall look.”

  On Wednesday, Caroline found me in study hall and asked me what color my suit would be. I was so delighted that she knew I had bought one, I could only mutter “blue” and stare at her in wondrous silence. On Thursday, Jenks and I put seat covers on the Chevy, and I managed to mention my upcoming date to all my dateless buddies who would form the ever-present “stag line.”

  Friday found me at the barbershop for a flat-top haircut and at the drugstore where I bought a bottle of English Leather cologne and a new razor. And on Saturday, at 4:00, three-and-one-half hours before the big event, Jenks and I placed on the Chevy the piéce de résistance: a chrome suicide knob. We were set.

  I laid out my new duds on the bed, careful not to wrinkle any crease or dirty any lapel, and went in to supper. My mother, of course, served what she always served on Saturday nights: liver and onions. I didn’t eat much, which caused my mother to smile a lot and my old man to grumble. As she cleared the table for dessert, she asked, “Did you all have that little talk yet?” My old man grumbled even louder, “Right after dinner,” and he motioned me to follow him.

  All week long he had been taking me aside for “little talks” that never got anywhere. Tuesday, after I bought my suit, he drove me out to the stockyards where we spent the better part of an hour watching a bull and several heifers look bored and hot in the afternoon sun. He chain-smoked Luckys for a while and finally said, “Oh, hell. Let’s go.” That, plus some even more inconsequential attempts at sex education, was the extent of my parents’ direct approach to the subject. Some months later they gave me a book.

  He abruptly ordered me to follow him outside, where we stood rocking on our heels in the twilight while he lit up another Lucky. He suddenly thrust the pack out toward me. I remembered all his stern admonitions about my even considering the habit, but after an awkward, silent moment, I selected a single paper cylinder and set it unprofessionally on my lip. He gru
mbled as he snapped open his Zippo and lit it, obviously embarrassed as much by his foolishness in offering me a smoke as by my foolishness in accepting it. All at once, he reached into his pocket and produced a $10.00 bill. “In case you need it,” he said.

  I didn’t know what to say, and the smoke was making me dizzy, but abruptly he snatched it away from my mouth and ushered me back inside with a nod to my mother who returned a confident and knowing smile and picked up her ongoing lecture on gentlemanly behavior.

  At some point—Wednesday, I think—I realized two things: First of all, I was about to attend a dance where I was going to have to dance. In spite of her Baptist-born reservations, my mother had made my twelfth summer intolerable by enrolling me in Miss Billie Rae Wilson’s School of Dance. I recall with a convulsive shudder the shame and terror of those four weeks: slinking down alleyways, making up elaborate lies to my friends about where I was, threatening my kid brother with his life if he breathed a word, and, the worst of it: spending all those hot, sticky nights in Miss Billie Rae’s un-air-conditioned studio, hugging her overweight and overly fragrant waist to my chest.

  At the end of the class, all of Miss Billie Rae’s students had to perform in a recital. My mother, secure in the knowledge that my social potential was insured, was doubtlessly pleased with my performance, even if I did risk my immortal soul by the very activity of moving in rhythm to music in the arms of a girl.

  But what my mother never could understand was that the fox trot, the waltz, the tango and cha-cha-cha were not the kinds of dancing that teenagers did. As a result, except for the two weeks I spent at Miss Billie Rae’s, I had never set foot on a dance floor. In fact, I had sworn never to do so.

  But now I was going to a dance. With a date. Things change.

  I tried to minimize the problem. It wouldn’t minimize. I spent some time watching American Bandstand, but that didn’t help much. The camera wouldn’t focus on one couple long enough for me to learn all the intricate movements of the older bop and the newer twist. And these were all city kids who already knew the basics and kept putting in extra steps and movements that looked professional. I borrowed some records from Jenks and tried to practice in my room, but my kid brother kept showing up and laughing himself silly.

  I would just have to tell Caroline that I sprained my ankle or something. There was no way on earth that I could dance, not in front of all those guys on the “stag line” who would be doing what we always did on the “stag line”: making fun of anyone we knew who was trying to dance.

  The second thing I realized was that I really didn’t want to spend an evening with Caroline. She was nice enough, and she was better looking than almost any other girl. But I didn’t want any other girl—I wanted Sherry, and Sherry was going to be with Jenks. The knowledge that I would have to spend the whole date in Sherry’s company but not with her began to eat at me. There had been moments of ego inflation—when Caroline asked about my suit, for example—but basically the image of Caroline paled when held up to Sherry, a girl I had held in secret special affection for years.

  Still, I was determined to put as good a face on the whole thing as I could muster. I took a long, long shower, shaved especially close—cutting myself only three times—and carefully donned my new clothes. By the time I was dressed I had come up to a peak level of excitement. I was almost breathless.

  My old man, squatting in front of the TV, fooling as he always did with the mysteries of the fine-tuning knob, tossed me the Chevy’s keys as I passed by. He didn’t even look up. “What color socks you got on?” he asked.

  “Black,” I replied, checking to make sure.

  “Be sure you never wear white socks with a suit,” he ordered as if he didn’t hear me. “Anytime you put on a suit of clothes, put on black socks.” That one piece of wisdom has meant more to me over the years than all the father-and-son talks we might have had.

  My mother met me at the door and positively beamed as she removed the toilet paper from my shaving cuts. Embarrassed, I tried to push past her, but she stopped me cold with a question, “Where’s your corsage?”

  Corsage!? I had forgotten about it completely. That was why Caroline asked about the color of my suit. It was a hint for me to find out the color of her dress so I could match it with a flower. How could I have been so stupid?

  “Here,” she said, producing a blue and pink box. “Mothers are good for something.” I think that had she asked me to lie down and die right there, I would have. Instead I only muttered that I didn’t know what Caroline was wearing.

  “It’s all right,” she smiled through what I later realized were tears. “I called Elizabeth this morning.”

  “Elizabeth!” My old man growled from in front of the TV. “Beautiful woman, but no—” The rest was lost behind the door as I left for the date. My first.

  ###

  I would like to report fantastic details about this momentous evening for which I had planned so long and carefully. Alas, the whole affair was remarkably uneventful. My old regrets about being with Caroline rather than Sherry evaporated when Caroline appeared wearing a sleek, black velvet dress topped off with a real diamond tiara in her golden hair. It wasn’t that Sherry ceased to attract me: that unrequited love would continue unabated for the next three years, undaunted by all kinds of adversity. It was only that for the first time I was proud of being with a person who was apparently pleased to be with me; this provided my ego and unflagging sense of romance with a boost.

  I recall that I did most of the talking that evening. Jenks said very little since he and Sherry had a fight over his “honking her out” instead of coming to the door. Sherry tried to talk to Caroline, but Caroline said very little to Sherry or to anyone else. I finally realized what my old man had meant about her having “no personality.” It wasn’t that she was dumb, uncomfortable, or nervous—she just never could think of anything to say. In later years, her dates would arrive at the Dairy Queen parking lot to complain that she hadn’t said two words all evening. She later went to graduate school and became a research chemist. Perhaps she found the solitude and silence of the laboratory more her style.

  There were some uncomfortable moments at the dance. It was too hot for one thing, and my new shirt wilted immediately. I managed to dance quite a few of the dances, but my new shoes hurt, and I drank enough of the sickly sweet, too warm punch to make me slightly ill. I recall looking more than once over toward the “stag line” and feeling proud and superior to Holcomb and the rest of the guys, but I also remember wondering if they envied me half as much as I did them.

  Caroline and I took a couple of walks out by the pool, but she maintained her silence, and I did all the talking. She was so beautiful, I tried to feel confident, to convince myself that things were really going very well. There was a full moon and music and a warm spring night. If only she would say something.

  When we left the dance, we made the requisite five or six passes around “The Drag” and drank a couple of Lime Cokes, but Caroline ordered a plain Coke, which was more evidence of my old man’s theory’s validity. And she remained mute, speaking only when spoken to, answering questions in polite monosyllables. I was so frustrated and miserable that I wanted to cry.

  After a while, Jenks drove out to “The Lanes” and parked. Had I been able to protest this particular side trip I would have, for I knew that Caroline was not of an inclination to spend any amorous moments with me on that evening or, for that matter, any other. If she wouldn’t talk to me, I reasoned, she sure wasn’t going to “make out” with me, full moon or no.

  This was all my fault, of course, not Jenks’s. All week we had planned, “if things went okay,” to make a stop on “The Lanes.” But I had never really believed that Caroline was going to go along with it. Still, I wasn’t about to admit to Jenks that I was unwilling to try, or that I was going to eliminate the possibility days before I had to.

  I suppose I had two plans: If the “slow dances” were of sufficient number and Car
oline and I managed to spark the right amount of “flame” in each other, then a session under the full moon might be right in order. Actually, I didn’t expect that any such “flame” would ignite at all. However, I was anxious enough to explore the mysteries of “The Lanes” to carry out the plan if circumstances unexpectedly developed along those lines.

  Unfortunately, my sweaty shirt, aching feet, and slight nausea from the punch cancelled any romantic notions I might have conjured; so I should have gone to Plan B, which was simply to tell Jenks to keep driving around and around “The Drag” until time to take the girls home. But I completely forgot about it until he swing the Chevy onto Airport Road, and it was too late to say anything without implying to him, and especially to Sherry, that I was some kind of prude or suggesting to the ever-silent Caroline that I was reluctant to spend any amount of time embracing, kissing, or whatever else was expected of a parked couple on “The Lanes.”

  But there we were, and I felt totally helpless as to what my next move should be.

  I had run out of witty conversation on the second round of Lime Cokes, and Jenks and Sherry were in no mood to carry on a rousing repartée: They had some making up to do and went at it hammer and tong for three-quarters of an hour. Through it all, Caroline and I squatted in the Chevy’s back seat in silence, since the radio only worked when the engine was running. She sat there, prim, proper, and silently beautiful, her hands folded neatly in her lap; I sat there, stiff, clumsy, and unbearably nervous, wondering if I should move closer to her or attempt to hold hands or try to put an arm around her, and whether I could do any of those things without her screaming.