Issue #1 Winter 2002
Most of Us Are Here Against Our Will
by David Samuel Levinson
The banner—Let’s Give Our Children a Safe Place to Play—hangs between two telephone poles in the parking lot of General Omar Bradley High School. I didn’t go to school here. I didn’t grow up in Galveston, where we are. I’m from someplace else.
Tonight, as usual, we sit in a circle in the physics’ classroom, our chairs almost touching. This is the tenth week in a twelve-week instructional on How to Write Your Way Out of Hysteria. It seems that we’ve all signed up for these meetings because someone in our family decided we were a threat to ourselves. Bob’s my only family. There is also Camilla Rae, my best friend, but she is out of her mind right now. There’s no Camilla Rae without hysteria.
I check my watch. We’ve been here almost three-quarters of an hour. In another few minutes, Dr. Saunders will announce our break. Class runs two hours, give or take. There are eight people—five men, three women. The men sit drawn-up and hunched, in league with one another; the women eye them suspiciously. Sometimes, I eye them suspiciously too. I’m not sure why. I’m not sure why I do half the things I do. That’s partly why I’m here.
When Dr. Saunders announces our ten-minute break, I head directly outside to smoke. I stand there, looking up at our classroom window. There is the silhouette of Camilla (not Camilla Rae)—she looks more like a Carol or a Harriet—eating one of the tuna fish sandwiches. I never eat what Dr. Saunders brings in. I am never hungry this time of night. Not for food anyway.
Back inside, Dr. Saunders reads a selection from his latest, best-selling book, Writing Your Way Out of Hysteria. "Love may lead us all to a door of unlimited and wonderful possibility," he chants, "but it is only through a love of language—the very backbone of life on this planet—that we can unlock these great doors to get at Peace. Words too can lead us to the same door. This takes practice. Each word is a universe, a destiny. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God. It is up to us, then, to choose them very carefully. Do not waste words, for only they have the power to change you." When he is done, he looks at us thoughtfully. "I believe that tonight Camilla will read to us."
This is his plan: to get us to open ourselves up through words. Logotherapy, he calls it.
Camilla rises and goes to the podium at the head of the room. She won’t meet anyone’s eyes. Her voice barely makes it out to me. I strain to listen to this forty-six-year-old woman and mother of three tell us about being raped in the Sears & Roebuck’s parking lot.
When she ends, she stands there not knowing what to do. Tears leak down her face. The room is deadly still as Dr. Saunders says, "Camilla, is there anything you would like to do to the man who did this?"
She says hesitantly, "I, I don’t know what to say. I’m not sure."
"You’re safe here, Camilla. Say anything you want to. We’re here to help you," Dr. Saunders says gently, looking around the room at us.
I don’t know what to say either. What can you say to someone who isn’t there? Camilla tries. She closes her eyes. She grips the edges of her desk, which is too small for her. Her knuckles go white. She says, through gritted teeth, while looking straight at Dr. Saunders, "I want you to know what it feels like not to be able to look anyone in the eye. I want to bash you’re goddamn head in. I want to ruin your life." She pauses. Then, "Why did you do this to me? I never did anything to you." There are no tears.
"There’s no reason anyone will be able to give you to explain why he did what he did," Dr. Saunders says. "You’re angry, Camilla. It’s all right to be angry."
"The police say it’s probably someone I knew. Isn’t that ridiculous? I don’t know anyone who would do anything like that." Her voice is a wilderness and sounds like my mother’s.
Glen, a wispy man in his early thirties, raises his hand and says, "You are so courageous! I know exactly what you mean. When it happened to me, I thought the same thing." Glen and his brother slept in the same bed for years. Glen says that his brother attacked him but I’m not sure I believe him. Every story is similar, including my own. It’s hard to believe anyone. "I despise men," he adds. "Every one of you is sick."
"Now, Glen," Dr. Saunders says. "We cannot go around making accusations like that. You cannot sentence every man the same."
The man on my left, Kenny, having something to say about everything, says, smirking, "He probably deserved it. You were probably the kind of kid that tortured animals, weren’t you?"
"Fuck you, Kenny," Glen says. "There’s only one person I’d like to torture right now." He makes scissors out of two fingers and slices the air. "That should make the world a safer place."
"Kenny, Glen, enough," Dr. Saunders says. "I understand both of you are here for very different reasons and that is the point of this workshop. Bringing you together to work all of this out." He looks at the clock. "Unfortunately, I’m afraid we’ve run out of time."
Kenny and Glen aren’t their real names. Marvin isn’t my name either. We aren’t allowed to use our real names in class. (I call it class; no one else does.) Dr. Saunders passed out a list of names that first evening.
As far as I could remember, Marvin was the only one that wasn’t the name of a hurricane.
Outside, I pull out a Pall Mall and set my lips on the foam-rubber filter. I always wet the end first, a trick I learned years ago from Steven. He said it made the smoke taste better. I read in a magazine, though, that it could reduce my risk of cancer.
Walking slowly, I wonder if Bob is waiting for me. I don’t want to go home just yet. The wind picks up newspapers, coffee lids, candy wrappers, swirling them around at my feet. I crunch a half-full can of Fresca under my foot, then pick it up and drop-kick it. My hands are sticky and smell like grapefruit. Another silly reminder of my stepfather.
When I get home, Bob is watching TV. He says, "Camilla Rae just called. She said you were having dinner with her tonight? I thought we were going bowling, Glen. I told her to fuck herself." Bob smiles. I admire his honesty. He is the only person I know who doesn’t put up with Camilla Rae. Who sees through all her hippie ways. Who thinks she is trying to break us up, which may or may not be true.
"You’re not at work," I say, sitting down beside him. "I thought you’d be working tonight."
"I took it off—remember?—so that we could spend some time together," he says, playing with the remote.
A car pulls up outside and honks. We both look at the window. Camilla Rae sits in our crushed oyster-shell, crescent-shaped driveway, smoking. She will not come inside.
"Why do I always have to be the bad guy?" I say. I have known Camilla Rae as long as I’ve known Bob. Longer than Bob actually since we didn’t get together until later.
"Hey, what do you call a person that comes into your life and messes it all up?" This is a joke that Bob has made up. The answer sits on my lips as I head toward the door. "You call a person that comes into you life and messes it all up—you call him Glen. That’s what you call him."
"And what do you call a person who signed Glen up for a class he didn’t want to take?" I say, stepping out the door.
Bob stands at the window and then the lights go off. Soon, he will put on his bowling shirt and sit in the dark, calling out his answers to the TV.
In the car, Camilla Rae says, "You look like a man without a name, a dog without a bone." It’s a line from a song, a song we used to sing on the way to the beach.
"It’s a whole lot worse than that," I say.
"I have just the thing for that," she says and points to a sign for 99-cent margaritas at Taco Cabana.
After we’ve ordered some nachos and sit down, Camilla Rae locates the locket around her neck and opens it. The contents—a few oddly shaped pills—roll onto the table. I don’t ask her what they are. I stopped asking a long time ago.
("Echinacea and valerian root," she always says, winking. "You should take them.")
"So this thing happened with Brad and now I’m totally confused," she says, dropping a pill onto her tongue. "But what makes it all so much worse is . . ." As I wait for her to continue, our eyes stray to the couple beside us at the next table. Their children lob bits of pico de gallo over the railing. "I have a little Brad growing inside me," she whispers.
Our number is called and she goes to the counter. Long tan legs, freshly shaven, the dress I bought her dotted with tiny sunflowers, overexposed skin, the stained macramé anklet from some flea market. She pulls at the skin under her chin, one hand bent at her narrow waist. She is indeed the daughter of flower children. Though Camilla Rae is more than that. She is Dylan’s lovechild, a rolling stone. Through the window, I look at the Gulf of Mexico. The sky is darkening, the Galveston air heavy and laced with salt.
"I’m sorry about Bob," I say, tasting the margarita.
"That’s all right. I’m used to him by now. I just never thought you’d stay with a woman-hater."
"Bob’s not a woman-hater," I say. "He’s just a little protective."
"What does that mean?" she says.
"Bob worries that you’re trying to take me away," I say.
"How could I do that? You like boys," Camilla Rae says. "That’s pretty stupid of him."
"You know how guys are. Either you’re theirs completely or not at all. No middle ground. It’s getting harder and harder to be with him, though," I say.
"Why? Has he hit you again?" she says.
"No, nothing like that," I say.
Bob is not the gentlest man I’ve ever been with. But he is good to me. He holds me when it’s necessary. I laugh a lot at the way he is, blustery and hard but often childish and silly. He has just about everything I want: a house, a car, the strength to keep me when I’d just as soon walk away. Sometimes, though, I get the feeling I deserve better than Bob.
"Well, good, because if he ever lays another finger on you," she says, "I’m going to send Brad over there to show him what it feels like."
"Thanks for the support," I say.
"We need each other," she says, licking the salt around the rim of the glass. "I don’t think I can have this baby without you."
"That is terrible," Bob says the next morning. It seems he has completely forgotten about last night. (Someday, though, he will bring it up again—"Remember the time you broke our date to go with that bitch," he will say. "That’s the problem with you, Glen. You need to recognize your enemies.")
He’s standing at the door to the bathroom, water dripping off his body. The lines of his stomach tighten. The powdery scent of baby oil fills the room. Bob steps back into the bathroom. Where he has stood, he leaves the outline of a few toes, two heels. My back is to him on the bed. I am sorting our socks.
"She’s a sweet woman. I just can’t believe something like that happened to her," I say. "And in the Sears’ parking lot of all places."
"Where was Brad when all this was happening?" he says confused.
"What in the hell are you talking about?" I say.
I study Bob’s face; he is indeed confused. We have been talking about class, about Camilla. Though I’ve explained to him that we can’t use our given names, though I’ve told him the other Camilla is probably a Carol or Harriet, he just won’t listen. To Bob, each name should bear its own meaning.
"It was your idea for me to go to that stupid class," I say, curtly. "The least you can do is keep up."
"Well, anyway," Bob says, turning out the bathroom light. "It’s a horrible story. Just as horrible as what happened with you and Steven."
"This isn’t a contest," I say. "No one gets a prize for telling the worst story."
The last time he mentioned Steven I nearly bit off my tongue. Just another reason Bob enrolled me for Dr. Saunders’ class. There were so many reasons by that point. Sometimes, when Bob looks at me, I think he must know the whole story. But he doesn’t. I’m afraid he’ll leave me when he does.
"I really don’t want to talk about him," I say. I stop what I am doing and turn toward Bob. With his hands firmly at his sides, the yellow towel carefully tucked in the crux of his hips, he raises his eyebrows; he knows there’s more to it. More that I am not telling him. "Why the sudden interest?"
He comes into the room, the sun catching the oil and water on his body.
"You woke me up last night. Again. You kept calling out his name. It doesn’t look good, Glen. I think I’m a pretty patient guy, at least when it comes to you. But some things are beyond even my patience. Some things require faith, which you know I don’t have."
I want to go back to the socks—red-red, blue-blue, yellow-yellow—the still-burning, just-out-of-the-dryer smell, but I know that Bob wants more than an answer, he wants a confession.
"Steven’s just this guy," I say. "Before I met you. He’s not important. Not anymore."
"Come on. We’ve been through this before," he says. "Don’t lie to me."
"I am not fucking around," I say. "I told you I didn’t feel like talking about this right now, okay?"
"You never want to talk about it," he says.
Bob takes one step backwards, then two, three, four until finally he is out the door. Seconds later the TV comes on. A woman’s voice blasts the news all over the house. It is much too loud for this early in the morning, for any hour really. But this is Bob’s way of settling this thing between us. And this—folding socks—is mine.
Tonight, Camilla Rae has decided that it’s high time we were children again. "And what do children do?" she asks me on the way to Westwood Park pool.
It is late, around 10:45 P.M. Brad is playing guitar as we sneak away. Bob is doing what Bob does: working. He plans to buy a new car by the end of the month. Before I moved in with him, Camilla Rae and I were always sneaking away. To the movies, to Magnolia Café for blueberry pancakes, to Taco Cabana for margaritas. Now, we are trespassing. Just another crazy night.
Even before she lands on her feet on the other side of the fence, she is already pulling off the same skimpy sundress. She cannot wait to be naked.
"Your turn," Camilla Rae says, jumping headfirst into the pool.
Her thighs are smooth, like the spare parts of mannequins. I scale the fence. My boots land in a puddle with a squish. They are new; they are ostrich. A present from Bob. Really a bribe to get me to go to class. I told him about the boots and they appeared one day in my closet. He said the boots were his way of stamping out Steven. I thought that was nice of him, the nicest thing he’d ever said.
Once naked, there is no turning back. I take a deep breath and hurl myself into the icy water. We swim up and down the length of the pool, doggie-paddling, passing each other and spitting. My lungs fight me; they want a cigarette. I pull myself out and light two, handing one to Camilla Rae, who takes it from me willingly. "You were reading my mind," she says.
As I smoke, I sit on the steps, deciding which part of my body I hate the most—my skinny, underdeveloped arms or my caved-in chest. I decide on neither, since I hate all parts of my body with equal disgust. I finish the cigarette and then dive under the water. The chlorine is strong; it eats my eyes.
Camilla Rae rolls into a somersault, a backflip. Her ribs are steak knives; I can see each bone through her skin. I look down at my own ribs. A thin layer of fat hides them but since I’ve stopped being hungry, I can almost see them. This makes me happier than I’ve been in years. To see my ribs, I think. Now that would be something great.
"My mom and I used to go to Lake Michigan when I was a girl. We’d go early in the morning before anyone was there so that we could swim naked. I loved my mother’s body. She was the same age I am now except my body’s falling apart," she says, "and I’m only twenty-five. I haven’t dropped acid in years. Not like her. She used to party every day while she was in grad s chool."
"What do you mean ‘only twenty-five’?" I ask. "It’s amazing we’ve made it this far."
"It’s different for us." By us, I suppose she means women. "Our bodies talk to us every day."
I want to ask her what hers says. As if on cue she frowns and says, "Mine says to get married. To have children. To fulfill my duties as a mother, daughter, and a woman."
"So deep," I say.
She bobs up and down, her feet not touching the bottom.
"These aren’t just for sucking." She cups her boobs, bounces them on her chest. "They’re my life."
She tweaks a nipple. "You know I’ve never been much of a breast man," I admit. "But yours still look pretty firm—for an old woman." Which makes me think of the other Camilla.
"Glen, you wouldn’t be so mean to me if you knew what I had to carry around in this body of mine. Yeast, chlamydia, genital warts. My ob/gyn told me no sex for six weeks. Every time Brad sticks his dick in me I get a bladder infection."
I do a headstand so that my legs shoot straight out of the water. The air is chilly above me but the water is warm. This phenomenon has always amazed me: how quickly our bodies adapt to initially painful surroundings.
"My gramma, Mimi, got married when she was eighteen. And my mother was married at twenty," she says. "I’m not too sure I don’t want to get married next week." She rubs her tummy. "I’ve got to think about—"
"So you’re having the kid?" I ask and climb out to the edge of the high-diving board. From here, the water looks like tar. Something else that could drag us down. I half-expect to find the bones of lost lovers there on the floor.
"I didn’t say that," Camilla Rae calls.
I take a running leap and throw myself into the air. I hit the water hard and sink to the leafy bottom. Down there, under the water, leaving Bob doesn’t seem like such a bad thing. I’ll take the boots with me, though. When I resurface, Camilla Rae leans against the fence at the far end of the pool, smoking a joint. She is dressed again, wearing the boots.
"These are cool," she says, clomping around. "I want to get a pair for Brad. Were they expensive?"
"I can go to Sears and have a look around."
I think about Sears: the cold asphalt of the parking lot. What words went through her head? And if he knew her, did he say her name?
"I think I’ll surprise him for his birthday," Camilla Rae says. "Though he really doesn’t deserve it."
"Do they ever?" I say.
She grins at me. "Yes," she says. "Sometimes they do."
I followed Camilla Rae up the rickety wooden steps to her apartment. We’d met a couple weeks before at a rave. It was very late. She told me that she took the apartment because of the deck, which she used year-round. Before we went inside, we sat outside. Camilla Rae lit candles and we smoked a joint. Joni Mitchell growled through the apartment. The mosquitoes bit me through my shirt. After a while, Camilla Rae led me into the bathroom, where she laid a towel out for me. She burned jasmine incense and talked about her mother, who was living in Houston with her third husband. The knobs are backwards, she said. Cold is hot and hot is cold. While the shower ran, images of Bob came to me. Driving in his truck along the highway. Kissing him on the seawall. Leaving him there. I didn’t think I’d ever see him again, which was just as well. Why go through that again? I’m going to bed, Camilla Rae shouted through the door. The couch is all set up for you. Half an hour later, I was almost asleep when the screendoor creaked open and a half-dressed boy walked inside. He wore a Metallica T-shirt and a pair of worn-out army fatigues. A bandana hung lazily around his neck. His boots struck the floor loudly as he slipped by me on his way to Camilla Rae’s bedroom. I rose on my elbows. Hey, I said. Camilla Rae in there? he said. Yeah, I said. He was drunk, that much was obvious. Who are you? he said. I’m Glen, I said. Not your name, asshole. What’re you doing here? That’s when Camilla Rae came out. She stood in front of us, her robe open at the throat. Hey, she said. Get out of here. Aw, come on, baby, he said, manufacturing softness. No, I mean it, she said. You can’t keep coming by here every time you want to—he slapped her, hard across the mouth so that her robe opened. I was at him then, behind him, holding him back. Fuck y’all, he screamed. I held him as tightly as I could, while Camilla Rae called one of his friends. I’m fine, he kept saying. Fine, fine, fine. Later, Camilla Rae confessed that he wasn’t fine. That she’d broken up with him weeks ago but somehow he just didn’t get it. He’s a really nice guy when he wants to be, she said. But I knew guys like him. They weren’t nice. None of them. They told you what you wanted to hear. They professed their love and anger and sorrow with fists. Each storm has a name, my mother used to tell me. That night, the storm’s name was Brad.
The rain starts in the morning and continues all day. Since I’ve been promoted to assistant manager at The Copy Desk and taken off the night shift, I’ve enjoyed being able to see the day. The early shift—from six A.M. to three P.M.—flies by. I feel somehow that I have more in common with the world now. I get up before Bob, who doesn’t leave the bed until he has to, which is somewhere around noon. I don’t mind. But there’s something to be said for the hours before the city rises and things get away from you.
Through the windows, the sky is one lonesome streak of gray. I can hear the rain above me. Through the drop-ceiling, against the roof. Business is slow. The thunder and lightning keep most people indoors. Not Camilla Rae. She stops by around one with a huge brown bag from McDonald’s. She lays it on the table between us and starts lifting out Big Macs, strawberry milkshakes, fries. I’m not hungry, though I take a hamburger anyway. All this while Camilla Rae tells me that Brad still doesn’t know. That there hasn’t been a right moment to tell him. She says that making this kind of decision takes time.
"What decision?" I say, not sure if it is to leave him or marry him.
"THE decision," she says, rubbing her belly. I nod; neither of them then.
Camilla Rae reminds me of myself at times. At others, she is as alien to me as anyone.
We haven’t spoken since the night we went swimming almost three weeks ago. Life sometimes gets in the way. That evening, a shoot of lightning zippered the sky. We were both in the water. I could feel it—through me. The ions or whatever you call them. Camilla Rae said, "We’re safe here." I didn’t know if we were or not. From what I’d been told, the last place you wanted to be was in a pool. She held her stomach the whole time.
Camilla Rae’s hungry: she eats everything. Then she smokes. No one but no one is allowed to smoke in the store. She lights up anyway. "I’m not no one," she says. It dawns on me that if she were serious about keeping the baby, she’d find another way. She’d take up some other bad habit. Something that only involved herself. And then something else—that maybe this is just another way for Camilla Rae to keep Brad. "Besides, you’re the manager when the manager’s not here. So relax."
I can’t relax. I keep thinking about the other Camilla. She cries so much in class I often feel guilty. I hear my mother in every word she says. I miss her. I hate her.
"You’re not there yet," Camilla Rae says. "When you get there, you’ll know it. It sounds horrible the way you described it. I’m not sure I could do it. But this guy—Saunders—he’s supposed to be good. Right?" The idea of going back to class nauseates me. "His books are everywhere. I thought about buying Brad one but you know how straight boys are. They’d rather drink beer and punch the wall and break their hands than look into the void. Everyone’s got to stop running at some point."
After Camilla Rae leaves, the day turns. Wind blows the tops of the trees back on themselves. Everything is coming undone: paper bags, empty cigarette packs, loose leaves, shingles from the roof of the hotel down the street. I think about class that night. We are getting closer to my turn to read. I think of Steven.
On my way home, I stop off at Jolly Roger Fishery. Since class, life with Bob has become a kind of long drawn-out midnight. Where the clock just keeps chiming twelve. When he stumbles home now, usually around eleven-thirty P.M., I barely recognize him: I find scales stuck all over him like kisses. He no longer washes his hands before coming home or showers before bed. Bob’s smell is powerfully nauseating. It is all I can do not to spend the rest of my life on the couch.
Sometimes, I even take a blanket and pillow and make a pallet for myself in the bed of his truck. Things you do in Galveston in summer. The best time is just before a storm, when the wind picks up and the barometric pressure drops to nothing in five minutes. Then you can lie there, with the world’s fan blowing across your face, and drift into a tropical sleep.
"Hey stranger," he says, wiping his hands on his blood-stained apron. Fish heads float in vats of seawater beside him. Lobsters claw their way up the side of a giant glassed-in cage. Their pincers make a clickety-click sound, like Bob in his sleep.
"Anything exciting at The Copy Desk?" he says, fiddling with the ice, rearranging the slabs of tuna steak.
The pink meat seems gray. Everything is gray without sun.
"Just a rerun of yesterday," I say. "And the day before that and the day before that."
"We should go shopping tonight," Bob says. "We’re out of everything."
"Sure," I say. "After class."
He looks at me again. I know this look of his. "Then you’re mine again," he says.
"You never had me," I whisper as he disappears into the walk-in freezer.
That night, instead of going to class, I head to Sears for a new ribbon for my typewriter. For the first time in several weeks, I do not feel like facing Camilla. I no longer feel hysterical; I no longer want to bite off my tongue. Thoughts of Steven, once unrelenting, have slowed. Now, they are simply background noise, like the rain. Each drop that falls brings me closer to sixteen again.
As I wander through the parking lot, I think of Camilla on her back, eyes riveted on the sodium lamps. I try to hear his name in the air. But there is only the rain. The police posted signs all over town: Have you seen this man? They haven’t caught him yet, though they bring a new suspect in for questioning weekly. This according to Camilla, who visits the precinct just about every day on advice from Dr. Saunders.
Inside, Sears is cool and dry and busy. Every aisle is packed with frenzied shoppers. Their faces are buoyant but terror-stricken; a hurricane draws near. Salesgirls rush around, like hungry seagulls. I find what I’m looking for almost immediately—a new ribbon for my typewriter. I have been down these aisles a hundred times. I forget to look for the boots. Maybe I’ll give mine to Camilla Rae; a baby present. As I pay, I notice the clock above the doors. Dr. Saunders has just released the class for our ten-minute break. I wonder which of us will eat the sandwiches tonight. I wonder if Camilla is weeping.
The rain stops momentarily, just long enough for me to make it home. The wind has picked up again. Other than this, the night is perfectly gaunt and still. While I wait for Bob to come home, his hands smelling of fish guts, I sit down at the typewriter. The blank page rattles slightly in the breeze. Each key echoes through the house, like our bed the last time we had sex.
Many years ago, when I first met him, Bob took me for a drive in his car, an old Chevrolet pick-up. He was a stock boy then. He said one day that he was going to trade in the truck for a more comfortable ride. I thought the truck fit him. It was rough and needed a paint job but I liked it; it smelled safe. Only a man liked Bob could get away with driving something like this, I thought. We drove down to the seawall, across from the Greyhound bus station. We parked and got out. Something was coming. The sea churned and the air held its breath. Like right before a storm. But it blew over and the last of the sun came out. It streaked the water and made it difficult to see. Bob asked me where I was from and I told him nowhere. We sat there, on the wall, in silence. He smiled and said that that was okay, that I didn’t owe him a thing. It was funny when he said that because I was thinking to myself that if he asked me, I’d tell him I was visiting from somewhere else, like Chicago or New York. I’d tell him that I was in town shooting a movie. I told him that he was right, no one ever owed anyone anything, and the surest way to get hurt was to expect something for nothing. Sounds like you’ve been hurt an awful lot, Bob said. Believe whatever you want, I said and jumped off the wall and walked away. Where’re you going? he called after me. I work at the fish market. That’s where I’ll be. The one with the guts all over his hands.
The parking lot of Food Heaven is full of cars. I stand outside the circle of blue-uniformed clerks on their smoking break and shoppers with heavy plastic bags full of ice. We are all impatient to leave; to get back to the safety of our air-conditioned homes before the food spoils and the ice melts. Being around all this food should make me ravenous. I’m not. I’m waiting to see my ribs.
Across the street, a pack of skateboard punks loiters in front of Dairy Queen. Some stand with their hands in the pockets of their acid-washed jeans, smoking clove cigarettes, setting napkins on fire. Steven used to take me to Dairy Queen for a Blizzard, while my mother was at work.
Bob comes out of the grocery store, clutching the rest of the bags. His face grim and dissatisfied.
"You could have helped," he says, frazzled. "The fat-ass check-out bimbo overcharged me for the damn eggs again."
Bob is always fighting. Since I have known him, it is impossible to predict what will set him off. Sometimes, it only takes a penny. When we get home, I go straight into the bedroom, while Bob puts the bags of groceries away.
"I can’t win," he says.
"You were fighting with a teenager," I say, fumbling in the desk.
"Can I read it when you’re done?" he says, taking off his shirt, his pants. The zipper makes me jump.
"You already know this story," I say.
He looks at me, fists raised. He thinks I am hiding love letters. He reaches down and yanks my chin with his hand. He kisses me hard on the mouth but I turn my head away. He can’t get too close to me. Not now.
The night of our first class, Dr. Saunders wrote a sentence on the chalkboard and underlined it several times. We read it silently to ourselves. Violence brought me to this place. Each one of us had to sign an agreement—no sex for the length of the class—but now I’m not sure that was such a great idea. I am torn: I want Bob, but I still feel Steven.
"Patience is a virtue," I tell him.
"Patients are people in hospitals," he says, putting on his socks, then his shirt and pants. In his eyes are the steps that led him to me. His hands are bunched again into fists but on his face a smile persists. That smile hurts the most.
Bob uncurls his fingers, pressing them tightly against his sides. They are bloodless in the light, as smooth and white as paper.
"Bob," I say, but he is no longer there.
I finish my homework on the typewriter and leave a copy of it for Bob taped to the refrigerator. I do not want to be around when he reads it. I have been through this before. Gathering my books and papers, I throw everything into my backpack. I do not want to leave Bob but I cannot stay. I tape another note to the refrigerator door. I love you, it says. Some things can’t be explained by love.
I head out into August, the heat sticking to my skin. The sky cracks with lightning. I tuck the key safely under the welcome mat. This will make Bob insane. I imagine him driving around the neighborhood looking for me. I imagine Bob will never believe in not looking for me.
The high school’s parking lot is empty. Most of the windows have been boarded up. All in preparation for the hurricane. As I head to class, I remember my boots. I will have to go back for them at some point.
The room is dark when I go inside. No one is there. On the board, the word CANCELLED is written in chalk. I sit down at one of the desks. The air smells faintly of sulfur and smoke. Something I’ve never smelled before. Test tubes lie in neat stacks in the back of the room. There is a centrifuge, a scale. Camilla comes into the room and says, "I didn’t get the message either."
She flips the light switch on but nothing happens. No fizzle, no nothing. Just the sound of the wind and rain against the glass.
"Maybe we should go," I say.
Camilla goes to the window and turns around. "Whatever happened to you," she says. "I’m sorry."
I nod my head. Everyone is sorry. Someday soon, Dr. Saunders will call me and we will meet for dinner to talk about it. He will write articles about me, about the boy in Galveston who told his mother what was happening with his stepfather, Steven, and when he did, she packed a suitcase for him and drove him to the bus station. How she sat with him until his bus arrived. "You’re going to stay with your aunt and uncle in Galveston," she said. He’d never heard of any such aunt or uncle. She didn’t believe him. She did believe him. Either way, this is where he is.
Camilla stands at the window for some time, humming quietly to herself.
"Do you need a ride home?" she says at last.
"Yes," I say but neither of us makes a move to go.
A few days later, we are sitting on Camilla Rae’s deck again. There is no music now, no smoking, no drinking, no candles.
"I feel bad," she says. "I went to my ob/gyn again. I can’t keep anything down. Hey, don’t look now."
Headlights burst through the trees, angling across our faces. We both look at the same time, wondering. But we know who it is long before the lights dim and the engine shuts off. I have forgotten that today is a big day for Bob. That the new truck is the beginning of our new life together. "When I get the truck," Bob said, "we’ll take a trip anywhere you want to go, Glen." I haven’t seen my mother in years. It might be nice to see her. "I should call Brad," Camilla Rae sighs, "to see if he’s coming by later. I hate sleeping alone during a storm. Of course, he’s probably out getting drunk. But that’s what boys do I guess."
"We could run away together," I say into the wind.
"I wish we could go backward, you know. Even to a couple months ago when we went swimming. Remember? I wish sometimes that lightning’d struck me instead of the fence. I wish I hadn’t gotten pregnant, I really do, but that’s where I am," she says.
Bob sits in his new black Chevrolet truck, the wipers beating back and forth across the glittering windshield. He honks twice. "Glen," he calls up as Camilla Rae heads inside. "I’ll call you tomorrow," she says and kisses me. The deck creaks beneath her. "If we make it through tonight."
The wind is howling through the deserted streets. Everyone is indoors, waiting. In the distance, the waves break heavily against the seawall. A siren sounds from faraway, like a baby’s cry. I think about what I want to eat. I haven’t kept anything down in two days.
"Get in," Bob shouts. "It isn’t safe out here."
He’s right. The sky breaks open and the rain comes. But it’s not rain. It’s hard and lumpy and cold. Bob starts to drive away, then stops. He honks again. I look into the apartment. I see Camilla Rae’s feet dangling off her bed as she talks on the phone. There is Brad and there is the baby. I make my way down the creaking wooden steps. I look at the truck, at Bob. I climb into our new life and shut the door.
©2002 David Samuel Levinson.
David Samuel Levinson received an MFA in Creative Writing from New School University. His poetry and fiction have appeared in 5x7, a chapbook; The James White Review; LISP; RE:AL; Blue Mesa Review; Analecta; Excursus; in the anthology, The Name of Love; and is forthcoming in The New Penguin Anthology of Gay Short Stories (2003). In 2001, "Most of us Are Here Against Our Will" received an honorable mention in The Atlantic Monthly. Levinson's non-fiction has appeared in Newsweek and is forthcoming in Poets & Writers Magazine. He can be contacted at burningboy@aol.com.