I didn’t have a car in high school. I didn’t have a car in college. It wasn’t until after I had graduated from OU and had started my first job. I was working there three months before I got a car. Before that I was driving my dad’s van. When I did get my car I bought it new, bought a Honda. Nowadays it’d be a Subaru but this was back a few years. Mine was black. A Honda Civic DX, hatchback, five speed. It was a major step up from the van.
In high school I never worked; we weren’t allowed to. My parents wanted us to focus on school. Senior year I had a job in a library; that was about it.
I never drank in high school either, never smoked pot. I did a lot of things late.
In high school I couldn’t drive, never drank, didn’t have sex. So I had to find other things to do. Mostly I did art projects. And hung out in girls’ rooms, not-having sex with them. We listened to music. I was into video; it was later I discovered painting. And it was later I discovered sex, real sex, fucking. And later still that I drank. And even later still that I learned to drive a car. Now I don’t do any of them. I’m retired. It was in therapy, maybe five years into it, when I realized I had become a Puritan. Maybe always have been. We have a strict family, but not in the sense that you’re not-allowed to do things. Strict in the sense that you can do whatever you want..but after you do it, we’ll judge you. Freedom, then damnation. That’s how all of us turned out.
A typical afternoon for me, once I had spent the entire day cutting class doing art projects, was to go home with one of my girlfriends and do art projects at her house until my parents called and made me come home, or sometimes until it had gotten to be so late that my parents would call her parents and promise to send me with money next time if they would please front the money, this time, for a cab. I preferred the cab. You didn’t want to have my dad pick you up when he was mad.
I liked girls’ basements, and I liked girls whose parents weren’t home. Parents who worked late, who would be home an hour before they stuck their head into their daughter’s bedroom and discovered there were two of us.
“Who’s your friend?”
“This is Matt.”
“Have you two eaten?”
“We had macaroni and cheese.”
“When’s Matt going home?”
“We’re working on an art project.”
“Liz, come see me. I wanna talk to you.”
“In a minute, ok Mom?”
“Elizabeth Ronstadt. Right now.”
Liz and I did video together. Our finest project was cut to some Pink Floyd she introduced me to, The Division Bell? My parents were into the Beatles. I grew up on Here Comes the Sun. We just cut all these pictures together—black and white pictures from magazines—and we put some Pink Floyd over it and we called it our own.
When Liz came back from talking with her mom she said: “You have to go soon.”
Then Elizabeth sat next to me on her bed.
Before, she had been sitting kind of across from me on the bed. Now we only had limited time, so we had to make out.
The first time I touched Liz’s breasts it was in school, and we were on camera. For video, we were supposed to go into the hallway, or anywhere around the school, and get shots of things we thought were interesting. Each shot had to be at least ten seconds long, for editing purposes. If the shot was shorter than ten seconds, when you tried to edit it, you might not have enough footage. What if you wanted to fade out? Or fade in? Even if it’s a still object, freeze-framing a shot doesn’t look the same as having a still shot, of the object, sitting there, not doing anything. We had to make sure each shot was at least ten seconds. We got shots of the stairs—this neat shadow that was happening. We got a shot of Liz’s leg. Then we got a shot of me cupping Liz’s breasts in my hands, as I stood behind her. That was the first time I touched Liz’s breasts. (Action.)
I touched them a lot after that. We used to sit and play footsie under the work tables in the art room. But in me and Liz’s version of footsie, we went straight for the crotch. We weren’t playing around with any toe-on-toe stuff. She went for my crotch. I went for hers. We got along fine in art class. When the people sitting next to us found out why we were laughing, they were disgusted. Maybe they were jealous; they acted disgusted. I liked having Liz’s foot on my dick. And I wasn’t sure exactly what I was doing to her, between her legs, but it felt hot and I liked having my foot there.
Liz was mixed. Maybe that’s why some of my white friends didn’t like that I liked her. I know that’s why some of my black friends didn’t like her. It’s ok, with some of your black friends, for their black friends to have white friends, but sometimes with those same people it’s not ok if their black friends like their white friends. You can like white people, you just can’t like white people. Same with black people; it’s okay to like them, you just can’t like them. Liz was mixed.
I really didn’t think of her that way. It’s only looking back that I realize she had darker skin (darker than a tan, and more regular than a tan) and that her hair was dark and curly and unlike the hair of any “white” people that I know. In high school I wasn’t aware that she was mixed. I just thought she had nice breasts.
When we made out at her house, when her mother left the room, I would put my hand down her pants and feel her vagina, and put my fingers inside of it, and her door would be open, and we’d both be looking at it, imagining her mom walking in.
I’d feel her squishy parts and she’d tell me about her neighbors.
“You know that kid Rafael? He was sitting on the fence when we came in.”
“Yeah. I know Rafael.”
“Why? How do you know him?”
“Because,” I say, “he’s a gangster.”
“Is that all you’ve heard about him?” Liz sits up.
My hand is still inside her. “Why? What?”
Her jeans tighten over the back of my hand and she leans close. “You can’t tell anyone this. Don’t tell him I told you. Don’t tell him. You know that girl Brandi, the one they found behind the school?”
I nod.
“You know how the police are always around here?”
“Yeah.”
“They’re looking into Rafael. They think he’s the one that did it.” Liz grabs my wrist and my hand is frozen. “Don’t tell anyone this, but I know he did it, because he told me.”
I look at her.
“He brags about it to everyone, around here. I told him don’t you ever tell anyone you told me that. He did it, though. Those police are here every day. I hope they get him.”
After that I lost my erection.