35
I was leaving Jeff's house at the end of Spring. As my passenger
continued to my car, Jeff called softly to me and I turned to see if
I'd forgotten anything. Instead he was beaming at me and gave me a
big thumbs-up. I think it was the only time in all the years I'd
known him that he'd done that...
When we started the writers' group, about three quarters were people
from the local science fiction club and the rest were new faces.
Those from the science fiction club included the two new girls in
town Daina and Rochelle. In the first couple of meetings, we'd
quickly resolved who the people with the writing bug were and who the
people who liked the idea of being thought of as a writer were. In
the initial gatherings we'd be asked to bring a short story of our
own and read it to the rest of the group, of those that did, there
were the quarter of new people and a third of the science fiction
group people, the remaining half of the group soon didn't return to
the meetings and we settled down to the routine of reading each
others work during the off weeks and giving feedback about it once a
month to each other. Rochelle was amazed by the opening sentence of
a trashy tale I had started writing the previous Fall. After reading
what I had to the group she was one of the first to avidly want more
of it... Though she herself was soon out of the group, her friend
Daina became one of the mainstays.
After hearing of the Great Sand Dunes in Colorado, I asked if Wayne,
Chet and Karl of the Dungeons & Dragons group wanted to
come along on a road trip to see them with me. Karl passed on the
idea, but Wayne and Chet were up for it. When mentioning the plans
to Rochelle she asked if she could come along. As we had the
spare seat, I didn't see why not. On the morning of the trip,
Wayne and Chet bowed out, perhaps they had both had long nights or
something and so I called Rochelle to see if she wanted to cancel,
but she decided she'd still like to do the trip, just herself and me.
Along the many hour drive she told me much about herself, her
childhood in California, the many boyfriends she'd had and the fact
that she'd moved out to Colorado with a boyfriend, but they had
quickly split once here and she found herself on her own but stayed
as she already had the teaching job confirmed. When she started at
her school she soon found Daina as another newcomer to town and they
quickly joined-up to discover the sights and surroundings.
Once Rochelle and I reached the Sand Dunes, we parked in the little
lot and took our shoes off to cross a small stream and get to the
dunes, proper. They were stunningly taller than I had imagined and
we ultimately only got about two thirds of the way up one of the
dunes before we decided to sit down and take a breather. While
there, Rochelle told me that she knew my 'trashy tale' had been about
her when I read it at the writers' group. This was news to me as I
had conceived of the story two months before I'd met her and wrote it
the following month, still before I met her. But rather than
dissuade her, I took this as a compliment: People hearing my story
could see it being about themselves.
Another male member of the writers' group would later tell me
that, based on reading my 'trashy tale', I really knew what it was
like to be a man and how men thought. Again, given my 'situation'
this was news to me, but I again took it as a compliment rather than
argue otherwise.
Rochelle soon became a regular tag-along with Wayne and myself and we
invited her on a trip to our local metaphysical store to look over
the books, clothing and many other trinkets & novelties. On the
drive back, I was playing Berlin's 1982 Pleasure Victim album
in the car and Rochelle remarked that it was an example of why she
didn't like ''New Wave'' groups as they only ever did one album and
disappeared, never having a follow-up hit song. This was a surprise
to hear given their successful Love Life album of 1984
and huge hit ''Take My Breath Away'' song that had owned the charts
just a few months before she made this comment. It was all I could
do to keep a straight face and not burst out laughing. It wasn't
that she had gotten something wrong that made it so funny to me, but
the air of authority she had put on when stating it, making it sound
like a fully considered and unquestionable fact.
I soon realized that Rochelle was a bit full of herself, but I had
found that everyone had their peculiarities in life and didn't worry
about it.
She and Daina came to my mother's mobile home to find out more about
Doctor Who and I showed them a selection of episodes while
explaining the background of the series. They also joined Wayne and
me to a movie outing and they even visited me at the grocery store to
see for themselves where I worked.
One day Rochelle needed some PC software disks and asked me if I
could help her with them. It wasn't something I could, but I
recommended my friend Jeff and as she didn't know where he lived I
ended up playing chauffeur for her to his place as they worked out
what she needed. Once done, this was when we were leaving Jeff's
house and he gave me that big thumbs-up. At first I was befuddled as
to why, but when I later asked him about it he told me that he
thought I had landed Rochelle as a hot girl friend. Hearing this, I
just smiled. After years of others furtively wondering about my lack
of interest in sexual matters, people seeing me hang around with her
gave me a reputation for liking the girls. Given that I've
now cataloged every interaction I'd ever had with Rochelle to this
point, I'll let you decide if that reputation was earned.
Still, by the end of the Summer, I decided I was finally going to
tell someone about my 'situation' and thought Rochelle would be a
good choice. I called her home and got her answering machine and
mentioned that I'd like to talk to her about something when she was
available. I never heard back from her and thus I never got to
tell her.
I would hear through the social grapevine years later that when she'd
talk about her long list of boyfriend conquests, I numbered among
them. This was news to me and I think she would have been very
surprised and had a very different story to tell had we become that
'familiar'. She told her friend Daina that she had cut contact with
me because I was getting to be ''too serious''. This became a
head-scratcher for me as I tried to figure out what that meant.
Did she think I had called and left the message about wanting to
talk to her as a pending proposal for marriage or something?
Given the amount she had been talking about me to her friends even
though nothing had ever happened between us, in retrospect I realized
I had ducked a major bullet. I came to believe that if she had been
the first person I had talked to about my strange puberty 'situation' it
seems she would have immediately tossed it out there as fresh meat
into the rumor mill rather than respectfully listening and giving me
advice...
And so for the few times I'd seen her and had little else to do with
her, she remained the girl who gave me 'my reputation' and made me a
man in the eyes of my long-time friend Jeff, if not others.
I guess if she was going to give me a reputation for something,
that was the best I could have hoped for.
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