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thehefnerHere it is, just in time for Valentine's Day. This has proven itself to my the most challenging, ambitious Hefner Monologue yet. What started off as a story about Tammy, my first great love and glorious flaming trainwreck, evolved into much more. There is a LOT in this story; hell, this one could almost be a one-man-show in of itself. It's so big that I'm gonna need to split this post into four parts! A lot more is riding on this story than any of the previous Hefner Monologues, so more than ever, your input would be very, very, very appreciated.
I should also note that while I think all the events of this story are very much in the past for everyone, several of you are featured in it. If there's anything that you find objectionable, please let me know and I'll change/delete it. The LAST thing I wanted to do with this is to step on toes or re-open old wounds.
I hope you enjoy.
“So there I was jabbering at her about my new job as a serious newsman - about anything at all - but all I could think was ‘oh wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, most wonderful and yet again, wonderful.’”
-Steve Martin quoting “As You Like It,” L.A. STORY
She could have worn a sign around her neck that read “TROUBLE” underlined three times with stars and sparkles, and I probably would have just fallen all the harder.
It’s hardly surprising that she’d be the first new face that caught my attention at the read-through of As You Like It. Tammy was an attention magnet; no, not even a magnet. She was like a magnetic sponge of attention, and when she walked into a room, she took everyone’s notice. But at the time, my attention was squarely on people like Alan, Rachel, Sean, Josh, Jaki, all the people whom I loved and missed and thanked God they weren’t there to see me get drunk.
I made some joke, of course I can’t even remember what it was now. It probably had something to do with comics, geekery, my hilarious ineffectuality with women, y’know, the Hefner classics. What I do remember was that amid the laughter (such glorious music to my attention-whore ears), I heard a distinct, joyous, and wholly unfamiliar giggle. One of the newer members, a new and improved model, SimFreshman 2.0. A small young girl of nineteen with a smile that shook your foundations and a laugh that brought you tumbling down to the ground. This was Tammy Raistrick, and for months the Rudes had been wondering what would happen when she and I would finally meet.
I don’t think Tammy thought of herself as sexy. Deep down inside, or maybe not even that deeply at all, I think she was still that insecure, mousy, frumpy, lonely girl from all those stories she used to tell me about her cold and abusive childhood. A girl who was unloved and unlovable, not beautiful, not intelligent, not worth it. But at some point down the line, she realized it didn’t matter what she thought. Because she knew that everyone else thought she was sexy. And really, that’s all that mattered.
Although to call her sexy isn’t exactly correct. I don’t really have photos of her, aside from the publicity shots we did for Rudes shows and that one of us at Birthday Ball. Not a single one of these few pics I have really catch the true essence of this girl’s appeal. I don’t think that’s the fault of any photographer. No photo I’ve seen of her even comes close to capturing what we all saw in her every night at rehearsal and at Bennigans.
She wasn’t so much sexy in her physical appearance, not like she was exactly lacking. She had a round head with a small pout and large, wide eyes, making her resemble one of the anime characters she loved so much. God how she hated it anytime someone made that comparison. Classically sexy, she certainly was not. American Idol turned her town not because she didn’t have the voice, which she certainly did, but because she “didn’t have the look.” It’s a shame. She would have been great.
What this girl had was something that really needed to be seen in person to be truly appreciated. It was in every glance she gave you, every squeal of a giggle, every wiggle of her butt when she danced, every ice cube she snatched out of a water glass and sucked on for us all to see. I remember once at Bennigans I was sitting around with her, Josh, Kevin, and Sean. Tammy picked up a slice of lemon and proceeded to suck on it while we were all talking with one another. One by one, everyone’s conversations died down as they turned to look at her, until Josh was the only one who hadn’t noticed.
He was still rambling to me about something or other, and I just droned, “Can’t talk. Watching Tammy fellate lemon.”
The table exploded in laughter- it was the only time I ever managed to break both Sean and Kevin, twin pillars of Rudes’ dry humor- and Tammy chucked the lemon slice at my face. The stinging in the eyes was worth it.
Whoever coined the term “Sex Kitten,” must have been thinking about a Tammy. I’m not exactly talking figuratively here either. Like, at random moments she would often get all fours and do a yoga stretch, y’know, like a cat would. Head pressed to the ground and butt sticking as far up and out as it can go. Yeah, this little maneuver could stop all conversation at twenty yards. When called on it, she professed innocence. “What’s everyone looking at me like that for?” Did she really not know? Hell, I couldn’t tell you. Flirting was so hardwired into that girl that I could believe she’d do things like that without even thinking anymore. That’s one of the reasons girls like Tammy are so dangerous. The only thing that’s worse than a girl how knows how to wrap a man around her finger… is a girl who doesn’t know that they have that ability.
Now for a whole different reason, Bennigans went back to being my weekly highlight. I got to spend my nights with my best friends and a girl who was sex on a stick. Tammy spent less time in her own seat and more in the laps of various Rudes. No one seemed to have a problem with this, for some reason. I know I sure as hell didn’t, especially when mine became her favored lap.
But for all her flirtations, we knew she was off-limits and very much taken. His name was Bryan, a scruffy, skinny kid who worked at the mall bookstore. Her first lay and her first love, and after two other boyfriends she was finally back with him to stay. As the years have gone by, I don’t always know what to think when it comes to all the life stories she told me, how much of it was true and how much was just, well, her version of events, but I still remember the way she talked about him.
I imagine her much like I was at her age, a child of an abusive parent, convinced of their own unworthiness, alone in those confusing and often disturbing years of budding adolescence and bubbling hormones. I tried to imagine what it would have been like to have lived like that for so long and then had someone come out of the blue. For the first time in your life, there is someone who thinks that you’re beautiful, that you are wonderful. That you are Worth It. I tried to imagine how differently my life would have turned out if I had met a someone like that, a someone I had not even met at age twenty. That was Bryan. Her first love, the boy she had gone back to after two other relationships fell through. The boy she was going to be engaged with at twenty and marry when she turned twenty-one.
Flirting with Tammy had become the great Rude Mechanicals pastime that summer because she was hot, funny, geeky, flirty, and totally safe. So it was under this mindset that I set out to pursue a friendship with Tammy Raistrick.
Oh, yeah. You know where this is going. Just wait, it gets better.
We had long movie nights at my house, and I’d always be certain to rent a horror movie so I could have an excuse to say, “Tammy, can you hold me? I’m scared!” Yes, I’m a pussy, but it worked, so shut up. We hung out at Bethesda’s most famous greasy spoon, the Tastee Diner, and held long, intense, personal conversations over burgers and milkshakes, as all long, intense, and personal conversations really should be held.
She soon became comfortable enough around me to open up about her past and her dreams. She would casually throw out little factoids about herself, tidbits like how she was a level two psychic vampire. It’d take me a couple seconds to realize she wasn’t kidding, but hey, I didn’t scoff. Whether or not I believed it didn’t matter so much as the fact that she did. She was able to share pretty much anything with me and I wouldn’t look at her like she was crazy. Because hey, what did I know? I was in no position to judge.
It actually did kinda bother me when she said she secretly wanted to become a stripper. I mean, on one hand, you have all the societal and moral implications and how it might affect a person’s self-worth. On the other hand, you had Tammy naked. So you can understand how torn I was. At first, I was supportive of the idea, hey, live your own life, do what you want. But the more I got to thinking about it, the more the idea troubled me. I couldn’t say why. Just for some reason, the thought of Tammy doing that really bothered me. Almost as much, I began to realize, as the idea of her getting married. Huh. Weird.
Of course, anybody thinking with their brains could see exactly how this was going and how it would end. You gotta understand, I was still secure in the knowledge that it would go nowhere. I mean, how could it? This girl was totally and completely taken. Helplessly in love with the boy she called her soul-mate. And what as I? The pudgy geek with muttonchops and a mop-top, a sweet kid who’d gotten used to years of being the sexless and unthreatening ‘special friend’ to a half dozen girls in his lifetime. I was not Worth It. So as such I was totally unprepared, two months later, when she told me that she loved me.
But one month before all that, before the wedding and before As You Like It would open and close, I had to return to Washington College for Junior year. It’s amazing what one semester away could do; with most of my former detractors graduated and a fresh-cooked batch of freshmen coming in, I found myself greeted like an old friend time and again by people I hardly knew. By the semester’s end, I would even be close friends with several of my Fuddy Meers cast mates. Hell, I should have never come back at all. I would have been the most popular guy in school!
Clancy was still there, at that point in his fifth year. We remained friendly, but we were never more than friendly acquaintances from that point on. We’d catch each other on the Cater Walk, say hi, and usually chat about comics. He was the only other person on that campus who really knew about comics. And since comic fans are so rare, when you find one you kinda have to talk comics with them every so often. But that would be pretty much it from that point on. That friendship sort of died away in favor of better and stronger to come. But what really piqued my interest was that my hopes had come true. Hot damn, Robyn and Clancy had broken up. Now it was Heffie’s time to shine!
I treated Robyn to dinner at La Routa, the finest Italian restaurant Chestertown. That is to say, the nicer of the two Italian restaurants in Chestertown. I don’t know what happened. A year before, this girl and I could talk for hours, but the date just went nowhere. A nice enough nowhere, don’t get me wrong, but still there was a distinct lack of sparks. Of course, I didn’t stop trying there, but in the days to come my attempts to hang with her proved frustrating as she became colder and more distant. Anytime I tried to hang with her, she was always accompanied by her roommate Andi and her “pet freshman” Hosey. This became even more uncomfortable as any idiot could tell that she and her “pet” were getting mighty close. Once I realized how lost this cause was, I fell into a bit of a funk by the time As You Like It finally rolled around.
Or so it would have been, if it weren’t for Hurricane Isabel. This part of the story you already know.
… you remember, the party? The wedding…? Me telling everybody the story at Turkeymas…?
Good grief, you people have short attention spans. Go back and skim over the first story again. Refresh your memory. And if you haven’t read it already, what the hell? Go on. Go. I’ll wait.
Back? Good. Don’t let it happen again.
As I said back there, I omitted a few details about what really went on between Tammy and me that night. After feelings were confessed and we made out for the first time, we had a few moments to ourselves to talk before we headed to the second cast party at Alan and Rachel’s. We’d spent the vast majority of that day on her couch, watching movies and, well… you know. When I finally stood up after a day on the couch of movie watching and tongue wrestling, the world rippled like water around me, like someone just brushed their fingers against the surface.
“Woah,” I said, falling back down into the sofa. “I feel like all my energy’s been sapped out of me.”
“Oh no,” Tammy said, and suddenly looked very guilty and ashamed.
“What?”
“No, no, it’s just… it’s me,” she said, and the words sounded like a confession. “It’s what I do to people. I’ve been really worried for Bryan. He keeps getting more and more tired, too exhausted to even work some days, and I know it’s my fault. This is what I do.”
I cocked her a cynical look.
“Oh come on, Tammy. What are you, a succubus?”
She looked at me with tear-filled eyes and suddenly I remembered. She looked away in shame.
“Oh.”
I stood again, a headache now mushrooming, and I said, “Look, all I had to eat all day was that soup you gave me. A single can of chicken noodle soup on the Tammy-Bri budget household. So I’m probably just malnourished, that’s all. It’s not you, ok?”
She nodded, clearly not going to believe me but appreciating me saying so.
“I gotta get ready for the party,” she said, and disappeared upstairs. I waited in silence amid the squalor of Bri and Tammy’s house, a mess of clothes, books, and Playstation 2 games. A funny thought came to me then, one I didn’t think much of at the time. All I’d eaten was a can of soup all day and I wasn’t the least bit hungry. But it was a fleeting though, soon forgotten when I saw her descend those stairs. She wore a Chinese dress, burning fuchsia, not unlike the silver number she would be wearing exactly two weeks later.
Thanks to Hurricane Isabel, Alan and Rachel’s house was still without electricity, which meant room temperature beer and a very ambient candlelit party for a wound-up cast with no play to perform. When we walked into the already-liquored-up fray, all eyes went to Tammy. Maybe it was the lack of electricity, but I think we all got the sense even early on that this was to be no ordinary cast party. This party had a distinct end-of-the-world scent in the air, like our responsibilities and reservations had been cancelled, if not for now then at least for the weekend. With more than a little hedonism brewing in the back of most of their minds, Tammy was the star of the show. Any other night, I would have been no different than any of ‘em. But hey, it was a party, I told myself. Relax, have fun and let them have fun. Don’t be Captain Buzzkill.
But if Tammy was the star, Paul Davis was the emcee. Paul was a Rude who joined the troupe with As You Like It. He was also, coincidentally, an alumnus of Washington College, one of the Drama professors’ favorite students. Another important little fact to keep in mind about Paul is that Paul likes to fuck. A lot. I actually spent a few minutes trying to think of something witty and elaborate to sorta exaggerate his libido, but nothing I say could really be an exaggeration. He likes to fuck a hell of a lot. He exudes a sexual energy that would almost be like a parody of a Renaissance Fair lothario if it weren’t so dammed effective.
Also at the party was another familiar face from my early days with the Rudes, a girl named Chenoa. When I first joined the troupe, Chenoa was sixteen and working behind the scenes with the Rudes on tech, production, and such. Many people, including me, found Chenoa quite attractive, but like Tammy she was taken and unlike Tammy she kept the flirting to a safe minimum. And because she was so young, the Rudes wisely kept their flirtations to themselves. This was Chenoa’s first appearance with the Rudes for awhile, and the mood that was already thick in the air was only heightened when, one by one, we all realized that, hey, she had just turned eighteen. So like all big events, this all started with a simple idea:
“Wouldn’t it be cool if Tammy and Chenoa made out?”
It seemed sensible enough at the time. Even I thought, “Hey, awesome!” Then they started doing it, and who doesn’t love two hot girls making out, right? Yet a funny feeling came over me. Huh, I thought. I’m not turned on by this. In fact, I think I’m vaguely uncomfortable with this for some reason. Why on earth would that be?
Being the only one sexually aggressive enough to do what many of the others could not, Paul got in on the action then, making out with one, then the other, then both. Next thing I know the three of them are lounging in a huge chair and Paul’s shirt is off. Chenoa’s on the left and Tammy’s on his right, making out with him, then each other, touching and licking to the amused hoots and hollers of the Rudes.
I decide now would be a good time for a drink.
I grab a green apple flavored vodka drink that tasted like an evil Jolly Rancher and tried not to worry. It’s a party, she wants to have fun. They all want to have fun. But there she was, making out with him and then, before too long, with anybody who wanted to, and all I could think of was that not two hours before this, she told me she loved me.
“Aw, I think Heffie feels like he’s being left out!” someone said. “I think it’s Heffie’s turn!”
More “Yeah!”s and “Woo!”s filled the room. Any other time, I would have gladly partaken of this latest installment of “Let’s Chip Away at Heffie’s Innocence!” At my very first Rudes cast party, Jaki was encouraged to show me first-hand why men have nipples. So this, of course, was the logical extension, the class upgrade, if you will. Fun with Heffie’s Nipples 102. Paul relinquished his throne for the modest consolation prize of going to make out with Jaki.
I say that, positively dripping with irony, since for all the years I’d been with the troupe I, along with several other men and a couple women, have spent many a rehearsal drooling over Jaki between lines. You try running scenes with a beautiful woman wearing nothing but black latex pants and a flesh colored sports bra and see how good your Shakespeare sounds. So yeah, at that party Paul was doing just fine.
I took my shirt off and nestled in between the two girls. Man, I tell you, I would have killed to have been in that position even twenty four hours beforehand. I always wanted to make our with Chenoa, and now I had my chance, but… I looked around at everyone, watching us. Then I looked at Tammy. A draft was chilling my bare torso, and I felt absurd and stupid. I just shook my head.
“I can’t do this,” I said, and then again to Tammy, “I can’t do this.”
She nodded, with a touch of sad understanding. I scooped my shirt back up and tried to let them be again. She went out to the porch with the smokers, kissing anyone bold enough to offer. Paul was making out with Jaki on the floor, others were fooling around with each other and I couldn’t even find a warm body of my own to get my mind off of how uncomfortable I was. Some days I think that even in an orgy I’d be the odd man out.
I sat on the couch with Paul while he fooled around with Chenoa a bit more. Tammy came back in and sat with me.
“You doing ok?” she asked.
“Well,” I said, trying to sound casual, “I do kind of feel like I’m the only one not making out with somebody.”
What I hoped to be a cue for her was interrupted by Paul, who heard this and put his arm around me.
“My dear boy,” he said, his breath a haze of whiskey and sex, “why didn’t you say something sooner?”
Before I could laugh it off, Tammy cooed, “Oh my god, that’d be so hot.”
And so of course, next thing I knew, I was making out with Paul. It only lasted a couple of seconds. The immediate mental image I had to describe the sexual chemistry of the moment was that of a wet towel slapping against a brick wall, peeling off, and plopping to the ground. It was like kissing pubic hair with teeth and a tongue. With that libertine beard of his, if I kept it up any longer I might have gotten rug burn. The things I would do to turn a girl on. But hey, at least I was now absolutely certain that I was, after all, extremely straight, and Tammy was very, very turned on. So it was kinda worth it.
She spent the rest of the party in my arms, the two of us holding each other and kissing beside Alan’s fireplace. Then she took my hand and led me into the back room, Alan’s gaming parlor, and I’m thinking my god, it’s happening, it’s just like what normal teenagers do at parties and I’m finally doing it myself, and it’s with her, with her, my god, with her.
We could barely see one another in the darkness, but neither of us cared. We lay out on the futon, our tongues intertwining and bodies writhing together clumsily. As we kissed, I felt short little acidic bursts from the back of my throat, and after pulling away from her I- oh god, no- released a little burp.
“I’m sorry,” I said, certain that once again my John Hefnerness has ended this right there and then, “I have acid reflux. I’m just…”
She shushes me, says, “It’s ok, I have it too,” and kisses me again like nothing had happened. I slip my hand inside her top, my fingers skirting around the edge of her breast but not daring to go any further unless she tells me to do so. She does. It’s soft, so soft it seems to shudder at my touch. When I nibble her earlobe she emits a sound that makes me want to sell my entire comic collection just to hear again. In that darkened game room, she takes me further than I’d ever gone, and we touch every base but home before we’re through.
But more than anything else, I want to do whatever it takes to make her feel good. With her taking charge just enough to give me my cue, I kiss her breasts, her belly, and her fingers slip under her skirt to pull down her panties. I go in. And the second my tongue touches a foreign surface, I feel a sudden rush slam into the back of my throat. I manage to stifle a great “URP!” and I force myself to dive in. I just start going to town in there, having only the vaguest idea of what the hell I’m supposed to be doing and I don’t know if it’s the acid reflux or the taste or just the odd texture on my tongue, but I’m just barely choking back percolating lumps in my throat. I want to stop, abort mission, game over man game over, but the sounds she’s making, she’s moaning and she gasps, “Oh Heffie…” and I’d always wondered why people said “Say my name, bitch!” and now I knew, they did it because it was fucking hot, so I can’t stop because I know, I know she’s almost there, but I also know that if I don’t, one of us is gonna blow and I don’t think it’s gonna be her…! Just before she climaxes, I pulled my head up and I say:
“Tammy, I… am so… so sorry.”
I pull up my pants, race through the party, up the stairs, into Alan’s bathroom, and throw up.
Ah. Yes. There’s that John Hefnerness. I was wondering where that went.
I plod back downstairs, still holding my pants up because I hadn’t even thought to buckle my belt, and trudge through the party of Rudes. They don’t seem to take particular note of me in this state, so thank god they at least don’t know that they’ve become my living Walk of Shame back to Tammy in the game room.
I apologize profusely, but again she shushes me. And again she kisses me, and I begin to wonder if there really isn’t anything I can do to faze this girl. God may be a vicious and sadistic bastard sometimes, but he ignores this very open opportunity and decides to leave me alone. After all, from this point on Tammy and I will take care of all the fucking up on our own just fine. I finish her off with my hand and we lie down together. Two rooms away, we can hear the laughter of the Rudes.
I realized that I didn’t call Jaki like I promised. I realized that I didn’t really care anymore.
“So what now?” I ask.
Sounding carefully rehearsed, she said, “I want to be able to keep doing this. As friends. I really care about you and I would love to do this more. But I want to keep this secret. I don’t want to hurt Bryan. Ok?”
And of course, I said, “Tammy… I don’t think I can do that.”
I didn’t realize what a punch to the gut my words were. This was a girl who was used to guys lying for her, to having guys willing to do all manner of things for her. A Dame to Lie For. I told her I’d think about it, but she already knew as well as I did that I couldn’t lie about this. Like I said, I wanted to tell the world. Hell, it’s one of the reasons I’m writing this right now.
Everything seemed different when I got back to college. My day to day life went from normal to Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy food Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy sleep Tammy Tammy Tammy. (I would have included masturbation in there as a gag, but I tell you, that “Oh Heffie…” of hers made pornography utterly useless. For, like, three whole weeks.)
Even still, I was determined not to let any of this get in the way of As You Like It, come performance time. I went up there to play Silvius, the idiot shepherd boy helplessly in love with Phebe, who was being played by Rachel. But Phebe was in love with the boy Ganymede, whom she didn’t realize was actually Rosalind (Tammy) in disguise. And then there’s Orlando, played by Paul, who doesn’t realize that his pal Ganymede is actually Rosalind, the girl with whom he’s helplessly in love. I’d say it makes more sense to see it actually performed, but that’d be a dirty lie.
There’s a scene where Phebe tries to use Silvius to explain the nature of love to “Ganymede”, and it was a scene I had been playing with my usual arm-flailing silliness. That’s why I was cast, after all. No one can flail an arm quite like John Hefner. So then the time came for me to say my lines in the actual performance, but the words didn’t come out the same way. Something was different. Something changed.
When Phebe commanded me to “tell this youth what ‘tis to love,” I said, with quiet tenderness, “It is to be all made of fantasy, all made of passion, and all made of wishes.”
The arms stay right at my side. The silliness, gone. I said, “All adoration, duty, and observance. All humbleness. All patience and… and impatience! All… purity…”
I look at Tammy.
“…all trial…”
And she looks back.
“… all observance… and, uh, so am I for Phebe!”
“And so am I for Ganymede!” Phebe/Rachel says.
“And so am I for Rosalind!” Orlando/Paul says.
“And so am I for no man!” Tammy says, snapping back into character as Ganymede. If you hadn’t known there was something going on between us, you wouldn’t have noticed anything was different. The Rudes sure noticed, yes they did. Some had been waiting for this to happen for months. But I knew it had to end.
After the show, just before I would call it off with her in the parking lot of Bennigans, I intercepted Tammy leaving the theatre with Bryan and gave her a rose. This was the first rose I ever gave her, but it wouldn’t carry the impact of the one I would give her one week later at the wedding.
“Congrats, you did it,” I said. She squeaked and hugged me. I didn’t look at Bryan, didn’t want to see his reaction. Didn’t want to know if he was already suspicious of me. I wonder what he was thinking when he picked her up in the Bennigans lot that night when the two of us were standing there, holding each other and saying goodbye? I don’t think I’d ever want to know.
“Yeah, we all know she’s poison,” Josh told my mother, “but we still want them to get together.”
At the wedding, after the dancing and the rose and the erection, Tammy and I finally did find a quiet corner to sit and talk. I had hoped that with discussion and reason we could find some sort of resolution, but nothing we could say could change a damn thing and we knew it. Were we going to call it off or keep going? Neither of us said anything either way. When she asked, all I could say was:
“‘So holy and so perfect is my love, and I in such a poverty of grace, that I shall think it a most plenteous crop to glean the broken ears after the man that the main harvest reaps. Loose now and then a scatter’d smile and that I’ll live upon.’”
She smiled, and I could see she was about to cry. That was good enough for me.
The very next day I was on my way back to Washington College when Tammy called me up. I don’t recall the specifics, but between multiple vehicle malfunctions, missed appointments, and just plain mean people, well, suffice it to say that Tammy had the day from Heck. She was miserable and wanted nothing else in this world but to see me. Not Bryan, not anyone else, just me. But I couldn’t, I told her, I had to be back at school in time for a rehearsal. There was just no way I could stay with her. So I swung by her place, picked her up, and took her to college with me.
Driving up, I kept her entertained by filling her in on the current goings-on in X-MEN (“And it was Magneto all along!” “Wow!” “Oh, and I think Jean’s dead again.”) and I re-enacted as best as I could from memory a story of the Incredible Hulk’s final days. When I got to the jade giant’s tragic dying words, “Hulk… feels… cold…” I think she was actually moved. I can only imagine what it must have been like to have been driving with a guy who was getting really into character as the Hulk.
We spent the night together in my dorm room, a single the size of a monk’s cloister. This particular dorm used to be a frat house, but the frat got kicked off campus for selling cocaine and pot, among other things, so yay me. There was hardly enough room for us both in there, much less on that mattressed splinter of a bed, but we made do best we could. This basically involved snuggling.
She wanted to sleep with me, but I couldn’t allow that. We could do anything else, oral, messing around, fingering, licking, animals, vegetables, minerals… but actual intercourse? I was still a virgin, and I wanted to lose my virginity with someone I cared about, someone who would make it worthwhile. It’s funny, Rachel once told me that she thought it would be great if I lost my virginity to Tammy, that she would be the kind of person who would make it a good experience. But my feelings for the girl had taken me to the point of no return, and as long as she was with Bryan, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It just wasn’t… right. Y’know?
The next day, before I drove her back home, I showed her one of my favorite movies, A Mighty Wind. She fell in love with it instantly. When I came back down couple weeks later for a Rudes party, Tammy and I sat on the porch and sang “A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow” seven times in a row. I don’t think if either Mitch or Mickey had intended the kiss at the end to include a few slips of the tongue, but screw ‘em, they’re not real anyway. We held each other, and a long contemplative post-make-out silence passed.
“I want to go.” she said.
“Now?”
“I don’t mean the party. I mean, I just want to get away. Hop on a plane and just be somewhere else. Anywhere else but here. Like Japan, I want to see Tokyo. Or Ireland.”
“I went to Ireland.”
“You did?”
“Yeah, for Spring Break. Heh, yeah, screw Bermuda and Cancun. I like my Spring Break dank and bleak, damn it.”
She giggled, and boy, was it nice to make her giggle. “What’s it like?”
“Oh, it’s gorgeous. It’s like a third world country, but in a good way.”
“I so wanna go.”
“Maybe I’ll take you with me someday,” I said and held her closer. We both knew it was a lie, but we didn’t care. It was one of those little lies you don’t want to believe is a lie, not at the time you say it. You hope that just saying aloud it might make it true someday.
I would not see her again for three weeks, as I had to rehearse for my latest part. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention, upon my return I discovered that the drama department had lifted their Hefner embargo. By the end of the semester, several of these kids would be some of my closest friends! Go figure.
Tammy and Paul drove up together to see my performance in a play called Blue Surge. It was a performance that made such an impression on people that, if for nothing else, I shall be remembered by these people for the rest of their lives. Because I was naked.
In my first scene, I played a undercover cop in a “massage” parlor. The whores have a system; if he doesn’t take his underwear off, then he’s a cop. Just give him a regular massage and send him on his way. So my character has to be totally relaxed and not self-conscious in the least as he strips completely for the girl. We tried to figure out of there was any way for me to get naked out of sight from the audience, but we knew that was impossible. It was on-stage seating. In the round. So while it was unavoidable for me, at least I had the dubious amusement of knowing that, no matter where they sat, it would also be unavoidable for the audience. It was gonna be the full monty, and we were all in it together.
Word soon spread throughout the school about my nude scene, which I dare say accounted a bit for the near-full-houses both nights. To make it easier for us all, I decided that I would ad-lib a little song and dance into the striptease. When I pulled my shirt off, people started laughing. Then off came the shoes, the socks, the pants, and they’re still laughing. When I’m dancing around in my shiny purple boxer shorts, they’re laughing even harder. And when the boxer shorts came off? Dead silence. People would later testify to watching the spectacle of every other audience member bring their hands to their mouths in unison. I danced around stage completely in the buff, then ended my song with a proud and triumphant Superman stance. I am proud to say that, to this day, no one can ever listen to Harry Nilsson’s “You Put De Lime in De Coconut” without shuddering.
In the years since Blue Surge, whenever someone mentions that scene they always say, “I could never have done that.” Every time I hear someone say that, the less it sounds like a compliment.
Paul came equipped with a bottle of booze for each of us to enjoy afterwards. I reluctantly sipped Bailey’s all night, while Tammy had her Malibu. Paul single-handedly took on an entire bottle of Southern Comfort, the special kind that’s something like 200% proof that bored southerners use in drinking contests to see who’ll go blind first.
“I should have brought some weed,” he said while distributing the bottles to us in my cloister. “That’s what we could truly use about now.”
“No, Paul,” Tammy said. She looked at me to tell me she knew how uncomfortable I was. I didn’t even want to think about her high. I couldn’t bear it. “No.”
Paul took us on a very special personal tour of the campus, like, “That’s Kent House, I fucked a girl there, and that’s Hartford, I fucked two girls there…”
“Paul, at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if you fucked that lamp pole.”
“I… no, ok, not there. But I did have sex in that very theatre in which you just performed, my friend. As well as down in the prop basement, on as many props as we could. And on one of the professor’s desks. I don’t think he ever found out about that.”
“Ah, lovely. Well, did you fulfill your ‘senior obligation’?”
“How do you mean?”
“Did you have sex in the green room?”
He paused to consider the question.
“Does an orgy count as sex?”
We went over to the graveyard just beyond the track field, across a bridge suspended over a trickling ravine. Students weren’t really supposed to be out in the graveyard at all hours of the night, but for many it was the ideal place to go hang with your friends to drink, to bring a lover to fool around with, or if one wasn’t the superstitious type, to be alone.
The centerpiece of the graveyard is a heartbreakingly beautiful angel headstone about fifteen feet tall. On Halloween, the Writer’s Union holds midnight readings under her watch. Countless students (Paul included of course, duh, of course him too, especially Paul) have made love under her wings. I wish I could hear her tell all those stories to which she has been witness. I’d kinda like her take on what happened that night.
We were walking back toward the bridge, and Paul was in full wasted Renaissance Faire bard mode. Tammy said, “I'm a bad person.”
“No you are not,” Paul said.
“I fucked him,” she said. "I got high and I fucked him, oh god...”
I didn't know who she was talking about, didn't really want to know. Who was this? Someone besides Bryan? How many others? Don’t you dare think about it, boy. Don’t…
“You are not a bad person," Paul said again, his drunken voice like smooth velvet.
“Oh god, if Bryan knew..."
“Shh…”
“… if anybody knew what I was really like, how I really am, no one would love me. If they really knew, no one could ever love me.”
I said nothing, could say nothing. I just took her hands and looked at her face, her tears glistening in the dim parking lot streetlights.
“That is not true,” Paul said. “You may not wish to believe it so, but that is not true. Look at this man before you. Look at him. This man has no illusions about who or what you are. He has understood you from the moment you met. This man loves you, my dear! He burns with love. He loves you with every inch of his person, to the very depths of his soul. His heart bleeds liquid fire for you, only for you, and he shall never, ever love another so much as you.”
She looked up at me, and after a moment asked: “Why are you crying? You shouldn't be having to cry too.”
She walked down the bridge toward the theatre and we let her be alone for a few moments. Paul chugged back the last of the Southern Comfort and came in close toward me. The drunken minstrelsy was gone.
“Hey, uh, I was just kinda bullshitting all that back there. Was I actually right?”
Quietly, I said, “Yes.”
“Thank fucking Christ,” Paul said, and smashed the bottle onto the parking lot.
Later, Paul’d pass out cold, nestled in the narrow strip of floor between my bed and my desk inside the cloister. She told me not to worry about waking him; he was so out, we could have done it on his body. He might have liked that, come to think of it. Ew. I went down on her again, this time with no problems, except for the fact that near the end she was shoving my head so hard that I actually started to suffocate. I pulled away, tired and ready to stop.
“I want you,” she said. “I want you so badly.”
“You're drunk, Tammy.”
“No I'm not.”
“Yes, you are. The first thing alcohol robs you of is judgment and…”
“Oh fuck you.”
“Tammy,” I said, swallowing the hurt of the insult. “This is me. I know what I'm talking about.”
“… I just… I want you so much. I know you want me too.”
“Yes. Yes I do. But you're drunk. And we both know you're not mine to have.”
She turned her eyes away from me and lay down next to me. The bed was so small I nearly rolled onto Paul, who was snoring underneath me and drooling on the dirty tile. I put my arm around her and hoped to get us a couple hours of sleep before she and Paul had to head back. They both had to be at work in eight hours.
“It’s doomed,” she said. “I just wish I didn’t feel… I… God, Heffie. You make everything so confusing,” she said. Those words, more than any others that she would say to me, stayed with me for the months to follow.
TO BE CONTINUED...
I should also note that while I think all the events of this story are very much in the past for everyone, several of you are featured in it. If there's anything that you find objectionable, please let me know and I'll change/delete it. The LAST thing I wanted to do with this is to step on toes or re-open old wounds.
I hope you enjoy.
“So there I was jabbering at her about my new job as a serious newsman - about anything at all - but all I could think was ‘oh wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, most wonderful and yet again, wonderful.’”
-Steve Martin quoting “As You Like It,” L.A. STORY
She could have worn a sign around her neck that read “TROUBLE” underlined three times with stars and sparkles, and I probably would have just fallen all the harder.
It’s hardly surprising that she’d be the first new face that caught my attention at the read-through of As You Like It. Tammy was an attention magnet; no, not even a magnet. She was like a magnetic sponge of attention, and when she walked into a room, she took everyone’s notice. But at the time, my attention was squarely on people like Alan, Rachel, Sean, Josh, Jaki, all the people whom I loved and missed and thanked God they weren’t there to see me get drunk.
I made some joke, of course I can’t even remember what it was now. It probably had something to do with comics, geekery, my hilarious ineffectuality with women, y’know, the Hefner classics. What I do remember was that amid the laughter (such glorious music to my attention-whore ears), I heard a distinct, joyous, and wholly unfamiliar giggle. One of the newer members, a new and improved model, SimFreshman 2.0. A small young girl of nineteen with a smile that shook your foundations and a laugh that brought you tumbling down to the ground. This was Tammy Raistrick, and for months the Rudes had been wondering what would happen when she and I would finally meet.
I don’t think Tammy thought of herself as sexy. Deep down inside, or maybe not even that deeply at all, I think she was still that insecure, mousy, frumpy, lonely girl from all those stories she used to tell me about her cold and abusive childhood. A girl who was unloved and unlovable, not beautiful, not intelligent, not worth it. But at some point down the line, she realized it didn’t matter what she thought. Because she knew that everyone else thought she was sexy. And really, that’s all that mattered.
Although to call her sexy isn’t exactly correct. I don’t really have photos of her, aside from the publicity shots we did for Rudes shows and that one of us at Birthday Ball. Not a single one of these few pics I have really catch the true essence of this girl’s appeal. I don’t think that’s the fault of any photographer. No photo I’ve seen of her even comes close to capturing what we all saw in her every night at rehearsal and at Bennigans.
She wasn’t so much sexy in her physical appearance, not like she was exactly lacking. She had a round head with a small pout and large, wide eyes, making her resemble one of the anime characters she loved so much. God how she hated it anytime someone made that comparison. Classically sexy, she certainly was not. American Idol turned her town not because she didn’t have the voice, which she certainly did, but because she “didn’t have the look.” It’s a shame. She would have been great.
What this girl had was something that really needed to be seen in person to be truly appreciated. It was in every glance she gave you, every squeal of a giggle, every wiggle of her butt when she danced, every ice cube she snatched out of a water glass and sucked on for us all to see. I remember once at Bennigans I was sitting around with her, Josh, Kevin, and Sean. Tammy picked up a slice of lemon and proceeded to suck on it while we were all talking with one another. One by one, everyone’s conversations died down as they turned to look at her, until Josh was the only one who hadn’t noticed.
He was still rambling to me about something or other, and I just droned, “Can’t talk. Watching Tammy fellate lemon.”
The table exploded in laughter- it was the only time I ever managed to break both Sean and Kevin, twin pillars of Rudes’ dry humor- and Tammy chucked the lemon slice at my face. The stinging in the eyes was worth it.
Whoever coined the term “Sex Kitten,” must have been thinking about a Tammy. I’m not exactly talking figuratively here either. Like, at random moments she would often get all fours and do a yoga stretch, y’know, like a cat would. Head pressed to the ground and butt sticking as far up and out as it can go. Yeah, this little maneuver could stop all conversation at twenty yards. When called on it, she professed innocence. “What’s everyone looking at me like that for?” Did she really not know? Hell, I couldn’t tell you. Flirting was so hardwired into that girl that I could believe she’d do things like that without even thinking anymore. That’s one of the reasons girls like Tammy are so dangerous. The only thing that’s worse than a girl how knows how to wrap a man around her finger… is a girl who doesn’t know that they have that ability.
Now for a whole different reason, Bennigans went back to being my weekly highlight. I got to spend my nights with my best friends and a girl who was sex on a stick. Tammy spent less time in her own seat and more in the laps of various Rudes. No one seemed to have a problem with this, for some reason. I know I sure as hell didn’t, especially when mine became her favored lap.
But for all her flirtations, we knew she was off-limits and very much taken. His name was Bryan, a scruffy, skinny kid who worked at the mall bookstore. Her first lay and her first love, and after two other boyfriends she was finally back with him to stay. As the years have gone by, I don’t always know what to think when it comes to all the life stories she told me, how much of it was true and how much was just, well, her version of events, but I still remember the way she talked about him.
I imagine her much like I was at her age, a child of an abusive parent, convinced of their own unworthiness, alone in those confusing and often disturbing years of budding adolescence and bubbling hormones. I tried to imagine what it would have been like to have lived like that for so long and then had someone come out of the blue. For the first time in your life, there is someone who thinks that you’re beautiful, that you are wonderful. That you are Worth It. I tried to imagine how differently my life would have turned out if I had met a someone like that, a someone I had not even met at age twenty. That was Bryan. Her first love, the boy she had gone back to after two other relationships fell through. The boy she was going to be engaged with at twenty and marry when she turned twenty-one.
Flirting with Tammy had become the great Rude Mechanicals pastime that summer because she was hot, funny, geeky, flirty, and totally safe. So it was under this mindset that I set out to pursue a friendship with Tammy Raistrick.
Oh, yeah. You know where this is going. Just wait, it gets better.
We had long movie nights at my house, and I’d always be certain to rent a horror movie so I could have an excuse to say, “Tammy, can you hold me? I’m scared!” Yes, I’m a pussy, but it worked, so shut up. We hung out at Bethesda’s most famous greasy spoon, the Tastee Diner, and held long, intense, personal conversations over burgers and milkshakes, as all long, intense, and personal conversations really should be held.
She soon became comfortable enough around me to open up about her past and her dreams. She would casually throw out little factoids about herself, tidbits like how she was a level two psychic vampire. It’d take me a couple seconds to realize she wasn’t kidding, but hey, I didn’t scoff. Whether or not I believed it didn’t matter so much as the fact that she did. She was able to share pretty much anything with me and I wouldn’t look at her like she was crazy. Because hey, what did I know? I was in no position to judge.
It actually did kinda bother me when she said she secretly wanted to become a stripper. I mean, on one hand, you have all the societal and moral implications and how it might affect a person’s self-worth. On the other hand, you had Tammy naked. So you can understand how torn I was. At first, I was supportive of the idea, hey, live your own life, do what you want. But the more I got to thinking about it, the more the idea troubled me. I couldn’t say why. Just for some reason, the thought of Tammy doing that really bothered me. Almost as much, I began to realize, as the idea of her getting married. Huh. Weird.
Of course, anybody thinking with their brains could see exactly how this was going and how it would end. You gotta understand, I was still secure in the knowledge that it would go nowhere. I mean, how could it? This girl was totally and completely taken. Helplessly in love with the boy she called her soul-mate. And what as I? The pudgy geek with muttonchops and a mop-top, a sweet kid who’d gotten used to years of being the sexless and unthreatening ‘special friend’ to a half dozen girls in his lifetime. I was not Worth It. So as such I was totally unprepared, two months later, when she told me that she loved me.
But one month before all that, before the wedding and before As You Like It would open and close, I had to return to Washington College for Junior year. It’s amazing what one semester away could do; with most of my former detractors graduated and a fresh-cooked batch of freshmen coming in, I found myself greeted like an old friend time and again by people I hardly knew. By the semester’s end, I would even be close friends with several of my Fuddy Meers cast mates. Hell, I should have never come back at all. I would have been the most popular guy in school!
Clancy was still there, at that point in his fifth year. We remained friendly, but we were never more than friendly acquaintances from that point on. We’d catch each other on the Cater Walk, say hi, and usually chat about comics. He was the only other person on that campus who really knew about comics. And since comic fans are so rare, when you find one you kinda have to talk comics with them every so often. But that would be pretty much it from that point on. That friendship sort of died away in favor of better and stronger to come. But what really piqued my interest was that my hopes had come true. Hot damn, Robyn and Clancy had broken up. Now it was Heffie’s time to shine!
I treated Robyn to dinner at La Routa, the finest Italian restaurant Chestertown. That is to say, the nicer of the two Italian restaurants in Chestertown. I don’t know what happened. A year before, this girl and I could talk for hours, but the date just went nowhere. A nice enough nowhere, don’t get me wrong, but still there was a distinct lack of sparks. Of course, I didn’t stop trying there, but in the days to come my attempts to hang with her proved frustrating as she became colder and more distant. Anytime I tried to hang with her, she was always accompanied by her roommate Andi and her “pet freshman” Hosey. This became even more uncomfortable as any idiot could tell that she and her “pet” were getting mighty close. Once I realized how lost this cause was, I fell into a bit of a funk by the time As You Like It finally rolled around.
Or so it would have been, if it weren’t for Hurricane Isabel. This part of the story you already know.
… you remember, the party? The wedding…? Me telling everybody the story at Turkeymas…?
Good grief, you people have short attention spans. Go back and skim over the first story again. Refresh your memory. And if you haven’t read it already, what the hell? Go on. Go. I’ll wait.
Back? Good. Don’t let it happen again.
As I said back there, I omitted a few details about what really went on between Tammy and me that night. After feelings were confessed and we made out for the first time, we had a few moments to ourselves to talk before we headed to the second cast party at Alan and Rachel’s. We’d spent the vast majority of that day on her couch, watching movies and, well… you know. When I finally stood up after a day on the couch of movie watching and tongue wrestling, the world rippled like water around me, like someone just brushed their fingers against the surface.
“Woah,” I said, falling back down into the sofa. “I feel like all my energy’s been sapped out of me.”
“Oh no,” Tammy said, and suddenly looked very guilty and ashamed.
“What?”
“No, no, it’s just… it’s me,” she said, and the words sounded like a confession. “It’s what I do to people. I’ve been really worried for Bryan. He keeps getting more and more tired, too exhausted to even work some days, and I know it’s my fault. This is what I do.”
I cocked her a cynical look.
“Oh come on, Tammy. What are you, a succubus?”
She looked at me with tear-filled eyes and suddenly I remembered. She looked away in shame.
“Oh.”
I stood again, a headache now mushrooming, and I said, “Look, all I had to eat all day was that soup you gave me. A single can of chicken noodle soup on the Tammy-Bri budget household. So I’m probably just malnourished, that’s all. It’s not you, ok?”
She nodded, clearly not going to believe me but appreciating me saying so.
“I gotta get ready for the party,” she said, and disappeared upstairs. I waited in silence amid the squalor of Bri and Tammy’s house, a mess of clothes, books, and Playstation 2 games. A funny thought came to me then, one I didn’t think much of at the time. All I’d eaten was a can of soup all day and I wasn’t the least bit hungry. But it was a fleeting though, soon forgotten when I saw her descend those stairs. She wore a Chinese dress, burning fuchsia, not unlike the silver number she would be wearing exactly two weeks later.
Thanks to Hurricane Isabel, Alan and Rachel’s house was still without electricity, which meant room temperature beer and a very ambient candlelit party for a wound-up cast with no play to perform. When we walked into the already-liquored-up fray, all eyes went to Tammy. Maybe it was the lack of electricity, but I think we all got the sense even early on that this was to be no ordinary cast party. This party had a distinct end-of-the-world scent in the air, like our responsibilities and reservations had been cancelled, if not for now then at least for the weekend. With more than a little hedonism brewing in the back of most of their minds, Tammy was the star of the show. Any other night, I would have been no different than any of ‘em. But hey, it was a party, I told myself. Relax, have fun and let them have fun. Don’t be Captain Buzzkill.
But if Tammy was the star, Paul Davis was the emcee. Paul was a Rude who joined the troupe with As You Like It. He was also, coincidentally, an alumnus of Washington College, one of the Drama professors’ favorite students. Another important little fact to keep in mind about Paul is that Paul likes to fuck. A lot. I actually spent a few minutes trying to think of something witty and elaborate to sorta exaggerate his libido, but nothing I say could really be an exaggeration. He likes to fuck a hell of a lot. He exudes a sexual energy that would almost be like a parody of a Renaissance Fair lothario if it weren’t so dammed effective.
Also at the party was another familiar face from my early days with the Rudes, a girl named Chenoa. When I first joined the troupe, Chenoa was sixteen and working behind the scenes with the Rudes on tech, production, and such. Many people, including me, found Chenoa quite attractive, but like Tammy she was taken and unlike Tammy she kept the flirting to a safe minimum. And because she was so young, the Rudes wisely kept their flirtations to themselves. This was Chenoa’s first appearance with the Rudes for awhile, and the mood that was already thick in the air was only heightened when, one by one, we all realized that, hey, she had just turned eighteen. So like all big events, this all started with a simple idea:
“Wouldn’t it be cool if Tammy and Chenoa made out?”
It seemed sensible enough at the time. Even I thought, “Hey, awesome!” Then they started doing it, and who doesn’t love two hot girls making out, right? Yet a funny feeling came over me. Huh, I thought. I’m not turned on by this. In fact, I think I’m vaguely uncomfortable with this for some reason. Why on earth would that be?
Being the only one sexually aggressive enough to do what many of the others could not, Paul got in on the action then, making out with one, then the other, then both. Next thing I know the three of them are lounging in a huge chair and Paul’s shirt is off. Chenoa’s on the left and Tammy’s on his right, making out with him, then each other, touching and licking to the amused hoots and hollers of the Rudes.
I decide now would be a good time for a drink.
I grab a green apple flavored vodka drink that tasted like an evil Jolly Rancher and tried not to worry. It’s a party, she wants to have fun. They all want to have fun. But there she was, making out with him and then, before too long, with anybody who wanted to, and all I could think of was that not two hours before this, she told me she loved me.
“Aw, I think Heffie feels like he’s being left out!” someone said. “I think it’s Heffie’s turn!”
More “Yeah!”s and “Woo!”s filled the room. Any other time, I would have gladly partaken of this latest installment of “Let’s Chip Away at Heffie’s Innocence!” At my very first Rudes cast party, Jaki was encouraged to show me first-hand why men have nipples. So this, of course, was the logical extension, the class upgrade, if you will. Fun with Heffie’s Nipples 102. Paul relinquished his throne for the modest consolation prize of going to make out with Jaki.
I say that, positively dripping with irony, since for all the years I’d been with the troupe I, along with several other men and a couple women, have spent many a rehearsal drooling over Jaki between lines. You try running scenes with a beautiful woman wearing nothing but black latex pants and a flesh colored sports bra and see how good your Shakespeare sounds. So yeah, at that party Paul was doing just fine.
I took my shirt off and nestled in between the two girls. Man, I tell you, I would have killed to have been in that position even twenty four hours beforehand. I always wanted to make our with Chenoa, and now I had my chance, but… I looked around at everyone, watching us. Then I looked at Tammy. A draft was chilling my bare torso, and I felt absurd and stupid. I just shook my head.
“I can’t do this,” I said, and then again to Tammy, “I can’t do this.”
She nodded, with a touch of sad understanding. I scooped my shirt back up and tried to let them be again. She went out to the porch with the smokers, kissing anyone bold enough to offer. Paul was making out with Jaki on the floor, others were fooling around with each other and I couldn’t even find a warm body of my own to get my mind off of how uncomfortable I was. Some days I think that even in an orgy I’d be the odd man out.
I sat on the couch with Paul while he fooled around with Chenoa a bit more. Tammy came back in and sat with me.
“You doing ok?” she asked.
“Well,” I said, trying to sound casual, “I do kind of feel like I’m the only one not making out with somebody.”
What I hoped to be a cue for her was interrupted by Paul, who heard this and put his arm around me.
“My dear boy,” he said, his breath a haze of whiskey and sex, “why didn’t you say something sooner?”
Before I could laugh it off, Tammy cooed, “Oh my god, that’d be so hot.”
And so of course, next thing I knew, I was making out with Paul. It only lasted a couple of seconds. The immediate mental image I had to describe the sexual chemistry of the moment was that of a wet towel slapping against a brick wall, peeling off, and plopping to the ground. It was like kissing pubic hair with teeth and a tongue. With that libertine beard of his, if I kept it up any longer I might have gotten rug burn. The things I would do to turn a girl on. But hey, at least I was now absolutely certain that I was, after all, extremely straight, and Tammy was very, very turned on. So it was kinda worth it.
She spent the rest of the party in my arms, the two of us holding each other and kissing beside Alan’s fireplace. Then she took my hand and led me into the back room, Alan’s gaming parlor, and I’m thinking my god, it’s happening, it’s just like what normal teenagers do at parties and I’m finally doing it myself, and it’s with her, with her, my god, with her.
We could barely see one another in the darkness, but neither of us cared. We lay out on the futon, our tongues intertwining and bodies writhing together clumsily. As we kissed, I felt short little acidic bursts from the back of my throat, and after pulling away from her I- oh god, no- released a little burp.
“I’m sorry,” I said, certain that once again my John Hefnerness has ended this right there and then, “I have acid reflux. I’m just…”
She shushes me, says, “It’s ok, I have it too,” and kisses me again like nothing had happened. I slip my hand inside her top, my fingers skirting around the edge of her breast but not daring to go any further unless she tells me to do so. She does. It’s soft, so soft it seems to shudder at my touch. When I nibble her earlobe she emits a sound that makes me want to sell my entire comic collection just to hear again. In that darkened game room, she takes me further than I’d ever gone, and we touch every base but home before we’re through.
But more than anything else, I want to do whatever it takes to make her feel good. With her taking charge just enough to give me my cue, I kiss her breasts, her belly, and her fingers slip under her skirt to pull down her panties. I go in. And the second my tongue touches a foreign surface, I feel a sudden rush slam into the back of my throat. I manage to stifle a great “URP!” and I force myself to dive in. I just start going to town in there, having only the vaguest idea of what the hell I’m supposed to be doing and I don’t know if it’s the acid reflux or the taste or just the odd texture on my tongue, but I’m just barely choking back percolating lumps in my throat. I want to stop, abort mission, game over man game over, but the sounds she’s making, she’s moaning and she gasps, “Oh Heffie…” and I’d always wondered why people said “Say my name, bitch!” and now I knew, they did it because it was fucking hot, so I can’t stop because I know, I know she’s almost there, but I also know that if I don’t, one of us is gonna blow and I don’t think it’s gonna be her…! Just before she climaxes, I pulled my head up and I say:
“Tammy, I… am so… so sorry.”
I pull up my pants, race through the party, up the stairs, into Alan’s bathroom, and throw up.
Ah. Yes. There’s that John Hefnerness. I was wondering where that went.
I plod back downstairs, still holding my pants up because I hadn’t even thought to buckle my belt, and trudge through the party of Rudes. They don’t seem to take particular note of me in this state, so thank god they at least don’t know that they’ve become my living Walk of Shame back to Tammy in the game room.
I apologize profusely, but again she shushes me. And again she kisses me, and I begin to wonder if there really isn’t anything I can do to faze this girl. God may be a vicious and sadistic bastard sometimes, but he ignores this very open opportunity and decides to leave me alone. After all, from this point on Tammy and I will take care of all the fucking up on our own just fine. I finish her off with my hand and we lie down together. Two rooms away, we can hear the laughter of the Rudes.
I realized that I didn’t call Jaki like I promised. I realized that I didn’t really care anymore.
“So what now?” I ask.
Sounding carefully rehearsed, she said, “I want to be able to keep doing this. As friends. I really care about you and I would love to do this more. But I want to keep this secret. I don’t want to hurt Bryan. Ok?”
And of course, I said, “Tammy… I don’t think I can do that.”
I didn’t realize what a punch to the gut my words were. This was a girl who was used to guys lying for her, to having guys willing to do all manner of things for her. A Dame to Lie For. I told her I’d think about it, but she already knew as well as I did that I couldn’t lie about this. Like I said, I wanted to tell the world. Hell, it’s one of the reasons I’m writing this right now.
Everything seemed different when I got back to college. My day to day life went from normal to Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy food Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy sleep Tammy Tammy Tammy. (I would have included masturbation in there as a gag, but I tell you, that “Oh Heffie…” of hers made pornography utterly useless. For, like, three whole weeks.)
Even still, I was determined not to let any of this get in the way of As You Like It, come performance time. I went up there to play Silvius, the idiot shepherd boy helplessly in love with Phebe, who was being played by Rachel. But Phebe was in love with the boy Ganymede, whom she didn’t realize was actually Rosalind (Tammy) in disguise. And then there’s Orlando, played by Paul, who doesn’t realize that his pal Ganymede is actually Rosalind, the girl with whom he’s helplessly in love. I’d say it makes more sense to see it actually performed, but that’d be a dirty lie.
There’s a scene where Phebe tries to use Silvius to explain the nature of love to “Ganymede”, and it was a scene I had been playing with my usual arm-flailing silliness. That’s why I was cast, after all. No one can flail an arm quite like John Hefner. So then the time came for me to say my lines in the actual performance, but the words didn’t come out the same way. Something was different. Something changed.
When Phebe commanded me to “tell this youth what ‘tis to love,” I said, with quiet tenderness, “It is to be all made of fantasy, all made of passion, and all made of wishes.”
The arms stay right at my side. The silliness, gone. I said, “All adoration, duty, and observance. All humbleness. All patience and… and impatience! All… purity…”
I look at Tammy.
“…all trial…”
And she looks back.
“… all observance… and, uh, so am I for Phebe!”
“And so am I for Ganymede!” Phebe/Rachel says.
“And so am I for Rosalind!” Orlando/Paul says.
“And so am I for no man!” Tammy says, snapping back into character as Ganymede. If you hadn’t known there was something going on between us, you wouldn’t have noticed anything was different. The Rudes sure noticed, yes they did. Some had been waiting for this to happen for months. But I knew it had to end.
After the show, just before I would call it off with her in the parking lot of Bennigans, I intercepted Tammy leaving the theatre with Bryan and gave her a rose. This was the first rose I ever gave her, but it wouldn’t carry the impact of the one I would give her one week later at the wedding.
“Congrats, you did it,” I said. She squeaked and hugged me. I didn’t look at Bryan, didn’t want to see his reaction. Didn’t want to know if he was already suspicious of me. I wonder what he was thinking when he picked her up in the Bennigans lot that night when the two of us were standing there, holding each other and saying goodbye? I don’t think I’d ever want to know.
“Yeah, we all know she’s poison,” Josh told my mother, “but we still want them to get together.”
At the wedding, after the dancing and the rose and the erection, Tammy and I finally did find a quiet corner to sit and talk. I had hoped that with discussion and reason we could find some sort of resolution, but nothing we could say could change a damn thing and we knew it. Were we going to call it off or keep going? Neither of us said anything either way. When she asked, all I could say was:
“‘So holy and so perfect is my love, and I in such a poverty of grace, that I shall think it a most plenteous crop to glean the broken ears after the man that the main harvest reaps. Loose now and then a scatter’d smile and that I’ll live upon.’”
She smiled, and I could see she was about to cry. That was good enough for me.
The very next day I was on my way back to Washington College when Tammy called me up. I don’t recall the specifics, but between multiple vehicle malfunctions, missed appointments, and just plain mean people, well, suffice it to say that Tammy had the day from Heck. She was miserable and wanted nothing else in this world but to see me. Not Bryan, not anyone else, just me. But I couldn’t, I told her, I had to be back at school in time for a rehearsal. There was just no way I could stay with her. So I swung by her place, picked her up, and took her to college with me.
Driving up, I kept her entertained by filling her in on the current goings-on in X-MEN (“And it was Magneto all along!” “Wow!” “Oh, and I think Jean’s dead again.”) and I re-enacted as best as I could from memory a story of the Incredible Hulk’s final days. When I got to the jade giant’s tragic dying words, “Hulk… feels… cold…” I think she was actually moved. I can only imagine what it must have been like to have been driving with a guy who was getting really into character as the Hulk.
We spent the night together in my dorm room, a single the size of a monk’s cloister. This particular dorm used to be a frat house, but the frat got kicked off campus for selling cocaine and pot, among other things, so yay me. There was hardly enough room for us both in there, much less on that mattressed splinter of a bed, but we made do best we could. This basically involved snuggling.
She wanted to sleep with me, but I couldn’t allow that. We could do anything else, oral, messing around, fingering, licking, animals, vegetables, minerals… but actual intercourse? I was still a virgin, and I wanted to lose my virginity with someone I cared about, someone who would make it worthwhile. It’s funny, Rachel once told me that she thought it would be great if I lost my virginity to Tammy, that she would be the kind of person who would make it a good experience. But my feelings for the girl had taken me to the point of no return, and as long as she was with Bryan, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It just wasn’t… right. Y’know?
The next day, before I drove her back home, I showed her one of my favorite movies, A Mighty Wind. She fell in love with it instantly. When I came back down couple weeks later for a Rudes party, Tammy and I sat on the porch and sang “A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow” seven times in a row. I don’t think if either Mitch or Mickey had intended the kiss at the end to include a few slips of the tongue, but screw ‘em, they’re not real anyway. We held each other, and a long contemplative post-make-out silence passed.
“I want to go.” she said.
“Now?”
“I don’t mean the party. I mean, I just want to get away. Hop on a plane and just be somewhere else. Anywhere else but here. Like Japan, I want to see Tokyo. Or Ireland.”
“I went to Ireland.”
“You did?”
“Yeah, for Spring Break. Heh, yeah, screw Bermuda and Cancun. I like my Spring Break dank and bleak, damn it.”
She giggled, and boy, was it nice to make her giggle. “What’s it like?”
“Oh, it’s gorgeous. It’s like a third world country, but in a good way.”
“I so wanna go.”
“Maybe I’ll take you with me someday,” I said and held her closer. We both knew it was a lie, but we didn’t care. It was one of those little lies you don’t want to believe is a lie, not at the time you say it. You hope that just saying aloud it might make it true someday.
I would not see her again for three weeks, as I had to rehearse for my latest part. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention, upon my return I discovered that the drama department had lifted their Hefner embargo. By the end of the semester, several of these kids would be some of my closest friends! Go figure.
Tammy and Paul drove up together to see my performance in a play called Blue Surge. It was a performance that made such an impression on people that, if for nothing else, I shall be remembered by these people for the rest of their lives. Because I was naked.
In my first scene, I played a undercover cop in a “massage” parlor. The whores have a system; if he doesn’t take his underwear off, then he’s a cop. Just give him a regular massage and send him on his way. So my character has to be totally relaxed and not self-conscious in the least as he strips completely for the girl. We tried to figure out of there was any way for me to get naked out of sight from the audience, but we knew that was impossible. It was on-stage seating. In the round. So while it was unavoidable for me, at least I had the dubious amusement of knowing that, no matter where they sat, it would also be unavoidable for the audience. It was gonna be the full monty, and we were all in it together.
Word soon spread throughout the school about my nude scene, which I dare say accounted a bit for the near-full-houses both nights. To make it easier for us all, I decided that I would ad-lib a little song and dance into the striptease. When I pulled my shirt off, people started laughing. Then off came the shoes, the socks, the pants, and they’re still laughing. When I’m dancing around in my shiny purple boxer shorts, they’re laughing even harder. And when the boxer shorts came off? Dead silence. People would later testify to watching the spectacle of every other audience member bring their hands to their mouths in unison. I danced around stage completely in the buff, then ended my song with a proud and triumphant Superman stance. I am proud to say that, to this day, no one can ever listen to Harry Nilsson’s “You Put De Lime in De Coconut” without shuddering.
In the years since Blue Surge, whenever someone mentions that scene they always say, “I could never have done that.” Every time I hear someone say that, the less it sounds like a compliment.
Paul came equipped with a bottle of booze for each of us to enjoy afterwards. I reluctantly sipped Bailey’s all night, while Tammy had her Malibu. Paul single-handedly took on an entire bottle of Southern Comfort, the special kind that’s something like 200% proof that bored southerners use in drinking contests to see who’ll go blind first.
“I should have brought some weed,” he said while distributing the bottles to us in my cloister. “That’s what we could truly use about now.”
“No, Paul,” Tammy said. She looked at me to tell me she knew how uncomfortable I was. I didn’t even want to think about her high. I couldn’t bear it. “No.”
Paul took us on a very special personal tour of the campus, like, “That’s Kent House, I fucked a girl there, and that’s Hartford, I fucked two girls there…”
“Paul, at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if you fucked that lamp pole.”
“I… no, ok, not there. But I did have sex in that very theatre in which you just performed, my friend. As well as down in the prop basement, on as many props as we could. And on one of the professor’s desks. I don’t think he ever found out about that.”
“Ah, lovely. Well, did you fulfill your ‘senior obligation’?”
“How do you mean?”
“Did you have sex in the green room?”
He paused to consider the question.
“Does an orgy count as sex?”
We went over to the graveyard just beyond the track field, across a bridge suspended over a trickling ravine. Students weren’t really supposed to be out in the graveyard at all hours of the night, but for many it was the ideal place to go hang with your friends to drink, to bring a lover to fool around with, or if one wasn’t the superstitious type, to be alone.
The centerpiece of the graveyard is a heartbreakingly beautiful angel headstone about fifteen feet tall. On Halloween, the Writer’s Union holds midnight readings under her watch. Countless students (Paul included of course, duh, of course him too, especially Paul) have made love under her wings. I wish I could hear her tell all those stories to which she has been witness. I’d kinda like her take on what happened that night.
We were walking back toward the bridge, and Paul was in full wasted Renaissance Faire bard mode. Tammy said, “I'm a bad person.”
“No you are not,” Paul said.
“I fucked him,” she said. "I got high and I fucked him, oh god...”
I didn't know who she was talking about, didn't really want to know. Who was this? Someone besides Bryan? How many others? Don’t you dare think about it, boy. Don’t…
“You are not a bad person," Paul said again, his drunken voice like smooth velvet.
“Oh god, if Bryan knew..."
“Shh…”
“… if anybody knew what I was really like, how I really am, no one would love me. If they really knew, no one could ever love me.”
I said nothing, could say nothing. I just took her hands and looked at her face, her tears glistening in the dim parking lot streetlights.
“That is not true,” Paul said. “You may not wish to believe it so, but that is not true. Look at this man before you. Look at him. This man has no illusions about who or what you are. He has understood you from the moment you met. This man loves you, my dear! He burns with love. He loves you with every inch of his person, to the very depths of his soul. His heart bleeds liquid fire for you, only for you, and he shall never, ever love another so much as you.”
She looked up at me, and after a moment asked: “Why are you crying? You shouldn't be having to cry too.”
She walked down the bridge toward the theatre and we let her be alone for a few moments. Paul chugged back the last of the Southern Comfort and came in close toward me. The drunken minstrelsy was gone.
“Hey, uh, I was just kinda bullshitting all that back there. Was I actually right?”
Quietly, I said, “Yes.”
“Thank fucking Christ,” Paul said, and smashed the bottle onto the parking lot.
Later, Paul’d pass out cold, nestled in the narrow strip of floor between my bed and my desk inside the cloister. She told me not to worry about waking him; he was so out, we could have done it on his body. He might have liked that, come to think of it. Ew. I went down on her again, this time with no problems, except for the fact that near the end she was shoving my head so hard that I actually started to suffocate. I pulled away, tired and ready to stop.
“I want you,” she said. “I want you so badly.”
“You're drunk, Tammy.”
“No I'm not.”
“Yes, you are. The first thing alcohol robs you of is judgment and…”
“Oh fuck you.”
“Tammy,” I said, swallowing the hurt of the insult. “This is me. I know what I'm talking about.”
“… I just… I want you so much. I know you want me too.”
“Yes. Yes I do. But you're drunk. And we both know you're not mine to have.”
She turned her eyes away from me and lay down next to me. The bed was so small I nearly rolled onto Paul, who was snoring underneath me and drooling on the dirty tile. I put my arm around her and hoped to get us a couple hours of sleep before she and Paul had to head back. They both had to be at work in eight hours.
“It’s doomed,” she said. “I just wish I didn’t feel… I… God, Heffie. You make everything so confusing,” she said. Those words, more than any others that she would say to me, stayed with me for the months to follow.
TO BE CONTINUED...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-02-13 11:21 pm (UTC)"all I had to eat all day was that can of beans you gave me" - make it a can of anything else? Or was this foreshadwoing?
"It was like kissing pubic hair with teeth and a tongue" - knowing that Paul has a beard is useful information?
And I feel I most protest "consolation prize of going to make out with Jaki" and defend her...ah, hell, what am I saying? Maybe the word describing the two of them together is "default"?
no subject
Date: 2006-02-14 01:27 am (UTC)But the reader who doesn't know Jaki and the Rudes might not. Hmm... *note to self, write a few paragraphs devoted to Jaki's boobs...* Hmm! I just might have a best-seller here!
no subject
Date: 2006-02-14 05:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-14 12:24 am (UTC)My youth, even my young adulthood, was not at all filled with experiences like this. For what it did to you, what it put you through, I am sad. Above and beyond that, I feel that silly stupid envy that always gets the best of me.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-14 01:16 am (UTC)The part I italicized doesn't make a lot of sense...
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Date: 2006-02-14 01:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-14 05:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-14 01:33 am (UTC)Paul never seemed lecherous. He wasn't. He was just a chick-magnet. He could go to a movie alone and leave with two girls he didn't know and who didn't speak English intending to take him home. When he graduated, watching him try to pick who to take to prom was wager-worthy...
no subject
Date: 2006-02-14 06:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-14 06:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-15 02:29 pm (UTC)by the way, all you writing rocks. every time i read a hefner monologue i find myself thinking in the manner with which you write for hours afterwards.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-15 05:11 pm (UTC)