BURGER SCOOT

I was on my back, Judi was rocking on my pelvis, when a hurled stone shattered the window above us. I reflexively pulled Judi close to me, chest to chest. Later, she would say she felt safe with me as if I was protecting her, but let’s face it, Judi was in a more secure position in her previous “giddy-up” position than down on my chest, where she was protecting my face and chest from any falling shards of glass not to mention the projectile.

Over the last 30 years, I’ve asked myself, “Who was I protecting?” I never think too hard about it because I might end up feeling ashamed by the answer. (Then again, perhaps that’s what this post is all about.) This memory usually segues to that morning when my roommate and best friend, Paul, ran into our old boss while walking to get some donuts at Winchell’s. That meeting inevitably reminds me of the time I unintentionally ratted on him.

Gentle reader, be advised, this story is not for the prudish, and I suggest that any members of my family stop here. The tale gets pretty rough and sometimes too graphic for anyone I see across the Thanksgiving table. This wasn’t me at my finest. Some of the names have been changed here due to the sensitive material. In fact, all of the names except Paul and Judi have been modified. Paul’s name remains because he doesn’t read my blog. When I started this blog I was quite the whore for attention: “Hey, look at me, I’m writing something about me. I’m so special.” Very few people looked up. Anyway, I’m sure this post won’t kill our 35-year-old relationship in the event he reads it, and Judi, because well, she’s dead. More on that at the end. But some background first.

I have submitted many posts in this blog about my time as a member of the floor staff of the Tower Theatre in Sacramento from about 1980 to 1985, but I have never written about the time I accidentally ratted out one of my bosses at that theater. I have also never written about a codependent relationship I had with a woman at that time, who worked as part of the theater floor staff. Perhaps that story is best left untold. I admit I have wanted to consign that one-year relationship to words for years, but some people might think it’s too intimate or embarrassing. The reader can stop here if they like. I won’t be offended. This is my second and final warning.

When I worked in the theater, I had two managers: a Theater Manager, Wayne, and a City Manager, Alex, who oversaw the operations of both the Tower Theatre, where I worked, and the Showcase Cinema, a repertory house that is now, sadly, a parking lot probably thanks to Blockbusters and other video stores. While Wayne was my direct manager, there were shifts when Wayne was off so that I would answer to Alex. That last sentence is important because it was Alex whom I unwittingly narced on.

Then there was Paul, my best friend, fellow Tower Theatre employee, and roommate. As movie theater employees, we couldn’t afford the two-bedroom apartment we lived in, so we moved into one of the rooms and sublet the other one. It worked well enough for a couple of best friends who were virtually inseparable in those days. Between my makeshift desk–a 3′ x 6′ slab of plywood my father gave me, which I placed over two file cabinets–and Paul’s two dressers, we maintained a nominal amount of privacy. We had created a “Wall of Jericho.” Paul and I would talk some evenings, staring at the common ceiling like Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in “It Happened One Night.” Though there was no sexual tension between us like the Gable and Colbert characters, there was sexual frustration in spades. Neither of us was seeing anyone, and when it came to talking to women, we were both hopelessly broken. That is, until I started dating Judi, from work.

Dating Judi created many imbalances: I didn’t care for her very much. Before our first “date” — if you want to call it that — Paul and I would crack jokes about her. Not mean jokes, but we would poke fun at how hopelessly out of step she was with the current vernacular. She called horror films “spook shows,” and her attempts at humor were painfully labored. Paul and I loved to watch bad cinema and laugh at them both in the theaters (which we saw for free through inter-theater employee agreements) and on video (which we also got to rent for free through Tower’s agreement with the video store across the street). Judi would like to come along, but she often feigned laughter, which took some of the fun out of these events. Finally, while I was no Rob Lowe by any stretch of the imagination, I didn’t find her physically appealing. I think it is fair to say that Paul felt the same way. So when I began to date her, Paul didn’t understand, and I could not explain why I was dating her without revealing the truth–I was using her. Before Judi, I had sex less than the number of fingers on one hand, now I was getting it about that many times a week.

There. I said it.

But I was using her in more ways than regular pussy and blowjobs. She edited and retyped my college papers on her breaks at her other job in a law firm using the office’s brand-new word processor. (Remember the half-step between typewriters and PCs and Macs?) These class essays include critical mid-term and term projects.

If I’m sounding like an asshole I’ll agree, but keep this in mind: she used me, too. Judi needed someone–always. She was possessive and could never stand being alone. Long before me and continuing after me, she hopped from one guy to the next with barely a break in the action. I recall driving her home from work the night this all started. When she leaned in for a kiss, I thought she was still dating someone else–I had just seen them together a day or two previous. She explained that Bruce, her last boyfriend, had broken up with her two days ago. I felt like I was just a fill-in, but I was too hard up and horny to think maybe she needs some time to get over Bruce and perhaps I should date someone I liked.

She then asked me if I knew that she had cancer and that it was in remission. I said I heard about it from a staff member. She then told me the cancer was no longer in remission and she had about a year to live. Now, I don’t know how cancer works, but I could tell she was providing me an “out” so I wouldn’t feel trapped.

As a lifetime wallflower, I marveled at how she could work a room at a party or a club. Despite her old-fashioned ways, she could mix it up with twenty-five-year-olds with jet-black spiky hair, a multitude of body piercings, and ripped New York Dolls tees, soften up life-hardened fifty-year-old bartenders, and gay men seemed to have an affinity with her. However, just when the party or club got really humming, and I finally started to loosen up, she would turn to me with a pouty voice and say she was sick and wanted to go home. It was like clockwork, and I swear she must have seen me enjoying myself with other people, including females, and go into the “I’m blue” mode. I’d drive her home, but we always ended up at a coffee shop and then had she went down on my in my car in a stalled housing development, parked along a chain link fence with the Main Post Office on Royal Oaks Drive chugging away into the late night, all flood lamps and steam.

We found various places to be intimate–her house when her dad was out of town (too weird), the occasional hotel room (too expensive), my car (way too often), and only once on this fateful night when the flying rock broke the window and our congress in my apartment. As Paul and I agreed when we decided to bisect the room by building the “Wall of Jericho,” whoever gets lucky would lock the door and post a note so the other wouldn’t bust in on the action. “What a joke!” I thought to myself when we agreed on this plan. “Like either of us is going to get any pussy in this century!” As it turned out, I surprised myself.

So, I was the first to keep out my roommate. I hoped Paul wouldn’t get in until later, but things didn’t work out. In the middle of our horizontal refreshment, Paul walked into the apartment and jiggled the bedroom doorknob. Then I could hear him rip the note off the door with an audible scoff. Judi and I giggled, but I felt bad because he didn’t have a car, so I’m unsure where he went. Also, it reminded me how Paul disapproved of the union. Some time passed, then the window shattered.

After the offending stone had settled on my plywood desk, we gingerly got out of bed, avoiding the sharp bits. Unlike a proper gentleman, I didn’t bother to examine Judi to see if a giant shard of glass meant for my torso had buried itself in her back. We got dressed and turned on the light.

My memory is fussy at this point. We must have picked up all of the large pieces of glass. Judi was disappointed that Paul and I didn’t have a vacuum cleaner. (A vacuum cleaner? Ha! Lucky for her, her blouse didn’t get too wrinkled that night–no iron or the traumatic event didn’t trigger a need for her to toast some bread–no toaster or she didn’t bring some steaks over for some post-coital protein–all we had was one butter knife!) Now that I think about it, I may have walked around that side of the room a couple of days picking up the remaining pieces of glass before we borrowed a vacuum cleaner from Judi, my mom, or the landlady. These post-smash events are very dim, like when the glass was replaced.

One thing I remember is when I first looked through the freshly broken window that night and realized the acute angle of the second-story window from any spot where someone could chuck a rock. You had to want to break this specific window; someone would have to stand near the building next to the apartment complex and throw the rock up to hit the second-story window. If a mischievous kid wanted to get a rush from the sound of breaking glass, there were many windows on the first (and second) floor facing the street and the parking lot.

That’s when I remembered running into Alex driving a bobtail that morning. (Presumably, he was now a truck driver.) Did he stalk me so he could break my window as a “Fuck you, you dirty rat” statement? That seems like a lot of energy for so little return on investment. I mean, he could have “cased the joint,” as they say, until he saw my Honda Civic–Judi’s and my little blowjob on wheels. Then he could have damaged my property–not the innocent property owners. But, I’m getting ahead of myself. How did I end up ratting on Alex, anyway? That story reveals what an absolute dullard I could be at times.

I came to work at the Tower one night and saw Edward, the Regional Manager for the theater chain, who rarely paid us visits, walking around with Wayne. (You’ll recall he was the Theater Manager.) They were looking at the concession stand and behind it, where the storeroom, freezer, and popcorn machine were. The floor staff was buzzing about how Alex, the City Manager, was put on administrative leave.

Some of the staff were defensive of Alex. One guy would ultimately quit in protest, and the assistant manager would make a defiant statement in support of Alex. Since I was the Crew Chief of the floor staff, Edward and Wayne called me to ask me some questions about things that Alex may have talked to me about alone.

I didn’t mind the questioning because I didn’t think I had anything of any importance to say–there was nothing for me to hide. At one point, one of them asked something about soda or popcorn cups, and I queried, not knowing I was going to blow this case wide open, “Do you mean backup popcorn cups?” There was a beat of silence, then Wayne asked me what I was talking about. I said something like, “You know, backup cups. The kind we use when we run out of regular soda or popcorn cups.”

For a moment, they both looked like idiots. Why have they never heard of this? In a split second, I envisioned Alex (or Wayne, for that matter) having to go to some restaurant supply store and buy popcorn or soda cups because they knew the theater would run out of them before the next delivery. It made perfect sense to this dumbshit.

Edward or Wayne asked what the cups looked like. I said, “I think I can do you one better.” With that, I walked over to the freezer and pulled a sleeve of medium-size backup popcorn cups from behind it, which I recalled seeing a couple of nights previously, and showed them to them. They stared at it for a while, then Wayne told me that we never have backup cups. I didn’t say anything, but wanted to ask, “But what do you call these? What do we do if we run out of a particular size of popcorn or soda cups? That’s what these are for.” I didn’t know it then, but I had just provided the theater chain the smoking gun to a suspicion they had about Alex and, I guess, solved some financial irregularities.

Brief explanation: At least when I was working at this theater, film presentation companies didn’t get a dime from ticket sales. The only source of revenue was from concessions–the net sales kept the lights on, the projectors running, and the staff paid. Determining sales, when it came to popcorn and soda, was done by how many cups were on site at the beginning of the day minus how many were left at the end. The difference times the price of that particular size of popcorn or drink. If you switch the cups before, say, the early evening screenings one night, all those backup cups sold, the price of each cup would go straight into the embezzler’s pocket. (I hope I explained that clearly because I don’t want to rewrite it.)

That’s how it was explained to me. What was embarrassing is how I didn’t connect the dots when it was happening: how Alex told me on one or more nights to start using these cups that were stored in an odd place–behind the freezer–not in the locked storeroom where everything except for the ice cream was stored. And telling some new guy that yes, you can do inventory on popcorn and soda like you can Raisinettes and Whoppers–by doing simple math on the popcorn and soda cups “just like I used to do at Taco Bell with soda cups and Enchirito trays.” (How many readers can remember Taco Bell’s ill-fated Enchirito?) If I was so damn smart to the greenhorn how come I didn’t see the Alex thing coming?

That’s how I became a snitch, a narc, a rat. I still think of that moment: me holding that sleeve of outlaw popcorn cups and those two guys staring at it incredulously. I honestly was not intentionally being a snitch. I was so naïve. It was unfortunate that I was so disingenuous to Alex as he sat up in that cab of that bobtail that morning as Paul and I walked for donuts. If I were older, I would’ve said something to him like, “Hey man, I was the guy who accidentally ratted you out. I’m sorry. Edward and Wayne asked me a question, and I answered it, and I had no idea you would lose your job.” Maybe that wouldn’t have been a smart thing to say. Maybe Alex would have said, “Hey man, that’s okay. Hey, wait a minute. I’ve got something for you,” reached into the glove box, pulled out a handgun, and shot me, then Paul, so there were no witnesses. Floor staff gossip said that Alex embezzled to feed a Coke habit.

I don’t remember Judi taking a side in the Alex thing, and I never told her I thought Alex could have thrown the stone. (It’s safe to say I left out the part that maybe in the split-second of the window breaking, I used her as a human shield against falling knives of glass.) A short time later, I attempted to break up with Judi in the parking lot of the local Peppermill. It was late in the evening, and she said something she often said that set me off, and so I tried to terminate the codependent relationship. She said no, then criticized me about something I had long forgotten. All I remember is that I relented. About ten minutes later she was sucking on my cock in the car in that ghost neighborhood near the post office, as usual, as we often did before dropping her off and I drove home feeling like shit, as I often did afterward.

I finally ended the codependent relationship; I’m not sure how. In the second half of the year-long relationship, Judi suddenly dropped the “I have cancer” story and switched to “I’m moving to Boston within a year.” I never asked her what happened with her cancer. By this time, I didn’t give a shit–I was now certain the cancer and Boston stories were her way of giving me an out, or maybe it was her out. Judi was my first relationship lasting more than three dates, so I was a rookie at this stuff and a bad rookie, at that. Shortly after the breakup, I began dating the woman who has been my wife for thirty years. She made me a much better man than the guy in this post.

About a year or so after the breakup, Judi moved to San Francisco. Paul moved to the East Bay. Paul would visit Judi often. From time to time, Paul would tell me she still thinks of me, but also poke fun at my immaturity. Fair enough, I guess. I would remember times in the thick of the dysfunctional relationship, I would think of my hero Bruce Springsteen and his song “Hungry Heart,” which had been on the radio in those days, and I had the album the song was on. I would think of those opening lyrics when I was dating Judi:

Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack
I went out for a ride and I never went back
Like a river that don’t know where it’s flowing
I took a wrong turn and I just kept going

I remember during my darker moments that Bruce was singing to me, it was convenient that my name was Jack. Abruptly exiting would not have been kind, but I wonder if I would feel better about that exit as time passed. Instead, I would sit there eating my Eggplant Parmesan from the vegetarian restaurant she insisted we visit far too often, or watch some film she wanted (me) to see.

Perhaps the worst feeling of relationship regret/panic came when we were at the State Fair. I remember being stuck at the top of a stalled Ferris wheel. I was trapped there with her as she was going on about something I didn’t care about, and I started asking myself, “What was I doing in this relationship?” I started going through the pros and cons of leaving, and the pros were winning by a landslide, at least now. I began to panic and got this overwhelming urge to go home to my bed. My bed was my reset button as the relationship dragged on. “Things will be better in the morning, Jack,” I would say as a mantra lying there in bed after another soul sucking (and cocksucking) date. Back on the Ferris wheel I started saying “Uh-huh” and “Right” to shit she was saying. All the while, I looked around to see how I could climb down the two-hundred-foot ride and leave her up there. My moral struggle with our relationship came down to me getting much-needed help with my class papers; having my balls regularly drained (even if I felt crappy after each time) versus me just leaving. Halfway through the relationship we both got tire of birth control so she suggested anal sex. This instantly cured my Delayed Ejaculation problem I always had. The problem now is that’s all I wanted to do was that and after I came I couldn’t figure out who I hated more her or me. Being passive, I just grew cold and quiet and wanted to run every red light to get her home as fast as possible and dropped her off didn’t make me feel any better.

Okay, that’s how bad I was, now her. She was domineering: we had to go to places she wanted to go to while she rarely asking me what I wanted to do. Besides her possessiveness she had a fear of being alone. She could be in a crowded room surrounded by friends and acquaintances, but if she didn’t have a man with her, she might as well be in an empty hall. It was revealed by someone I knew from work that two days after I broke up with her, this guy received a letter in the mail from her, saying that they should hook up. Wow, on the same night she begged me through tears not to leave her she must have written the letter to her prospective suitor. This followed the pattern of how she went down on me only two days after her last man broke up with her.

We made quite a couple, never acknowledging these things even though they were so transparent. When the inevitable breakup occurred, it was like a mashed-up quote from Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: We shouldn’t ask why Jack and Judi’s relationship ended but how it lasted as long as it did.

The main players in this story of embezzlement, codependency, and vandalism have gone their separate ways. I haven’t seen Alex since the morning of the donut run. I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again, and if I do, I hope he has moved on and in recovery. Even if I did see him, he might never confess to breaking the window. In darker moments, I think Paul might have broken the window in frustration of being locked out of his room, but that doesn’t sound like him at all, and if he did, I would like to think he would have told me by now. Judi, after moving to San Francisco in the late 80s, got breast cancer. She died in 2004. (Yeah, I know, I could make some comment about irony, but cancer’s a bitch.) Paul is still living in the Bay Area. We text each other a few times a week. He remained one of Judi’s friends to the end. As for me, I’m an open book, as you can see.

In my current line of work, I often deal with personnel changes: office reorganizations, as well as individual employee hires, moves, and separations. So, when I have to type up that last action, Judi always comes to mind: Separation. I recall a time decades past blanking on the vowels in that simple word while working on a paper late at night at a coffee shop, Judi hovering over me ready to take it when I was finished so she could type it up for me at here work and get it to me before the due date. I asked her how to spell it, and she gave me a mnemonic aid that–as mnemonic aids are designed to do–has never left me. “There’s always A-RAT in ‘separate.’” Coincidence or was she also trying to tell me something? Am I “a rat”? That stone on my plywood desk seemed to cry out something like that. As for Judi, she’s gone but haunts me in a word I see far too often.