BURGER SCOOT

I recall watching the Mike Nichols 1971 film Carnal Knowledge in or around 1980 at the Showcase Cinema, a repertory theater in Sacramento that is now a parking lot. I remember wondering if I would ever see the kind of action the principal actors were getting. Up to that moment, I was quite the loser in the love department, and that wouldn’t change for a few years.

I have written in this blog about how I was never successful dating women. It was a horrible cocktail of low self-esteem, being, absolutely petrified of rejection, and a reverence about the female creature. I had a horrible crush on Michelle, a woman I worked with at the Tower Theatre in Sacramento, who once told me, “Jack, how do you expect someone to love you when you don’t even like yourself?” She probably was right, still, there were a couple of small exceptions and one giant one that defied Michelle’s otherwise wise words. There was and still is–last time I checked–my wife of thirty-seven years. This post is about the four women who preceded my wife, and how I had no idea how to be with them.

In this post, I have left out a couple of names because they were both teenagers: one my only steady until years later, and the other a catastrophe of a single date. My only image of the latter one was in a drive-In, after she downing beer after beer when I finally made my move, kissing her on the lips, neck and slowly working my way down her chest, unbuttoning her shirt and wondering how I was going to unhook her bra when she was on her back, cursing bra designers for not having the hooks in front only to finally notice her deep, regular breathing and looking up to see she had passed out. I sat up and watched the rest of the shitty film all the while my date snored amongst the empties.

My first sexual experience was with a stranger. These two mid-teenage girls were hanging around the dunes at Dillon Beach watching me and two other boys slide down the dunes in sleds. I’m not sure how it happened, but a few minutes later, the boys and I ditched the sleds and were rolling down the dunes with the girls. I remember the overwhelming urge to kiss one specific girl when we stopped at the bottom of the dune. Looking back on it, I know I could have kissed this cute girl with the big smile–braces and all–but something stopped me. I think the failure to kiss the girl defined how absolutely horrified I was of the opposite sex. Here this girl was laying on the sand with a big grin on her face, making no move to get up, she was asking to get smooched, and I fucking chickened out. I was on top of her–multiple times! — and each time I failed. Though I know it could have been so much better, it was a rush being on top of her–it was the first time I ever had anything close to sex, and it felt great! Okay, that was the preamble. Now, on with the pathetic parade.

Connie just may have been the best kisser. About four or five years after the girl in the dunes and Kenna, my only pre-adult regular girlfriend, I dated a woman who worked at the same Taco Bell as me. Connie was soft-spoken and cute, with glasses too big for her small, pretty face.

Many people who worked the evening shift at this Taco Bell attended the same high school. One guy, Mel, had a steady date and would encourage me to go to whatever dance the school was putting on. His idea was I would find a girl there. I knew from the first Freshman dance when I spent the entire time holding up the wall, I decided never to go to one again. A couple of months later Mel asked me if a girl had asked me to Twerp yet. (Twerp was one of two dances at my high school where the girls would ask out the boys). Hell no, I thought until Connie sheepishly asked if she could take me (in my car since she didn’t drive yet). Connie liked me, but I couldn’t figure out why. We attended two other dances and went to a film or two. On each date, I started with Connie at her house, talking with her very nice parents. At the end of the date, we always made out in my car in front of her home. Until I met my wife, I didn’t think I ever got so turned on by a kiss like I did when Connie laid into me. She kissed way above her weight class for such a bashful little thing.

So why did I stop asking her out? We were both working at Taco Bell; I was still sliding flour tortillas and taco shells to her to add all the filling; I was close enough for me to whisper, “let’s make out during break.” Instead, I said nothing. What was wrong with her? Nothing, besides the out-of-style glasses. I think it is like what Groucho Marx said when he cancelled his membership to the Friars Club. See the video below. Why would Connie want to go out with me? Something must be wrong with her besides her glasses.

Mary may have been the most beautiful, but our dating period came with an understood expiration date: She and her sister had bought tickets to move back home to their mother in Texas in a week. The poor woman humiliated herself by asking me why I hadn’t asked her out. Reader, think of the most attractive person you know and imagine that person likes you. That’s what was going on. After she and her sister were wheels up, one of the guys on the floor staff of the Tower Theatre, where we all worked, asked in the politest way possible how thick I was. Didn’t I see the signs? Mary was doing everything except cornering me in the stockroom naked. I didn’t see it. During one of the three dates I had with her, we walked by a construction site where she received cat calls, and another time at a restaurant, I returned from the restroom to see a man leaning on our table inside Mary’s comfort zone. No, this weak runt of the litter did not confront the offending man; a waiter beat me to it, anyway, and I stumbled through asking her if she was okay. She said, “I get this kind of treatment every time I go out and many nights at the theater. When I was away from the concession stand where she usually worked she would receive unwanted advances from patrons.

I’m sure Mary thought I was the worst date she ever had, but she probably told no one except her husband (if she ever got hitched). She was remarkably shy for someone so gorgeous. I probably would have somehow ruined our relationship if it hadn’t been over just as it started. Her last gesture was placing a red rose in the ice machine the day after our last date. I came in for the evening shift, and Charles, the closest thing I had to a big brother at work, gave me his hand, pulled me in for a hug, and said with a big grin, someone had left something for me in the ice machine. After I had pulled a perfect red rose out of the ice machine and blankly stared at it–the wheels slowly grinding upstairs, I looked up at the theater lobby. About four staff members were standing there with big grins on their faces. Amazingly, this wasn’t the confidence booster it should have been.

Then there was Lisa Loving. I shit you not, that was her name, and I know it might be inappropriate using her real first and last name in this post, but I can’t help myself. I mean, the name is priceless! As you will find out soon enough, Lisa did not act inappropriately in this story so I feel okay about using her name. If our relationship stopped at working on the Sac State Hornet newspaper, then it would be only a joke, my fellow journalism students on the newspaper would snicker about: a gorgeous brunette with dark brown eyes to match her hair, and a perfect smile, she knew how to use. Though I was a Springsteen and Clash fanatic at the time, I probably played Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” in my head more times than anything else after meeting Lisa.

So I have provided a name and a place so one would call me a dick for writing a kiss-and-tell, the only thing is, I don’t remember ever kissing and I know it never moved onward and upward from there. Imagine an airplane idling on the runway, then bursting into flames. That was an apt metaphor for my relationship with Lisa. Alas, the lines, “Making love in the green grass/Behind the stadium with you,” were only wishful thinking for me. What I can tell is Lisa seemed to like me and that scared the living shit out of me. I know this because, like poor Mary, I wasn’t picking up on the signals. Poor Mary desperately hung in there until she finally felt she had to humiliate herself. I could tell she wasn’t comfortable doing what she felt was the man’s job. Lisa had no hang-ups in that department.

This non-starter romance started when we were working on the galleys of the next issue of The State Hornet (this is the pre-digital days, circa 1982), and she walked up and introduced herself. After I stammered out my name, dumbfounded that a beautiful woman was talking to me about something other than classes, the newspaper, or how she didn’t appreciate being ogled. (I’m kidding about the last item.) Our main mutual interest was rock music because she asked about the concert review that I wrote and was now proofing. I recall trying to forget how gorgeous she was and how she was staring at me and smiling. I focused on the band she asked about. If I felt I had anything to impress a girl with, it was my knowledge of popular music and films, so I could relax as long as we kept it on those two subjects.

I don’t remember how many times we talked this way–in the lab keeping it to subjects like The Clash, “Blade Runner,” Talking Heads, “Koyaanisqatsi”, the ska movement in the UK, the films of Akira Kurosawa, etc. but, if I had nothing else to share with her besides my strong opinions I would be lost. Come to think about it, I don’t remember Lisa’s voice. I think this was because I felt that if I babbled about the narrow subjects of my interest, I wouldn’t have to ask her any questions about her. Years later, I would see a movie that spoke to me like no other film before and since. I have certain personality elements of all three male characters. So when Lisa started in on music, I responded with the qualities found in High Fidelity‘s three main characters.

I also don’t remember what we did outside the Journalism Lab. What kept blowing my mind was how, every day, I walked into the busy lab. I saw Lisa across the room doing something or talking to someone. I remember the jig must be up–she knows what a loser I am, but day after day, we made eye contact, and she made her way with purpose to me, gave me that million-dollar smile, and started a conversation. In a way, Lisa doesn’t belong in this post because I don’t remember doing anything off campus with her. This doesn’t mean we didn’t see a film or go out to dinner, but as suspect as my memory is, I can’t visualize her anywhere else but in the lab, and that fateful day at the campus cafeteria, The Hornet’s Nest.

The last time Lisa and I were together as a (hopeful) couple happened after I heard she had gone out with someone else. I felt betrayed, but intellectually I knew we weren’t officially an item; it’s just that every time I spoke with her, she gave me her total attention. It would have been more obvious if we had been in junior high: when we talked, we would either be holding hands, or I might have been behind her, my arms around her neck and torso, punctuating our talk with kisses. You know, the shit you see younger kids do and want to tell them to get a room.

Since we hadn’t consummated our relationship (probably thanks to me not being aggressive enough), I shouldn’t have felt as betrayed as I did. But I kept calm and wanted to tell her I wasn’t into an open relationship and to choose between me and whoever the guy was. But the next time we saw each other at the lab, Lisa did what she always had done; she walked across the lab, smiled at me, and asked how I was doing. Once again, I was floored because I thought she had made her choice, and it was some other guy. It’s funny she was adult enough not to greet me with a kiss, but I sure wish she had been. I think I politely mentioned that I knew she went out with someone the other night, and she owned it as if it was nothing.

I asked if I could speak to her privately, and she agreed and suggested we take a walk to the Hornets’ Nest. I don’t remember what we said on the walk, but I’m sure it was about music, film, classes, or campus stuff. We sat under a tree outside the cafeteria. I told Lisa about her date and that I didn’t like open relationships. She smiled that heart-stopping smile and said she understood without saying that she agreed or wouldn’t date anyone else while we were dating.

While I remember feeling that she was saying she was still going to date whoever she wants whenever she wants, but still wants to see me without saying that I was about to ask her for a definitive answer when a sign from The Avian God answered for Lisa: a bird shat on my shoulder. She recoiled as the shit hit the shoulder close to her. Kudos to her for not laughing. She giggled a little, then quickly got up and told me she would be right back. She came back with wet napkins and some dry paper towels and did her best to wash out the bird shit all the while, smiling that perfect smile and said that she got most of it and you could barely notice the mark on my shirt. We walked back to the Journalism Lab, and things seemed okay between us, but “okay” was not what I hoped for.

Things didn’t seem right between us after that, and when the paper printed an image of Lisa skanking on the roof of some campus building with the State Hornet’s Editor-in-Chief. I stopped putting forth an effort, and that was a shame. (My definition of “effort” was scanning the Journalism Lab, Journalism Department, and everywhere else for Lisa.) I should not have cared about Lisa dating other people, and the pic of Editor-in-Chief and her skanking could have been a staged shot, anyway. Who knows, if I could just let go of the open relationship thing, we might have one day be “making love in the green grass behind the stadium…”

Finally, there was Judi. Compared to all the other women mentioned above, I had the longest relationship by far with Judi, a year almost to the day. However, it was, in many ways, the worst. It was so profoundly toxic that I devoted an entire post to it. Read The Ballad of the Codependent Rat at your own peril. It is not for the faint of heart.

I’ve left my wife out of this post for a couple of reasons, but mostly, after thirty-seven years, I can say it has been a success, though I still need to improve in some areas. So, as far as romantic relationships go, I got this one right. Still, I think longingly about the good-looking guys who are brimming with self-confidence and wonder what my 20s would have been like and how different this post would be if I had been one of those guys. It might have been like the butterfly affect. Would if I kissed that girl in the dunes, would if we would have ran off, copulated, and got her pregnant? I shudder, “Thank you, god for making me a pussy when it comes to females.”