Michael Thomas Ford - Full Circle (13 page)

"Ned!" Andy said expansively. "Come on in. Tracy, this is Ned."

 

"Hi," Tracy said breathlessly, giving a little wave of her fingers. I could see Andy's balls between his spread legs, and every time Tracy raised herself up, several inches of his shaft slid out of her. "I'm sorry," I said, trying not to look at Tracy's breasts. "I was looking for Jack. I thought he might be here."

 

"No," Andy said. "I haven't seen him. But, hey, why don't you stay? I bet Tracy wouldn't mind." Tracy giggled and winked at me coyly. "I wouldn't mind," she confirmed. Andy pumped himself up into her, making her cry out and giggle again.

"She's a wild one," he said slapping one of her ass cheeks with his free hand. "Want a ride?" "Thanks," I said. "But I've got to find Jack. Sorry to interrupt."

I retreated from the room, shutting the door before I could see anything else. Inside, Andy slapped Tracy's ass again, the sharp smack followed by more laughing. I walked away quickly, before I heard anything further, and descended the stairs to the third floor as if I were running away from the scene of a crime.

When I got back to my room, Jack was there. Like Andy, he was stretched out on his bed, but instead of Tracy and her breasts, he had a book open on his chest.

"Where have you been?" he asked, looking at the clock. "It's almost eleven."
"I was looking for you," I said. "Where'd you go?"
"Just for a walk," he answered. "You know I like to get some exercise when I'm hot." I nodded. "I went to the track," I said.

He laughed. "I should have guessed," he said. "Look, I'm sorry about earlier. I was just mad about the test. I didn't mean anything."

 

"I know," I told him.

 

"And I guess I should stop spending so much time with Andy, too. It hasn't exactly been helping my grades."

 

"I think Andy's found someone else to spend time with," I said as I took off my shoes and sat down. Then I told Jack about walking in on Andy and Tracy.

"You're kidding," Jack said. "She just kept right on riding him?"
"Like a merry-go-round horse," I said. "Up and down and up and down and…"

"I get the picture," said Jack. "That guy is just crazy. He's fun, but crazy. I guess I let myself get kind of carried away by him."

I didn't say anything. Jack was apologizing, and I was happy that we were on good terms again. But I knew that I had something to apologize for, too, and I wasn't doing it. I couldn't. I could never tell him that for a brief moment I'd actually considered joining Tracy and Andy on the bed, and not because I wanted to get my hands on Tracy. For the second time, I felt as if I'd chosen someone else over Jack, and for the second time that person was Andy.

I picked up my business class text and turned to the chapter we would be discussing in class the next day. Of all my courses, this was the most difficult for me to have any interest in. The material was dull, and the instructor even duller. I couldn't believe some of my classmates actually found the discussions of profit and loss, earning statements, and inventory control interesting. Worse, I couldn't believe my father had devoted his entire life to work that centered around these things. When I looked ahead and imagined myself at a desk, computing the week's accounts, I wanted to slam the book shut and never open it again. I'd already promised myself I would never take such a job, for any reason. Over on his bed, Jack groaned and flipped the pages of his textbook in irritation. "Why can't this guy write in English ?" he complained.

"What are you reading?" I asked.
"Chaucer," he said. "It's supposed to be a poem."
"Chaucer?" I repeated. "Chaucer does write in English."
"Well, it doesn't look like it to me," said Jack. "I don't get any of it."

I closed my business book and took Jack's from him. "It's Middle English," I explained. "It just sounds funny. Here, I'll read it to you."

For the next hour we went line by line through the first part of the prologue to Canterbury Tales . Having already covered it in my class the week before, I was able to help Jack cut through the arcane language. It was tedious work, especially as Jack kept insisting that Chaucer was making up words that didn't exist. But I kept on, feeling that it was my penance. I told myself that I owed it to Jack for what I'd been thinking of late. I'd let him down, and helping him with his translation seemed the least I could do. When we reached the part where Chaucer begins to name the pilgrims, I stopped. "That's enough for one night," I told Jack, who gratefully took the book and set it on his desk.

"Is it all like that?" he asked.
I nodded. "Pretty much."

Jack groaned as if in pain, then took his toothbrush and toothpaste from its place on the closet shelf. "I'll be right back," he said. "I'm just going to the bathroom."

I undressed and got into bed, waiting for Jack to come back and thinking about what we'd just read. Like Chaucer's pilgrims, we were on a journey together. There was Jack, the handsome Knight, fair of face and beloved by all. Myself I cast as the Yeoman, faithful servant to the Knight, always by his side ready to do his bidding. Andy, too, was along for the ride, as bawdy and uninhibited as the Wife of Bath. We made for strange companions, the three of us, yet it seemed that, for better or for worse, we had cast our lots together.

What, I wondered, would our tales be when we were finished?
CHAPTER 13

Jack's renewed dedication to his studies lasted about a week, during which he managed a C+ on a speech about the origins of the Peace Corps and a 72 on an art history test in which he mistook Turner's painting of Norham Castle at sunrise for Monet's landscape portrait of Paris' Parc Manceau. As his enthusiasm for his classes waned, he returned to Andy's room more and more often. Apart from our shared classes, I had not seen much of Andy since interrupting his tryst with Tracy, but he continued to be friendly to me and in no way seemed offended by my decreased presence in his room. I, however, was miserable because of him. To my annoyance, I'd discovered that I was fantasizing about him often. Even when I was with Jack, I would sometimes see Andy's face, or recall the glimpses I'd had of his dick. He became a distraction to my studying, an ever-present figure in my thoughts who demanded attention at inconvenient times. I resented him for it, and I hated myself for allowing it. I should, I believed, be able to control my thoughts and feelings. Objectively, I understand that my growing infatuation with Andy makes little sense. Love seldom does. Its unreasonableness is what makes it so dangerous. It's what allows so many of us to make terrible decisions, decisions that can lay waste to lives (especially our own) and end with us sitting wounded and bleeding in the midst of ruin, wondering what happened. It also sometimes results in unimagined joy, although I suspect that's more true of movies and novels than it is of real life. I can't, even now, fully explain what it was about Andy Kowalski that allowed the hooks of love to plant themselves in my heart. Partly it was his wildness, which I both admired and was jealous of. Partly it was his beauty, which was undeniable. And partly it was because he wasn't Jack. I can see that all these years later, although at the time I didn't allow the admission to enter my conscious thoughts. Jack had been my best friend for nineteen years, my lover for four. Having taken place in secret, our relationship had therefore also been untested. Until our arrival at Penn, there had been no other possibilities for my romantic interest. Now, though, I was discovering that my feelings for Jack might not be exclusive to him, and that frightened me. Like so many people, I'd come to believe that love flowed only in one direction, its course as fixed as that of the Mississippi or any great river. That this river could have tributaries, that it could flood and overflow its banks, was a shock. It was made worse by the knowledge that Andy was unavailable to me. His hunger for women had been made clear, and despite his invitation to join with him and Tracy, I could not imagine that he would have any interest in me as a solitary object of desire. This made my feelings for him all the more ridiculous, and deepened my misery. I retreated more and more into myself as a way to dampen my feelings, although admittedly it did little to stop me from weaving daydreams about being in Andy's bed. Jack didn't notice. One of the advantages to self-absorption is that you're able to completely ignore any cracks in the foundations of your relationships. Being on top of the pedestal precludes having to view the base, so that by the time the marble has started to crumble, it's usually too late. Again, I'm being a bit harsh on Jack. He had no more experience of relationships or love than I did. Also, he had the disadvantage of never having lost. He had not learned to recognize the signs of impending trouble. Even if he had, he would expect someone else to divert the danger, leaving him safe. He had no reason to think that our relationship was beginning to shift in a perilous direction. Halloween of 1969 fell, conveniently for those interested in celebrating it without the worry of having to attend class the following day, on a Friday. The campus was the scene of multiple parties, all of which began as soon as classes were out in the afternoon. I remember walking back to the dorm following my history class and passing through a crowd of ghosts and ghoulies, all of them in a festive mood. In particular, I recall a girl dressed all in green, with sequins sewn to her clothes like scales. A long tail extended from her backside, and she'd painted her face to match her costume. As I walked by, she exhaled a cloud of marijuana smoke into my face, exclaiming, "Happy Halloween from Puff, the magic dragon!"

That was only the beginning. The halls of Pinchot were filled with revelers. I walked past pirates and devils, hippies (probably uncostumed), and Gandalfs. On the second floor landing, I encountered two Richard Nixons sharing a joint. And in my own room I discovered Jack laying out some items he was pulling from a brown paper bag.
"What's that stuff?" I asked him, eyeing the goods warily.

"Our costumes," he said proudly. "We're going to a party."
"We are?"
He nodded. "Andy invited us. It's at the house of some friend of his. Off campus."

I didn't want to go to a Halloween party. Correction—I did want to go to a Halloween party. Just not one that Andy would be at. I couldn't tell Jack that, though, not after he'd gone to the trouble of actually buying us costumes.

"What are we going as?" I asked, resigned to spending a night dressed like who-knew-what. Jack held up a cowboy hat. "Butch," he said.

"Let me guess," I said. "I'm…"
"Sundance," he said, holding up a second hat.

He'd also found some vests, chaps, and cheap plastic spurs, all of which we put on. When we were done, we looked like the world's worst cowboys. Jack handed me a toy pistol. "Don't forget this," he said. "Now you look like the real thing."

The final step was to paint on moustaches. We'd been growing our own out since the beginning of the semester, but the results had been unimpressive. At least mine had. Jack's was thicker, but because it was blond, it looked a little scraggly. We fixed that with some greasepaint. We also painted on heavy beard growth, smearing our cheeks with the stuff. The combined effect of the makeup and the getups was presentable, if a little haphazard.

Andy had given Jack the address of the party, and we drove over there in Jack's Fairlane. Things were already in full swing, even though night had barely fallen. A grinning jack-o'-lantern greeted us on the front porch, a flickering candle lighting up its eyes and mouth. A paper skeleton hung on the front door, flanked on either side by arching black cats.

Our knock on the door was answered by a young woman dressed as a witch. When we told her that we were friends of Andy, she showed us in, saying, "Andy's over there talking to the milkmaid."

She pointed to a couch on one side of the room. We saw the milkmaid, all breasts and pigtails, and we saw Andy. He was shirtless, and his pants were covered in what looked like clumps of fur. On his head he wore what appeared to be a fur hat with pointed ears affixed to it. It wasn't immediately clear what he was supposed to be.

We worked our way through the crowd of people standing around with beer bottles and plastic cups in their hands. There were perhaps twenty people crowded into the house's living room, and the din of their voices, combined with the Cream album being played on an invisible stereo, made it difficult to hear anything. When we reached Andy and the girl, it was all we could do to say hello.

"Look at you two," Andy said. "Git along, little doggies. Who-hoo!"
"What are you?" I asked.
"What?" Andy mouthed.
"What are you?" I shouted.
Andy lifted his head and howled. "A-woooooooo. A-a-a-woooooooo."
"The Wolfman!" Jack exclaimed. "Cool."

"I hope you brought a silver bullet," Andy said to the girl, biting her neck. The girl laughed. Andy grinned. "Guys, this is Melanie. How do you like her milk pails?"

 

Melanie laughed again. I could tell she was high, or drunk, or probably both. Andy, too, seemed to be stoned. He squeezed one of Melanie's breasts and stood up.

 

"Come on," he said, putting an arm around each of us. "You guys need a drink." He led us back through the crowd to the kitchen, where a table was piled with cookies, candy, and other assorted treats. Andy picked up two brownies and handed one to me and one to Jack. "Try these," he said. "They'll start you off right."

 

While Jack and I ate the brownies, Andy procured three beers from the refrigerator. He popped the tops off and handed us each one.

 

"That's good shit," he said, nodding at the brownies, which we'd almost finished eating. "Premium California weed. I've had two already."

The pot was good shit. Within minutes, all my worries about Andy, the party, and Jack were gone. I was laughing at everything Andy said, and when we returned to the living room to see what was happening, I even found myself in conversation with a mummy about the films of Franco Zeffirelli, none of which I'd actually seen. The mummy, most likely as high or higher than I was, didn't seem to notice. He (or she, I never saw the face behind the toilet paper wrappings) nodded a lot and said very little. I know I went back for at least one more brownie, and possibly more. Having skipped dinner, I was easily wasted, and soon I had no idea of the time or much of anything else. When Andy came over and guided me back into the kitchen, I went willingly. He'd brought Jack as well.