(Author's Note: this is one chapter in my on-going sexual self-examination. Theoretically each part should stand on its own and their chronological order is irrelevant.
"Kael's Diary" is a work of fiction and the people and situations described herein and from the imagination of its author. Any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.)
Please feel free to send comments to Kael.
I was in a bad way, and it wasn't just how I was dressed.
As evenings went for me during the first, bleak months of 1987 (those that followed that last, bleak month of 1986) this one was pretty good. Everyone in the freshman acting class, or everyone who mattered, was sitting around MacShaney's Pub, which was the sole domain of the University of Ohio School of Theatre, or at least it seemed so to us. There was a very good possibility that if I walked in MacShaney's I would find someone I knew, and with any luck someone I was on speaking terms with.
The seriously cool people never went near the place of course, the juniors and seniors and those uppity grad students, but we weren't seriously cool, we were freshmen. The most important part of MacShaney's, apart from the dim lighting and the guy who came in on Fridays who actually played the piano, besides the rough-cut, worn smooth wooden beams and the interesting, strange and sometimes downright frightening photographs of Clemson that dated back to the turn of the century (two men standing with a cow, a bunch of nurses gathered around an old man in a wheelchair in front of the insane asylum, that bridge under which they say someone was found strangled last Halloween, you know, the year before we arrived) the real reason was because they served minors.
I was there, with my hair cut short on top but running in twisting, greasy curls down my neck in that unpleasant white trash style, a U of O bandanna tied on my head (a do-rag, a Frisbee helmet) a T-shirt with a flannel shirt over it, and a pair of jeans I had just the day before splashed bleach on to give them that splotchy look that was so necessary at the time.
We'd pushed several tables together and it was like a big Viking meeting hall with all of us drinking and yelling and laughing along this long brown, heavy wooden table. Wilson was there. We were becoming really good friends. And Satch, with his long gray trench coat and those crystal ice-blue eyes, he still weirded me out a little, but boy could he make me laugh. He was so strange and beautiful. His hair was darkest brown except for this little swoosh of blond he'd put in at the part. GOD he was cool. Alexis sat across from me and she, at long last, I was finding quite interesting.
Alex was a striking girl with this vibrantly red, blood red hair, it stood on her head, curly and stunning, it fell about her face and shoulders and framed her orange face. She had beautiful eyes with the longest, blackest (mascara) eyelashes, a broad Polish nose and a shy little smile. When she let loose and laughed or really started showing off she reminded me a lot of Lucille Ball, and it wasn't just the hair, she could make the funniest faces or play real stupid as a gag.
There was only thing that pissed me off about her. When people talked about sex, she would say, with a certain amount of pride that she was a virgin and that she wasn't ashamed of it. It just kind of made me mad, I had lost mine a few months earlier and it was a wonderful and perfect -- I resented the idea that I should be ashamed of that or something.
And Martin was there and Sarah and just everybody, except, of course, for Barbara. Barbara, the love of my life. Barbara, the cigarette fiend, the soccer player, the woman I fell in love with at age twelve and who had recently taught me how to fuck. The only woman I had ever fucked. And still, now, almost three months after we broke up, after we had started school here together and I had spent the most wretched and painful time of my life -- adjusting to college life, taking way too many courses, missing all of my friends and working so desperately to save the most important relationship in my life -- still, she was the only woman I thought of or desired. Yes, I was looking around, I was on the rebound and struggling to not seem to pathetic, but if Barbara had said the word, just given me a call, and I would have forgiven everything.
"Isn't our improv class exciting?" Alex said, smiling with huge teeth, "have you heard what the final exam is like?"
"Yes, and who cares?" Satch said, slowly and mysteriously, the way he liked to, "has anyone given a thought to putting on an hour of club improv?"
"Oh you mean funny stuff," I said, setting down my drink. A Sloe Gin Fizz. I'd just discovered it. It was really sweet and sticky. "I used to do some of that in high school. I started my own troupe."
"Really, Kael?" Alex asked, visibly impressed.
"We were awful," I said, "Comically unfunny."
"That's great," Satch said, meaning it wasn't, "Teacher says if we want to we can get around all the usual bureaucratic nonsense of getting a space and signing up for time by staging an improv show as though it were an additional project, like an extra credit project for class."
"Brilliant!" I said.
Alex touched my hand and spoke lowly to me to draw my attention away from the conversation Satch continued with Martin, Wilson and Sarah.
"You know, Kael," she said, "I wish I were as active in theater as you were in high school. I was just in the regular shows -- you seem to know so much already about doing outside projects. And there's so much we could do here at college, I just don't know if I can handle it all!"
"Oh," I said, raising my eyebrows. Where did that come from? What do I say? "Well, uh, thanks, I guess. You know Alex...can I tell you something?"
"Of course."
"I really think you're the most talented girl in our class." It might not have been saying much, but at least it was true.
"Well, thank you Kael."
"I'm serious -- hey, you know what one of my other projects is?"
"No, what?"
"I'm a dee jay."
"No way!"
"Yes," I said, "I do a little show on the campus radio station, Saturdays from twelve till two. Me and a friend host it."
Alex cocked her head slightly and gave me a curious smile. "You're pretty smart, Kael."
"Oh," I said, "how's that?"
"Well, everyone in our class is up in arms about how we're not allowed to do any shows until we're sophomores, and you went out and found a way to perform every week, on the radio!"
"I never thought of it like that," I said. "Hey, you wanna do me a big favor?"
"Anything."
"Well, my co-host went home for the weekend, I was wondering if you wouldn't want to sit in for her."
Alex sat back and gave me a big, open mouthed, you are incredible smile. "Oh, Kael! Really?"
"Hey, it's no big deal, it'll be fun."
"I'll be so nervous!"
"Well, I don't want to cheapen it but nobody listens to the campus station, do you?"
"Well, no," she said.
"So it's really no big deal -- look, I'll meet you at the cafeteria tomorrow morning at ten, and we can walk from there."
"It's a date," she said.
"Hi, Kael," came a familiar stuffed up voice from over my shoulder. I turned in my heavy wooden chair to see Barbara? No, just her hair -- a short, black, boyish haircut on anyone's face made me see Barbara first. It was Carolyn. Her hair was dyed that color, she liked to wear army boots and funky cats-eye glasses, she was progressive as they say, she listened to all of those moody sounding Euro-groups I just couldn't get into.
"What a coincidence," I said, "Alex, this is Carolyn, she's the programming director for WUOR."
"A pleasure to meet you," Alex said sweetly.
"Hi," Carolyn said, "is this seat taken?" and she gestured to the empty one to my right.
"No," I said, "please, sit down."
Carolyn looked odd tonight. Oh, it was because she was wearing a nice shirt, a button down shirt and a skinny tie. Her face was a bit mottled, like stucco -- she had a lot of acne scarring, but she was so mysterious it was attractive. A tomboy, and I had learned a long time ago that girls who dress like boys love to mess around more than girls who don't.
"Carolyn's a senior," I informed Alex.
"What are you majoring in?" Alex asked her.
"Well, it was Inco but I switched over to the Communications department so I should be here for a fifth or maybe a sixth year." She pulled a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from her big ugly bag.
"Same old story, I guess," I said. I don't know anyone who graduated in four years.
"Hmn," Alex said, "what do you call someone who is taking a fifth year?"
"A fifth year student," Carolyn said a little brusquely. "Kael; have you given any thought to those promotional tapes you said you were interested in making for the station?"
"Oh," I said, "uhm, yes, a little bit."
"I'd like to assist you," Carolyn said, lighting up her cigarette, "seeing as it's your first time."
"Well, sure," I said, "thanks."
"Not at all," she said, "besides, I think you're cute."
"Kael," Alex said, derailing the train of thought Carolyn's unexpected observation put me on, "ten o'clock is real early and it's very late now, would you mind walking me home?"
"Oh," I said and looked at my watch. It was a cheap digital number my grandfather had given me for my eighteenth birthday. It read 1:15 AM "Yikes, it is late, sure I'd --"
"Hey you live on the South Quad, right?" Carolyn asked, blowing out a long stream of smoke.
"Uhm, yeah," I said.
"Then you can walk me home, too."
***
The three of us trudged across campus through snow and ice and bitter cold. South Quad was located the furthest from town of all the dormitory clusters and took about twenty minutes to get to. I huddled my army jacket close to my body. I was used to dressing warmly at home, but not for extended periods outdoors and I was always forgetting how cold it got at night. Alex had a long, beautiful black coat, she always dressed so snazzy before she went out, even for just a drink. Carolyn wore a long tweed trench coat, probably bought at a second hand store. We approached the first row of residence halls, the freshman row. Alex lived in the one next to mine.
"Well," Alex said, "this is where I get off."
"Heh," chuckled Carolyn.
"See you tomorrow," I said, "for breakfast."
"I can't wait," she said, walking over and giving me a big hug, "this is so exciting!" and then she kissed me on the mouth. It was the first time she'd ever done that. As we parted I gave her a big smile.
"Yeah," I said, "it is exciting. I'll see you tomorrow." And with that she walked off to her dorm.
Carolyn's place was further back, near the river. I stopped as we approached.
"Here you are," I said.
"Oh," she said, turning to face me, "would you like to come up?"
"Uh," I said. I hadn't thought of it, and it struck me as kind of a strange thing to offer. I knew what it probably meant, but just couldn't believe it, that had never happened to me, and it didn't make sense to be happening now, I mean we barely knew each other. "Sure."
She smiled at me from the corner of her mouth, a slight squint in her eyes. Strange mouth, her lips were rather fat and protruded a bit from her face. She swung open the great metal doors to the first floor of this college building and we rode the elevator to her place on the fourth floor.
***
A single. A small room, cramped and small. A bed, a desk, built in drawers that overflowed with clothes, the space in front of the huge mirror the university provided was positively cluttered with make-up, appliances, personal items -- it was built just like mine, it was on the same quad after all, but this was a single. It was half the size of the room I and my stoner roommate, Rod shared, maybe even smaller. It was the most disorganized and messy room I'd ever seen a woman maintain. And she was a senior, I guess she was twenty-one then, and living on campus. I hoped I wasn't still living on campus when I was her age.
The English progressive band "The Smiths" stood on one wall, leering at me, chastising me that meat was murder. Another huge poster, this one of their lead singer was pasted to the opposite wall, by the door, he was posing severely, his shirt off, he had a hand to his head and was pursing his lips at me. There were other posters, too, lots of them, mostly pertaining to music or social functions which featured music.
The only chair in the room, the one at her desk, was heaped with dirty clothes and so the two of us were squatting on her bed, talking about things, smoking cigarettes (which still made me woozy) and it was getting very late.
"I knew your brother, Max," Carolyn told me. She lit up her fourth cigarette. I hastily stubbed out my second into the University of Ohio ashtray sitting on the bed between us.
"Oh yeah?" I asked.
"Yeah," she said, "I used to do schlep work over at the tee vee station and I hung out with him a couple times. He's real cute."
"He is?" I asked. I wasn't being disrespectful or anything, I'd grown increasingly close to my brother since he graduated from U of O almost two years earlier, but my image of him was pretty much like my image of me, just another guy, skinny and geeky, not the type women notice and bother to say 'he's cute' about.
"You don't have to act so surprised, Kael," she said, "you're pretty cute, too."
I couldn't believe this. I had only been working with Carolyn at the station for a little over a quarter now and we had never done much talking together, a little perhaps, but where was all of this coming from? It was all so sudden, it seemed obvious where it was going but I had never even kissed a girl I hadn't known already for a few months. And now this, and I couldn't help but feel a little more than insecure and a little less than aroused. The smoke, the speed, the heat -- it was the dead of winter and the university made sure all of its charges weren't being left in the cold. The air temperature was hovering around seventy degrees and I was still a little drunk. My armpits were damp and my forehead was slick and greasy.
"You think so?" was all I could say.
"Yeah," she said, and smiled warmly. "I've thought you were pretty cute for a while now."
"Hmn," I said, "I've been thinking the same thing about you." Well, this was true. I had. She was short with a boyish black haircut, like Barbara. But her hair wasn't really black, that was dye, and her natural pale skin didn't compliment it, and under the fluorescent light provided by the school, her flesh was even worse -- it wasn't smooth and velvety like Barbara's, it was scarred and pockmarked and her lips were puffy and red and looking not a little chapped, standing out brightly against her sallow face. Her eyes were narrow and dull, not round and bright like Barbara's. She wasn't what I wanted. No one was, but Barbara.
"Really?" she asked.
"Yeah."
Hello, uncomfortable silence.
"It's late," I observed.
"Would you like to spend the night?" she asked.
Help.
"Would that be okay?" I asked. I knew she had a boyfriend, or at least I thought she did.
"You don't mind, do you Kael?" she asked.
Someone tell me what to do.
"Uh, do you have anything I could sleep in?"
She got up and found a pair of cut-off sweats for me, and excused herself to the communal bathroom to put on her nightgown. I took off my pants, my shoes, my watch, and slipped into the shorts she had provided, which were a little too snug and revealing, and so I just slid into her bed before she came back.
In she came, wearing this incongruous floor length baby girl nightgown. It had a bow. At first I was shocked by the way it looked on this hard-core art-type I had come to be acquainted with, but the way she almost blushed as she saw me look her over, the way it fell about her shoulders and down her sides, the way I could see now how large and pendulous her boobs were...
I got an erection. Bam.
This is what I was here for. This is why I was here. This is why she invited me, and I had to face it, I had not had sex since November. Since long before Barbara and I had broken up. And I had never had sex with anyone else.
Carolyn hit the light and got into bed next to me. The lights from the catwalks outside shone through the one window in her room and cast a golden glow on the two of us, faint though, no single light cast its beam directly into her window. I was propped up on a collection of pillows at the head of her bed. She snuggled into me and looked up into my face, her eyes round and wet now, reflecting up at me.
"Could I kiss you?" I asked. I was miserable. She nodded slightly and I touched my mouth to hers. Her kiss was dry and lifeless and I struck my tongue into her, licking at hers, and she shoved her tongue into me and we mashed awkwardly, two people trying too soon to adapt to each other's rhythms. I held her to me and she grunted appreciatively, sniffling a little bit, I guess she had a cold and couldn't breathe properly. We kissed little kisses then, each one ending with an embarrassing "smack" from her, my lips are thin and full, hers were wide and fat, they didn't fit, they were just so wrong -- Barbara and I kissed perfectly.
I fumbled at the fabric of her nightgown, fiddled with her large, misshapen breasts. This had to stop, I wasn't enjoying this, I didn't love this woman, I didn't even know her well enough to know if I liked her, foreplay and fondling had no joy in it, I just needed to fuck. I wanted to feel my penis inside of someone, to feel it sliding inside of something warm and smooth and comfortable, to take away the pain, if only for just a little while. To forget.
"Can we do it?" I heard myself whisper into her ear.
"You want to?" she asked. I couldn't tell if it was because she knew what was going on in my head or if she was just making coy bed talk. I helped myself away and looked her in her face, her not-Barbara face.
"Yeah," I said with a little smile, "I want to."
"Okay," she said, smiling, and pulled her nightgown out from under me. I pulled off my shirt, displaying my chest, covered with large acne boils and sticky bandages holding together the ones which were open festering sores. My acne was at its worst -- the pressure of school had caused a eruption and my fallout with Barbara busted me wide open. I leaned on one hand and worked off her sweatpants and exposed my swollen and bobbing penis.
She lay back against the mattress, I could see her naked body below me, all white and glowing in the dim lamplight. She was skinny but her hips were broad and her pussy was an unshaven raggedy bush of dark and twisted hair. Not neatly trimmed like Barbara's. Her breasts were huge, so much so that they were flat against her, spilling out across her chest and over the sides. I put my mouth to the left one and kissed her wide, almost invisible nipple. It too was dry and chapped. Sucking on it seemed like a joke.
I looked up at her. "Would you put me in?" I asked. She reached down between us and took hold of my dick, pressing it against the opening of her vagina as I slid forward. I held myself up on my arms as I pressed on in, her snatch was hot and wet and huge, I passed through easily, and in a moment fell against her and hugged her close, I was longing for comfort and this was it, I pumped myself into her hard and fast, my chest, my Band-Aids mashed into her breasts, my butt bucking up and back into her groin, my face was stuffed into the pillows and I groaned and whimpered, the stinging sensations in my dick rising swift and increasing relentlessly and she squeezed my ass and I felt the surge burning, swelling up in my balls, in the base of my penis and I cried and I whimpered and I came, shooting a pathetic dribble of white stuff into Carolyn.
A minute and a half, tops.
I frumbled myself up and off of her, breathing unevenly. Her face hid not a drop of disappointment.
"Hmn," she said, sitting up, "impressive."
I lowered my head in shame as she got back into her nightgown and excused herself back to the bathroom, presumably to wipe off my little present. I skulked about and located my sleeping outfit and had them on by the time she returned.
"Do you still want to sleep over?" she asked. It's amazing the two different connotations 'spend the night' and 'sleep over' have.
"Yes," I said, because I assumed things were bad enough without my running away like an animal with his limp dick between his legs. She got back in bed, we said good night, and she fell asleep.
***
I looked at her bedside LED clock. 4:15. I had been lying awake in Carolyn's bed for over an hour and a half. The heat wouldn't let me sleep. My emotional distress wouldn't let me sleep. And the one time I had drifted into a light semi-conscious state, she began smacking her big fat lips, a kissing noise, accompanied by the word 'muh'. She did it often, she did it loud. She smooched the air. I gazed exhaustedly at the poster of Morrisey. I began to feel he was making kissy faces at me alone, and now I could hear him.
"Muh, muh."
My first one night stand, and it was wretched. This was much worse than anything, even worse than the time I had led Fran on, leaving her panting and unsatisfied on my parents' bed. At least then I had stopped before I had fucked her. At least then I wished I was with a girl I had a crush on but had never actually been with -- a longing for something I didn't know of or understand, not like this. Not humiliated by a woman three years older than me, wishing stupidly for a little satisfaction like that I had known in the arms and between the legs of a woman I loved, who loved me.
"Muh, muh, muh."
4:16
***
"Carolyn."
"Mm?"
"Carolyn, I'm going to go, okay?"
"Mm-hm.
" "I'll see you at the next station meeting."
Pause.
"Muh, muh."
I crawled over her snoozing and noisy body and pulled my clothes back on, my pants and different layers of jackets and squinted to make out the legend on the clock. 5:23. Out of that building and not looking back, pulling my coat to me to keep out the bitter wind as I crossed the quad to Freshman Row.
In my room I found my roommate in his bed, his mighty, dope-induced snoring not nearly as disturbing as Carolyn's disgusting sleepy time smacks which had tormented me for the past what seemed like million years. I shed my clothes, peeled my underwear from my still moist and sticky penis, the guilty reminder of night spent in the tenth circle of hell, the one meant for premature ejaculators.
I flew like a wraith in the early unfamiliar, unknown and unusual morning silence of a boys dormitory into the showers to wash myself clean, to expurgate the stink of disappointed pussy from my crotch, to wipe the sweat from my brow, to open the puckering sores on my chest, clean and disinfect the accumulated puss and blood that flowed like tears from the open wounds before dressing them again, dry and shivering with a patchwork of fresh bandages in the safety of my own room.
And then I slept.
***
"Good morning, you're listening to WUOR, Clemson's only alternative. That was Crowded House with "Don't Dream It's Over". Before that we heard "I Wish I Had a Date" by Fishbone and started the whole set off with the Beastie Boys and "She's Crafty". You're listening to 'Saturday Afternoon with Kael and Cheryl' but it's not today, is it?"
"No, not today."
"That's right, because this morning I have my good friend Alex sitting in with me."
"Hello Clemson."
"And you know, forgive me for saying this, but I don't miss Cheryl at all right now."
"Oh that's sweet," she said, and knowing her she meant it.
Alex and I were seated side by side in front of the operations board in the small studio that was WUOR. We had our headsets on, a mic in front of each of us, and had been bantering like this, spinning records and gadding happily over the air for about an hour, half the length of the show. My nerves were shattered over breakfast and I tried desperately not to let her know it. Alex was too excited about being on the radio to notice, just my luck, and now I was beginning to settle in, calm down -- I was whipped, a little hung over and only three hours of sleep to recuperate, but Alex was such a doll and we were having such a good time, I felt the horrid memories of the night before beginning to subside.
"Hey Alex."
"Yeah Kael?"
"I'm taking a big risk by asking this over the air."
"Oh."
"Yeah, but it's something I gotta do."
"I understand."
"Alex?"
"Yeah, Kael?"
"You know next Saturday is St. Valentine's Day."
"Oh?"
"Yeah, and I wanted to ask you, in front of all of Clemson, if you'd be my valentine."
"Oh Kael, I'd love to be."
"We'll be right back."
And with that I started a PSA about how to escape from your dorm room in case of fire. I swiveled my chair towards the stacks and rummaged about for another album to play.
"Kael?"
"Yeah, Alex?"
"Did you mean what you said just then?"
I turned around in my seat to look at her. Such an innocent face, all bright green eyes and freckled. She was so kind and endearing.
"Yeah," I said, smiling shyly, "did you?"
"Sure," she said, "I'm flattered."
With that the door opened and in walked Carolyn in her hulking overcoat and with a thick wool scarf wrapped around her neck, obscuring her chin.
"Hiya Kael," she said, setting down an armful of station mail and new releases. "How are you this morning?" Her tone was empty, cold and businesslike.
"Morning, Carolyn," I said, trying hard to stare at the albums in my hand, "I'm fine, how are you."
"Fine," she said, brushing past me and placing certain pieces of mail into certain cubbyholes. "Hey, can you meet with me a half hour before the station meeting tomorrow to go over those promotional ideas?"
"Sure," I said, "that would be fine." I set a new record on turntable one.
"Cool," Carolyn said, and turned to head out the door. She stopped right next to me, and set something frighteningly familiar on the console.
"And here," she said, "last night you forgot your watch."