The work day was
done.
Tyler sat in his
living room…time for a beer and the evening news.
The big story was
the sex scandal playing out in D.C. A
man’s confirmation hearing in front of a bunch of senators had come to a
screeching halt as a woman stepped up to say once upon a time, long ago and far
away the man had sexually assaulted her.
He said it never
happened.
Tyler scrunched up
his face and thought, pondered, reflected.
Ever since the story
broke days ago there were times he mined his memories and wondered…
Had he ever gone
“out of bounds” with any girl once upon a time when he was a teenager? In college?
Long ago? Far away?
No, no he hadn’t.
But…
There was that time
he made Lisa* cry because he was angry at some stuff she said to him and he was
driving too fast. He was sorry that
happened. He wanted to send her an
apology a few years ago but found out she had caught “The Cancer” and died.
And there was that
time he got drunk at the Tri-Delta sorority house party and passed out. The girls got a mannequin and took pictures
of him and the mannequin in salacious poses.
The night it happened he remembers the Tri-Delt girls laughing and
pointing and him being annoyed and stumbling back to his dorm room. It was weeks later when he saw the pictures.
But the memory that
came charging back from way back in his memory was the time he bumped up
against a boundary and someone let him know right quick he had hit the
guardrail.
Tyler remembered
Angie.
Angie and Tyler were
on the staff of the student newspaper at the university. Tyler wrote humor columns, Angie did general
office stuff there…compose the paper, send out bills for advertising, things
like that.
Wrapping things up
at the newspaper office one cold January night Angie asked Tyler to walk her to
her dorm.
Out into the cold
night they went.
There was small talk
about some of the stories that were going to be in the next edition.
Then…
“Did you drive over
here?” asked Angie.
“Yeah,” said Tyler,
“Oh yeah, I’m parked right behind your dorm.
I had class before heading over to the paper.”
“Let’s go to your
car,” said Angie, “And talk.”
And in no time at
all there they were at Tyler’s old ’60 Lincoln.
Tyler opened the door
for Angie.
She stood there and
looked at the old, big-ass boat of a car.
“Damn, Tyler,” said
Angie. “What the hell is this?”
“Old ’60 Lincoln,”
he said. “It used to be the old man’s
old car.”
“This is BIG,” said
Angie as she slid in on the passenger side.
Tyler shut the door
then went over to the driver’s side and got in.
He fired up the Lincoln.
“Didja wanna go
somewhere?” he looked over at her.
“No,” said Angie, “I
want to stay right here and fog up the windows.”
With that she took
off her glasses and put them on the dash.
Angie slid across
the big front seat right up to Tyler.
“Kiss me, Tyler.”
Before long they
were both naked in the front seat of the car.
The windows were all steamed up.
From time to time there were shadows of people passing by. Nobody knew, probably nobody cared what was
going on in the Lincoln.
And so it began
between Tyler and Angie.
They would
“make-out” in the dimly lit lobby of her dorm.
They would have sex
in Tyler’s apartment.
The two of them
would take long drives into the mountains where a remote meadow or rock
outcropping became the backdrop for Angie posing naked for Tyler’s camera.
They would have more
sex in Tyler’s apartment.
Then one night when
Tyler and Angie were making out in the lobby of her dorm…
“I love you, Tyler.”
Tyler stared at
Angie.
“Aren’t you going to
say anything?” she asked.
“What do you want me
to say?”
Angie slugged him in
the chest.
“HOW ABOUT ‘I LOVE
YOU,’ DUMB-ASS!”
Other couples making
out in the darkened dorm lobby stopped what they were doing and stared.
“I love you,” said
Tyler.
“Too late,
dumb-ass,” hissed Angie, getting up and disappearing upstairs to her dorm room.
Tyler didn’t hear
from Angie for days. He called her but
always got her answering machine.
“Angie,” he said to
the machine, “I’m sorry. I hope to hear
from you.”
Then Tyler’s phone
rang one Friday night.
“Tyler, Tyler,
Tyler,” it was Angie.
She sounded drunk.
“Hey Angie.”
“I’m upstairs in Bryce
Hansen’s place, come up.”
Angie hung up.
Hansen was the
photographer for the student paper.
Tyler walked up the
stairs to the third floor and knocked on Bryce’s door.
Hansen answered.
“Hey Tyler, come on
in.”
Angie was sitting on
the sofa.
Tyler walked in,
shut the door behind him and sat next to Angie.
Bryce sat in a recliner.
“So I’ve been
drinking,” said Angie. “Which one of you
wants to f*#k me tonight?”
Tyler and Bryce
looked at each other.
“I don’t know why
you’re here, Angie,” said Bryce. “I told
you I have a girlfriend back home in DC.”
“I’m here because I
thought you might f*#k me, and we’d be doing it right over Tyler’s apartment.”
“Wish you’d a-told
me,” said Bryce. “Coulda taken care of
this real quick, just taken you straight down to Tyler’s. I’m not interested.”
Angie turned to
Tyler.
“Reckon it’s you and
me, Loverboy,” she said.
Tyler held Angie’s
arm as she stumbled down the stairs to Tyler’s.
They walked back to
the bedroom.
“Are we going to ‘do
it,’ Loverboy?”
“Not while you’re
drunk,” said Tyler.
“What a gentleman,”
said Angie as she sat on the bed.
“I’ll be back,” said
Tyler as he went to the bathroom.
He came back to find
Angie standing naked in the room.
“You’ve never said anything about my boobs,”
she said as she looked down at her boobs.
“Once I started on The Pill they just exploded.”
She looked back up
into Tyler’s eyes.
“You have nice
boobs,” said Tyler. “Now why don’t you
get back in bed. I’ll sleep on my
sleeping bag on the floor.”
“No,” said
Angie. “Take off your clothes and sleep
with me. We don’t have to do it.”
And so he did.
And they didn’t.
And they slept.
And Tyler and Angie
began again.
Or so it seemed.
Because they went to
see a movie the next night. When the
flick was over they headed back to Tyler’s apartment.
Angie stopped in the
living room.
“I just want to
talk,” she said looking into Tyler’s eyes.
“You don’t have to
love me and let’s get high awhile,” said Tyler with a smile, rattling off the
words from a song of the day.
Tyler took her hand
and they sat on the sofa.
Tyler moved in to
kiss Angie.
“No, Tyler,” she
said. “I said I want to talk.”
Tyler leaned back.
“What do you want to
talk about?” he asked.
“If you and I are
going to be a couple I want exclusivity, I want a relationship, I don’t want
this to be all about f*#king like bunnies all the time.”
“F*#king like
bunnies,” Tyler chuckled.
Tyler leaned in and
kissed Angie.
Had he been paying
attention he would’ve noticed that Angie wasn’t kissing him back.
Tyler put his
fingers on the top button of Angie’s blouse and was met by a powerful roundhouse
punch to his jaw.
Tyler flew off the
sofa and landed on his back on the living room floor.
Angie got up and stood
over Tyler.
“I SAID NO, ASSHOLE,”
yelled Angie. “I’LL NOT BE TREATED LIKE
A BRISTOL WHORE.”
Tyler rubbed his jaw
and looked up at Angie.
“What’s a Bristol
whore? Is that Virginia? England?
Is that from some book?”
“ARRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHH!” yelled Angie and she kicked Tyler in the
ribs. “YOU’RE SUCH A F*#KING DUMB-ASS! TAKE ME HOME!”
The two of them rode
back in stone silence to Angie’s dorm.
Except, halfway
there…
“I’m sorry,” said
Tyler.
“F*#k you, Tyler,”
said Angie.
The car had hardly
stopped before Angie was out the door and gone.
Whenever Tyler walked
in the room at the student paper Angie would get up and leave.
Tyler came out of
his memories back to the present.
He sat in his
recliner and rubbed his jaw.
E P I L O G U E
“I’ll not be treated
like a Bristol whore.”
Angie’s words would float through Tyler’s brain from time to time. He always wondered about it. Was it a saying from Angie’s home town? Was it something from literature like Charles
Dickens or something?
Then one day, well
into the 21st century, Tyler was on the job when Ed dropped in to
pick up an order.
Ed was a local
businessman who had done some traveling to England, Australia and some other
places.
“Say Ed,” said Tyler.
Ed stopped at the
door and turned.
“Hey,” Tyler went on,
“You’ve been to England, have you ever heard the term ‘Bristol whore’?”
“Well,” said Ed,
“You know Bristol is a shipbuilding town so with a city like that you’d
probably have a lot of women plying that trade there. That’s probably where it came from. But I’ve never heard that exact term before.”
“I wondered if it
was a saying or something from some literature or something,” said Tyler. “Thanks.
It’s something I heard about 40 years ago. Now I know.”
Ed gave Tyler a
sideways look.
“It’s a long story,
amigo,” said Tyler with a smile.
-30-
*All names are fictitious.
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