Escape Artist

Tommy and I had become escape artists of sorts.  It was, I think now, our major skill.  Whenever something bad happened, we were able to slip back into the shadows, to just disappear.  I was even learning how to talk out loud so that only the person to whom I was speaking could hear me.  That is what I thought.  We watched a lot of action shows.  People were always running away, escaping something.  It was a theme.  James Bond wasn't the toughest guy in the room.  He just knew how to get away.  My dreams then were full of that.  I was always being chased by something ominous, but night after night it never caught up with me.  

It happened in real life, too.  One night, we heard about a rumble that was going to happen at the high school.  We followed some friends in my car and pulled into the back parking lot.  By the time we arrived, there must have been thirty cars.  People were standing about everywhere.  Just then, the police showed up, three cars of county sheriffs.  When one of them approached us, I looked at him and asked, "Hey, what's going on?"  "What are you doing here?" he asked back.  "We just saw a bunch of cars pulling in and stopped by to see what was happening," I said, looking bewildered.  "You boys get out of here," he told us, and we agreed.  Our friends who weren't so lucky told us that they took everybody's names and hauled some of the fellows in.   

But we were free and happy, laughing our way through the night.  

We learned how to read situations and people, too.  There were some very dangerous characters who were beginning to hang around and they were like mad dogs.  Things would be going along fine and then some twisted gene would assert itself and there would be instant trouble. We watched the hierarchies form, one pandering to another.  "Hey, motherfucker, you want some shit," Judson said to Tommy one night as we leaned against the cars drinking beer.  Nobody was sure what had happened, and maybe it was something and maybe it wasn't.  But Tommy quick as lightening said, "No thanks, Judson, I just ate."  Judson liked that one.  

It was more difficult, though, to escape the things that had a hold on you, the things you were expected to want and did want but did not want, too.  A new girl moved into the trailer park.  Her name was Marie.  She lived with her mother in a rundown trailer by the park entrance, one they rented and did not own.  Marie was in the tenth grade and had a pretty face and all the guys in the trailer park were about her.  But she was not glamorous at all.  Her clothes were poor, her hair a little ratty.  But she was nice and I used to see her at school and we talked there a little from time to time.  

One Friday night we were all together drinking in the park as usual.  I sat talking to Maria and was beginning to feel warm when I noticed her looking at me with dreamy eyes.  She was sweet, I thought, and tender, too.  And in that moment, I liked her.  And so we walked away from the crowd and down to the lake, just walking and talking, and she surprised me when she took my hand.  And, as they say, there was nothing to do but to take her up in a kiss.  I could taste the Canadian Club and Coke on her tongue, sweet and bitter at once and she kissed me with an enthusiasm that was a promise.  We walked to a spot in the woods where no one could see us and lay down on a flat square of ground littered with leaves.  I did what teenage boys do, sticking a tongue in her ear and feeling a breast, and there was no resistance.  I knew what I was supposed to do next, but I hesitated.  If I did this, it would be my first time, and I was scared.  Dutifully, though, I moved my hand down her stomach and into her waistband, and suddenly she was quivering.  It wasn't just a little tremor, but her whole body seemed to convulse. She struggled to control it, but it was an involuntary reaction.  She was scared, I thought, trying to control my own shivers.  And then I sat up.  "You don't want to do this, do you?" I asked.  She said nothing, but looked at me with liquid eyes.  "We don't have to do this.  I don't want to do this here like this anyway."  And then we both stood up.  

Walking back to the group, she took my hand.  She was sweet, I thought, and I was a hero.  But that was the only one of the things I was thinking about.  There were others.  I knew I had been scared and I knew I had not wanted to do that.  And it ate at me.  What was wrong with me, I wondered?  Why was I scared?  What would I say if I were asked about it?  

When we got back to the group, it was clear that everyone assumed that we had consummated our affair.  And for the moment, I was OK with that.  

Later, I walked her back to her trailer.  I kissed her and said goodnight.  When the door closed, I was glad.  I was glad to be back in my car, glad to put on the samba music, glad to feel the cool night air flowing over my skin.  Glad to be away.  I was now as I was when the night started.  Unscathed.  I had escaped.