I Have A Dream - Part II

The History, part II

The next year, or maybe the year after, I came back one evening when I knew there was a school play. Plays were always cool because of how liberal the school was; they were really more of an art house or One Act Theater type performance. I was standing at the back of the main hall (a big ski-lodge type building), and sometime after the show started, J. had to enter, from the rear of the audience. As she waited for her cue, she saw me and beamed, giving me a tug on the belly of my striped Gap sweater as she walked past me and then down the aisle and onto the stage.

A couple years later, after high school, I looked up my friend L. - who had become her boyfriend - and drove to the city to hang out with "him." Really I wanted to be with J., but I never let on. I was with my first real girlfriend at the time, but she had been molested by her dad and his brother, and their dad, so the way this manifested itself was in hyperactive sex drive. Oh, it was great. We'd fuck 10 times a day, literally.

Anyway, somehow we got directions to her apartment, and she let us crash there one night when we needed to, when she was out. It was in Berkeley, a very hippie town, so there were like 3 other roommates and people were always coming and going.

Well, a few months later, in the summer, my girlfriend and I got into a big argument late one warm but rainy summer night. I pulled on jeans and a jacket (no shirt), stormed out and drove off. To J's apartment of course. I couldn't believe I found it in the dark, no streetlights, and it'd been a while since I was there that one time. I went up the stairs and knocked gently on the door. 2 AM. Nobody answered. I opened it - whole place was dark, I mean pitch black. Groped my way through the darkness into the kitchen. A tiny bit of light came from under one roommate's door. I knocked, knocked louder, finally opened the door slowly and said his name (I met him that time I was over). I went in, and he was passed out, stoned out of his mind, with a candle still burning. I took the candle and went to J's door. Tap tap, just quietly. "Yeah?" I opened the door and, holding the candle in front of me, went in. She was awake, sitting up in bed, facing the doorway with her back against the wall. A big disbelieving smile spread across her face. "What are you doing here?! How did you get in? Where'd you get that candle?"

We talked all night, and the candlelight with the moonlight and the cracked window moving the diaphanous white curtain so slowly and gently made it look like we were underwater. I wanted to nail her really badly but I was too chicken to make a move.