Tag Archives: party

Don’t Rayne On My Parade; chapter two, part two

 “I’m telling you, she’s the best art teacher there is.  She knows everything!”  A young woman in her early twenties with ratted dyed black hair and heavy raccoon eyes gushes to her friend who is so nondescript, I barely notice her.  “If Moira says it’s true, then it is.”

“That’s bullshit, Brenda,” the other woman says heatedly, her face flushing.  Her shoulder-length mousy brown hair falls in her eyes no matter how many times she brushes it back.  She finally gives up and peers at her friend from behind a veil of hair.  “She’s a charlatan who gives good mouth.  Her stuff is crap, and her advice is crap.”  Her hands are clenched into fists, and her receding chin is thrust out as far as she can.  “The bitch thinks she’s all that.”

“You’re so wrong, Tansy,” Brenda says earnestly, touching her friend on the arm.  Tansy?  I have never heard a more inappropriate name.  Dorcas, maybe.  Or perhaps Zelda, but not Tansy.  “Moira really cares about people’s talent.  She talked to me for fifteen minutes about my charcoal sketches in the caf one day.  She didn’t have to do that.”

“She probably just wants to shag you,” Tansy says cruelly, her face a dark red.  I watch in fascination at the scene developing.  “You know her reputation, right?  She likes them young and stupid.”

“Is that why you slept with her?”  Brenda shoots back, her own face pinking.  “You certainly fit the stupid part, though you’re no longer young.”  The two of them glare at each other, and I’m wondering if I should step in.

“Here you go,” Emil smiles, holding out a glass.  “Rum and coke, just as you ordered.”  I accept it from him and take a sip, choking as I do.  It is definitely not as I would order, being heavy on the run and nonexistent on the coke.  “Oh dear, what are those two young women arguing about?”

“Moira,” I say simply.  I’m beginning to think that everyone has a Moira story to tell.  I recall the sway of her hips as she saunters around the room.  I think about the curve of her lips as she smiles, dreaming about kissing those lips.  I stop.  Where have I seen her before?  For the life of me, I can’t remember.

“—Don’t you think?”  Emil is looking at me, but I haven’t the slightest idea of what he has said.  Noticing my befuddled look, he repeats himself.  “I said, Moira is going to get herself in trouble one of these days, don’t you think?”  He’s shaking his head, but he can’t keep the gleam out of his eyes.  He is looking forward to the day Moira gets in trouble.  He is hoping that he’ll be there to witness it.  Slightly sickened, I drain half my drink.

“There you are, hon!”  Paris exclaims as he breezes up to me and Emil.  “Emil!  How the hell are you?  How’s academic life?”

“Tedious, Paris,” Emil says with a smile.  “I am taking a sabbatical next year, and not a moment too soon.  Nobody cares about true learning any more.  The students only want to know what’s ‘relevant’ to life.”  He twists his lips in distaste before smoothing them out again.

Continue Reading

Don’t Rayne On My Parade; chapter one, part two

Over the years, our friendship has been forged through fire as well as through happiness.  He was there for me when my father died in a car accident.  A drunk driver plowed into my father’s car at three in the afternoon.  The driver had eight previous DWIs, but hadn’t spent any real time in jail.  Killing Dad netted him a year behind bars.  A year!  He took away a man’s life, and he got a year.  It was disgraceful.  I was a sophomore at Berkeley and almost went insane.  I had been Daddy’s girl since I was born, and his death hit me hard.  If it hadn’t for Paris, I would have been in horrible shape.  He was the one who held my hair—it was waist-length then—while I puked night after night of heavy drinking.  He would go to the parties with me, though he rarely drank himself, making sure I didn’t get myself into trouble.  He’s the one who kept telling me that it was going to be all right when I felt as if I had no more heart or will to go on.  He was the one who stopped me from slashing my wrists at one especially low point that year.  My mom adores him.

In return, I was the one who ran interference between him and his mother.  She sent him letters every week while we were in college just as she does now, but he wasn’t as inured to them then.  Each letter would upset him for days.  Unlike me, he didn’t realize he was attracted to both males and females until he was a junior in high school.  His mom caught him kissing a boy that year.  Ever since, she has been preaching to him, trying to save his soul.  After reading each letter, he would rush to our apartment and sit in the dark for hours, not moving from whatever position he was in.  Paris became so distraught after one letter—where his mom wrote she’d rather see him cut off his testicles and become a eunuch than for him to fornicate the way he did—he refused to speak for days, even in class.  I decided to take matters into my own hands.  His mother’s letters arrived on Friday without fail—I wouldn’t put it past her to have calculated when she’d have to send the letter from Memphis to get it there on Friday just so his weekend would be ruined.  I intercepted the next one and opened it.  I refused to let him see it, then read the innocuous parts to him such as how his mother was doing.  That’s how we read the letters until Paris felt strong enough to read them on his own.  I was also the one who kept him together after the love of his life died from AIDS, but I don’t like thinking about that.

“What are you thinking so hard about?”  Paris asks softly.

“Family,” I reply.  “Us.”  I take a deep breath before continuing.  “Do you ever think how much easier it’d be if we were a couple?”  We’ve talked about this before, but it’s a subject we revisit from time to time.

“Yeah, no doubt,” Paris sighs, ruffling my hair.  I move so that I am in his arms, rather than lying in his lap.  It’s not like we haven’t tried.  Paris was my first kiss from a boy.  I had been very unpopular in high school, more teased than dated.  The only physical contact I had was when a boy snapped my bra then ran away.  I messed around with female friends from time to time, but boys left me strictly alone.  Paris was popular, but had been gallant enough to take me to our junior prom.  When he dropped me off for the night, he kissed me on my front porch.  My parents had left the porch light on, but that hadn’t daunted Paris.  In some ways, it’s still my most cherished kiss.

Continue Reading