Emily was the meanest girl I’d ever met. Her dad, Jim, a former professional tennis player, taught tennis lessons to children at Summer camps at a clubhouse in my neighborhood. I was a pretty good tennis player, but not as good as Emily. Whenever the boys in the Summer camp got cocky, he’d put us in with his daughter and she’d school us. I mean really whip us without mercy. She was the same age and in the same grade as me. I met her when I was 8 years old. From the first moment I met Emily, I could tell she hated my guts. She’d sneer slightly whenever I nervously tried to be nice and talk to her. She was a sort of royalty at the clubhouse and fully aware of this. Each Summer, her attitude got worse. Each Summer, she would get that much better than the rest of us who only practiced at tennis camp while she practiced every day with a professional coach. Each Summer, she got more intimidating. Each Summer, she also got better looking. As she leaned over to pick up a tennis ball after a point, she kick started my 13 year old hormones into puberty. The world stopped for a moment as I lusted for the first time lost in the moment all the while wondering what was happening. She glanced back at me, we made brief eye contact, and then she made a “gaaah” noise. Her next serve was an ace. It’s easy to serve aces on a guy who is frozen stiff in more ways than one.
Emily’s family also attended the same church as my family and we both attended youth group functions. She made clear quite often how much of a dork she thought I was. I never fought back. It was useless. She was rich, athletic, hot, and the most popular girl in my youth group. I was just a shy, nerdy outcast with a weak two handed backhand. By the time she was 14, Jim had the misfortune of being an extremely over-protective, religious zealot with a daughter who had the biggest boobs in the youth group. He watched her like a hawk and ran off every guy who approached her. And pretty much every guy was jumping out of his shoes to try to talk to her. He never had to worry about me, though. I wasn’t on the radar.
Every Summer, our youth group would have some kind of corny week long get together usually involving camping and day long sermons about how to serve God good and do other stuff good, too. The most memorable was a week in Orlando where we attended the famous televangelist Benny Hinn’s Holy Spirit workshops and at night stayed in cabins near a cow pasture.
Each room of the cabins had two bunk beds, four people to a room. My bunk mate was a hippie guy named Steve, but everyone called him chicken boy. The other two guys in my room were also hippie types. I wasn’t sure why a straight laced, clean cut guy like me was sharing a room with Christian stoners, but there I was, wondering why these guys were so giddy about having a cabin next to a cow pasture.
The first night they snuck out of the cabin I was too afraid to go with them. I waited a couple of hours until they finally came back with a bag full of magic mushrooms fresh off the cow patty. These things smelled vile. Even after they were washed, they still smelled bad. Steve explained to me he would normally make tea so as to bypass the cow shit flavor, but he didn’t have access to a stove, so we’d just have to rough it.
I don't know why I ate the mushrooms. I just absentmindedly put them in my mouth and chewed. They tasted as vile and gritty as they smelled, but I somehow got them down. After about an hour, we wandered back outside and ran around in the moonlight making enough noise to attract the attention of Emily and a few of her would be jock suitors (this was the only time they were safe from her dad). At first, they threatened to tell on us, but realizing they’d be busting themselves, too, they settled on eating the rest of our mushrooms with us and playing a game of capture the flag in the woods. It was a game of jocks and hot chick vs hippies and dorky guy made infinitely harder by the psilocybin clouding our perception. We really weren’t being the best Christians that night. And as the night went on, more and more youths discovered the cow pasture and joined our game.
I thought I was all ninja. Stealth. Undetectable. I laid low while watching a bunch of tripping Pentecostal kids wander around the field in the moonlight looking like a scene from a George A. Romero movie. I was going to find that flag and then I was going to taunt Emily that I finally beat her at something. Victory would soon be mine. I was sure of it! In this game, if you crossed enemy lines, and spotted by an enemy, if they tagged you, you became their prisoner. You were only safe if you stayed on your side. But the only way to win was to sneak over to their side and steal their flag.
As I low crawled toward team jock’s flag, I was spotted by Emily who came running toward me to tag me and make me a prisoner. I knew she was a faster runner than me. I knew I was about to lose to her yet again. No! This can’t be. This bitch gets too much pleasure beating me at tennis every Summer. I can’t let her win again.
So, in my tryptamine haze, I tackled her. Full on tackle. Body to body. My face into her incredible boobs. Prisoner? Ha! What prisoner? I just changed the game. Whether it was being alone in the dark, or being messed up on hallucinogens, or something else, we ended up sharing a lot more than just a moment that night as she looked up at me and said “No one has ever put their full weight on top of me like that!”
And then she smiled at me for the very first time.
No comments:
Post a Comment