Renae Christmas...

 

“It’s her father’s company Christmas party.” I tell my mom. I tell my mom that it is taking place at what used to be Saunders, my fathers favorite stop for breakfast, where he takes my Uncle Larry, his brother, on his birthday every year, Saunders, which is now a bar.

            “A bar?” My mother says. You can almost see the question mark dangling at the end of her sentence.

            “It’s just a company Christmas party.” I reply in my innocuous patois.

            “You know,” My mom begins to talk to me and then pauses, “If they get too drunk you can always call grandma or us and we’ll be happy to pick you up.”

            “I don’t think they drink that much.” I add, trying not to repress the image of Renae driving her dad home drunk up the cement swerved of Smithville hill.

            “Just wear your seatbelt.” My mom says.

            “I will,” I add, probably noting that I own 

            “Wear your seatbelt.” My mom says again.

                                                            ***

“We don’t have to stay for the whole party.” Renae says, during one of our afternoon make-out I-love-you-so-much honey sessions over the phone “If you like mom can just drive us back to our house and we can watch movies until the party is over.”

            “Yeah,” I think to myself, wondering what it must be like to be all alone with Renae in the house she has lived in all her life.

 

As we are talking to each other it is snowing. Renae tells me to make a wish.

 

“You are my snow angel.” I tell her.

Renae tells me that I make her melt, especially when we make out.

I’ll see you soon, I tell her.

She purchased me a golden bracelet. I still have not gotten a Christmas gift for her.

 

I will see her soon.

                                                            **

“It’ll really be no big deal,” Renae adds. David was always over here after band almost every night.” She says, alluding to Best, all I can think about is that there rapport is no where near as physical as our rapport. All I can think about is last year on the orange ramp I told Ben and Andy that I couldn’t believe that David only gave his girlfriend a sweater and didn’t kiss her. All I can think about is how last year my heart stood petrified in pulse as I ogled the picture of her on Dave’s mom secretary desk. I think about all this and wonder somehow what would happen if Renae and I are on the same couch together, the aquatic blue glower of the television splashing late night shadows against our foreheads, her parents no where in sight, my body inching towards the clad denim of her thighs.

            “Besides,” Renae notes, “It’s not like we’d be all alone.”

            “No,” I add,

            “No,” She says, “My cousin Ian will be there.”

            “Ian,” I add.

            “Yes, “ She says, “My mothers sister’s son, he’s three. He’s a cutie.”

                                                                          ***

“And after prom they all go over to somebody’s house and an adult stays up with them for the entire night.” My father says, talking about my cousin’s purported itinerary for the evening.

                                                              ***

            “I would have fallen in love with you.” I add, over the trapeze wire of one of our daily mandatory endless phone conversations, “ I would have groped your hand in public every chance I got. We would have made out on the monkey bars after school every night.”

            Renae tells me again that I would not have liked her at all.

            “To look at my grade school graduation photo,” Renae adds, “It’s like, shit, too much make-up.” She says before making a shriek at the sound of it.

 

                                                ***  

            I continue to scrutinize the angular dimensions of my countenance in the mirror, my cheekbones lathered with drops of English Leather, the cologne I got as a graduation gift from my good friend David Hale. I shave every day though in essence I probably could go five days without needing to pick up the stem of a Schick My hair is thoroughly matted in its James Dean standard intractable plateau. From the living room the holiday albums are heard chiming across the festooned rolls of plastic pine, the scent of clover and pine and poinsettia, the flicker of holiday lights, the feeling of being eternal, the Christmas wear dad is trying to play a joke on my youngest sibling Jenn, informing her that the long elongated box under the tree is a guitar for me (unbeknownst to her, a casio keyboard).

           
It is the first holiday of my high school experience and I have a beautiful girl on my shoulder like a parrot. I still have not decided whether to go back to Reane’s house during the interim of the party when the bulk of adults will be drinking at the bar.

            The face that is reflected back to me from out of the glass frame of the mirror is that of my own and, even with my glasses doffed, I can still make out cubist contours of looming potential. I can see myself going to state next year in cross country. I can see myself breaking the five minute barrier for the mile this year. I see myself acting in the auditorium in front of the silhouette of domed heads which constitutes the student body.

I see myself winning the elusive young Columbus, going to Europe and somehow meeting the girl of my dreams, I see myself garnering a cross-country scholarship, attending a swanky school in the east coast, following in my fathers Rockport's and perhaps teaching high school history. I see myself married by twenty-one, starting a family at age 25. I see my parents becoming grandparents and dandling their bloodlines on the caps of their knees.

I see all this looking down in the digits of my runners watch slapped on to my wrist.

I wear my blue shirt buttoned half-way down my chest in the fashion of a fifties grease, tucked into my pants.

I wear the boots I bought in the mall almost two months ago that have become my best friend even though they are Harley-Davidson heavy and one of the janitors  has heavily insinuated that they scab up the interior linoleum of my school if scuffed the wrong way. I wear the chic thick brown leather jacket I found in my fathers closet, the jacket I wore two weeks in the massive make out session we had in the cold sheet of the December rain. 

The last thing I handcuff to my wrist in the identity bracelet Renae gave me two weeks earlier, the TO DAVE: on he front reminding me of the mono-syllables of my identity.

As I re-enter my room I think about calling Dawn Michelle and asking her how speech is going. From outside my windows I see the college girls who live less than ten feet away skirt through the closed blinds as if ice skating.

Renae’s gift is already wrapped and laying on the desk where I sat when I somehow discovered Tori Amos a month earlier. The next thing I hear is the voice of my mother informing me that it looks like my ride is already here. 

            “Just wear your seatbelt.” My mom says, again.

                                                            ***

            AS if we are being chauffeured Renae sits in the back seat of the firebird with me. Our arms seem to envelope around each others spines when we see each other. Although her father is behind the wheel of the car I still cup Renae’s back in a sensual tilt and plant the petal of my lips on the side of her cheekbones in one amorous swoop.

            “I think you know what this is,” I say, handing her the holiday wrapped parcel.

“Monty Python and the holy grail!!!” she yelps in a high pitched exclamation of joy. In the front seat Larry makes and ill-timed quip about it better not be an engagement ring of any kind.

            “Here,” Renae says, as she hoists up several cd’s for the party. There is the Cure’s Wish and mixed up. There is Nirvana’s Nevermind. There is Stone temple Pilots and Pearl Jam’s TEN and the Shakespeare sister CD she bought a few weeks ago at the mall.

 

            “Do you like Black Crowes?” She asks, alighting a copy of Amorecia

“They're okay.” I say.

            “I thought you told me the other night on the phone that you really liked them.”

            “Yeah,” I add, not being familiar with any of the black crows tunes. “I guess they are not bad indeed.”

                                                ***

Renae’s grandfather’s apartment is three blocks away from the brick shoe box of my own grandmothers house, two blocks in the direction of the kow towing harvesting corn, the vacant field that seems to stretch for lavender light years in the directions of my father’s school. Even though it is only Larry driving the fire bird the two of us both sit in the back seat, the sensual odor of her body seems to greet me in lusty stalks of exclamation. As we enter the house Renae’s grandfather seems seminally hunched over as if in a human question mark. She still has the cd’s cusped in her hands as if she is waiting to mail a package. His right arm seems to be sore. Renae walks over to where he is seated bows in the fashion in which the acolytes bow at my church after they have finished illuminating the wicks in front of the altar, kissing the side of his face, wishing him a merry Christmas.

I sit back with Larry who is cracking one liners looking at the back of Reane’s Limestone jacket. It reads LIMESTONE: MARCHING BAND.

I look down at the bracelet she gave me two weeks ago and smile.

“And who might you be, young man.” Her grandfather says rising, his wounded arm outstretched like a grade school flag.

            “This is Dave,” Renae says. That smile bleeding across her lips.

            Renae’s grandfather tells me that he has a sore hand but that it isn’t sore enough to shake the hand of a man who is fortunate enough to date his good looking granddaughter.

            I address him as sir. I tell him that it is a pleasure meeting him sir. Like his progeny he tells me not to call him sir. Her tells me to call him Larry senior.

            “Larry too,” I add, the continental slab of my hand squeezed in his palm.

            “It’s nice to meet you Dave.” He says, the flash of glory sewn into his granddaughters lips reminds me of the time I crashed in on Renae when she was playing with the band at a football game.

            “You have a good looking girlfriend.” Her grandfather notes.

            “Yes, “ I agree, before verbally responding to him that I am a very wealthy man indeed.

                                                                                    ***

            The bar feels like sandpaper as we enter it, the hard scathing waft of nicotine, the smell of expired shots, the odor of beer entering every pore in my body. Renae has her cd’s free in one hand, my hand cuffed in the other.

            “The party if over here, in the back room.” She notes.

We sit at the back of the bar in a table seat that could pass for a church pew. Renae is drinking a coke, I am keeping with my adult semblance and ordered a cup of coffee the waitress who refers to me as hun had to brew special just for me. Renae’s stereo is seated on the buffet table at the front of the dining room. Slowly patrons begin to sway in and out, laughing, wishing each other a happy holiday, chinking alcoholic scepters, buying each other rounds. I am almost always introduced as Renae’s Dave to employees of her fathers company.

            “I like this place.” I tell her, taking a swig of my coffee.

            Renae’s head seems to bow in concurrence, before adding that its too bad were not old enough to drink, at least in public as she shuffles through her Cd’s and plays the Cure Wish telling me that her dad has always liked this one for some reason.

            “So is this the bar you had to drive your dad home from that one time?” I ask

            Renae tells me it has been more than just that one time and to keep it down because his employees don’t realize how much of a lush he is.

            “At least he seems to be a funny drunk. I mean, its not like he’s punching holes in the side of his bedroom or anything.”

            Renae makes a crooked look with her lips. Her mom has just entered the establishment a long with her aunt and her three year old cousin. As has been the case the first two times I have seen her, her mom is wearing ass-tight jeans and, for a woman in what I could only speculate is in her late thirties, looks pretty damn good.

            “This is Ian,” Renae notes, introducing me to her cousin. I stand up and wish Miss Holiday a cordial happy holidays.

            “Please,” She requests, reminding me, “It’s Debbie.”

 

The party continues. There are more rounds purchased. Renae has hinted that once the boys start doing shots of Jagermesiter they really get fucked up. Renae has hinted twice that she is bored and that we have made our remedial appearance and that now it is time for the two of us to adjourn back to her place, alone, on her couch, watching movies, with her three year old cousin asleep in the back room. The bible is still in my front pocket. I wonder if I try if I could if, during one of our makeout sessions, I could somehow get renae’s jeans off. I wonder how far she would let me go. IN the front of the room Larry is brandishing a Coors Light introducing different employees in the company. He points the top of his beer like a nozzle in the direction of Renae’s grandfather and smiles.

           

            “And this is the boss man of the cooperation. Even I have to kiss ass to him.” He says to a room fraught with cigarette smoke and with laughter. I reach my beneath the wooden lip of the table and lose myself in the smooth grip of Reane’s touch.

 “Let’s go,” Renae alludes, telling me flat out that she is getting bored and that she can’t stand it when they start to drink so much.

                                                            ***

“And Renae also said that one of the main reasons you broke up with her was because she didn’t have a vehicle and that you never saw her,” Amy says to me, three weeks later, still drilling me a new asshole over the phone, telling me that I have no clue just how hard Renae has been crying over the last weekend, telling me that I am oblivious to the pain I caused her.

                                                            ***

The three of us gradually slip into the backseat of the Firebird. As Renae’s mother bends over to fasten Ian into his toddler car seat I try not to overtly ogle the denim contours of her ass thinking about how hot her daughter will undoubtedly be someday when she reaches middle age.

                                                                        ***

 Renae’s mother is at the helm of the wheel as we pull out of the parking lot behind Saunders. Briefly I have a moral quandary about what is the right thing to do. If we go to Renae’s house we could make out but Larry or Debbie might me too inebriated to drive me home.

I want to be with Renae. I want to hold her tight cradled in the limbs of my arms with the lights of the Christmas tree somehow jisming in the background. I want to have a hardcore makeout session like the one we had two weeks ago in the rain. I want to pop in Monty python and the Holy Grail and watch the first ten minutes of it before reeling her into my body and losing my breath in the warm pond of her lips. I want o bring up the discussion of sex, the discussion we have both been painfully avoiding, I want to know just how far she will let me go.

            “So where to?” Her mother inquires.

            “Actually I should probably be getting home.” I say, blathering on about having to be up early in the morning to help my grandmother out after my paper route. I can feel Renae’s shoulder tilt and sigh in disappointment. It would be the first time since we started going out that we have not be able to make out.  

I think about what my mother told me and I fish around for my seatbelt.

            “You and your damn seatbelt.” I can hear a semi-disappointed Renae comment.

 

                                                                        ***

Reane’s mother asks me what we have planned for the holidays. I tell her that we open presents on Christmas eve and then deport for to see our relatives and then we make it back in time for the midnight service at church. I try not to think how I am the Crucifier, with my wispy robes, holding the cross in front of me as I herald the choir and the pastors down the burgundy aisle, into the sanctuary, into the presence of God.

            “It’ll be a good holiday.” I say looking at Renae a smile seems to be sprouting up in her lips. She gives me a look insinuating that I try to keep my hands off of the lower hemisphere of her body when her mom is driving especially with her younger cousin situated on the opposite side of her.   

As I leave the Firebird I wish Renae a Merry Christmas once again. Renae gets out of the car with me and the two of us engage in an adult-assenting embrace. I kiss the side of her cheek. I tell her that I love her. I tell her that, if I don’t see her, to have a merry Christmas baby. I tell her that I will call her tomorrow.

            “Thanks again for the ride Miss Holiday.” I amend, not forgetting my manners.

            “Please,” She says sounding just a tad nonplussed, “ Call me Debbie.”

As I enter the house I can see that the light is on in the room with the college girls right next door.

 

I wonder what would have happened if somehow I would have stayed.