second hoceky game (ie, first offical date...) with good ol' David Hale..

                           
   

The Limestone gang is going to another Rivermen game. This is our first meeting as an official bona fide couple.  I arrive with Hale early and wait for Renae and the Limestone gang to show up at the box office. I don’t want my parents to know that I am dating. I tell them I am going out with Hale.

Hale seems irked. He doesn’t want to be here.

“These guys go  the same high school you do. They're cool people. You can make friends.”

“Limestone really isn’t all its cracked up to be trust me. “

Hale says that he has made quite a few friends via the Science Fiction and Aviation club.

“Dave, please. I really like this girl. She’s really special.”

“I don’t know why you just could not stay with Dawn. I really liked her. She’s really special. We always had interesting conversations.”

Hale asks if I ever speak with Dawn. I lie and tell him no even though I feel compelled to call her whenever something seemingly profound in my life transpires.

“Maybe you can give me her number and we can hang out sometime.”

I try to be a bad ass. I try to deliver a monologue that is poignant and bad ass and after-school-special like look Dawn was then and Renae is now.  I try to tell Hale that there is no way I can give him Dawn Michelle's number since the last time I called her mom informed me that she was no longer living under her parents roof so to speak Hale stops and says that Renae is also here.

I look she is walking towards me as if on stilts. She is smiling. I wonder if we will kiss tonight.

We greet each other with a little hug.

This is our second hockey match. It is the first time we have our a bona fide couple.


She is with Laura and Kristi and Amy. Tim is walking behind. For some reason Lee wasn't able to make it to the Hockey game tonight.

"Everyone this is my best friend. This is Hale."

Both Laura and Amy are polite offering nice to meet you. For some reason Renae seems aloof as she extends her smooth palms out and shakes David Hale's hand and then I remember that she was aloof the first time we met.



As we enter the arena we are holding hands.
   

                                                                      ***

Renae is dressed to kill. She is wearing a green holiday-portending turtleneck. Her turtleneck is tucked into her waist. She is wearing tight jeans. My glasses are still in my pocket. I am wearing my cool boots. I am wearing a retro jacket I filched out of my father’s closet before I left.


We are walking to the same location we sat at the previous Rivermen game, near the top of the arena where we can spread out.



"Wait, I have something for you."

Reane reaches down into he front pocket.  Her shirt flies up like a drape or a clacking end of a movie reel. I can see her naval., It appears to be winking at me.

For a minute I see her body. For a minute she is doffing her fins.  She punches her right hand hard into the side of her jeans. As her fingertips bite down I see the top of her underwear. It is white, with white lace ruffled at the tops. Pure cotton.  The center of my body seems to running into a telescope. When reaches down, pinched something and reaches back up. I can no longer see the top of her underwear. I have an erection sprouting like a tilted pinwheel on the side of my leg. I am paralyzed.

 

She has no clue what the subtle orchestrations of her subtle limbs are doing to my anatomy.

 

“This if for you." She tells me.

 

“I know you really wanted a picture of me. This is from last week. Sorry all of my classmates are in it. It's from a fashion show we did in French class.

In the picture she is wearing a white shirt. She is seated. Her hair looks like is has just been tussled by the sun.

I tell her thank you.  I press my lips into her forehead as if I am smelling a dutch rose I can somehow see Renae’s eyes squint into a close while her lips lift her entire face into a smile. It seems hard to believe we are now a bona fide couple. I wonder when our first make out session will indeed ensue.
I try to sit down as if the thwart my erection.  I slip my hand around Renae’s back.  In front of us skaters pirouette and grind into each other on a slate of ice. This is our first official date.  We sit toward the top of the stadium. The green turtleneck Renae is wearing seems like the most beautiful top I have ever seen. I take my glasses out of my top pocket, put them on for two minutes, note the score of the game, look at the beautiful creature next to me, pretend I am near sighted and look at my watch before flipping my glasses back off and placing them in my top pocket. Tim is reticent and still-jowl two in the row behind us.  He is wearing what appears to be a fishing cap glasses. Apparently Tim and Kristi have been what I will learn as “on and off  again” for the past four months and Tim gave Kristi some weird adolescent proviso that if she runs out and goes off crying again in the middle of the third period the relationship is over.

In the first two minutes the opposing team from Milwaukee had scored three times. 

We are a couple now. We hold hands I keep kissing her forehead. I tell her that it is good to see her again to which she volleys back the same.

 Hale is a third wheel. He is seated to my left three seats over. I am trying to get him to socialize stating that these are his fellow classmates and Hale obviously responds that he pretty much more or less just hangs out with people in the Sci-Fi club.  When Hale gets up and tells me he is bored he's getting some nachos or something Reane tells me that she didn’t know what good old David Hale has to join us.

“He’s my brother. Besides he goes to  your high school.”

Renae smirks.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I like being with you. We’re couple now.” I lasso my arm around her shoulder.

We are an official couple. This is our first bona fie date.  We are watching the Rivermen get so massacred it looks like the ice is the color of blood.

With my arm around her shoulder I grope her fingers.

“I like being with you.” I tell Renae, telling myself that I need to take this slow.

She responds by saying the feeling is more than mutual.

She attacks my hand, giving the fleshy asterisk of my fingers a little squeeze.

Laura and Amy are in the row  in front of us.

The election is this coming Tues.

Renae says that she doesn't follow politics.

 

When Hale clambers back up the steps he begins to take loud slurps out of his x-tra large soda.

Renae looks at me as if she is bemused.

The opposing team score again.
                                                                            ***

            “You know it doesn’t matter.” Renae says,

            “What?” I add, trying to sound perplexed.

            “Your glasses,” she says, insinuating that I am somehow self-conscious about my mien, which of course she is right.

            I begin to blather on about how I only need them periodically lassoed around the curves of my ears to read. Although she at times appears to be a moveable blur I can perceive the pulse of her smile drips off her face before regaining an aura of seriousness.

            “I like being with you. My friends all like being around you. The glasses thing is just no big deal at all.”

            I smile.

 

Laura is in the front row. Hale is seated a seat and a half next to Laura.  There is always popcorn and soda.I try to make a motion goading Hale to hit on Laura. Renae is like no. She makes a comment that she wishes Lee were here because he would end up entertaining Hale.

 

The date is by all accounts a fiasco. He keeps saying he is bored, blathering on about how he can call his sister and he she can pick us up early so maybe we can go out and do Maid Rite and a Move.  My arm has been draped around her the entire date it has lost all circulation. I can’t move my fingers.

Unlike last time Kristi has not moved once.   Tim and her seem to get off giving each other the silent treatment. It feels awkward. I probably shouldn’t have invited Hale.

As the Zamboni is sweeping the ice Hale says that we really got to get a going. He stands up. Renae says that if I like I can wait around and then Laura’s mom will give me a ride home. For some reason I feel that I at least owe it to Hale to hang out with him for the rest of the night.

 

Hale is pelting me again over the shoulder that we need to go. That we are going to miss our ride.
 
“I’ll call you this weekend.”  I tell Renae. I squeeze her lithe frame.

I go to kiss her forehead.  We are facing each other like plastic caricatures on a stale wedding cake. This is high school. My lips are a missile aiming for her forehead. I like this girl. I am trying to take it slow.My glasses still lodged in my side pocket like a portals of prayer my dad keeps with him wherever he goes. My right arm finds itself  looped around her shoulder. I reel the top of her forehead in my direction and plant my lips on her forehead, almost in the fashion I did with Anastatia, spontaneously, in a fit of ardor and longing, four months earlier and the next thing I know Renae is marshaling her neck, she is standing up on her the bridge of tippy-toes like four year old trying to get a sluice of water from a park water fountain on a sweltering summer day. Her lips somehow end up finding mine. It is our first kiss.

It is terse. Her lips are wet. They are minty.  My glasses bump against her left breast.

 

I am trying hard to impede getting another erection in public.

 

I am going to kiss her again when from behind me I hear Hale.

 

“Dave, let’s go, we’re going to miss Becky.

 

I turn to Renae. We smile at each other and say goodbye.

 

We are waiting in the bottom of the Civic center, Hale sister has still not arrived.

“Dave man, I don’t get, we could still be hanging out the Renae.”

Hale says that his sister is going to be here any minute anyolsdway.

I tell him Dude, we’ve been waiting for half and hour. Hale shrugs.

Hale says that he doesn’t like Renae because she always ignores him when she sees him in the hallway.

“Well if you want to hang out with Dawn here’s a quarter, go ahead and call her although she won’t be home because the last time I tried calling her two weeks ago her mom answered in tears and told me that she didn’t live with them anymore.”

Hale is quiet. He asks what happened. I tell him I don’t know,

“She was partying a lot and coming home late. We were talking sporadically and I always enjoyed our conversations as well and then last week I called and her mom was in tears and apologized. For all I know she’s living in a box outside the Salvation army. I don’t know what happened to her. You’re just gonna have to accept the fact that I’m with Renae now and that she’s rather important to me so I’m sorry if you just want to reminisce about old times.”

 

I pad my front pocket thinking it is the pocket where the picture stowed.

 

I am tapping the top of the Gideon bible.

 

I realize I am taking a lot of my frustrations out on Hale. I am venting.  I am pissed about my season. I am pissed that this is my first official date and it ended awkwardly. I am pissed that tomorrow I am watching Peacock in the sectional and I got beat by runners I have dogged all season.

 

I look at my boots. Without saying anything I kick the side of the phone booth.

 

I scream out the word fuck.

Hale is quiet. Then he points. He says that his sister just swerved up in the parking lot to take us home. When she asks how the game was Dave says boring, “Dave just spent the whole time making out with his girlfriend.”

The election is four days away.