s u m m e r
bottle
I knew I was in trouble when she broke the bottle against the side of the hallway.
The University Inn was a mix of all the wrong kinds of kids. Mix them up enough and there will always be trouble. The bad part is this diversity can't read itself. Understand. And that's why you don't mess with the gays.
Charles had been my roommate for awhile, hell, what the hell did I care if he was gay or not, but the country boys on the other side of the Inn never saw it that way.
They also didn't see Christina as a lesbian.
They saw her as a piece of ass. They saw her as something to grab and yell at and high-five each other which each rude comment.
So when she came over to drink with Charles I usually ended up saying the same thing I'd said a couple minutes before.
"Let it go Christina."
What the good old boys also failed to see was the mean-ass streak that ran through her from the days when she lived in New York. I've never been there, don't know the first thing about it, but I know she was messed up when she got to Greensboro and the university simply put her on more Lithium and called her another manic and sent her on her way. They didn't notice, or didn't care about the scars on her arms and thighs and all the piercings or the tatoos, done herself with straight pens and black ink.
They also didn't know about the bag of sharp things she carries around.
"Come on Christina, they're not really worth it, right?"
In hindsight, I should've never made it a question. It was all she needed to get up and cross the line. She walked over the green plastic turf, past the glowing RC Cola machine shifting he hold from the middle of the bottle to its neck just before she cracked it against the hallway.
And that was of course all they needed.
I'm a lot closer to those good old boys than I am to a lesbian from New York and I knew they were only waiting for the right series of events to take place before they could justify to themselves doing what they'd wanted to do all along. To Christina it could've been anybody, I'd seen it before. But those guys had to have a reason...beyond the fact she wouldn't have slept with them in a million years. That only pissed them off, knowing they couldn't possibly turn her on, no matter what. They needed more because they wouldn't admit that small fact to themselves. It simply wasn't true. And so they taunted, figured if they couldn't tease it out of her then they coud make her mad enough to do something stupid and give them all the latitude they needed (which wasn't much to begin with) to justify in there minds all was lost and they might as well beat the shit of her as look at her.
She'd given them that much as was waiting at one end of the hallway with a broken bottle to find out just how far they were willing to go.
I figure each was banking on the other backing down. I knew at least a couple of the fellows would and sure enough two grabbed the paper carton of beer beside them, jumped over the railing into the pool area and left through the gate. I heard their truck start up by the dumpster and that left three.
I knew Charles wouldn't do a damn thing. Charles was only good for drinking and music. The first sign of trouble (didn't matter what kind) and he never knew you. That left Christina and I 'cause I damn sure wasn't letting her go at it alone. Not that I care in the long run but it's simple principle. You stick by who you're with. If you aren't prepared to go that road then you should pick who you hang out with a little more carefully. Yeah, that's the way I've always been, and I've fought for some pretty dumb shit as a result. At least this time there was a shade of something to it.
So we squared off each end of the hallway, taking small steps until the moonlight was left behind and I was under the dull glow of sixty watt exposed bulbs.
goodnight 4.19.99