Adrian, Robert and Meg
by Edward Beuchert
Close up: just the face too close seeing nothing else except that face out of the darkness. His face her face twisting contorted asking why. "Remember," she said new shot far view still the darkness. "I remember," he said same shot. Sudden silence broken by a bright sound black light baby make me want to cry.
Adrian held the phone in his hand for a moment before placing it back down on the receiver. He had recognized the voice of the caller. It grabbed him from the groggy consciousness with which he had answered the phone and shattered the disturbing images of his slumber.
"No, she’s not here," he had said.
Adrian gently rolled off the edge of the bed and slipped into the living room. He needed a cigarette. He picked up a leather jacket lying in the corner and reached into a pocket. His fingers curled around a folded piece of metal. Adrian wondered why it felt cold, given the hot stickiness of all else that evening. He released his grip on the object, reminding himself that he only wanted a cigarette. His fingers fumbled in the pocket, finally withdrawing a small crushed package from which bits of tobacco dripped.
He wandered over to a large pink sofa and sat down. Pieces of disintegrating foam spilled from the torn fabric. He propped his feet up on a squat table in front of the sofa and lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply. The sensation of expanding smoke filled his chest; he wondered if it was actually pleasurable or yet another kind of pain he had come to relish.
A girl wearing only a T-shirt and panties emerged from the bedroom. She pushed her fingers through her orange hair and yawned halfway. "Did someone call before?" she asked.
"Yes," he said, bringing the cigarette to his lips, drawing the smoke into his lungs. "It was Robert."
"Oh," she said, folding her arms together as if she were cold. "What did he say?"
"He asked if you were home."
The girl walked over to the table and lit a cigarette. "What did you say?" Adrian reached out towards her leg, wrapping his hand around the inside of her thigh. Her skin was smooth, softly mottled with pale freckles.
"You haven’t spoken to him since the last time," he said. "Have you?"
She turned around and stared at him, then threw his hand off her body: "Why why why why WHY do you have to be such an idiot sometimes." She retreated into the bedroom.
By the time Adrian finished a second cigarette her sobbing had died down. Adrian stood up and picked his leather jacket off the floor. He looked at the door to the outside hallway, and then towards the bedroom. He slowly walked into the darkened room. "I’m going now," he announced to the bundle on the bed. The sheets stirred.
"Hey," she said, "I’m sorry." The girl rose from the bed and embraced him, planting a wet kiss on the back of his neck. Adrian pressed his hands on her shoulders. She dropped to her knees in front of him and began tugging at the buttons on his pants.
* * *
During the summer, the hill had come to be one of Meg’s favorite places. Often she and Laura would bring a jug of wine and watch the sunset together. Recently Meg had moved several hundred miles away, to start her first full-time job out of college. It was, she told herself, the necessary thing to do. But still she felt remorse: she realized now that she had been happy, even if she had not known it at the time.
Meg sat on a large rectangular rock that had been painted white. She looked down at the city, bathed in the glow of late afternoon. She watched the activity below, colored boxes sliding along the streets and funny creatures crawling along the sidewalks, all moving to a slow silent rhythm marked by the changing traffic lights. At the far edge of the city a few docks, warehouses and industrial buildings were set down by the river. Occasionally a barge lumbered up or down the blue brown track that somehow reminded Meg of a broken rubber band.
"I don’t know about that place they call the real world; it’s not what I expected," said Meg. "I don’t believe it’s what I spent all these years preparing for. Sometimes I think I just want to run away from it, but where could I run away to? Maybe that’s why I’m here now. Trying to find shelter from the real world in the shadows of my alma mater. Can I do that?"
Laura stood several feet in front of Meg, wearing a pair of black military pants with bulging side pockets. She had large green eyes, and delicately curling hair the color of dry prairie grass. She was proud of her high cheek bones, a feature undoubtedly inherited from her grandmother, a Cherokee Indian whose rape had resulted in the conception of Laura’s mother.
"I’m sure it takes awhile to adjust," said Laura. "Maybe in a few months you’ll like it."
"That’s what I’m afraid of in a way. Most of the people around me seem so adjusted, settled, dead really. I’m afraid I’ll become a victim of Middle Age...at twenty-two!"
Meg stared off into the distance, watching the sun settle onto a distant mountain range. Laura popped open the magnum of champagne they had brought in a paper bag, refilling their ceramic mugs with the bubbly liquid.
"They’re right about a lot of things, you know," said Meg, "like the discrimination, the men who call you ‘girl,’ and tell jokes about blonde bimbos, the ones who expect you to make coffee and then be an engineer. But the thing they never mention in their books or their lectures is the boredom. It’s so often goddam the same, day after day. Sometimes I think maybe I should get married and have a kid, just to do something different."
"Something different?" asked Laura. "Like doing that is something different?"
"Yeah," Meg smiled, "it’s funny isn’t it? That’s really nothing different."
The two women sipped from their cups.
"Would you really want to have children?"
"Not now, not for awhile really. But it’s a nice contemplation." Meg drank some more. "When Chuck and I got pregnant---I mean when I got pregnant, that time, there was never any question of not having an abortion. And while I wondered what the baby would have looked like, the kind of person it could have become, and I felt guilty because every woman must feel that, when she terminates a pregnancy, I kinda look back on the whole thing as a positive experience. And if it’s even possible to feel joy mixed in with all those other emotions, I guess I did. An awareness of my physical self. I realized I finally was a woman, capable of growing another human being inside my body."
"That’s psycho-sociological conditioning: first they’ll get you to express the so-called maternal instincts, then they’ll have you espousing the virtues of a traditional family structure, and finally, admitting the biological supremacy of the make sex. Judas Priest, you’ve got to be careful woman."
"I suppose. But it could be a wonderfully creative, fulfilling experience. Don’t you ever think of bearing and raising a child? A lot of lesbians do, you know."
:Most of the other dykes I’ve met who talk about that are such femmes I want to vomit. Besides, I’d be afraid of stepping on a little rug rat who had free run of the apartment. And if you’re talking about creativity there are a helluva lot better ways to express yourself than by making a baby. Women have been doing that for thousands of years and look how far it’s gotton us."
"I think you’re disturbed by the fact that women can do just about everything by ourselves except make a baby. In that way we’ll still be dependent upon men for a long time coming."
"Dependent? What kind of dependency is it when all you need them to do jerk off into a paper cup?"
Meg chuckled. "I suppose you’re right, it’s no dependency at all."
The sun slipped below the mountains, filling the sky with hazy layers of red, orange and purple. Meg lay sprawled on the grass, looking up at the twilight overhead.
Laura picked up her leather jacket and walked over to Meg. "Whudja doing?" she asked.
"Looking for Venus. It’s supposed to be a bright star you can see right after the sun sets."
"Don’t you know anything?" Laura sighed. "It would be over there," she said, pointing to the horizon.
"Oooops, sorry," Meg giggled.
Laura knelt down, down cradling Meg’s head between her thighs. She stroked Meg’s long, apricot colored hair. "That feels nice," said Meg. Laura leaned over and placed a kiss on Meg’s lips.
"Is that alright?" Laura asked softly.
"Ye-yes..."
Laura stretched out alongside the other woman’s body. She held Meg’s squarish face in her hands, and placed her tongue inside Meg’s open mouth. Her hand cupped Meg’s breast, and she felt the nipple, erect. She pulled up Meg’s shirt, exposing her white, fleshy stomach to the warm September air. Laura gently loosened the drawstring on Meg’s pants. She pushed her fingers under Meg’s briefs, spreading her hand over Meg’s slowly undulating crotch.
"Please, Laura," Meg whimpered, "please stop."
* * *
"Ever wonder why a person falls in love, you know there’s gotta be a reason they call it falling in love like falling for a guy; it’s kinda Zen I think, this whole idea of encountering the infinity and losing oneself in it, surrendering and achieving a total inside/outside union the this greater Universal entity."
"Don’t you think some questions are unanswerable?" asked Adrian, shifting in his seat across the table from Robert.
"Well it seems like an interesting idea, said Robert. "actually I was reading an essay by Freud and kicked around a couple of ideas that sounded pretty Buddhist to me."
"Really, it’s a shame we pay so little attention to the Eastern mystics," replied Adrian.
"Damn right it is. Although I suppose a lot them just couldn’t handle dealing with the real world." Robert picked up a cigarette from a box on the table and lit it. "I suppose it’s good that you’re thinking about getting your Ph.D. somewhere else," said Robert. "after all, you wouldn’t want to risk becoming part of the woodwork around here."
Adrian glanced up at Robert in acknowledgment. Adrian flipped through a few pages of the book in front of him, pretending to search for a crucial bit of information. He looked up across the Freeman Room in the general direction of the clock. He closed the book and pushed his papers together, loading them into his knapsack.
Robert coughed. His head jerked forward and he brought his hand to his mouth, attempting to cover the loud, hacking sound.
"You don’t sound too well," said Adrian.
:I’ve had this cold for about three months," replied Robert. "I don’t know what it is. Maybe I’ve got AIDS," he grinned, as his body erupted in new spasms.
"Well...unfortunately I’ve got to be going," said Adrian, standing up. He extended a slightly trembling hand. "As always, it’s been a rare pleasure."
"Oh, but Adrian," said Robert, rising. "You can’t go now. It’s been such a long time and we haven’t had a chance to talk." Robert lowered his head, raised his eyebrows, and pouted. From careful study in front of a mirror he had honed this to be one of his most expressive gestures. "perhaps we can go for a little walk?"
"Er---sure," said Adrian. "I mean, that would be alright."
They walked across the Freeman Room, over to a set of heavy double doors. Robert held one open for Adrian.
"Killed any rabbits lately?"
"With my research?" Adrian responded, a puzzled look on his face. "No." He paused. "I haven’t had to put one of those creatures out of its misery for awhile now." They continued their slow pace under the light of the moon.
Robert extended his hand out towards Adrian’s shoulder. Adrian noticed several unhealed cuts in the skin. "We’ve been friends for how long? It’s been years since we met, hasn’t it?"
"Yes, years," replied Adrian, turning to watch a passing car.
Robert brought his hand around to the back of Adrian’s neck, and leaned closer to the leather jacketed boy. He pressed his open mouth against Adrian’s lips. Adrian pushed him back. "You need help." Robert’s knee quickly shot up between Adrian’s legs. Adrian doubled over in pain and fell to the ground.
"Yes, years," said Robert, watching him grovel in the mud. Adrian clutched his arms over his jacket, trying to reach for something in his pocket as Robert walked away.
* * *
Meg leaned against a wall, alternately sipping her beer, smoking her cigarettes and biting her fingernails. Adrian and Veronica stood together on the far side of the room, talking, laughing, looking into each others’ eyes just a little bit too often. It’s not fair, thought Meg. She noticed a certain ease in the way their arms brushed against each other, a particular familiarity in Veronica’s manner as she placed her hand on Adrian’s shoulder.
Joni stumbled over to Meg. "Heeeeeey, how’s it going," she said, her words slurring into each other.
"Pretty shitty," said Meg. Joni looked up at the ceiling and nearly fell down dizzy. She steadied herself against the wall and slowly traced Meg’s line of sight.
"Ooooh, you bothered by Veronica’s new toy?"
"What’s it that she’s got, except a bubbly personality and pneumatic little body?" asked Meg in an icy voice.
"Not much, not much my deeear, ‘cept for something you used to call yours." Joni stared at them for a few moments before wandering away.
Veronica stood up on her toes and whispered something to Adrian. Adrian glanced apprehensively at Meg. Veronica held out her hand and Adrian kissed it.
Meg swilled down her beer, stubbed out her cigarette and marched across the room; she pushed herself between the couple.
"Take me home Adrian, please take me home," she whispered before inserting her tongue into his ear. Veronica remained by Adrian’s side, clutching his hand. Adrian looked into Meg’s eyes, estimating his chances of bringing both women home to his brass bed. As he tried formulating an appropriate way to phrase his suggestion, Veronica let go of his hand and walked over to another boy.
Copyright © 1986 by Edward Beuchert