Salad Days

Over the last few years, writing poetry has been my primary creative outlet, but that wasn’t always the case. There was a time when I focused more on writing short stories, with dreams of seeing them published in prestigious magazines like GQ, The Atlantic, and Granta. This was back when I was running The Final Carrot, an online writing group I founded in the late 90s. I’d set weekly writing assignments, with submissions being posted online. One of the goals was to create a nurturing environment for growth and creativity, so members were encouraged to provide both supportive feedback and constructive criticism.

I’d be excited to submit my stories to various publications and competitions, but I’d always find the rejections (and they were always rejected… it was only ever my poetry that got accepted) disheartening. Eventually, I found myself moving away from writing short stories, and since that initial burst of creativity came to an end, I’ve only written a handful of additional stories. This is one of them.

Salad Days

It was her eyes that I noticed first, or rather I noticed the way her eyes noticed me. We were standing in line together at the college cafeteria, both idly making selections from the uninspiring salad bar. No, stop! Rewind. If I’m to avoid painting myself as a ‘victim’ in this, if I’m to avoid the soporific embrace of wallowy self-pity, then I need to be brutally honest with myself right now. When I said we were ‘together in line,’ I let myself imply something that wasn’t there at that point, something I now know all too clearly will never be.

“Lighten up, you’re being too hard on yourself,” I can almost hear you saying: “It’s just a turn of phrase. We know that you didn’t mean ‘together’ in that sense.” Well, let me tell you something: you’re being too easy on me, because that’s exactly what I meant. I wanted you to think that I had some previous history with this girl, that maybe we’d laughed or cried together, maybe shared intimate thoughts, maybe held each other at a moment of sadness… or maybe a moment of passion.

No, there I go again. I can’t even tell you the story of what actually happened without switching it around and telling you the story of what I wanted to happen. How I wanted to let my hands glide over the fuzzy, sun-kissed down on her forearms, how I wanted to release her long, golden tresses from the clip holding them captive and watch as she shook them free, how I wanted to hold her tightly and trace the curves of her face, exploring the roundness of her cheeks, the pertness of her nose, the cuteness of her chin, and, finally, the rich, welcoming fullness of her lips.

OK, calm down! Maybe you should go and get a cold shower or something. I know that I could certainly do with one. So, enough of fantasy land. Let’s get back to what really happened (and I promise I’ll try and stick to it, warts and all).

Well, there we were in line, surveying the unappealing selection of colorless leaves, limp vegetables, and countless pre-mixed (and seemingly pre-digested) salads that passed for the healthy eating option. It was then that she turned towards me and pretended to be sick, rolling her eyes, sticking two fingers up near her mouth while she pretended to gag. You’ll know just how bad I had it (who am I trying to kid, I still have it!) when I say that this seemed like the most overtly sexual come-on in the history of the universe.

I laughed at the face she was pulling, a little too hard and a little too long maybe, but her joining in rewarded me. Her infectious, high-pitched giggle only made me want her more. Let’s be honest here! If she’d have brayed like a donkey, I’d still have wanted her. I’d just have had to think up some other things for her to do with that sweet mouth of hers… other ways to keep it occupied.

So, we were laughing together—a good start. I decided to capitalize on it by suggesting that we skip the college cafeteria and grab a bite to eat elsewhere. She seemed hesitant, but when I followed up with a wisecrack about how the most nutritious part of the salad bar was probably the bugs that didn’t get washed off the lettuce, she rolled her eyes once more and said “Yeah, you’re probably right – let’s go somewhere else.”

Well, I have to say, I have never moved quicker than I did right then. We just left our trays right there at the salad bar, wheeled around and headed for the parking lot at a pace that wouldn’t seem out of place on a drill square or a forced march. As we walked, I wondered if she was as anxious as I was, that light-headed, heart-thumping, pulse-racing, breath-catching anxiousness that comes when you are so close to something you want so badly. At that moment, as I turned and watched the jiggling bounce of her unfettered breasts, I convinced myself that she was. Looking back now, I have to be honest with myself and say that in reality, she was just damn hungry!

As we reached my truck, I decided to play the chivalrous card and raced around to open the passenger door for her. She seemed to have a quizzical look on her face as she climbed up into the cab, but I put this down to the fact that my fumbling fingers had managed to drop the keys on the ground twice before I managed to get the door open for her. Once she was settled in and I had closed the door behind her, I raced back around the other side and took what felt like my rightful place beside this beautiful woman.

As I fired up the engine and turned to look over my shoulder as I reversed out of the parking lot, my right arm automatically extended across the back of her seat, as is the birthright of all truck drivers. I left it there as we drove off and found that it took all of my willpower to stop myself from lowering my fingers to her neck and shoulders. I tried to visualize my childhood baseball card collection instead of imagining how good it would feel to massage from her neck to her shoulder blades and back again, hearing her gentle sighs and feeling her relax into my fingers.

I pulled over into the drive-thru lane of the first fast-food restaurant that I saw. As I’d mentally fast-forwarded through my plans for her seduction, I had intended something a bit more romantic than McDonald’s for our first ‘date.’ However, given my state of extreme (and seemingly almost uncontrollable) sexual arousal and what that had done to my driving skills, I decided that it would be safer for everyone concerned if I was off the road. She laughed, with both her eyes and her mouth, as I had to repeat our order three times into the speakerphone. I still wasn’t sure that what the disembodied voice repeated was what I’d actually asked for but I figured that if I was lucky, the food would go uneaten anyway as the passion of the moment overtook both of us.      

We made small talk while we waited for our food, and all the time I forced myself to resist the urge to stare into her childlike face. I knew that if I did, it would only be a matter of time before I impulsively reached over and kissed her. As the conversation waned a little, I became lost in thoughts of how her lips would feel pressed against mine, of our tongues intertwined in mutual exploration.

As I reveled in my daydream, I was abruptly dragged back to reality by the cashier tapping on my window, her outstretched hand holding our food. My face was flustered as I lowered the window and took the bag from her, and I struggled to say “thank you” through the excess saliva lubricating my mouth in sweet anticipation. It was at this point that I had my next brainwave. We could either pull over into the parking lot proper and eat our Big Macs by the side of the highway, with tractor-trailers racing by us (not exactly the best setting for a seduction scene, is it?), or we could drive on to somewhere more conducive to my plans.

Nervous of her response—everyone knew that you only went there for one thing—I asked her if she fancied driving up to the lake and eating there. She seemed to think about it for a moment and then said “Oh, I used to go there a lot with my ex-boyfriend. It would be nice to go there with someone who isn’t a jerk—sure.” I still find it hard to believe that she didn’t hear the cheer that went up in my head at that moment or see the way that my hormones triggered a celebratory Mexican wave that reverberated through every fiber of my body.

It only took about two or three minutes to get to the lake from Mickey D’s, which was probably a good thing given the state of my driving and the fact that I seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. I stopped the truck, and while she sorted out the food and sodas, I tried to calmly tune the radio into something that matched my anticipation of the moment. Soundbites of fire-and-brimstone preaching flowed into inflammatory talk radio, then into tear-jerking country and western music, before the dial hit and stopped on the syrupy, sweet tones of Barry White. “This is it… this is it… go for it!” the voices in my head urged.

My arm slid around the back of her seat again and I turned towards her, unconsciously licking my lips in readiness. There was a long pause as we looked deep into one another’s eyes again and while I desperately tried out words of love in my head. Why is it, at times like that, that painstakingly learned lines from Shakespeare’s sonnets desert you, only to be replaced by groan-inducing cliches like, “If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?” I was still trying to come up with something that didn’t smack of sheer desperation or cloying cheesiness when she opened her lips and beat me to it.

“You know when I said that I used to come up here with my boyfriend? Well, when we did, he often talked about you. It was why we stopped seeing each other in the end. He was just obsessed with you, about us.”

The power of speech (or rational thought) seemed to evade me and so I nodded dumbly and muttered an “uh-uh?”

“Yes, it’s sort of embarrassing really, because all he talked about was the thought of all three of us being together… sexually.” Her cheeks and throat blushed crimson at her mention of the “S” word, and I found myself silently moaning at the sight.

I’d never considered that particular combination, but I found my heart to be racing faster all the same. It was then that she dropped the bombshell that brought an end to my fantasies.

“Of course, I told him that would never, ever happen. That there was no way that you would ever want anything to do with a sleazeball like him, and that even if he found someone else who was as depraved as he was, there is no way on God’s green Earth that I’d ever let one of those dirty lesbians lay even a finger on me!”

She’d almost spat out those words, and her face remained a mask of loathing and disgust. I was too shocked to say anything, and I guess she assumed that I was just as disgusted by her revelation.

“Never mind, honey,” she said as she rested her fingers on my arm, trying to console me. “There are plenty of other fish in the sea that aren’t as sick and warped as he is. Now, how about we stop off at the mall on the way back? You know, if you were to wear something a little more feminine and maybe try a little make-up, I’m sure you could find yourself a nice man.”