My boyfriend back then called himself Tiger. I thought he was cool.
For about a week I thought he was cool. Well, why lie about it? It might have been even six weeks. Less than three months anyway.
This was a long time ago. I was very young. Back then, I wouldn't have won any awards for biggest brain.
After six weeks, he still thought I thought he was cool. I was at least smart enough to let him go on thinking that. But what I was thinking was that for the moment he was the only boyfriend I had.
It's not like we were planning on getting married. I wasn't smart, but I wasn't stupid.
In the middle of the night, one night, we were staying in a motel and he wanted a coke. And of course there wasn't any room service. So it was pretty obvious who was going to be getting Tiger's coke.
"You don't need to bother putting any clothes on," he said.
"I'll just put on my jacket," I said.
"It's not cold," he said.
"I can't go outside naked."
"It's the middle of the night. And you've got a nice body, Baby. Nobody's going to to complain about having to look at you."
He was cool, Tiger was. Having his old lady go out naked to get him a coke. That was really cool.
Calling me "Baby." That's what cool guys did.
"You've got a quarter don't you, Baby?"
Say it one more time, I thought. Just one more time.
This was a long time ago. Cokes were a quarter then. Or maybe it was fifty cents.
"Don't lock the door on me," I said.
"I won't."
He was half right about it not being cold. At least it wasn't freezing. I give him partial credit on that one.
If I come back and he's locked the door, then I'm going back out by the coke machine and stand there until some man comes along, I thought. I'll fuck the first man who comes along and finds me naked.
But of course I wouldn't have. I would have just stood out there in the cold pounding on the door naked, like the damned idiot I was.
Before I could put my fifty cents in the coke machine, a guy came down the stairs from the balcony. A young guy, even more than me. But wearing clothes, of course.
For a moment, he didn't really see me. Then we both froze. It was a question of fight or flight, as they say. As it were. But not fight, of course. The only choice was which direction to run away in.
Then after being frozen there for a moment, I crossed out "flight." I turned around and stood there and let him have the full view. "Full frontal nudity," they used to call it.
The ball was in his court, so to speak.
"Good evening, Ma'am," he said.
"If I scream, then people will come running and find me naked. And that would very embarrassing," I said. "So I guess I can't scream," I said. "In case you were maybe thinking of touching me or something."
I didn't say that. What I really said was, "I'm getting a coke." In case he was blind or retarded or something and didn't know what a coke machine was for. I waited to see what he was going to do.
For a minute he just looked at me. Then he said, "I could buy it for you."
"I've got two quarters," I said. "It's for my boyfriend," I added.
"We could sit on the curb here and enjoy our cokes together," he said.
He didn't say that. Even if I hadn't told him about my boyfriend he wouldn't have said that. He was pretty shy.
"Just wait here a few minutes until I have a chance to get back to my room. If my boyfriend's locked the door on me, I'll come back and go to your room with you."
I didn't say any of that.
When I got back to the room, Tiger hadn't locked the door. Probably thought about it. But he knew that even if I wasn't very smart, I wasn't completely stupid. He knew that even for a cool guy like him, girlfriends don't grow on trees. So to speak, as it were.
"What took you so long, Baby?" Tiger asked.
"I met a young guy," I said. "I think he doesn't have a girlfriend. Of course I have a boyfriend, but that might not last a lot longer. In case you were maybe thinking of calling me Baby one more time."
I didn't say that, of course. I wasn't smart back then, but I didn't say every stupid thing that came in my head. I knew that I still wanted him to think that I thought he was cool.
What I said was, "I had to go find a different coke machine, because the first one only had Pepsis."
That was a long time ago and I've taken off my clothes a whole lot of times since then. In my bedroom, of course, sometimes with company and sometimes not. And lots of times standing on a stage in front of a whole crowd of guys. No big deal, really.
A whole crowd of assholes, actually. That's what I ought to say, excuse my French, and present company accepted of course.
When I think at all about Tiger any more, mostly I just think about how stupid I was back then.
But that young guy by the coke machine. I'll never forget about him.
Too bad he wasn't cool. Too bad I wasn't smart.
May, 2007