Archives: August 6-August 12, 2006

August 6, 2006

“Stop, my hair's a mess,” Julie says, ducking behind a rack of fall jackets.

“Oh whatever,” Lois says, angling around to catch her in her camera lens. “I'm not looking for glamour shots—just everyday stuff. See, Preston won't care.” Without any further warning, Lois turns the little silver digital camera to me, behind the front counter. I continue ringing out my customer, trying to look happy about it—a substitute for a smile in this photograph.

“C'mon, take one of me,” Jermaine's voice calls out. I look over and he has a pair of leopard print women's underwear over the top of his head.

“I told you to stop wearing the merchandise,” Lois says, snatching it off. “Now come on, pose with Julie there.”

“I don't know why you're so camera-happy all of a sudden,” Julie says, but this time she allows Jermaine to put his arm over her, and fakes a half-smile for the photo.

The camera clicks and Lois lowers it. “I want something to remember you guys by. You and Preston are gone at the end of the month. Then sooner or later Jermaine's going to graduate and find a better job.”

“You know I won't leave you, Lo-Lo.”

“Well I can hope anyway,” Lois says with a smirk. “But seriously, it's the nature of the job. You kids won't be around forever. And I like working with you all.”

“That's sweet,” Jermaine says.

“With a few exceptions, that is.”

My customer leaves, just as Anastasia appears in the entryway. It's ten minutes to three and she's on her way in for an afternoon shift, as my own winds up. Lois, maybe following my gaze, turns with her camera raised. I think I'll ask her later, if she can send me copies of all these pictures.

August 7, 2006

“You know, if I could start college over again, I almost think I'd do something like fashion design,” Julie says, working a floral shirt onto a hanger as it migrates from its place on a display table, over to sales rack.

“You don't say?”

“It would just be so much more fun. Well, no—it probably wouldn't be as much fun if I had to study all of the history and reasons behind styles and all. But if I got through it, can you imagine how much fun it would be to design stuff like this, and get paid for it?”

“You can't settle for folding stuff like this, and getting paid for it?”

“Har, har,” she says, setting that shirt aside, and moving to the next. “I'm serious. I mean I'm studying architecture. Ultimately, much more practical, probably more profitable. But I'm going to spend the rest of my life sketching what buildings should look like, then re-sketching them when my clients say the first design won't work.”

“And things would be different as a clothing designer?”

“It's a different industry. You're still serving your customers, but there's more room to convince them of what they should like, or what looks good. There's more of a marketing aspect to it.”

“Well you're only a year into college. You could change your major now.”

Julie shrugs. “I'm not that serious about it. I mean, my dad would kill me if I made a change like that.”

“Your life.”

“My dad's tuition money.”

“Touche.”

“What do you think?” She holds up another one of the floral shirts. “Lose the sleeves, cut out the back. Would make for a nice little halter top, don't you think?”

“You're asking the wrong guy.”

“Well c'mon. Put Anastasia in a top like that. Would it be hot?”

“Why are you asking me about Anastasia?”

Julie smirks. “No reason at all, Preston .”

August 8, 2006

“Hey Sam, how's it going?” I ask, picking up the phone.

“Not so good, Presto,” Sam says, not wasting any time. “Tucker isn't letting up on the ads thing.”

“You're kidding.”

“Wish I was. And it's actually gotten worse—he's still saying we have to give student groups a priority for advertising space, but he's not letting us charge them a dime for ad space. So, if he wants to play hard ball, he can effectively keep us from making any money at all by booking all of the ad space.”

I take a sip of iced tea. “Okay, I get that Tucker is a douche. But in the end he's looking out for SA. There's nothing in it for him to keep us from making money.”

“Ah, but there is. If we don't make any money, we, as a student organization can be suspended.”

“And you really think Tucker wants to go that far?”

“College government is not unlike government in a third world country. In the US , if the government tried to shut down a newspaper, there would be legal issues, and other news outlets would rush to protect freedom of the press. But here, the government funds the media, and the government has every power to shut us up permanently. And who's going to run to our aid? The campus TV station? SA will shut them up too.”

“Well we could take legal action.”

“Our counsel runs through SA. Which means, if we really wanted to press it, we'd have to pay for lawyers out of our own pockets.”

“You're painting a gloomy picture here.”

Sam sighs. “It probably won't come to that. I'm just trying to explain to you why this is dangerous though. SA makes one decision now, and it could be a much bigger deal two years, five years down the road.”

“So we should try to make nice with Tucker now?”

I hear a chuckle come across the line. “You take over the paper some day, and you can kiss all the ass you want. As long as I'm in charge, we're gonna go down swinging.”

I look at a copy of the last issue of The Window from this spring, sitting on the corner of my desk. “I thought the point was for the paper not to go down.”

“You look at it your way, I'll look at it my way.”

August 9, 2006

Behind the front counter, I watch as Jermaine waves a red towel in the air. This is the signal that everything is in place at the store. There are no customers in sight. Lois has just gone into the back. Most importantly, he has just gotten off the store phone.

And so, we all—Jermaine, Julie, Anastasia and I—move toward the back office. As the doorknob turns and Lois comes back off, Jermaine counts off, “One, two, three,” and we sing.

Lois's face turns red at the happy birthday song. She doesn't move, only shifting from one foot to the other as we sing on, then clap at the song's finish.

“Thank you guys,” she says, grinning widely. “So, what—is the lack of gifts an indication that you all need a raise?”

“Na,” Jermaine says, smiling just as widely back. “We just figured we would leave that up to an expert.” He steps aside, and the rest of us follow suit. It's a second before Lois looks past us, but then she sees her boyfriend, Cal, making his way inside, cake in one hand, red roses in the other.

He nearly drops both as Lois runs up and hugs him. Julie's there right after and takes the cake to set it on the counter. Lois takes the flowers then kisses Cal , before looking back at us all a little embarrassed.

I smile. In a sense, it's kind of odd seeing them, people five or ten years older than me, so in love—and especially odd looking at Carl, with all of his tattoos, holding little Lois close to him. But in another sense, it's just a really nice thing to see two people who are just so happy to be with one another.

I turn to Anastasia just as she turns away from me.

August 10, 2006

It's a hot day in Shermantown. I wish I was working, just for the sake of spending the afternoon in an air-conditioned place. As it stands, I would like to go away somewhere, but can't even bring myself to get out of my desk chair, sitting by an open window, fan blowing air in my face.

I think about tomorrow, when I'll leave town with Dad, heading to our old campgrounds for the weekend. I don't know what we'll talk about on the way there, or for those hours on the fishing boat, or before we head to sleep at night.

I think about what will come after this weekend—in these last couple weeks I'll have with Anastasia. I think about what would happen if I just kissed her good night one of these nights. I think about what we could, or couldn't make out of a couple weeks of time.

And I think about going back to Taylor . It's funny that I haven't been single there since last fall—and even then, it feels as though Emma and I were always in some stage of getting together before we actually reached that point. I'm not sure I even know what it means to be single at college now. I know I'll have a good time with Dave and Mike, and it will be good to have Chang around this time too.

Sometimes, I think it will be more fun without a girl to worry about—that I could be more like Dave. I crave the unpredictable nature of a life like that, where I would never know what will happen on a Friday night. Where I could end staying out all night, or could wake up in a different bed with a different girl, or have a different girl in my own room. Could be a girl I know from some class, or some girl I meet that very night. Maybe someone from The Window. Maybe I'd develop sort of a stock of two or three girlfriends to spend nights with, the way Dave did.

But then I think about nights when things don't pan out. I think about how, for all this time spent in relationships, I'm still not that confident or smooth. I think of how lonely it could get, and how all I'd have would be those friends, and then what would I do if they didn't come home some night?

Or say I found a hundred girls—a different one or two for every weekend night. I had a connection with Emma. I built something with Veronica—or at least I thought I had. I was almost certain. She said we were in different places in our lives. Maybe I haven't thought enough about what that meant.

Maybe that last weekend with Veronica is a testament to why I shouldn't seek out anything too serious.

Then I think about Lois and Cal. I think about how much I'd like to take Anastasia in my arms—even if it was for just one day.

I'm thinking too much. I lean back, so the hot air the fan's re-circulating only grazes my nose. In turn, the breeze blows some papers lying around my room. I get up to put them back in order.

August 11, 2006

As we roll to the outskirts of Shermantown, it occurs to me that this isn't only the first camping trip I've taken with my father in years, but also one of the few times I've so much as rode in a car with him alone for quite sometime, excluding the rides back and forth for college. For those rides, there's that element of going away—a different feel to the journey because I've got something on my mind—the transition between home and life away at school. That, and at the end of the trip, I know we won't be spending a lot of time together—unlike today, when the drive is just the beginning.

That's not to say that this trip is a bad thing. I pang of nostalgia hits me as travel on. I remember my brother teaching me camping songs along the rides out to camp when we were kids, and how my father would laugh at each one—in retrospect, probably laughing through gritted teeth, after hearing the songs over and over again. I remember playing the alphabet game, too, looking for letters along the road, in sequential order, racing my brother to spot every one. He usually won.

“You know, your mother and I used to go out on camping trips like this, before you and your brother were born. It was never really her thing, but I think I made her like it back then.”

“Must have been tough roughing it back then. I mean, had man even discovered fire at that point?”

Dad laughs. “Your mother used to bust my chops because I had the hardest time starting a fire, no matter how many times we went out there. So, though my caveman buddies had discovered fire, I hadn't mastered the art quite yet.”

“As I recall, you still hadn't mastered the art when we went camping with you.”

“Always used to be my father who made the fires when we went camping. I was a better fisherman by the time I was your age, though. But we used to have the whole family out for these trips, and we didn't stop until I was off to law school.” He shakes his head. “Those were some good times we had back then.”

“You could probably get Uncle Gary to come up here with you. I'm sure he'd like getting away from the City for a few days.”

“Maybe so. He's as busy as I am, though. We're lucky when he can come back for Christmas.” Dad slows down the car and hangs a right as we progress further from civilization, with more trees all around us, less businesses. “Seems like we can never find the time.”

August 12, 2006

Dad and I sit on the boat. It's cooler out on the water, in the middle of the lake. There's a dull throbbing in the back of my head, a natural consequence of getting up with my father at 6 a.m.

Nothing's biting, and I wish for some activity—something to talk about, be it the fish that got away, or the prize piece that my father will talk about for the next week. Hell, I'll settle for a little sucker, just for the sake of having my father coaching me on how to reel it in, or to watch him pull up the first catch of the day.

“So I know things didn't pan out with Veronica,” Dad says, breaking a silence. “And I don't know exactly what happened with Emma. But I feel like we're a little overdue for a talk.”

“Is that right?”

“It is. And I'm talking about sex.”

“Oh come on, Dad.”

“Now, I'm serious.”

“I know you're serious, and I'm saying I seriously don't want to talk about it.”

“Well, we'll keep it quick then.”

“Dad, I know about sex. I know—the mechanics, and the consequences, and the precautions to take—”

“All right, well that's good. It's still my fatherly duty to say a little something. Because we all make mistakes, Preston .”

“Are you telling me you've made mistakes?”

“I'm only human. And if there's one thing I can tell you, it's that the sex thing isn't a game. You get a girl pregnant, that can change your whole life.”

“I know how to use a condom, Dad.” I say it before I think about it—rushing to get to the end of the conversation. In doing so, for the first time, I admit to my dad that I've been active.

“Well I'm glad for that, at least.” Dad looks away, out on the water. “Look, I'm just saying that it's easy to make a mistake. You've got a good head on your shoulders, Preston , and I would hate to see you make a mistake. It's good that you're protected, but regardless of that, you've got to make smart decisions too.”

“The only—the only person I've been with was someone I was in a relationship with. Someone who I trusted—at least someone I trusted then.”

Dad nods. “Okay.”

I shift my pole, turning a little, looking back out toward our campsite in the woods.