By request...
"I vote for a post about girls. We haven't had one of those in some time."
---Seth, August 31, 2004, 10.22 a.m.

Doing what nerds do

Trimble once told me that Benjamin Franklin learned to write well by hand-copying books or pamphlets he admired in order to teach himself rhythm, diction, punctuation, and all the rest. So in that vein, while I was covering a school board meeting tonight, I began to type up the beginning of Baldwin’s short story, “Sonny’s Blues.” This story is no less incredible than any of Baldwin’s best essays. Seemed like a good place to start.

I was only a few clicks in when I saw three pairs of legs scooting toward my seat. I moved to let them pass.

“Oh, that’s okay, you’re fine,” said the smooth, young, bronzed legs next to me. I looked up and three blondes from the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor were taking the seats next to mine.

“Are you here for class?” Legs asked.

I explained I was from the Telegram, and we all made small talk for a minute or two until the meeting started. They were education majors, there for a class requirement. The one farthest from me was the cute one, of course.

Anyways, this was all fine until John Kirchoff started talking about the City of Temple Tax Increment Financing Reinvestment Zone Number One. I slid out “Sonny’s Blues” and started typing. I was going so far as to bold the verbs and nouns I found particularly effective and to italicize the critical transitional sentences. Then I realized that the girl next to me was looking over my shoulder.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

I froze. I felt like Dark Helmet caught playing with his dolls again.

“Uh, I’m transcribing this … to send to a friend,” I lied.

“What is it?”

“It’s a short story.”

She made a piff sound. “That’s, like, a novel.” I flipped through the 20 or so xeroxed page and frowned. But this was the girl who had earlier told me that she didn't really care about becoming a teacher, she just wanted a degree.

Turning her head, she whipsered to her friends and they all started giggling. I played along by making confused faces at the cute one and mouthing the words, “What’d I do?”

There were some other odd exchanges, like when Legs was reading over my shoulder as I typed my lede and joking with her friends again, apparently about me, because the cute one whispered, “He’s so hot,” obviously to see if I was listening. She laughed when I exaggerated a look of surprise.

And that, my friends, is as close as I’ve come to flirting or being ridiculed in Temple. I brushed it off and returned to my dolls:

I read about it in the paper, in the subway, on my way to work. I read it, and I couldn’t believe it, and I read it again. Then perhaps I just stared at it, at the newsprint spelling out his name, spelling out the story. I stared at it in the swinging lights of the subway car, and in the faces and bodies of the people, and in my own face, trapped in the darkness which roared outside.

It was not to be believed and I kept telling myself that, as I walked from the subway station to the high school. And at the same time I couldn’t doubt it. I was scared, scared for Sonny. He became real to me again. A great block of ice got settled in my belly and kept melting there slowly all day long, while I taught my classes algebra. It was a special kind of ice. It kept melting, sending trickles of ice water all up and down my veins, but it never got less. Sometimes it hardened and seemed to expand until I felt my guts were going to come spilling out or that I was going to choke or scream. This would always be at a moment when I was remembering some specific thing Sonny had once said or done.

When he was about as old as the boys in my classes his face had been bright and open, there was a lot of copper in it; and he’d had a wonderfully direct brown eyes, and great gentleness and privacy. I wondered what he looked like now. He had been picked up, the evening before, in a raid on an apartment downtown, for peddling and using heroin.

Which brings me to a preview of my next post….

I thought about it in the car, on Enfield, as I rode back to Kevin’s. I saw them, and I pretended to ignore them, but I saw them again. Then perhaps I just stared out the window, their memory hidden in the dark trees, their names written on the street signs, telling tired stories. I stared at them in the swinging traffic lights, and in the windshield and in Adam’s glowing dash, and in my own face, bored in the darkness which sagged outside.

They were just two girls who happened to live on the same street, years apart, one whose house I drove to only once and the other’s countless times. I passed Christa’s old place frequently enough to act like I didn’t notice anymore, despite the itch I always felt to look for the kitchen window that faced the street, where I stood so many times watching the cars. We only passed Nicole’s house farther out because Adam missed his turn. It was novel enough that I could point it out to my friends.

I shook my head and tried to snap out of it. They were just disappointments, no more worth dwelling on than a roll of film that didn’t come out. More pressing matters called. Dorris was in Austin. There was drinking to do.

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I’ll finish this story tomorrow. Don’t worry, the rest is much more Charlie Brown than Kicking and Screaming. This little experiment was fun, even if it unravels a bit toward the end. For now, bedtime.