Blinking Red: November 2007

I’D RATHER NOT

Jim had his favorite girls. Most of them were the younger unmarried ones who flirted with him by giving him either a transparent smile or a piece of their mind. I was one of these girls. As a favorite, I was blessed with the opportunity to have Jim peck at me about my social life like it was his own. He would tell me how a girl my age should be dating someone or even thinking about marriage (only in Utah). “Now take my nephew Nic…top of the line cowboy, hard workin’, good lookin’ kid and just the shyest thing you ever saw. You n’ him could balance each other out. If you’d just let me set you up, I know there’d be fireworks,” he’d say. I would shake my head hopelessly and say, “I’d rather not. I hate guys.”
Having broken up with my high school boyfriend I was like a leaf of lettuce stuffed inside a mango when it came to the dating scene. I was dysfunctional. Dark circles hung under my eyes, I was thinner than I’d been in months, and my mind was a black hole sucking in fragments of space and putting them into empty storage. College was a tapestry hanging limply on my wall; it was there but not something I was putting forth much effort into. After telling my mother about the pains of my existence, she very tactfully said it was my own fault I was this way and that I should date even if I didn’t want to. Dating would be the best kind of therapy. Taking her advice, I agreed to a blind date with the notorious Nic Walker from Piute County and for the first time since in I don’t know how long, I discovered my mom was…amazingly wrong.
A couple of weeks later at seven-thirty my buddy Joy and I were wringing our hands by the front door of my house. Our dates were a half hour late and the clock was steadily ticking forward. Deep inside both of us were crossing our fingers. Perhaps Nic and company spotted a bar on the way here and couldn’t resist the temptation. What if they ran into a deer? The very best we dared wished for was to be stood up—we might have a chance at salvaging what was left of our Friday night.
My doorbell rang ferociously. Nic was what most girls would consider “hot” with his saggy blonde hair and blue eyes but something about his skin tight Wranglers and belt buckle big enough for me to eat off of made me want to throw up in my own mouth. His buddy could be summed up with the image of a gang-banger-hick. Not enough bling to be real and he wore the Piute accent on his sleeve like his momma gave it to him.
Getting into the jacked up truck Gang-banger drove was a feat I still wonder how we ever accomplished without a step ladder. With girls in the back and boys in the front we were moderately comfortable- one of many precautions we took to prevent the dreaded cross county contamination. My ears shriveled from the time they fired up the engine till the time the fiasco was over in an effort to save themselves from the continual chorus of “Chain Hang Low”- a classy remix of “Do Your Ears Hang Low.” Watching my house disappear down the dirt road that night I was overcome with the grievous thought of it being the last time I would see my home again.
About twenty miles away from civilization, Nic turned to me and yelled his first and last words for the night over then din of “Chain Hang Low.”
“What’d ya wanna do?”
“WHAT,” I yelled back.
“I said, WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?”
Looking at Joy I could see her trying to restrain her fists from punching the phony accent out of his mouth. The next fifteen minutes were the equivalent of the vulture scene from The Jungle Book where they sit on the limb of a tree and go back and forth with the dreaded phrase, “What you wanna do?” For some reason I had assumed when we decided to go on a date, our dates would have some idea in mind of what we were going to do. The bowling alley was taken by a tournament and the movie in the local theatre had already started. The next showing would not be for two more hours. Time stretched before Joy and I like a torture device moving ever slower with its dirty work.
I’d given up carrying on a decent conversation with Nic and resorted to discussing the dynamics of Pink Floyd with Gang-banger. When Nic was not immersed in his phone’s text messaging he was talking to his ex-girlfriend, his potential girlfriend, and his drunk buddy. We were caught off guard a bit when Nic looked up from his phone to say he needed a drink. Looking back, its funny how it took us a half hour to find a gas station, five minutes to convince the boys to forgo the beer, and then another ten minutes to clean up the mess Joy made(nerves) by spilling juice all over the floor. One hour and fifteen minutes left before the sanctuary of a movie theatre.
Twenty drops of sweat and 1200 seconds later we were in town again. The Wall-Mart parking lot to be exact, making bets on whose red neck truck would win in the race on Main Street. Lucky for the other guy we were racing, he saw the cop first. Gang banger didn’t until it was a little too late. Joy and I were frantically scrambling to find the slot to the seat belt when the official knuckles rapped on our window signaling it was time to fess up. Folding my hands over my lap firmly I managed to look like I had my seat belt on. When the cop left, Gang-banger looked over his shoulder at us and said, “See, I never get in trouble. People know me.” I chose not to break it to him that it was a cop who knew him…not always the best sort of folks to know you in a small town.
Evidently there was something Nic wanted Gang-banger to know without us hearing. Not that it would have made much difference whether they had said it out loud or not; the bass from “Chain Hang Low” was going strong. The next thing I remember was being outside of a random town and Gang-banger saying, “Don’t look out there. Nic’s takin’ a leak,” as Nic jumped out of the truck. From the look on my poor, devoted friend Joy’s face I could tell she was in just as much shock as I was. She was also wishing she’d never agreed to come along and at the same time happy to save me from facing atrocities such as these by myself.
To this day I don’t understand why we couldn’t have stopped at a gas station in town for Nic to take a leak. I still don’t know why they picked the movie Happy Feet, or even why I chose to spend four hours of my life with such works of nature. However, I know with a surety what it the difference is between saying, “I’d rather not” and “NO.” “I’d rather not” leaves room open for hesitation, for deliberation. By saying, “I’d rather not” you are really saying, “If you pressure me enough to do this, I’ll bend and give in eventually.” I know now to leave no room for second guessing. If you mean “no,” mean it. Don’t change your mind because some friendly stranger says he has your best interests at heart. And unless you are one in a hundred thousand, your better off waiting to meet a happy distraction than having one set up for you. You are the one who defines what a happy distraction is. Finger painting could be your safest bet.

The thunder outside the white farm house rumbled again, shaking the windows in their loose frames. Jaqu's window was the only one open in a welcome gesture for the threatening rain. A fresh gust rushed in from the great outdoors moving her white lace curtains with it's whisperings and Jaqu shivered savoring her discomfort. A girl of fourteen at the age of guilt and shame, Jaqu detested herself and yearned for a bit of self punishment.
Down a stretching dirt road the rusty barn groaned as a torrent of rain spilled down in sheets from the gray sky. Bessy lowed in unison with the worn timbers and Tim touched her side with his free

hand, milking at a steady pace with the other. He looked up at the sky he could not see and shook his head. One more watering like this for the fields and they might not have to worry about the dying sprinkler system.
Cassie hitched her skirts higher up her scrawny, scab speckled legs, and waded further into the pond, attempting to blow her rain sodden hair out of her face. A croak from Cassie's right resulted in a crooked grin from her seven-year-old mouth and she giggled, "You ain't got to hide no more, froggies. Cassie's got a nice new bed for you at home." A second, lower croak joined the first and before Cassie knew it, a choir of gug-ar-ums were singing to her.