2

 

Randy Kroeber first came to my attention around sophomore year in high school. At first he seemed sadly representative of the stultified, backwoods population of Dunsmuir—a population that readily allows people of more privileged backgrounds to look down on us as rednecks or patronize us with the demeaning epithet “working class.” His father was a coal miner and he was destined to end up there himself: the idea of going to college would have been as remote from his mind as becoming a Buddhist monk and moving to Tibet. He was tall, lanky, with a shock of unruly black hair that framed a long face with angular features that few would have considered attractive; but there was something in his brooding countenance and shuffling walk that paradoxically appealed to me, if only because I had so much trouble figuring out how he could so limit his horizons. He seemed wearily content to follow the path that had been set for him almost since his birth, and the idea of rebelling against it was beyond the powers of his imagination.

But it was during junior year that he and I became close—and more than close. We were in the same English class—for the high school, in its infinite wisdom, decreed that students must pass three years of English and three years of math to graduate—and it quickly became obvious to me that he was struggling. I have to confess that it was largely pity that led me to offer my help: seeing someone suffer so acutely at what to me was so effortless (in spite of my heavy preference for the sciences over the humanities) caused me such pain that I felt the need to alleviate it, just to make myself feel better.

We were supposed to write a “critical analysis”—in other words, a glorified book report—on a book of our choice, to be picked from a list of a dozen titles the teacher, Mr. Kratzner, offered. You can imagine what was on the list—The Catcher in the Rye, The Pearl, Johnny Got His Gun, and so on. Randy chose Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men—probably because it was one of the shortest.

But with even this simple tale of shattered dreams and stultifying trauma he had difficulty. He just couldn’t get it through his head how an “analysis” of a made-up story written by a man long dead could be of any value or relevance to his life—and, in all honesty, I had to agree he had a point. But it was an assignment, and nothing he could do or say would get him out of it.

So he began coming over to our house, plodding along with his bag of books and other paraphernalia as if it was one of the “fardels” that Shakespeare says we all must bear. I had already read the book, even though I was writing on another one (Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment), so I offered what help I could.

He would sit on the floor, pawing through the slim paperback copy with a kind of frustrated hatred. He had in fact been diligent in reading the text, but its “tragic” ending—and, in general, the generally lugubrious tone of the whole work—had affected him more than he was willing to let on.

But trying to articulate his feelings about the book—which, in fact, was all that Mr. Kratzner really wanted or had any right to expect of his largely “working-class” pupils—was nearly beyond Randy’s abilities.

I wanted to help him, but drew the line at actually writing his paper for him, as Randy had initially suggested.

“Come on, Randy,” I said, losing my patience a bit at what struck me as his almost willful refusal to think for himself, “you can do this.”

He just shook his head disconsolately.

“It’s not as hard as you’re making it out to be,” I said, trying to be reassuring.

He eyed me sourly, but said nothing.

“What about Lennie?” I said in a kind of desperation. “Lennie’s really the heart of the book, don’t you think?”

Randy’s mouth twisted in an uncharacteristic sneer. “He’s a stupid fool,” he said scornfully.

“Randy,” I said tartly, “Lennie’s not stupid. He has mental problems, but his heart is in the right place, don’t you think?”

“Why does he kill everything he touches?” Randy almost whined.

“Sometimes you kill the things you love, don’t you, Randy?”

I have no idea why I said that. We were all of sixteen, and I don’t suppose either of us knew very much about love beyond what we saw on the contrived TV shows we were all addicted to. But my comment seemed to sink in, for Randy looked down at his own hands as if they were Lennie’s, stroking a rabbit or a puppy until he inadvertently twisted its neck.

Let me say right here that Randy himself wasn’t at all stupid: I certainly didn’t think of him as some hideous parallel to Steinbeck’s Lennie Small. He had a lot of native intelligence—it just wasn’t the book-learning that so many schools want. I was a bit surprised Randy was even still in school, for a certain number of his compatriots had already dropped out, knowing they’d spend their lives underground and figuring they might as well waste no time getting there.

But what Randy did at that moment surprised me—no, shocked me. He began to cry.

I was young enough, and unworldly enough, to believe that a young man crying was something so profoundly aberrant that it was beyond embarrassing—it was almost horrifying. And Randy’s tears were, I suspected, not merely an inarticulate expression of his frustration at his inability to handle what to most everyone else was a simple school assignment, but perhaps a more deep-seated lament at the self-imposed smallness of his own world. Lennie’s dream of owning a farm and “living off the fatta the land” was modest enough in itself (hence the significance of his last name)—but even this dream proved futile as he dies at the hands of his best friend, George Milton, in what can only be characterized as a mercy killing. Perhaps Randy was thinking that his destined life as a coal miner was itself a kind of death sentence—as, very likely, it was.

And so he cried. Not loudly or histrionically, but with an appalling silence that showed only in his crumpled face and the thick drops that fell from his eyes.

What else could I do but take him in my arms?

Once again, I felt myself falling into the stereotyped female role of comforter of the male species. That was what women did—what they were for—wasn’t it? I won’t say that at the time I was all that feminine. I didn’t take much care of my dirty blond hair, which I merely tied back in a long ponytail to keep it out of my face. But I like to think that I had (and still have) a nice-looking oval face with soft, gentle features and a lean body with only a modest endowment at the chest but with long, athletic legs made strong by repeated exercise (I was really good on the uneven bars). I almost never wore a skirt or a dress, but this time I happened to be wearing a simple print dress that my mother had made—only because the late September weather was still warm enough that I wanted something cool and airy on my person.

Randy had been sitting in a kind of lotus position, so I had no choice but to squat over him and take his head in my arms. The result was that his head became nestled between my small breasts while I had to spread my legs around either side of him as I basically sat down on his lap. Somehow the sexual suggestiveness of the position escaped me in my almost frantic quest to dry those horrible man-tears.

I could feel those tears wetting my chest as Randy’s arms wrapped themselves almost convulsively around my waist. Somehow the contact with my body acted like an emotional trigger for him, and he uttered a wail that would surely have been heard through the door of my bedroom and reached my mother’s ears if his face hadn’t been muffled by my breasts. Now really alarmed, I could do nothing but coo, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” over and over again, as if those silly, meaningless words might have some sort of incantatory effect.

To this day I don’t know how the rest happened. I casually noted the growing erection in his groin, but paid it little attention: I figured it was a natural and unconscious by-product of the male anatomy, and becoming intimate with him was the furthest thing from my mind. But apparently it wasn’t from Randy’s.

In some mysterious fashion he managed to pull his member out of his sweat pants and, pushing my thin cotton panties aside at my own groin, insert himself into me.

At first I didn’t even understand exactly what was happening. Oh, I was of course familiar with the basics of copulation—even in the complete absence of anything that could be called sex ed in my conservative high school—but only as something that was done with suitable privacy and under the cover of darkness, not at 3:30 in the afternoon and with my mother bustling cluelessly in the kitchen not more than twenty feet away beyond a closed but unlocked door.

It was only when Randy broke through the impediment he encountered as his organ probed me that I suddenly realized what was going on. Strangely enough, aside from the rupture of that ridiculous little membrane I felt little pain, even though I’d listened with awe and wonder as some of my friends described the exquisite agony of being “entered” for the first time—the first several times—by their importunate boyfriends. And another anomaly of the unconventional position we had unwittingly adopted was that I was in charge of the proceedings—or could have been if I had been more aware of the scenario. Instead, Randy had to do most of the work while awkwardly seated on the floor, at times seizing my hips and moving me up and down as if I were an immense yo-yo.

It was all over in a few minutes. The grunts that came from him, and the sudden surge of wetness that filled me, testified to the less than climactic completion of the act, at least as far as I was concerned. In fact, I can’t think of anything less erotic than what had just happened, given that we had remained all but fully clothed during the whole episode and Randy hadn’t taken the slightest interest in my feelings, physical or emotional.

And yet, he continued to cling to me—and to rest his head on my breasts—after it was over. I had to pry myself away from him, and he wasn’t keen on letting me go. When I did so, getting up stiffly and sitting heavily on the bed nearby, he seemed irrationally embarrassed at the exposure of his softening member and quickly shoved it back into his pants. I just sat there looking down at him, not knowing what I was feeling.

We said nothing. After what seemed an interminable interval, I realized that I needed to clean myself up lest I stain my dress and the bedsheets I was sitting on. With only a touch of awkwardness, I peeled off my stained panties and threw them away into a far corner of the room, then dabbed my crotch with some Kleenex. There wasn’t much blood there, but there was some.

“We shouldn’t have done that,” I said slowly.

“Why?” he said, looking dreadfully vulnerable, his face still streaked with tears.

“We just shouldn’t have,” I said. I didn’t want to tell him that there was mercifully little chance of my getting pregnant: I knew my cycle well enough to know that it would be at least a week or more before I began ovulating. But I didn’t want to convey the impression that he could just “have” me at the snap of his fingers and without any consequences.

“You…hadn’t done it before,” he said—and he couldn’t keep a soupçon of pride from entering his voice.

“Of course not,” I said impatiently, although I was well aware that a fair number of girls in high school made no bones about being “experienced.”

“I hadn’t either,” he said softly, and somehow that surprised me. True, I hadn’t seen him with any other girl, but somehow I just assumed that boys “did” it as soon as they possibly could, with whoever was willing.

When I said nothing to his confession, he uttered the words that changed our relationship forever.

“I love you.”

Even at sixteen, I knew that he really didn’t mean those words—he may have thought he did, but he didn’t. It was the sex talking. Contary to popular myth, boys of that age are perhaps even more susceptible to romantizing sex than girls are. But as he gazed up at me with that somber, vulnerable look that I would come to know so well over the years, I knew I had to be careful what I said in reply. My first instinct had been to scoff derisively (“Oh, come off it, Randy, don’t be ridiculous!”), but I was well aware that that would crush him emotionally and perhaps make him permanently unable to express himself unaffectedly to another human being.

So I slid off the bed, sat down next to him, stroked his face with my hand, and said, “Randy, that’s really sweet. I don’t know what I feel about you yet, but let’s see how it goes.”

I’d spoken the truth. I didn’t know what I felt about him—I simply didn’t know him well enough. Our families were casually acquainted—our respective fathers more than our mothers—but that was about all.

My noncommittal remark was enough for Randy, and he beamed at me. I almost thought he was going to start crying again; and even though they might have been happy tears, I’m not sure I could have dealt with them.

Instead, he hugged me in a curiously chaste manner, seeming to make an exaggerated effort not to have his chest touch my breasts. And yet, there was a look in his eyes that suggested he might want more action right away—but I put a stop to that.

I got up hastily and said, “I think you’d better go home. Mom’s getting dinner ready.” That was an outright lie: even Mom didn’t start preparing our evening meal at four in the afternoon. But Randy took it in good stride. Getting up swiftly, he grabbed his books, stuffed them in a frayed backpack, and prepared to leave the room and the house.

But he turned around at the door to my bedroom. I was right behind him, expecting him to walk through. Instead, he looked down at me (he was about three inches taller than me), bent his head down, and gave me a feathery kiss on the mouth. His lips fluttered as they touched mine, and I think a shiver racked his entire frame—and mine too—as he kept his lips lightly fastened to my own for what seemed like an eternity, but could surely have been no more than a few seconds.

Then he went home.

That’s how it started. Our unexpected encounter had, for better or worse, created a bond that would last forever, and I’d never be able to think of him the same way as I’d done before. It was quite obvious that he wanted to take things to another level, at least physically. And why not? No doubt he’d enjoyed himself that first time—but he probably had a reasonable expectation that he would enjoy himself a lot more with suitable preparation.

And preparation of a different sort was on my agenda also. I’m referring to birth control. I wasn’t so naïve as to think that Randy (I tried not to think what a horrible pun his very name had become) would be content with the “rhythm method,” forswearing sex for a week or two every month; and I also doubted that he would have the discipline to wear a condom every time.

So I had a frank and open talk with my mother, who responded with a kind of blasé resignation, as if knowing that such a conversation was bound to happen sooner or later. We country folk start procreating early, and it was not unusual for both boys and girls in our tiny high school to drop out to get married or even to continue in school with a baby in tow. Mom urged me to get an IUD and even accompanied me to the one medical clinic in town.

It was evident that Randy was keen on resuming our physical union, and he made it clear that his own house was pretty much off-limits for such activity: his parents were very religious and were among the few who openly objected to pre-marital sex, so we’d have to meet at my house exclusively. My own mother, as I’ve suggested, didn’t seem to care one way or the other, and my father was too exhausted from his back-breaking work at the mine to pay much attention to the fact that his only daughter now seemed to have a beau.

I remember the first time I stripped naked in front of Randy. He had taken off his own clothes in a kind of manic alacrity, and I had to admit that what I saw pleased and impressed me. Lean as he was, he was muscular in all the right places, and there was an imposing strength in his broad shoulders and pillar-like legs. I also sensed—not that I had the least experience in the matter—that his member was a bit larger than average. As I tried to keep up with his nudity with a hesitant and not entirely comfortable striptease of my own, I saw him devour me with his eyes almost like a predatory animal focusing on a kill. Maybe that’s unkind, but given that no other male—not even my father—had seen me naked for a decade, I think my unease was not unwarranted.

But he proved to be a tender and considerate lover, even though he had to be taught about the mysteries of female desire. Indeed, I half sensed that he wasn’t even fully aware that women had orgasms just as much as men did; and when I had my first climax in his presence, he seemed to gaze upon me with a kind of appalled fascination, as if he was witnessing something inexpressibly obscene.

Let me be frank, however: I think I was the more willing to couple with Randy because I knew in my heart that, no matter what I felt for him or he for me, our relationship was destined to be temporary.

I’ve already mentioned that my parents had long ago determined that I should eventually seek my way out of Dunsmuir, both for my sake and theirs. There was a whole big world out there, and they were intent on my partaking of at least a little of it—they knew that they had missed the chance of doing so, and they were keen on ensuring that I had a very different kind of life. My very gender made me unsuitable for work at the mine, and the town offered little else for a bright, ambitious young woman.

But everyone—I, my parents, Randy’s parents, and Randy himself—knew that, whether he finished high school or not, his sole destiny was the mine.

He accepted his fate unquestioningly and without resentment. Dunsmuir was the only world he knew, and he didn’t seem much interested in anything else. Maybe it’s unkind of me to attribute such a narrowing of horizons to him, but he really didn’t exhibit the least interest in what was going on in other communities, other states, other parts of the country, let alone the world as a whole. In this he wasn’t at all unusual in our town—and probably in most towns in this nation and elsewhere. Cosmopolitanism is not easily acquired.

And I admit the sex was good. After I had patiently taught Randy how to please me as well as himself, we had a very nice time. Like the average oversexed teenage boy, Randy was capable of performing over and over again, and sometimes I had trouble keeping up with him. I’ll also mention—and no more than mention—that he developed a penchant for what is tactfully called “rear entry.” I can’t say I was thrilled at this uncomfortable and occasionally painful procedure, but I went along with it—only on condition that Randy repay me by doing things that I liked.

It became quickly obvious to everyone at school that we were a couple engaged in regular sex. And we were by no means the only ones. Among the fifty or so people in our junior class, at least half were similarly involved. The girls with sexual experience formed an informal club or clique, speaking among themselves with purportedly world-weary fatigue about the tedium of pleasing their insatiable mates—although in reality, they would have been the first to whine if those mates had deserted them or wanted to be “just friends.” And there were any number of breakups, philandering by both boys and girls, and many of the other relationship troubles that adults are constantly dealing with. Meanwhile, the boys and girls who still remained virgins looked upon us with a confusing mix of awe, envy, jealousy, resentment, and fear.

Initially the “club” had trouble accepting me as one of their number: after all, I had long ago developed the reputation as a tomboy (not to mention a science geek), so a number of the girls—who were doing everything they could, with makeup, revealing clothes, and what they took to be seductive poses, to let everyone know that they were “getting it”—were incredulous that I had managed to snag a boy of my own. And even though neither Randy nor I engaged in the vulgarity of talking about our intimacies, it became so obvious that we were physically involved that I found myself in the “club” whether I wanted to be or not.

I don’t wish to convey the impression that having sex was all that Randy and I did; but I have to say that, in our little town, there wasn’t much else to do. We had exactly two movie theatres—strangely enough, they were across the street from each other on Main Street, our only major commercial thoroughfare—but it didn’t even have first-run movies, instead doing a surprisingly brisk business showing older films (sometimes vintage black-and-white films from the 1940s or earlier) that attracted both adults and kids. Dunsmuir was also not noted for parks, malls, or even playgrounds where young people could congregate. Sometimes Randy and I drove to Fenton, which had a few more facilities to interest us; he was already an expert and efficient driver, and both his parents and mine had no compunction letting him sit behind the wheel of their respective cars.

But as junior year ended, summer vacation was over, and senior year began, our breakup became imminent. Nothing was said, but I’m sure both of us knew what was coming. I was going to college, he was going to the mine—and that would be the end of it.

I had a feeling that he actually wanted to propose to me, but knew that my response would be no—and that might mean the end of our sexual sessions, something he couldn’t contemplate without acute agony. And so he became even more sullen and taciturn than usual as the fall turned to winter. Sometimes I felt that he was becoming a bit rougher in bed as a way of punishing me for my impending desertion—of him, of the town, and of the only life he knew or wanted to know.

Of course, my college choices were limited. For financial reasons, an in-state institution was the only option. My family had once taken a trip to the Finger Lakes—one of the few times we took a vacation anywhere—and I was thrilled at what seemed a whole new world of truly civilized life that opened up before me; but I had little hope of getting into Cornell, although I did make an application to Wells College in Aurora (I didn’t get in). In the end, Lehigh and Penn State accepted me, as did a few other, smaller colleges; and paradoxically I chose Lehigh as being closer to home. I was ready to leave—but not ready to go to the ends of the earth.

After a humdrum graduation from high school, Randy and I continued our liaisons during a languid summer. He tried desperately not to think of our impending separation—and, in all honesty, so did I. The physical and psychological benefits of regular sex are not to be understated. But almost immediately after graduation Randy had taken up his humble place in the mine, and in our meetings he already seemed covered with coal dust—and, more plangently, with the sense of hopelessness that came with a harsh, grinding, dead-end job. He now clung to me with an unspoken desperation, as if I were his one fragment of sanity and pleasure as he faced a lifetime of relentless toil.

I remember how he looked glumly on that late August day when I packed my few belongings and loaded them into the family car (I didn’t have my Mini then), my mother impatiently waiting for me to finish so that she could whisk me away from the town that had become a stultifying prison to her as it was to her husband. It was as if Randy couldn’t believe I was actually going through with it: the whole business of leaving for college seemed to him some cruel ruse or practical joke I was playing on him as payback for some imaginary blunder on his part.

I wished that my mother wasn’t looking on sharply as I gave Randy a final hug, but she seemed inclined to think I might irrationally change my mind and bolt from the scene—although why I would so heedlessly throw away my ticket out of this place I couldn’t for the life of me imagine. Randy, as if exacting some minimal revenge on my mother for not letting us say goodbye in private, gave my bottom a deliberate squeeze as I muttered insincerely, “Take care of yourself.”

He said nothing—for what, indeed, could he say that wouldn’t sound fatuous or resentful or bitter?

And so we parted.

Nevertheless, I wasn’t quite so unkind as to turn my back on him altogether. When a girl lets a guy enter her body repeatedly over a period of two years, an emotional bond of some sort has to be created. Did I love him? Maybe—as much as a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old girl can be said to know what love really means. And maybe I wanted to let Randy down easy. He knew I wasn’t prepared to go from being a coal miner’s daughter to a coal miner’s wife; but I did wish to convey that he had meant something to me—as in fact he had.

So I wrote occasional letters to him, and even spoke to him on the phone a few times. Randy wasn’t exactly very good at correspondence, and I found his short, misspelled letters—written on lined paper with big block letters—both amusing and inexpressibly sad. That first year of college so expanded my whole outlook on life that, when I came home that summer (for where else did I have to go?), I already felt a different person.

But I made the mistake of resuming relations with Randy. It was a mistake because he himself tried to preserve the illusion that nothing had changed—that I’d just gone inexplicably away on a long vacation and was now back, and we could just pick up where we left off. I will be frank and say that I did miss our regular sex—I was entirely celibate during that first year at Lehigh—and the feel of his naked body next to mine was something of a tonic for me, as it clearly was for him. I hope I don’t sound uncharitable in saying that he didn’t seem even infinitesimally different from when I had left him nine months before—except, perhaps, that he already seemed worn down by his thankless work just as my father had been in his twenty-odd years underground.

That summer was such a nightmare—filled with the undeniable physical and emotional satisfaction of sex but, for me, a horrible sense that I was being dragged back to a life I was desperate to escape, even if it meant repudiating everyone and everything I had ever known—that I knew I couldn’t repeat it. So when I returned to school, I was determined that I would never see Dunsmuir again except for the briefest of visits.

And I did it by the simple, if contemptibly passive-aggressive, tactic of not coming home during the summers. I somehow managed to get a succession of menial positions in Allentown and a succession of fleabag sublets that cost next to nothing and whose various deficiencies I could endure for a few months. I pretended to myself that I really needed to stay near the college to study more and get a head start on next year’s classes—but it was really just to avoid Randy.

No, that’s not fair. Randy had become a symbol of my hometown—a place whose tragically limited opportunities condemned its denizens to lives of quiet despair and early death. I not infrequently felt selfish in making sure I made a clean break from Dunsmuir. But I had my hands sufficiently full making my own declaration of independence: how would I be able to drag others with me, whether it be Randy or my parents or anyone else?

So the letters and phone calls stopped. I had casual involvements with various men at college, but they led nowhere. That didn’t disturb me, for I wasn’t looking forward to early marriage and the narrowing of horizons that can frequently bring with it. Meanwhile, I worked hard on my chemistry degree and had some hope of making a career of it. The death of my father put more than a damper on things, and my mother’s failure to attend my graduation didn’t help; but I walked away with that degree in hand and felt that there were abundant opportunities for me.

And yet, here I was, back in Dunsmuir. Maybe it would only be for the summer, as I hunted for a full-time job. But was it possible that this town had so deeply entered into the fabric of my being that it would never let me escape?