Chapter 7

Spring 1996

I watched Jason and Angela fall in love. I didn’t want to. But it was there, every moment of the day, even when I wasn’t with them. I couldn’t look away. It wasn’t like watching something horrible happen and being drawn to the morbidity of it all. It was more like watching a movie, something I never would have chosen, maybe a romantic comedy. I started watching convinced I would hate it, convinced that I could not be touched by the sentiment. But it wasn’t long before I was swept away by the sweetness. But the sweetness had an aftertaste that lingered long after the pleasurable part was gone. Watching Jason and Angela fall in love made my own loneliness, and my desire for Angela, all the more unbearable.

Yet I watched. It was the closest thing I had to love. I couldn’t look away.

I also couldn’t help thinking of it as some kind of logical process. I outlined it in my head as it happened. Every event seemed to follow another as if it were inevitable. Each new step was unsurprising, predictable. It never occurred to me to try to interfere. Before this, I had considered myself a realist, perhaps fatalistic in my world view. Shit happened and there was nothing you could do about it. Your mother died, your father was a jerk, you followed the path set before you whether you wanted to or not.

But as I watched Angela and Jason become Angelaandjason, I realized that my view of life wasn’t quite so negative. I hadn’t thought much about God. But this thing between them somehow seemed right, in a good way. It was not my place to try to keep them apart. They were meant to be, and it wasn’t just shit happening. At the beginning, what they had was pure. It was good. And so I simply watched.

Step 1: The First Date

The campus was still deserted when we got back to Duke, save for a few souls who would rather putter around an empty dorm than endure the post-holiday letdown at home.

I lay back on my bed, my arms folded, with the back of my head resting on my hands. I had propped a book up on my bended knees, and I turned a page every once in a while to make it look like I was studying.

Jason whirled around our suite with more energy than I’d ever seen from him. He splashed on expensive cologne, changed pants three times and tried to choose between two ties.

“Which one?” he asked, holding them both up to his throat.

“Umm, does this place require a tie?” They were going to a restaurant in Chapel Hill. I’d heard of it because it was a big date night spot, but I’d never been there. In any case, I thought a tie was overkill. “You don’t want to seem too eager.”

He nodded. “Good point.” Jason tossed aside the ties and rummaged through his closet for a sport coat.

“What are you reading, anyway? Classes haven’t even started yet.”

I looked down at my book. It was my calculus textbook from first semester.

“I’m just reviewing.” I figured the vaguer, the better. Plus, he was an English major who was allergic to math. He wouldn’t know any better.

“Blue or black?” He held up two jackets. It was starting to feel like a fashion show.

“Blue.”

Jason slipped on the sport coat and smiled at me. “You know a lot about date clothes.”

For someone who never dates, I finished for him in my head. He was still smiling, so I knew he didn’t mean to make me feel like a sharp stick had just stabbed into my chest.

I laughed and hoped it sounded genuine. “I’m an expert from way back. I’m just laying low, actually studying.”

Jason made a face. “No one studies over Christmas break.”

Including me. I tossed the book aside and stood up.

“I’m going to find something to eat. Have fun.” I called this back over my shoulder as I left. I tried not to wonder whether Angela was spending this much time worried about her clothes, too.

Step 2: The Courtship

By late spring, I was devoting more time than was needed to organic chemistry, and Angela was a regular in our suite. In fact, she was there more often than I was. I made it a point to see her as little as possible. I felt transparent. I was convinced that if we spent enough time together, she would know that I was falling in love with her right along with Jason. Worse, maybe, I feared Jason would see it.

It was the end of spring break when she made her first appearance in our suite. Jason had gone home to Baltimore (without me this time) and I spent the week reading and thinking of Angela. Mostly thinking of Angela. She consumed my daydreams in the purest way. I thought of her skin, her smile, the way she held her own the night of that first party. I imagined myself in Jason’s place, taking her out to dinner, using my family’s money to buy her gifts that were expensive but not presumptuous. In my mind, she and I were never far apart, and she found my imagined combination of charm and introspection impossible to resist.

This was as far as I let it go. In my mind, Angela was not a sexual object. I saved those thoughts for other women on campus, those mortals who could not approach Angela’s stature. I would not sully her image with mere sex.

But at the end of spring, it seemed Jason had no such qualms. It was the Saturday before classes and was warm, so I decided to go out for once and get some fresh air. I knew moping around the dorm wasn’t a good idea, but that day was the first all week that I was motivated to do anything else. I drove over to Chapel Hill and looked through used CD shops on Franklin Street. I was in the mood for something depressing. I flipped through the CD singles for something that wouldn’t remind me of Angela. Live’s “I Alone.” “Can’t Stop Lovin’ You” by some dubious incarnation of Van Halen. Madonna: “I Want You.” Even “Fantasy” by Mariah Carey. Wasn’t there even one song that didn’t somehow remind me that not only did I ache for Angela, but that I was utterly alone?

I abandoned the record store empty-handed, got a large coffee from a shop down the street and headed back to the dorm. I wasn’t expecting Jason back until the next day, so that’s why I was paralyzed by the sight of him and Angela entwined on the bed, naked.

I stood in the doorway long enough for the outlines of Angela’s soft curves to imprint themselves on my brain. That image of her, sleek and brown, on top of my best friend, has never left me.

I backed out, silent and ashamed. I made no noise as I shut the door, surprised by the anger I felt. I have never decided with whom I was angry, or why. Me, for watching longer than I had to? Jason, for taking her away from me? Angela, for not seeing me? The worst part of my voyeurism was the fact that by necessity, I would always be an outsider. Jason and Angela each had something I wanted. Jason had Angela, and Angela had love.

Thou shall not covet. I knew I was wrong, but I had no idea how to stop watching, how to shift my focus so I wasn’t reminded of what I didn’t have at every turn. I coveted. There is no commandment that told me how to get rid of the envy I felt for Jason and the desire I felt for Angela. Just say no? Just do it? How?

I spent the rest of the day in the library. When it closed, I sat in my car. I planned to stay up all night but, at some point, I slept, and when I woke up, the sun shone through my front window. I had slept sitting up in the driver’s seat. I had dreamt of Angela.

Step 3. In Love

In the romance of Jason and Angela, I took on the role of confidante to both of them without the other one knowing.

“Can I tell you something? I mean, I know Jason is your friend, but I need to talk to a guy about this. You’re the sweetest guy I know.”

We had both emerged from the Social Sciences building at the same time. I had given her an awkward wave and she came up and hugged me. Now, we walked toward the Bryan Center to grab something to eat. Finals were almost over and I was both relieved and anxious at the thought of the coming summer. Jason would be spending the summer in Europe with his mother. All I had planned was a short trip back to Chicago with Maren to visit our mother’s grave. Not exactly a fun vacation.

Angela and I had become friendly over the past months. How we could not—she spent nearly every free moment in our suite, and, of course, I liked her. It was impossible for me to hold her relationship with Jason against her, not when she told me her favorite books were mysteries about some Scotland Yard cop named Jury. How could we not be friends, when she agreed with me that there was nothing better than Taco Bell in the middle of the night? She was the only other black person I knew who would admit to preferring Weezer over Nas.

These things made me want her even more. These things seemed to make her see me as some kind of asexual boyfriend, one to whom she could spill her secrets without risk. She called me “sweet.” I hated it. I loved it.

I promised to seal my lips with Super Glue. She went on.

“I think I’m in love with your boy.”

She seemed to think this was a shocking revelation. I looked down at her.

“And?”

She sighed. “And, what if I tell him I love him and he doesn’t say anything? Or he gets scared? I want to tell him before he goes away for the summer.”

I had some time to think as we entered the front doors of the Bryan Center, walked downstairs to order sandwiches and settled into one of the TV rooms. On a regular day during the semester, this room would have been packed with people getting their daily Young and the Restless fix. But during exams, even the hardest partiers shut themselves into carrels at Perkins Library. We had the large room to ourselves. I turned on the television for background noise. It was three o’clock. Oprah time.

“To be honest, I think you should tell him how you feel. Not only is it obvious that he’s into you, but you don’t want to pretend you don’t care. Not with something this important.”

I meant what I said. I couldn’t lie or try to get in the way of Jason and Angela. Thou shall not bear false witness. After nearly six months of watching them together, I was convinced they loved each other.

She took a bite of her turkey club and smiled at me.

“You’re right. I’ll tell him tonight.”

She spoke before she’d finished chewing and a bit of lettuce stuck between her teeth. It was adorable.

That image of her body flashed through my mind, as it did about a thousand times a day. I banished it and turned up the volume on the television.

“Good. Now can you shut up? Oprah’s revealing the secrets of housewives today.”

Angela punched me in the arm and took another bite. I settled into the worn sofa.

“I’ll bet you dessert that one of them is smoking crack while her kids are at school.”

“Cheesecake?” Angela’s tone was childish and hopeful. It was another adorable thing about her—she ate like a guy, especially desserts.

“Of course.”

“I say she’s turning tricks after PTA meetings. Bet’s on.”

* * *

The next week, I sat on the bed, watching Jason pack up his things for the summer. We’d already taken down all of the posters from the walls. Our bookshelves were empty. My own clothes were packed, but I was only moving across campus to another dorm room, where I would spend the summer taking extra classes. Jason had talked me into renting an apartment off campus with him next year. His parents would pay for his half. I had found a part-time job with one of the biology professors to pay for mine. Angela was going home to Chicago.

Jason tried to jam one final pair of jeans into his stuffed suitcase.

“Can I tell you something? Promise you won’t laugh.”

“I’m not laughing.”

He cleared his throat. “I think I’m in love with Angela.”

Oh really? Did he think I didn’t have eyes? Ears? A heart?

“That’s cool, man. Why would you think I’d laugh about that?”

He grinned. “Well, we spent all that time talking about how we weren’t going to get tied down. And now, I’m ready to get tied down, you know what I mean?”

I tried to smile back. “Yeah. I know what you mean.”

The bare walls of the room felt as if they were closing in on me. None of this was news. I knew he loved Angela. And she loved him. But a tiny part of me, the part I wasn’t proud of, had hoped that she was fooling herself, that he didn’t feel the same. That tiny little shameful part wished he would break her heart and leave her for someone like me to save. I was ashamed. I wished I were a better person. I wished this wasn’t happening.

* * *

Calvin on love:

When I met Vanessa, I couldn’t believe my luck. She was everything I had always wanted in a woman: smart, pretty, fun. I didn’t really think of her as a real person, a person with gifts and flaws just like anyone else. If I’m being honest, I didn’t even know women were real people—I was young and women were still like alien beings to me. Growing up so sheltered by my mother and living in a town where all the women were either wives and mothers, or they were preparing to be wives and mothers, I had no idea that a woman could have facets that had nothing to do with me. Women were supposed to take care of men, I thought, and when I met Vanessa, I thought she was the perfect wife for me and mother for my future children.

Putting someone on a pedestal never works. Looking back, I can see that I was desperate to be loved. There was a hole in my life and it threatened to suck me down into it. Vanessa, with her beauty and poise, would save me.

It was too much to ask of another person, and it’s a wonder we lasted long enough to have our two children, long enough to regret all the mistakes we made. The mistakes I made. I wish I had known then what I know now. The only person who could save me was me.

—From Save Me: A Memoir by Calvin Emory