Home Run Page 14

  I do have to give Kirk credit for finding a very romantic place for the girls’ last dinner in Puerto Vallarta. On one of his daily jogs, he had run across a restaurant that was literally on the sands of the beach. It had little thatched roofs over each table—Kirk naturally knew that these were called palapas—and those big Mexican wicker chairs that are so wonderfully comfortable. With a candle on the table and the sun setting over the Pacific, whose waves almost splashed up to our table, it was really a lovely place.

  The girls, too, looked lovely. For Nicole this required very little effort—she would have been gorgeous in paint-splattered track pants—but tonight she had on a sheer dress that seemed to swirl around her body quite effortlessly, both hiding and revealing the curves beneath. For Lacey, a little more work was required. She seemed fully recovered from her drinking the night before, and for tonight had done something with her makeup that made her eyes seem very large and her lips very full. I’m not sure how women perform such miracles with the various tubes, brushes, and lotions that seem to take up so much room in the bathroom, but they can work wonders. Lacey was actually attractive. In her tight tube-top and wrap-around skirt, she was also quite sexy.

  And I’ll admit it: the suggestion that Lacey might be “easy” or at least easy enough for me had subtly changed how I looked at her. Hanging out with her might be more than just a favour for my roommate, it might actually lead to something.

  Dinner was quite pleasant sitting at our table as the surf bubbled towards us. Without the blaring mariachi band, the four of us could talk easily across the table. Nicole really was a very nice girl, I finally decided, who put on the ice queen attitude just to keep a world of horny men at bay. Given her looks, what other option did she have? She was bright, serious about her studies, and quite genuinely interested in Kirk’s religious ideas. At times she even reminded me of Maggie. There was something about her shy smile and her quick wit, a bit caustic but a bit sweet, that had me remembering so many nights with Maggie back at home. I knew that Maggie would have loved it here at this restaurant on the edge of the Pacific.

  But as Kirk so succinctly put it, Lacey was here and Maggie wasn’t. There’s fantasy and then there’s opportunity. After taking care of the bill, Kirk and Nicole declared that they were going off for a last walk down the beach. That left me looking into Lacey’s eyes.

  “You know, Lacey, I am just beginning to appreciate how wonderful you really are.”

  “So you’ve forgiven me for last night?” she asked.

  “Forgiven and forgotten,” I told her. “And tonight I’ve really gotten to appreciate you. You’re so much more interesting than I had ever dreamed.”

  “Really?” she giggled.

  “Really,” I replied, though it was a bit of an exaggeration. “I just wish we could spend more time together here. It’s such a shame that you’re flying home tomorrow.”

  “Me, too,” she replied. “We could email.”

  “We will,” I said with a wistful sigh. “But now this is our last night together, here in this beautiful place.” And then I had a burst of inspiration.

  The sea is calm to-night.

  The tide is full, the moon lies fair

  Upon the straits; on the French coast the light

  Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

  Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

  Lacey’s eyes lit up. “Oh, Alan, did you write that?”

  “Well, actually,” I began and got ready to give Matthew Arnold his due, but then something else clicked into my brain, “actually I did.”

  “So you write poetry?” she said.

  “Not much,” I told her. “I just try to capture certain moments.”

  “Like this one, tonight?”

  Lacey’s face was so bright and her gaze so focused on me that I couldn’t back away. Somehow I was making an impression, a big impression, so I went ahead:

  Ah, love, let us be true

  To one another! For this world, which seems

  To lie before us like a land of dreams,

  So various, so beautiful, so new,

  Tomorrow is lost in the northern snows.

  Tomorrow I would apologize to the ghost of Matthew Arnold. But for now I just looked into Lacey’s eyes, then took her into my arms and kissed her.

  “Alan, let’s go back to your room,” she said, breaking away. “Let’s not waste this last night.”

  “Oh, yes,” I replied.

  In seconds we were out of the restaurant and flagging down a cab. Clearly we both had sex in mind. I suspected that Lacey already had some experience in matters sexual, but I wasn’t going to ask, and I certainly wasn’t going to tell her that we were rushing off for my first real sex, ever. A man has to have some pride.

  “Much better taxi ride than last night,” I said, climbing in beside her.

  “Oh shut up,” she replied, giggling, then pressing her lips against mine.

  So there was not a lot of witty repartee before we got back to the El Paradiso. By then, it was almost midnight and the hotel lobby was largely empty. Lacey and I could make our way to the elevator and upstairs with only a few eyes staring at us. I felt a bit embarrassed, but it was Spring Break, after all, so what could people expect?

  We reached my shared hotel room on the fourth floor, staggering down the hall with our arms around each other’s waists. I admit, I was both nervous and excited. All of the attempts at getting laid over the last two years, all of the grand plans and schemes that ultimately led to frustration, and now it was simply coming to me. There’s that principle of irony, again.

  I tried to think about how we’d do it. Go inside, close door, grope, remove clothes, find condom. No—find condom first, then have it ready so it doesn’t break the mood. Fortunately I had no socks to worry about this time, no angry husbands or small children to break in on the action. It was just me, Al Macklin, and a girl so hot she could hardly keep her hands off me. This was it—the moment of truth.

  Except that there was a shirt hanging on the room door.

  “Oh, no,” I said.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Somebody’s inside,” I explained. “I mean, one of the guys and a girl are in there, you know, kind of…”

  “Like, doing it,” Lacey concluded

  “Right,” I replied, blushing for no good reason.

  Tap-tap-tippity-tap, I tapped. Did I remember the right pattern? I tried a quick variation. Tap-tippity-tap-tap. There, that should get the message across. There was even a grunt from inside to indicate that the message had been received.

  “I have a hunch they’ll be out of there in maybe ten or twenty minutes. Now what could we do to pass the time?”

  Lacey smiled at me. “Like, make out?”

  “Excellent suggestion,” I replied.

  I looked up and down the hall for some place that would give us a little privacy, but saw nothing obvious. So I took Lacey over to the wall just to the right of the door to our room, where we were shielded from public view by a fire extinguisher. All right, I guess we were not much shielded from public view, but it seemed a little cozier than making out right in the middle of the hall.

  We were in mid-makeout when I heard a noise at the elevator. I decided that our foreplay should not be disturbed by minor annoyances like people trying to get to their rooms, so I continued. By now my hands were so busily involved with Lacey that, had she screamed, I would have been up on assault charges. But there was no scream, only mild moans of pleasure. Unfortunately, her sounds were soon joined by another.

  “Ah-hem,” was the sound. In truth, it was more of a cough or a throat-clearing, but the effect was the same.

  I stopped kissing Lacey and looked to the left in the direction of the elevator doors.

  “Alan, my man.”

  It was Scrooge. Naturally there was a girl with him. From the girl’s outfit, it would seem that she had just been a contestant in a wet T-shirt contest.

&
nbsp; “Uh, hello,” I said.

  “Passing the time?” he asked.

  “I did the knock,” I told him. “We’re next in line.”

  “So who’s inside?” Scrooge asked.

  “Well, it has to be…” I began.

  At that moment, the door to our room flew open and the couple inside appeared in the doorway. It was Kirk!

  With Nicole!

  My jaw dropped. I realize that’s a cliché, but that is exactly what happened. In fact, Scrooge’s jaw dropped. If the girls had realized how astonishing this was, I bet their jaws, too, would have dropped.

  Instead, Lacey stared at Nicole.

  “And what were you doing, Nikki?”

  “I…uh…” Nicole stuttered. Under stress, all her self-confidence just disappeared.

  “Sorry,” Kirk said, his face reddening. “We were just talking.”

  “Talking?” Scrooge asked.

  “Talking,” Kirk repeated.

  With anyone else, we would have all broken into laughter. With any other guy, there would have been lewd jokes and lots of rude suggestions followed by a reminder that their time was up. But with Kirk, we were all left repeating ourselves.

  “Talking,” I said.

  “Talking,” Kirk repeated.

  “Talking?” Lacey asked.

  “Talking,” Scrooge added.

  It was Nicole who broke the stunned repetition.

  “Yes, we were talking,” she said vehemently. “It’s something that intelligent people do.” Nicole stared at us, with the obvious suggestion that the rest of us—more interested in sex than conversation—were lacking in intelligence.

  Had I been somewhat quicker in my mind, I might have noted that sex and intelligence were not mutually exclusive, that one can be horny and bright—indeed, horny and a genius—without any contradiction. But I was a bit dulled by alcohol, so I said nothing as Nicole took over.

  “Alan, get your hands off Lacey. She’s leaving with me.”

  “She is?” I asked, dumbly.

  “I am?” Lacey echoed.

  “She is and you are,” Nicole ordered. With that, she grabbed Lacey by the arm and led her towards the elevator. In a few seconds, the elevator chimed, the door opened, and the two girls disappeared.

  Scrooge shook his head. “Smoked ya,” he said succinctly.

  “Yeah,” I sighed.

  Then he took the hand of his girl and smiled at Kirk and me. “Now, gentlemen, if we could take our turn?”

  22

  New Vows

  I BELIEVE KIRK AND NICOLE were talking, and mostly just talking. The other guys may have had different opinions, based on excessive reading of men’s magazines like Maxim, but I probably know my roommate better than anyone, or anyone except Nicole. If Kirk says they were talking, and he tells me they just wanted a quiet place for some serious talking, then I believe him.

  “Yeah, like he was really talking,” Matt said with scorn the next day. Kirk had gone jogging down the beach so missed this conversation. “You don’t go into a room with a girl like that and just talk. Let me tell you what I would do.”

  “Spare us,” Scrooge said, cutting him off. “From my experience, talking can sometimes be better than sex.”

  We stared at him, open-mouthed.

  “Sometimes,” Scrooge repeated with a certainty that made the rest of us fall silent.

  It was our fourth day or maybe the fifth day of a seven-day holiday. I confess, I had lost count. The sun had already done its damage to most of us; the tequila was taking its toll on our collective brains; Nicole and Lacey had flown home; and I had given up on getting laid.

  One by one, almost all the other guys in our crew found a girl—during their stay. Make that three or four in Scrooge’s case. Matt hooked up with a very cute, very petite girl from Chicago. Biff connected with a girl who looked like a female bodybuilder. Aiden found a curly-haired history major from Utah, of all places. And Goofball found a group of stoners to hang out with, spending a lot of time with a much tattooed and much pierced girl whose eyes seemed permanently glazed over—and not from romance.

  Even Fuji—and that was the most grating thing—found a girl. By our fourth day, he was joined at the hip to a tiny Asian girl who seemed to play video games as well as Fuji. Even Scrooge had to shake his head. “The man must be dynamite with a joystick.”

  In the face of their success I proclaimed that virginity really was a good thing.

  “I could have told you that,” Kirk said. We had found a bar that served one-dollar Scotches and I was busy tossing them back. My only satisfaction was that Kirk had to pay two dollars for each of his Cokes.

  “It gives me an innocence,” I said, “a freshness.”

  “No risk of pregnancy or disease,” Kirk added.

  “No pretense of commitment.”

  “Absolutely right,” Kirk agreed.

  “But still,” I moaned, “I think I’m the last nineteen-year-old virgin on the planet.”

  “Correction,” Kirk said. “There are two of us.”

  We decided that there was some larger force at work preserving my virginity. Kirk would say that God had other intentions for his servant Alan, that my calling was higher than fleshly desire. But that would be Kirk talking. I simply finished up the holiday feeling frustrated, philosophy or no.

  On the plane flight home, Kirk was sitting beside me, looking more tanned and handsome than ever. Fuji was behind us again, playing video games.

  “You know, Al, I’ve got to thank you for this experience.”

  “You do?”

  “Absolutely,” Kirk said. “I got a chance to get over Kathy and I got to meet a girl who’s even more wonderful. I was able to learn about the evils of tequila and rum. And I got an early tan.”

  “Well, bully for you,” I snapped.

  “Don’t be so down,” he went on. “There is more to life than sex, Al. Just because you didn’t get a girl doesn’t mean the holiday was a failure. It was what it was. You had the experience the good Lord wanted you to have.”

  I hate it when Kirk goes religious-philosophical on me, so I decided to cut him short.

  “I’m going to make a vow, Father Kirk,” I said.

  “Wrong church,” he told me, “but I’ll be happy to listen.”

  “I vow to give up on women until the summer,” I said. My fingers were not crossed. I was, despite my hangover, deadly earnest.

  “That’s just a couple of months,” Kirk reminded me.

  “True, but this is a real vow. I will not date, chat up, or pursue any female for the remainder of this school year. In fact, I will do my best not to think about any female for the next few months.”

  “This is serious, Al. Maybe we should write it down.”

  So on the back of a TransitAir napkin, I scribbled my vow.

  I will not pursue, chat up, or date any female for the remainder of this school year.

  —Alan Macklin

  I signed my name with a flourish.

  “So what are you going to do instead?” Kirk asked.

  “Maybe I’ll meditate.”

  Kirk gave me a look just as the stewardess came by to offer us drinks. She gave Kirk a wonderful, winning smile. She gave me an orange juice.

  “Still, meditation wouldn’t be bad,” Kirk said. “I think you could stand a little more looking inside instead of ogling outside.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Maybe the romance you want isn’t out there,” Kirk said. “Maybe what you’re seeking isn’t some airhead like Lacey, or some older woman who’s out of your league. Maybe you really want something more serious, a girl you really care about.”

  “Spare me,” I sighed. “My goal is simple. I want to get laid.”

  “Is it really that simple?”

  “Of course it’s simple,” I mumbled. “I’m a simple guy…with a simple goal…it’s really very simple…” and then I nodded off to sleep.

  I had a weird dream while I was sleeping. It i
nvolved a Mexican beach, and some little girl crying, and Lacey, who then turned into an awful old woman, and a taxicab driver demanding a hundred dollars. And then his face turned into Matthew Arnold’s face looking angry that I’d stolen his poem and pretended it was mine. It was his face that made me wake up with a start. And that was when I had my moment of inspiration.

  “I’ve got it,” I said. If I’d been a Greek philosopher, I would have shouted Eureka!

  “Got what?” Kirk asked.

  “I’ve got an idea.” I replied. “I’m going to write poetry.”

  “Not a bad idea, Al.” Kirk said cheerfully. “You begin writing poetry and you might start thinking with your brain instead of your, uh, you know.”

  “Yeah, I might,” I told him. “It might be a brand new experience.”

  “It could be deep,” he said.

  “Or shallow,” I replied. “But it’ll be more than what I’ve got right now.”

  I did not begin my new career as a poet immediately, however. Plane flights do not inspire poetry. Nor did my return to school. There were other matters to deal with—midterms, assignments, readings, all the dull stuff of university life. It was difficult to find quiet, contemplative moments to begin my poetic work. I mean, you just don’t knock off a poem while running from Taylor Hall to the quad; you have to meditate and wait for inspiration. Keats and Shelley, for instance, went off to Italy for inspiration. Perhaps if I had gone to Italy rather than Puerto Vallarta I, too, would be moved to pen a few great lines.

  Instead, I sent email. Email was so much easier.

  From: amacklin@​BU.​edu

  To: maggiemac@​sl.​edu

  Back from PV, virginity intact. Despite my best efforts using wit, charm, and tequila, the Spring Break girls managed to resist me. Did manage to get a decent sunburn and a few fine hangovers, but surely there is more to life than that.

  Roommate Kirk, incidentally, managed to rebound from the departure of one flawless female by lucking into a second flawless female. Apparently she goes to your school. Does the name Nicole something-or-other ring a bell? She’s your basic blonde type, perfect skin, perfect cheekbones, perfect everything. Kind of boring unless perfect is your thing.