That Feeling - 15. On-The-Hill

Getting in to the club had proved easier than I expected. To be fair, those expectations were mainly based on movies and TV shows and not actual experience, because I would never have even thought of sneaking in to a club a month ago, but we all have a line we cross eventually. The club- which is called Club Apollo if the neon sign in loopy cursive outside means anything- is a tall, narrow storefront on Walton Way, with chipped bricks painted black and posters for drag shows and $2 drink nights at various bars pasted over blacked out windows. The building stands across from The Academy of Richmond County, with it’s sloping aged stone portico, wide yard, and air of faux-superiority as the public school closest to the edge of Augusta’s exclusive Summerville neighborhood, nicknamed The Hill due to it’s geographical location on a hill, who wouldn’t deign send their kids there in the first place. From up The Hill, the shadow of the looming white-and-red Victorian architecture of the Bon Air Hotel falls on downtown, a testament to the city’s past as a resort locale for presidents and oil tycoons; a constant reminder of all that Augusta had been. Down the road, as it continues to slope down the hill and bottom out at 15th Street, the start of Downtown, I can see the blinking lights of the Medical District, where three hospitals and the University’s medical school share a ten block radius. At least we’d be close in case someone attacks us.

People were standing around the entrance as we approached, smoking cigarettes and heckling passersby as they nudged each other and laughed. They stared at us as we walked past, eyeing us as if we were for sale. I wanted to back up, but the sidewalk was narrow and cars zoomed by close, almost as if they’d hit you, as Walton Way was one of the narrowest in the city, a far cry from Broad Street downtown, the widest road east of the Mississippi River. At the door, Clark whispered something into the bouncer’s ear, which elicited a smile as he waved us in.

I lost Clark almost as soon as we entered the dark interior of the club. It was loud and smelled like a mix of body odor and cheap cologne. The low, bouncing thud of the bass line made me nervous as Clark tried to hold onto my hand as we emerged ourselves deeper into the club’s innards. Guys would bump into Clark and recognition would flair as they talked. He’d smile and the guy’d smile and put his hand on Clark’s shoulder lightly. Most seemed older, college guys, and some even older, wearing too tight jeans and shirts that were thin and gaudy. Clark attempted introductions, but it was too loud and I couldn’t understand anything anyone said. I just wanted to sit. He ordered himself something to drink at the bar as I found a seat at a small table that faced the dance floor. Clark gave me a wink and a wave, trying to get me to dance. I shook my head and looked around at the crowd as they writhed around on the dance floor like worms digging into the bass beat. Clark frowned but left me alone as he folded into the mass.

And that’s where I’ve stayed, sitting at my table, stirring the lemon around my ice water and wondering why I even bothered to come out at all. I don’t like parties, so why in the hell would I like a night club with its loud music and flashing lights and dancing. DANCING of all things. At least it was fun to look at the hot guys, which was something I felt like was very safe here, because if any place lived the mantra, “if you’ve got it, flaunt it,” it was this place, where guys tried at every turn to show you what they were working with. I watched them as if I was studying them, even if they barely paid me much attention. Oh, they’d look me over, but barely smile at my corner loneliness and move on. I could never be like these guys, because I could never be so free. I could never peel my shirt off as I ground against another guy while another guy had his hands on my chest. I just couldn’t do it. It suddenly feel hotter than before and I pull at my collar. I notice that I’ve been sweating and I need to go to the bathroom.

At the back of the club, a long dark hallway of black wood paneling leads to the bathroom. There’s two, but I doubt the women’s gets used much in this place, although I did see a some girls grinding shamelessly on the dance floor. It smells like piss and cologne when I enter. A guy leaving looks me over and smiles. He’s cute in an alternative sort of way, with gauges in his ears and the sides of his head shaved. But he keeps walking out and I forward and that’s life anyways, we make eye contact and we share a moment with someone and then we drift apart forever, but like Whitman says, we take a little part and we make a little life in those seconds and that’s something that makes be feel better. Because in a place like this a look is all you may get, but that look can be a thousand words and a million years at each others side in some other universe and maybe that’s enough. The music seems louder in here, but I can still hear slurping from the last stall. I hope that’s not Clark. I couldn’t spot him on the dance floor before I left and even though I wasn’t worried, I did have a bit of panic. But I can’t be like that. I have to be okay.

At the sink I splash water on my face and use a paper towel to wipe it off. I don’t really want to be here anymore, but I don’t think finding Clark and making him take me home is really an option. But I have to do something, I feel claustrophobic in the bathroom and I breath in deeply only to hack everything back up. And once I start, I can’t stop. I feel like a lung might come up as I leave the bathroom. I can only think that I need to get out. The dance floor’s a blur as I rush past to the door. Outside it’s cool and it feels like a kind of relief, like flipping your pillow to the cool side. I vomit on the sidewalk and a few guys standing on the sidewalk curse and move on. Someone laughs with a howling laugh and I feel a little dizzy. I’m not okay.

I start to walk down the sidewalk, towards the glowing white of the Bon Air. I could cross at Heard Avenue or walk toward the university. I just need to clear my head because everything is spinning and all I can smell is piss and cheap cologne and cigarette smoke and I can’t breath in deep without feeling like I might cough and I can’t cough because I’ll vomit. I think of how I vomited right there on the sidewalk and it makes me want to cry because how embarrassing is that. I pass some apartment buildings that try too hard to look like they belong in Paris and I see the fixed gear bikes on the porches and am reminded of the hipsters that have recently began to take over Summerville in some kind of reversed gentrification and why do I even care? A guy on a bike whizzes past and waves. It feels like he might hit me. When the hill starts to slope upward, I stop. I can see Heard and it’s tree-lined streets and Craftsmen architecture copied in my suburban neighborhood. The Partridge Inn sits proud and yellow at the crook as Walton way curves sharply up The Hill. What am I even doing, though? I can continue up the hill, into Summerville and the huge 19th century mansions, with their manicured lawns and cobblestone drives and the Anglican and Catholic and Presbyterian churches looming with a fearsome Gothic air with their neat and tidy little private schools tucked behind, all tagged with On-The-Hill, to let everyone know that they held their location in concert with St. Mary and St. Mark and St. Paul. On to the main university campus, tucked neatly in the middle, with it’s clever mixture of new and old hidden behind billowing oaks, so as to hide any modernization that may “upset the neighborhood culture.” The dorms couldn’t even be built on campus, instead housed at several locations further away, out of zone, due to an archaic Summerville law prohibiting the co-habitation of more than five people who aren’t related. At the first corner of campus, I cross the road. I stop at a bus stop, but continue on, as a homeless guy eyes me from the corner. How did he even get here? How did I even get here? I walk up a few steps and I’m on campus, near where my sister used to take art lessons from a professor during the summer. The campus here isn’t that big, being spread out over several locations across the city, but this is the oldest part. I don’t walk on, not to the old arsenal where there are still slits for guns to defend the old city, or the yellowing Greek Revival Benét House, where the poet Stephen Vincent Benét once lived. I sit at the fountain at the main entrance, looking into The Grove of live oaks, the school’s emblem.

I do this when I start to loose it, I tell myself stories in my head to hold it together. I teach myself little history lessons about the city and the state and my family. My mom went to high school with the mayor. Her grandmother lived three blocks over from this school and we’d go every Christmas to her great house that looked like it should have belonged to some English noble family in their Yorkshire estate. They’d lived in this city as long as any of them could remember and now the house was gone, sold after her death to the highest bidder. I shake my head to stop. I can be okay. I can do it. I take out my phone. It’s ten and who do I call? I won’t call my parents. I can’t. Carson is out and Sara...no. But first I text Clark. ‘Left the club. i started to feel sick...i’ll find a ride. Srry.” But would I find a ride? Am I really sorry? I scroll through my contacts and land on Jake Holley. I can’t believe I didn’t delete him a month ago when I went crazy. While still contemplating, my finger slides over to call anyways.

He picks up after three rings. “Hello?”

“Hey, Jake, it’s Caleb.”

He chuckles. “I know, dude, what’s up?” His voice sounds husky and full and I wonder if he’s with someone. “You don’t sound so good.”

I wonder what I sound like to him. Do I sound lost and alone and maybe a little afraid even? Because that’s how I feel. “Yeah. I’m okay. Can you come get me?”

He’s silent for a bit and I worry that he’ll say no. “Yeah, I’ll come get you. Where are you?”

“The Hill. At the university.”

“What are you doing way down there?”

“Admiring the scenery.”

“I’m sure.”

“Clark snuck me into a gay club and I hated it, so I walked here.”

“You snuck into a gay club. With Clark McDonnell.”

“Yeah.”

“I am talking to the same Caleb Abernathy who is afraid to go over the speed limit and won’t even drink alcohol at his own parties, right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, just checking. I’ll be there in 20.”

“Thanks.”

I hang up and stare out over the dark trees. A few people are still moving around campus, but the parties and students are mainly elsewhere, tucked up in their neat dorms or crappy Olde Towne apartments or clubs or bars or wherever the night finds them. It’s getting colder as I wait for Jake, the wind blows through the trees and I wrap my arms around tighter. Suddenly, someone is next to me, I can hear their breathing and I turn around quickly. Jake walks around the fountain and joins me.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Fancy meeting you here.”

“Thanks, Jake. For coming.”

“It’s okay.”

His face is red and it looks like maybe he’s hot.

“Is everything alright.”

“I got in a fight with Will. But it doesn’t matter.”

“You were with him weren’t you, when I called.”

He’s silent for a moment as he looks out through the trees. He inhales deeply. “Yeah,” he breathes out.

“But you still came.”

“Of course.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be, Caleb. You’re more important than him.”

“He’s you boyfriend.”

“Not really. I won’t commit, remember?”

“Still.”

“Still nothing. I’d drop everything for you.” He says it low, almost a whisper and I get a chill. Maybe I’d written off Jake as a never, but he obviously still has feelings for me. And what about me? If I’m honest, I would say of course I have feelings for Jake, but it just isn’t feasible to admit it, even to myself. Too much has happened. Maybe I’m destined to be alone forever, drifting through life unattached and unable to harm and be harmed. Part of that appeals to me, part of me never wants to be hurt and hurt someone. But that also seems terribly lonely.

Back in Jake’s Jeep with heat and barely audible music, he drives home. I point out the house Bill Gates owns, a huge Spanish Revival in Lake Aumond you can barely see from the road, but it’s just to distract me and him and everyone from the silence as we ride. He asks if I’m hungry and I say yes, because it’s late on a Friday night and what else is there for two teenagers to do but eat. He pulls in to Waffle House and I grin.

“Old habits die hard?” In middle school we’d always go to the Waffle House across from the movie theatre after our movie was over. Carson would always complain, but end up eating the same thing anyways.

“You know it.”

It is relatively empty, a few men at the counter and a young family in the far corner. The waitress, an thin, old snaggle-toothed woman named Earline, tells us she’ll be there in a second as we stuff ourselves into the tiny both by the window. Outside I can see the cars driving by on I-20, going anywhere and everywhere and part of me wants to be them, just moving along to some other place. Earline comes to take our drink orders and I notice her rotten front tooth, black and crooked, as she grins when Jake orders chocolate milk. I order cherry Coke, hoping they don’t over-do the cherry syrup like that Waffle House in Atlanta did that time.

Jake looks around nervously as we sit. Finally he huffs, “So are you and Clark, like, a thing?”

“What? No.” He gives me a look like he doesn’t believe me. I roll my eyes. “We’re just friends. Although, that’s more than I can say for you, so I hear.”

His face darkens, but he quickly recovers. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’ve heard about y’all’s little...affair.”

“Hmmphh, from who?”

“Clark.” Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.

“He told you we dated?”

“Not exactly. He said y’all fooled around in like freshman year.”

Jake shakes his head. “Well, we didn’t. At least not like you think.”

“So you’re saying he lied to me?”

“I’m saying he inflated the truth.”

“Then what is the truth?”

Before he can say anything Earline brings our drinks and takes our orders. I order some waffles and hash browns. It’s late, but I don’t care, I came for food. Jake orders cheese grits and pecan pie, and I giggle. Here it is almost eleven and we’re eating the breakfast first graders.

After we’ve settled with our food, I repeat my earlier question. He looks at me with a look that says what he’s about to say is barely worth mentioning.

“We made out a few times. I think we jacked off together once. He tried to blow me, but I wouldn’t let him. He kept calling and IMing me for weeks, I think he thought we were dating or something. This was when I wasn’t even letting myself belief I was in to it. I just did it and made up excuses of why it happened. I was probably a jerk, but he was a freak about it.”

“So it was something?”

“Barely anything.”

“Semantics.”

“Dude, I don’t even know what that means.”

“Forget it.”

We quietly eat our food. After while, he says, “I’ve been with a lot of guys, you know.” It takes me by surprise, because I didn’t know this about him, or I did, but didn’t necessarily process it and even now it’s still hard for me to picture it. “Usually at parties when we’re both drunk. Sometimes guys I met on the internet.”

“People I know?”

“Sure. But I’m not telling.”

“And you’re okay with it?”

“Hell no. I feel like a whore most of the time. But I don’t know. It’s the rush of being with someone I guess.”

“Are you safe?”

“Not always.”

I don’t know really what to say, because I suddenly feel cheap, but I can’t tell him that. We’re working on things and he was my first anything and I just want to forget about it. So I smear my syrup around my plate with my fork and say, “It was my first time.”

“I know. You deserved better.”

“Not really. Who says we need everything to be perfect all the time? Sometimes life is just a drunken blow job and that’s that.”

“You’re smarter than you let on, Caleb.”

“Not really. I’m neurotic.”

“Is their a difference?”

“Yeah. Smart people know how to do life. I just sit and watch life do me.”

“That isn’t fair. You do a lot.”

“Secondhand stuff. I’m too much of a coward to do anything great.”

“Well, I, for one, like you that way.”

I look up at him and we make eye contact. “I can’t. We - can’t.”

“I know. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want it. I’ve blown it and I know.”

“We’ve both made mistakes.”

Jake pays for me and we leave as Earline cackles at something an old man at the counter says. When we reach my house, Jake puts the Jeep in park and looks over at me. He looks like a lost puppy and suddenly everything seems fractured. I can’t be with him, but I want to. I shouldn’t want to kiss him, but I do. I should feel angry about the things he’s done, but I don’t. I find his hand and squeeze it. He smiles and I lean in and kiss him on the cheek. Before I pull away, I whisper in his ear: “Don’t give up on this.” I get out and he watches as I walk into my house.

And that’s it, walking in I feel like two hundred pounds of shit is weighing all around me, like I’m about to let it all slip off, but I’m still holding on, even if some sloshes out. Maybe I can just drop it all, but all of it is everything I know. I’m stuck and I’m free and maybe that’s a real contradiction I can’t understand yet, but it’s somehow true. I’m not hiding who I am, but who I am isn’t necessarily all that great right now.

I hear voices coming from the kitchen, which is odd, as my house usually isn’t this lively this close to midnight. As I turn the corner, I start to feel faint. Sitting at the kitchen table is Adam, his hair long and stringy; his face sunken and sallow. He’s wearing an old black t-shirt with holes everywhere and carpenter jeans that are two sizes too big for his skinny waist and barely-there legs. I want to walk backwards out of the house and back into Jake’s Jeep and tell him to take me to his house. I want to be away, but my mom has seen me and she gives a small smile.

“Caleb...You’re back from you date.” Dad and Adam turn around. I blush as he smiles and gets out of the chair. He hugs me tightly. He smells like body odor and piss and stale cigarette smoke.

“Hey baby bro.” His voice is raspier than I remember. Everything about him is different than I remember.

“Hey Adam.”

“I’m back.”

“Yeah.”

“I hear you’re queer now.”

I deflate. “Yeah.”

He pushes back and he’s smiling. His teeth are discolored and I grimace.

“It don’t matter to me, Cee.” I wince when he calls me that, because it takes me back to when we were kids and he was my hero and the grass was green and soft on a hot summer day as he pranced around in the sprinklers.

“Okay. I’m going to bed.”

He frowns a bit and mom looks down. My dad says my name once, to get my attention, to reprimand me, to tell me to embrace the prodigal son, but I’ve already turned around towards the stairs. This isn’t how I wanted this night to end. Fuck it all to hell and thank God Clark isn’t here now.