3-D Memories

My second winter in boarding school, my then-best friend, Kat, asked me to go into town with her to see some comic book store she'd been talking about, and to meet the people there, and stuff. I had no better ideas, so we took the school-provided town bus in -- it was my first time in town at all -- and she took me to what she termed CoBoCoNoCo, short for the Comic Book Company of Northern Colorado. It was a small store that sold comic books, science fiction and fantasy books, calendars, buttons, and such-like. Kat introduced me to the manager, Eric Cardell, and we hung out and talked to him, joked with him. He was an awful flirt, and so was Kat, and they traded sick jokes and comments back and forth, and Eric flirted a bit with me, too. Eric was short and overweight, balding and with thick glasses, but even so, he had charisma all to hell. I was sorry when Kat told me he had a wife, and almost glad when she told me they were having problems and that she slept around on him.

After we'd been there for a while, two guys walked in, good friends of Eric's, named Mykie and Orangu. Orangu struck me as a bit strange-looking, but I thought Mykie was gorgeous. He was obviously older than my sixteen, somewhere in his twenties, I figured, so of course I didn't have a chance with him. He had dark-blond hair, cut short and spiky on top and down to his collar in back, and he was wearing a black fleece jacket. He and Orangu asked Kat and me to a party they were throwing that night. Kat and I knew we wouldn't be permitted by our school to go, but I said maybe we could sneak out, that they shouldn't count on us showing but that neither should they rule out the possibility. They gave us the address and then took off.

After Kat and I rode back to campus, I kept saying that I really wanted to go, that I thought Mykie was a doll, that we'd have fun, that we had to get there. We could sign out to someplace else, a movie, maybe, take a taxi, go, have fun, and either get a ride back to campus or take another cab. In the end, I convinced Kat. She coached me on how to dress, saying I couldn't dress up and look all sweet and innocent, that it wouldn't work with this crowd, so I wore black and denim after finding out that all her clothes looked ridiculous on me.

The cab had trouble finding the place and cost a mint ($14), but we did eventually get there. We only had about an hour and a half before we'd have to leave again, but we got introduced to people, none of whom I remembered later, and found Eric, who was surprised as all hell that we'd actually snuck out and shown up. He told us that we couldn't expect him to make much sense or drive us home because he'd eaten a mushroom. He felt twelve kinds of guilty about that because he felt like he ought to be protecting us poor innocent girls and all, but we said we didn't care, and anyway, he said Tim could drive us home.

Tim was the tallest, thinnest person I'd ever seen with long, straight brown hair and a beard that jutted out from his chin. He was wearing a Batman T-shirt -- the first I'd ever seen. He worked with Eric. Kat kept calling him Jim. I don't remember why. We got back to school safely. Kat had him drop us at the back gate, so no one on campus would see us get out of a car, and we walked in the dark across campus, hoping no one would see us, so we'd have to explain what we were doing.

I went back the next day, this time without Kat, who said she didn't want to go, found the comic book store by sheer luck, and went in. Eric remembered me. He said that Mykie liked me, but to steer clear of him, that he'd be bad for me. I was in shock that Mykie actually liked little, sixteen-year-old me. Eric told me that Mykie was twenty-seven. He also told me that Mykie was due in the store in a few minutes, with Dave, Dave and Doug, to go see Shakedown Street, a group I'd never heard of, in the Eldest Tar, a bar I'd never heard of and was too young to get into. Then Mykie showed up, looking every bit as terrific as he had the last time I'd seen him, glad as hell to see me, and talking about sneaking me into the show, saying I was with the band or something. Dave, Dave, Doug, Angie (Eric's wife), Mykie and I all squeezed into Dave's beat-up VW Bug. I felt way out of place. I was much younger than all of these people, intimidated by Angie who was both older and beautiful, and breaking school rules right and left, with no real way of knowing if I'd be able to get back to campus. We got to Marribou, the town the bar was in, parked, and walked to the bar. When we got there, the bouncer said sorry, but that I couldn't go in. So Mykie borrowed Dave's car keys and said we'd go drive around while the others saw the show. But when we were halfway back to the car, Dave came tearing around a corner, shouting that the doorman had changed his mind and that I could go in as long as I didn't drink.

I almost forgot to mention that Mykie was wearing a beautiful blue-and-white tie-dyed Grateful Dead shirt and bell-bottomed jeans, neither of which were his. He'd apparently spent the night at 3-D, home of Dave, Dave and Doug, and borrowed clothes from Dave.

Anyway, we went in, and headed straight for a sort of nook that had two tables and a fish tank next to it, and was bordered on another side by a bookcase, and then a railing. Mykie sat down next to me. The guys got a pitcher of beer and I got a Coke, and Mykie gave me sips of his beer, and we waited for the band to start. The guys had told me that they were a Grateful Dead cover band, but that didn't mean much to me, since I'd never heard any of the Dead's music before. I still felt out of place. I'm shy and I didn't know these people very well, and I was afraid of either sounding childish or silly. But they talked to me some and I managed to answer, and I drank my nice Coke, chain-smoked. Kat had just recently taught me how to smoke, and I was still uncomfortable with it, felt like people could see I didn't know what I was doing, but Mykie and Eric both smoked, and it make be feel like I fit in, plus it gave me something to do besides just sitting there feeling awkward and stupid. Then the music started and after the first couple of songs, Mykie asked me if I wanted to dance. I love to dance, so I said yes, and we went out there, and it was terrific. After a bit, Angie and a couple of the guys joined us and we all danced in a circle, and I still loved it, but I felt like I wasn't dancing quite the right way for Dead music, so I watched Angie and tried to tone my dancing down a little. Kat said that while I was a good dancer, my style drove her nuts because it was too bouncy. So I tried to bounce less. But I still had a good time. While the band was between sets and we were back at our tables, my back was to the door, but someone said a cop had come in, and Mykie told me to kiss him so that the cop wouldn't see how young I was and the bar wouldn't get into trouble. So that was how I got my first kiss from Mykie. Then the cop left and Shakedown Street started playing again, and we danced some more. I kept checking my watch, though, and asking Mykie how long it'd take to get back to campus, because I wanted to be a little early, so I wouldn't get caught. Finally, Mykie and I left, and he drove me back to campus in Dave's car. On the way back, we talked, and he got my phone number at school, and I got his phone number at his parents' house, and he said he liked me and he'd like to see me again as soon as my school let me leave again -- we were only allowed off-campus on the weekends.

He called me the next day and we talked, and he asked me if I was sure that I couldn't get off campus, and I said the only place we were allowed to go on weekdays was Twofields, this tiny little pseudo-town just off campus. So he said that the next day I should walk into Twofields and he'd meet me in the parking lot outside Super-A, that he had a white car and that he'd be looking for me. I agreed, and the next day I walked in. I wandered around the parking lot forever, trying to find him, looking at every white car that drove in to see if it was his. I finally found him, and he got out and gave me a hug. He was wearing an olive-green T-shirt and baggy pants of the same color. I felt a little shy with him but we talked, and kissed and stuff. I don't remember if we went anywhere, although we probably didn't go too far because I had to be back at school before too long. I told him I'd meet him at the comic book store the next Saturday, and we could go somewhere then. I said I'd sign out to go to dinner and a movie and take a cab home from town so I could stay with him from two in the afternoon until midnight. I think he drove me around to the back entrance of the school so that I wouldn't have to walk so far.

The next Saturday, I met him in town, as planned, and we hung out and talked to Eric for a little while and then got in his car, and he said we could go over to 3-D. We drove a ways and stopped in front of a little, yellow house on Verdana Street. We opened the porch door, which had icky carpeting and a very trashed out couch within, and knocked on the front door. Dave, Dave and Doug were all there. The room was the poorest and dirtiest I'd ever seen. There were big pillows in a wooden frame on the floor, making a couch of sorts. There were also (I think) a table and several chairs. I concentrated on not looking appalled. Little Dave, who had wild, shoulder-length, slightly curly, black hair, parted in the middle, with no bangs, and no front teeth, was sitting in a chair, in a dressing gown. I tried not to look appalled about that, too. Dave, Dave and Doug announced that anyone who walked in their front door had to give each of them a hug, and I, though not usually much of a hugging sort of person, complied. I was invited on a tour of the house, which was the strangest I'd ever seen.

The living room had a warped floor, with several dips in it, which I was warned not to trip over. Off the living room was Dave's room, which had a hanging, glass table and various bizarre relics, figurines, etc., and crystals galore. Off the living room in the other direction was a completely empty dining room . . .



[to be completed, including the part about me considering running away to there to avoid being committed, and the summer I lived there with Dave, Jim, and my school-friend Sunshine]