Johnnie Always Gets Me Thinking - Eight
I went back to my office. Somehow Molly and Cami were already there.
“What’s up?” I said as nonchalantly as possible.
“Roger called.” Molly said.
“And? You talked to him? What did he say?” I asked. It was a good subject to distract me from what had just happened.
“That he is moving to Canada.” – that was new and odd – “That he got offered a job there and he is moving there with that girl.” Molly said. She didn’t seem sad. She looked like she was trying to process it.
“The girl from the photo?” I asked surprised.
“Yeah.” She said.
“He brought it up?” I was even more surprised.
“Yeah. I’m beginning to think he is some kinda psychopath.” She said astonished. “He said that if I took him back he’d beg Gregory for his job and stay here.”
“I am beginning to agree that he is a psychopath. What did you tell him?” I asked scared that she would say what I didn’t want her too.
“That if he ever came close to me again he would leave with more than a bloody nose.” She said to my relief.
“Well, are you OK?” I asked.
“Yeah. At least I don’t have to worry about awkward meetings at work.” She said.
“Speaking of which...” Cami spoke. I knew what was coming. “...what did Gregory want?” she finished.
“Well, um, it turns out that she is not that much different from last weekend after all.” I said just waiting for their reaction.
“What?!” they both said at the same time.
“You had sex in her office?” Molly asked, loudly, with a completely different expression from seconds before when she was talking about Roger.
“Shh! Yes, but there’s no reason why the whole floor should hear it!” I said reprehending Molly. Cami didn’t say a word.
“Did you at least talk to her about anything like her bipolar behavior?” Molly asked.
“Kinda. She said we know her outside now so she can’t just go back to treating us like before, but that we shouldn’t expect any big difference of treatment from the others.” I told them as she had said to me.
“So she will just treat us a little bit like crap, but not a lot?” Cami said annoyed.
I was about to speak when someone knocked on my door. The door opened and it was Elizabeth. Her bun was perfect in place again. Of all things I don’t know why the bun worried me after I saw it out of place.
“Cooper, I need to see the photos from the convention last week.” Elizabeth said to Cami with a superior, but yet civilized tone.
“Um, yes, actually I have them right here.” Cami took her flash drive from her briefcase that was on her lap.
Elizabeth walked in and took the flash drive from Cami’s hand. “Thank you.” She said to our surprise. I had never heard her say that at work before.
“You’re welcome?” Cami said. It came out as a question because of the surprise I guess. Elizabeth looked at me and left.
“I told you.” I said. Now I was full of myself.
“She is different. Dragon Gregory would give us hell just for being here and not doing our jobs.” Molly stated. “And she would never come and get something. You would have to take it to her.” She continued. “ And ‘thank you’? Come on she would never say ‘thank you’.”
“No she wouldn’t.” I said looking at Cami. She got up and left quietly.
The rest of the day Cami only spoke to me if it was work related. We got back home and I went to my room with a bottle of Johnnie Walker, a glass and an ice bucket. I needed to do some thinking. I understood that Cami was going to need time to adjust to everything and that I had to have patience and wait for her to deal with it and accept me or just let me know that she would never be OK with it. And that had frightened me for a long time. The truth is that I’ve always known I was gay. I’ve tried to hide it, and I never acted on it, and I’ve had a straight relationship all my life, but it was never right and I knew why.
I’ve known since the fourth-grade when I had a crush on my cousin's teacher. We went to the same school, but we were in different classes. I had Mr. Turner as a teacher. He was a fat, bald old man, very sweet, but I wished I had been on my cousin’s class. She had Mrs. White. She was dazzling. I saw her from time to time when she was walking the hallway or at the cafeteria. She walked all graceful in high heels, her hair charmingly swinging from one side to another. Her soft voice sounded like music to me. By that time I knew what I was feeling wasn’t just admiration for a female character. I was in love with her.
I realized that I was different and that I would have to accept me, but then I found out that others might not accept me the same way. That’s when I decided to hide myself from everyone, my friends, my family, and my colleagues. I determined that I would live as a straight person and would never take action on the desires I had. As a teenager I had other crushes on women, but I hid it, as deeply as I could, specially after all that my parents went through, which is the reason for many other complications in my life.
I almost gave up the hiding and blew everything in the open a few weeks before my eighteenth birthday. Carter’s cousin went to Orlando to visit her aunt and uncle. She would stay for a month while her parents were traveling for business. Her name was Jessica. Of course, life likes to complicate everything that’s already complicated, so I fell for her. We hung out a lot because Carter and I were best friends, and she had nothing else to do for the time she was staying there. I was so attracted to her and I could tell she had feelings for me too, which she decided to declare to me on the day before my birthday.
She came over to my house – her uncle was my neighbor – to give me my present. I remember she went to my room I was doing homework. She knocked on the door and went in. She was absolutely flawless. She had an impeccably straight blonde hair. She was wearing a jeans mini skirt and a white shirt with a penguin drawn on it. She wore a white flip-flop and carried a package in her hand. She came in and sat on my bed. She handed me the package that looked like it could be a book and said “Happy Birthday”. I said it wasn’t until the next day. She just told me to open it.
I unwrapped it. It was a book. “Poems to Julia” was the title.
“Whoa. Thank you. I didn’t know there was a book with my name.” I said laughing and going through the pages.
“There wasn’t.” she said. Then I realized there was no author, no publishing or editing information. “I wrote it for you.”
I had no reaction. I wanted just to lean and kiss her and do it over and over. I tried to control myself, but at that moment I was ready to throw away all the years of hiding and everyone else’s opinion. She took my hand and leaned forward. I leaned towards her. I knew it would be the best kiss I would ever have in my life and I wanted it so badly. I was a few inches from her lips when my mother knocked on the door. We both jumped immediately back and I hid the book under my pillow. My mom opened the door. She sensed what was going on, but just pretended that she didn’t. The look in my mother’s face was of disappointment. I will never forget her expression. She said dinner was ready and left. We both got up and she could tell from the way I looked at her that nothing else was going to happen.
Jessica left. I kept the book. It was still hidden after all that time in the back of the bottom drawer of my desk. The next day my mother was having a dinner for my birthday. I knew Jessica would be there and that it would be too hard, but I had to make a choice. I chose to keep hiding. I went over to Carter’s house when I knew Jessica had gone out with her aunt and went up to Carter’s room.
“I want you to go to dinner at my house with me today” I told him.
“Jules, I am going to dinner at your house. It’s your birthday, your mom invited us.” He said confused.
“I know, but I want you to go with me.” I said giving emphasis on that last part and I kissed him.
“Oh. You mean like…?” he said still confused.
“Yeah.”
“Oh. Yeah, um, yes!” he said and kissed me again.
I promised myself that it was the last time I would think about any of that, that I would never fall for another girl and I would try to make it work with Carter. My mother was very relieved and supportive of it. My father was just clueless about anything that was going on. He had his own issues to deal with. Jessica never spoke to me again. And she didn’t go to my house for dinner. After high school, Carter and I moved to New York for college. That’s when I met Cami. She was my college roommate. I thought about talking to her about it because I was away from my parents and we instantly bonded and she seemed to be so opened minded so I thought she would be someone I could talk to. But, then again, I couldn’t do that to Carter. He and I dated all through college and a few years more until the day he broke up with me in a two-minute conversation.
I was used to hiding again. And I had promised to myself that I would never do anything to bring up in anyone else the look my mom gave me the day she walked in on Jessica and I. But then Catalina just happened and now Cami was giving me that look everyday. I didn’t know how to deal with it. Cami was my roommate since freshman year. We left school with our jobs – and Molly and Ryan – ready at the newspaper waiting for us. And we kept being roommates and working together because it worked for us. She was my best friend and I was her best friend, but after Elizabeth, it was all just falling apart, and I didn’t know if I could go back to hiding. Not for Cami, not for my parents, not for anyone else.
It wasn’t even because of Elizabeth. Of course being with her was great and it made me feel more alive than ever, but it wasn’t about her. I owed it to myself. After a lifetime of hiding and self-loathing I owed it to me. I had to let myself try to be happy for once. I had too many reasons to be unhappy and I wasn’t going to let Cami not accepting me be one more. After the whiskey bottle was half empty – I wasn’t on the mood to look at it as half-full – I decided to have a very honest conversation with Cami the next day.
I got up earlier. Molly was out to buy breakfast again. I went to Cami’s room. She was already dressed. She didn’t say anything when I walked in.
“We need to talk.” I said sitting on her bed.
“Yeah? Something with work?” she asked sitting down and putting on her shoes.
“No. We need to talk about what is going on.” I looked at her.
“What do you mean?” she looked at her shoes. She knew what I meat.
“You know what I mean Cami. You didn’t talk to me the whole day yesterday about anything but work. You attack me anytime you get. I was in my room the whole night and you didn’t even ask if everything was OK.”
“I just though you were on the phone with Gregory, or Liz or whatever you call her now.” She said trying to sound detached.
“See this is what I mean. You’re not OK with this and I can see that. You don’t have to try to hide it anymore OK? Just tell me the truth and I will deal with it. You don’t have to accept me, I know that a lot of people won’t, just don’t lie to me about it.”
“Yeah? Well you seem to have lied for quiet a while.”
“Is that what’s bothering you? That I didn’t tell you?” she was quiet. “Camille I couldn’t tell you or anyone else. I promised myself I wouldn’t. I promised myself I would never act on my feelings because it would jus hurt too many people and it was just not worth putting them through it, putting you through what your going right now. I just couldn’t.”
“I’m not going through anything. It doesn’t matter to me that you’re gay. You’re the same girl I met freshman year. I just don’t get why you had to lie and hide. It can’t be easy for you, I know you’ve been through a lot, but it’s me. You had to talk to ME about it. You had to tell me. I mean it’s ME! You know me! Well, at least I thought you knew me.” I wasn’t expecting she’d say that. She went on “And then you go and act it on Gregory. I mean of all people the first one to know your inner most secret was Gregory! You didn’t tell me, or Molly, or Ryan, even though he had already figured it out, but you didn’t tell us and then Gregory knew before us.” She was angry, but a good angry. The kind of angry that lets you say what you are actually thinking.
“Cami it’s not like I acted on Gregory before telling you because I didn’t want to tell you. It’s not my fault or hers. It’s not about HER. I was just wasted and she was just there.” I was getting angry too. But I had to be careful not to let me say the whole of what I was actually thinking. “You’re right. I should’ve talked to you ages before, but I was just trying to keep a promise to myself. And that night the vodka washed away any kind of bond I had with myself and Gregory was there. I don’t even know if I said anything about it to her before anything happened.” I was trying to control myself now “I was drunk and full of hiding. I didn’t chose to be her before you guys. At that point I didn’t even want it to be her. But she was there. She just happened to be there. And you guys weren’t.”
She was calmer “we were here for years. You could’ve just told us.” She said sadly, wiping away a tear that ran down her face.
“I know you were. And I should’ve just told you. And… But it’s not that simple, Cami I couldn’t. You know everything I’ve been through and it was just too hard to even think about talking to my parents about it. And there was Carter and I knew if I told anyone I would want to act on it and it would somehow get to my parents.” I said truthfully.
“You are miles from your parents. And it’s not like you don’t lie to them anyways. The only reason they knew you and Carter broke up was because his parents told them. If it were for you they’d be waiting for your wedding invitation anytime soon. And after you guys broke up you don’t even talk to Carter. There is no way any of it would get to them.” She said. And she was right. But she didn’t know the whole truth. My parents weren’t the only reason I couldn’t tell anyone about my feelings. Actually, I wasn't worried about them at all.
“I know. But still. I knew that if I did anything about it I wouldn’t hold it in. I would have to talk to them about it. Like I know I have to do now. And I was trying to avoid it because I didn’t wanna feel as terrified as I am now” I said taking her hand. We looked at each other for a moment. “Or I just never got that much drunk with you guys.” We both laughed and then we hugged. “Are we gonna be OK?” I asked letting her go.
“Yeah. Just don’t hide anything from us anymore, please?” she said looking at me.
“Yeah. OK” I said trying to be honest, but I just couldn’t tell her the whole truth.
“And tell Gregory she needs to be nicer. ‘Thank you’ was a first step, but she still has too much to work on.” She said getting up.
“Yeah, I’ll try.” I promised and hugged her.
