It has a new name now. Daynight Donuts. They sell a lot of different foods and there are signs all over the windows. It's not clean and simple with clean glass that lets you see through to the curved counter. There's no more cigarette machine under the window to the fryer where I used to stand watching my accidental friends drop rounds of batter into simmering oil.
The smokes were .55 cents a pack, two quarters and a nickle. I usually had enough to buy one pack and one cup of coffee. When it was just Shari and Beth, they would let me stay there all night, refilling my coffee while I smoked, they worked, and we talked between customers. I liked to watch Shari refill the coffee while Beth made more donuts. Sometimes I had enough money to buy an old-fashioned glazed, my favorite.
At night on the corner where the four lane street split into two, one going toward downtown and one going toward the freeway, I sat under the buzzing bright florescents in the corner closest to the back wall and the glassed in edge of the counter. From there I could see what was going on in the service area while I talked to my friends, and watch outside, looking to see who was pulling in, who was walking by and who was coming in the double doors.
I could hide if I wanted, play with the paper from a sugar pack while watching the end of my cigarette as it sizzled with my inhales. Or I could look up at whomever came in, trying to get noticed, or get a free donut. Mostly, I waited while the girls worked. When they couldn't talk to me and no one interesting walked in, I sat there and thought about what might be coming next, always ready for that thing I knew I was missing, the reason I didn't sleep at night. I couldn't bare the thought that I might miss out on the action. And I kept hoping I'd meet a man, someone who would understand me, take care of me and finally make me feel beautiful. I wanted to be rescued.
I liked dark men, men with muscles and long hair, men with tattoos and rugged faces. I liked big men. Men who were tall and tough, but had a gleaming warmness in their eyes. Men who only cared about me. I liked men who were handsome and protective and kind, but hard. These are not the kind of men that came through the doors of Dunkin' Donuts. So, not wanting to turn down the only attention I could get, I went home with a skinny blond guy about 7 years older than me to look at his photos.
As hard edged as I tried to make myself appear, I was soft, naive, and actually thought that I'd be viewing his photos while we got high in his living room in the nondescript box of an apartment. Not much in the way of decorations. White walls. It wasn't dirty and I wasn't really looking. I thought I was supposed to be showing interest in his images. That was the right thing to do. That's what I agreed to do. So when he invited me into his bedroom at 3 am while he turned on the stereo, I was confused. When he had me sit on his bed and didn't pull out a stack of photographs for me to look at, I was not sure how to act. When he leaned in and put his tongue in my mouth, I went with it. I was high, he was a port in the storm, and I liked being touched, even if his hair was too light and too stringy, and his body was too small.
At 14, I wore widely flared jeans that drug on the ground and got holes in them. Or worse, ripped when my rubber wedge Famolare sandals were caught in the denim while I tried not to trip. I often wore a blue t-shirt with cut outs around the neck and I tried to feather my frizzy brown hair, clipping in a silk flower on one side, just like my mom. On my neck was a cloisonne unicorn necklace, one of the many unicorns I collected. I wore liquid beige foundation from my neck up, blue eyeshadow on the top of my lids and under my bottom lashes, and lipstick that smeared on my buck teeth. I wasn't exactly ugly, but I never thought of myself as cute either.
I don't know exactly what that skinny white boy saw in me. Someone vulnerable. Easy. When I tried to, at his urging, suck him off, I scraped his dick with my teeth and he moved my head away, telling me I could stop. I was relieved. I had never seen a penis up close and didn't like the look of it. I read a lot of porn back then, Penthouse Forum stories. I knew the words, but not the mechanics. And I really wasn't ready. So I left.
I was always leaving before things got bad. Sometimes I ran. Sometimes I hid. Sometimes I prayed that the car I was in would stop so I could get out before I was trapped. But this time I just walked out, disheveled and down to my last smoke, and walked a long way in the dawn light down the street, past the graveyard, to my house.
I was a reject who had done something wrong. I felt sick about having gone home with someone whose intentions I had so badly misinterpreted. I was ugly. I was stupid. And I was so relieved. Of course, now I can add another word: Lucky. Anything could have happened, and it didn't. I survived that experience and countless others.
The same can't be said for Shari and Beth from the donut shop. All those nights hanging out until dawn talking to them about the monotony of our lives while I drank coffee, smoked and waited. All those nights looking at beautiful dark skinned Beth, wishing I had some of her good looks. And admiring Shari's perfectly feathered hair. I had no idea what was coming. No one could.
By the time they were cleaning the office building at night, when the intruder broke in and hog tied them, I was up the street, having moved from all night donuts to a 24-hour Carrows Restaurant. By the time they were shot in the head, one by one, I was taking rides with Danny and Lori in his van, the Sundowner, the orange words painted in script across a desert scene with a cow skull and tumbleweed. That same orange lined the floor and platform inside the van behind the bucket seats, shag carpet.
I had moved on to another tedious situation where I smoked, drank coffee and shared extra crispy french fries with barbecue sauce with my friends while Shari and Beth had been terrorized by a notorious serial killer. One lived and one died.
There's some things in life you just don't get over, even when they didn't happen to you.
Great story! Delicate and evocative. I like the way it flits around, increasing the urgency of unease. It feels very honest too, avoiding traps of easy, predictable emotion and politically correct viewpoint. It makes me want to read the others.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much Regan. I write these things off of prompts, hence all the nonsensical titles on my blog pieces. This one I wrote longer than the allotted time and edited a bit. A hard story to tell. True and terrible.
DeleteI very much appreciate that you read it and commented - means a lot to me. Thank you again.