Enjoy Yourself--It's Later than You Think

 

Marilyn Horan

Enjoy Yourself: It’s Later than You Think

            The dirty white socks strewn on the floor, and the untied sneakers were the first signs that my roommate at Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference was a slob. Her running shorts and panties lying, crotch up, greeted me as I entered what were to be our shared lodgings for two weeks, and solidified my impression of her. Huge black flies were zooming around the dorm room, whose wide-open windows emphasized the lack of air conditioning.  Shabby chenille bedspreads covered, but could not camouflage mattresses that sank in the middle and probably stank all over from years, even decades of absorbing human leakage, confirmed my decision to get the hell out of there.  I had not gone away to college, and unless you count my sister and my husband, I had never had to share a room with anyone, and was not about to start to do so at age 42.

            “I’m going home,” I said to my husband who had driven me to Vermont from our house in Brooklyn, to which he would return after getting me settled.

            “Relax,” he responded, understanding after fifteen years of marriage that I did not do relaxing well.  “We’ll find you a hotel or inn,” he added.  So off we went to the housing desk whose manager found me a peaceful and clean room at a small bed and breakfast about a mile away. On the way to my new digs, we rented a used car. I drove that wreck with a suspension that could only have passed inspection accompanied by a bribe, and whose moist insides reeked of booze, mold, and Lysol, back to The Bide-A-Way Inn.  I relished the solitude and cool air of the bedroom, kissed my husband good-bye, and prepared to spend the next two weeks writing, really writing.  As an English teacher, I spent so much time talking about writing and marking essays, but never had time to do any myself.  This was my chance.

            I drove to the Middlebury cafeteria for lunch where I introduced myself to a few people.  One woman about my age, Kiki, said she had seen me at the B&B where she, too, had rented a room.  We spoke for a while before joining our writing groups and agreed to meet at the evening’s meal.  At dinner we enjoyed the company of a fortyish man, Jackson, who hailed from Texas.  Conversation centered on our backgrounds, jobs, home states, and interests in writing.  After eating, we continued our chitchatting, made more fun and interesting by the addition of the wine we drank with abandon at the “barn” a big, informal space with a bar and music.  So this was what I missed by attending a local university—meeting people from all across the country, having semi-intellectual talks lasting into the early morning hours, laughing it up, and, oh yeah, getting drunk. As I got up to leave the glorious new world I had discovered, my inebriation was obvious to me and everyone else sober enough to notice or care. I almost fell the minute I rose from my seat and Jackson said something like, “Whoa, thar, Murrlin.  You caint be drivin’ in yur kindishin.” 

            “Don’t worry, Jackson,” Kiki said.  “I got her. I’ll drive her home to our place.  She can get her car tomorrow.”  With that I was carefully escorted by Kiki and Jackson to the auto, and I was grateful to my new found buddies, one from either end of our great United States—a country that allows a woman in her forties to experience all the joys and of college away from home.  No husband to cook for, no dogs to walk, no papers to grade.  This was about me, me, and more me, and I loved it.

            I went to my room across the hall from Kiki and got settled into my pajamas when I heard a knock on my door.  It was Kiki, also in night clothes. She invited me into her room to have a nightcap and to look at the four hundred-page memoir she had written about growing up in Alaska.  I guess the clean Vermont air blowing in my face on the drive back had invigorated me, so I accepted, enjoying the idea of a mini pajama party cum biography.  Kiki handed me a huge glass of wine and pointed me to the love seat.  Once I was settled, she handed me the tome about her life in the 49^th state during the 50s.  As she did so, a magazine fell out of her Alaskan tale.  She picked it up, laughed and said, “Oops!  Look at this, will ya?”

            It was a sex toy/lotion/outfits catalog.  She sat next to me on the small sofa and murmured that she didn’t know how that got in her book.  She opened the catalog to the pages of dildos and asked me if I had any of them, or any of the vibrators and gadgets that appeared as she slowly turned the pages. Through the thick fog of alcohol and waning literary exhilaration came the realization that I was being set up for seduction.  I froze in my seat, gulped down the wine, and said it was getting late.

            Kiki asked me what I was so nervous about as she began to massage my neck.  I had never been in a sexual situation with a woman before and didn’t know what to do:  flight or flight.  I chose flight, being the easier of the two, and jumped up as if electrified and headed for the door.  She followed me saying, “What’s the matter?  I didn’t mean anything.  What are you so nervous about?  I was just trying to relax you.”

            “No, no.  It’s okay.  I am relaxed,” I said.  “But I am exhausted and must go to bed now.”

            “Here,” she said, “Let me walk you to your room.”

            Kiki crossed the hallway opened my door and told me to just lie down and go to sleep.  Great, I thought, I’ll just pretend to go to bed and she’ll leave. I got under the blankets and the next thing I know she is sitting on my back, massaging under my shoulder blades with her incredibly spindly fingers, gripping me around the waist with her knobby knees.  “Jesus Christ,” I thought, “How do I get rid of this psycho?”  I could buck up like a bronco and fling her bony body across the room.  I could start snoring and maybe she’d disappear.  I could tell her to get the fuck off of me.  Instead, I just began crying, sobbing really.  That seemed to put an end to her ardor.  She dismounted and I began wailing about how I never should have come for this conference, I missed my husband, I was going to leave the next day, I was not cut out for college away from home, I couldn’t write anyway.

            “Calm down,” she said, looking terrified that I was going to have a nervous breakdown.  The fact is, I might have had one had she not said good night and left the room.  The minute she did, I got up from the bed, secured my door with the tiny latch, and shoved the dresser in front of it, reinforced with the coffee table on top and a chair under the doorknob.  In the middle of the night when I needed to use the bathroom, I had to first do lots of furniture moving.  I unplugged a lamp to be used as a blunt instrument should my would be inamorata need to be further discouraged.

            The next morning I called a taxi and left the inn really early, hangover and all, to avoid meeting Kiki.  Once I got to the cafeteria I saw Jackson and told him the whole story.  He laughed and said, “I knew she was going to try to put the move on you.  She was flirting with you the whole of last night.” 

            “What?  Flirting with me?” I asked.

            “You mean to tell me a sophisticated lady like you from New York City can’t spot a woman in comfortable shoes?”  That description was Jackson’s way of saying lesbian, and he used it often during the rest of the week.

            I couldn’t help thinking that maybe I should have stayed with my original roommate, the slob.  That situation might not have been so physically comfortable, but at least I wouldn’t have to barricade  myself in my room at night, nor tiptoe through the inn with a weapon always at the ready.

            At the end of this journey into summer institutes I learned two important things:  1.  people go on these conferences not to improve their writing, but to get laid, especially by one of the visiting faculty and  2.  I am glad that I never went away to college