The Dark Corner

It could make an inconvenient mess out of the dolled-up makeup and hair that consumed a woman’s afternoon in preparation for her evening out, but she loved the way the dew from the Carolina humidity deposited a thin veil of moisture onto her skin. It was the perfect mix of science and human emotion as she watched others blot the wetness from their brows, noses and necks so as not to disrespect the time it took for them to apply eyeshadows, foundations and colognes to display their best selves. “Unfortunate,” she thought as she felt a cascading bead of sweat roll down her cheek.

Again she was home visiting for a short time. Long enough to self verify the health and welfare of her aging parents. And long enough to sit here for a few hours to wait and see her.

As it always did when she sat in this chair, at this place, waiting at this time, her memory of when they first informally met etched out a spot in her mind. Her face was buried between the integers of an equation in her math book. She liked math. She liked its definitives and explicit outcomes. No underlying meanings, no interpretations, no enigmas.

From the corner of her eye, over the spines of encyclopedias that sat on the Reference shelf, she saw shadows of immersed, intertwined bodies. She heard the faint smacks of lips kissing and pants from pleasuring touches. She witnessed her first live display of sex.

Her eyes darted around the library to see if others too had noticed. The tops of heads, due to faces also being buried in books, was all she saw. Her eyes slowly rolled back to the dark corner behind the Reference section. She squinted from behind her already magnifying glasses to try and see more. The figures in the corner were still elusive to her. Their smacks and pants echoed between her ears and sent a distracting tingle between her legs.

In her present, as she brought the straw to her lips to cool herself from the inside, she smiled in remembrance of that first distracting tingle. The feeling that she would continue to chase into early adulthood until it was replaced by something more powerful. True love. Love that was anchored by reciprocity.

She peered over her surroundings until she landed on an alleyway that parted the carefully laid bricks of two buildings. The darkened alleyway took her back to that dark corner of the library. The shadows, smacks, pants and tingles swirled through her mind.

She remembered waiting on that day also for the figures to emerge from that dark corner. She needed to see the parties responsible for distracting her from her first love of math by igniting her with a distracting tingle. But the fourth period bell distracted them all. 

As heads popped up from books and items were noisily gathered into bags, the figures stopped. The smacks were halted and the pants were quieted.

She did a slow, reluctant gathering of her things as she waited to see at least one of them. “It’s probably that idiot Kevin Litney that was suspended for having his dick out on the bus, and that fast-ass Sophia Reynolds who was also suspended for jacking him off,” she thought with disgust while gathering her things.

As the minutes ticked closer to the top of the hour, and the realization set in that she was about to be late for her next class, she hastily walked to the library exit. She looked back over her shoulder to the dark corner as she pushed the door open. One of the figures emerged, adjusting her clothes and wiping the corners of her mouth with her fingertips. Her big, blond, feathered hair, held in place by the can of Aquanet she used each morning, weathered well through the tryst, but her smudged lipstick and eye shadow showed remnants of the event. She recognized her as Amy Kellings, a captain on the volleyball team.

Satisfied by the fact that she had seen at least one of the figures, she exited the library and made her way to class. Though her and Amy were on opposite ends of the social spectrum that dictated high school interactions, she knew enough about her to guess the other figure was Amy’s boyfriend Steve. 

The next day, she ran to the library after second period and took her same seat next to the Reference section. As she pretended to again be buried in an equation, she saw Amy pretend to browse books as she made her way to the dark corner. Shortly behind Amy another girl, that she also recognized from the volleyball team, pretended to be looking for a specific encyclopedia on the Reference shelf before making her way to the dark corner also. And soon the smacks and pants continued as if they had never been startled away by the period ending bell the previous day. 

Again she watched the shadows immerse and intertwine, and, again, the amalgamation of all those passionate factors caused her to tingle. Enjoying the tingling feeling, but not knowing what to do with it, she attempted to stifle it by crossing her legs. Still watching the shadows and hearing their excitement, her crossed leg began to bounce. Her bouncing leg caused an unintentional friction that heightened the tingling. Soon she felt the build up of compounding tingles and a resulting implosion that caused her body to jerk and her head to drop further into her book. Her eyes blinked repeatedly as the tingles subsided and rippled out of her body. Met with curious faces as she slowly lifted her head, she began coughing to distract from the episode she just had.

“Are you ok dear,” she heard the voice of Mrs. Graham say from behind her.

“Huh…,” she said, stalling for clarity after her disrupting commotion. “Oh yes, ma’am.”

The smacks and pants resumed when the safety of silence arose around them again. Her eyes rolled back over to the dark corner and saw the shadows doing their dance. Her eyes rolled back to Mrs. Graham who too was noticing the noises. As Mrs. Graham began searching for the exact direction of the noises, another coughing fit served as a disrupting commotion.

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Graham said rushing to her side. “Maybe you should go and see the nurse.”

As she nodded in agreement with Mrs. Graham’s words, she saw the second girl rush from the darkened corner as she adjusted her clothing. Following shortly thereafter, Amy emerged again adjusting her clothes and wiping the corners of her mouth with her fingertips. 

She noticed Amy notice her. As Mrs. Graham rubbed her back through her coughing spell, Amy’s lips curled up into a half smile, and she sent over a wink.

She lived many more moments the rest of that year at that table in the library near the dark corner, admiring Amy from afar and sharing their mutual secret of liking girls. And now it’s moments like the present one, where she sits in this chair, at this place, at this time waiting to just see her, that she realizes how significant those moments beside the dark corner were for her. They were transformative. Prior to them she was an integer in a definitive equation that determined the explicit outcome of a young woman living in the south. On the other side of them, she became an enigma of compiled underlying meanings and interpretations.

Amy was her first real crush. She fell in love with the unexplainable enigma that had a boyfriend, yet ventured to the dark corner with her girlfriend.

She again peered over her surroundings and saw that the moment arrived for which she had been waiting. Amy had become the molasses sweet expectation of what all petite-figured, blond-haired women were destined to be in this area. A man’s wife, and a child’s mother. An integer in a definitive equation with an explicit outcome of a young woman living in the south.

She watched as Amy led a little boy that resembled his mother by his hand, while talking to a man with disinterest deposited on his face, who was obviously the other contributing half of the little boy. She saw Amy halt her words when she noticed that she was being noticed. When Amy registered the familiar face, her lips curled up into a half smile and she sent a wink to her.