Caroline, I Think

My sister-in-law got a conversation starter card game from a Secret Santa gift exchange at work, and it seemed that the family was going to have to suffer the consequences.

It was the holiday season a few Christmases ago. OK, quite a few years back. Since the family was all mostly gathered in town already, we were having a pre-Christmas get together at my brother’s house. All the kids were in bed, or at least upstairs, and the adults were sitting up just drinking and bullshitting, when sister-in-law Debbie pulled out her new game.

Skipping ahead in this setup to the point, somebody pulled a conversation card for me that said, ‘Tell about your worst date ever.’

That’s sort of the way I generally remember that evening, but the details of that night aren’t really important.

The question could just as easily have been, ‘Tell about your most embarrassing sexual experience’, and my answer would have been the same. Not that there had been any real sex involved. Caroline (I think that was her name) and I had gone our separate ways after that first encounter, so that kinda fell in line with most of my first dates from that time in my life. But I should probably just tell the actual story. Those details are much clearer.

It was the 4^th of July, 1987. Earlier that year, I had relocated to Pennsylvania as part of my job. A few months later and I was still settling in, getting to know my new surroundings in a small town just south of Pittsburgh. Southwestern Pennsylvania was still working to establish a new identity as one steel mill after another shuddered their doors, unemployment a definite regional concern. Such was the backdrop of my new life.

The move east had been relatively easy, mostly attributable to the fact that it had just been me at that time. Single and unattached, I had more vehicles to move than I had had serious girlfriends in the two years since college. For the record, that was a small pickup, a Jeep and a motorcycle that moved with me, versus maybe one sort of serious girlfriend who I had almost managed to convince that her old fiancé was a total asshole and that she should quit pining for him and just focus on our relationship. Such was the state of my dating prowess at the time.

But back to the 4^th of July, which fell on a Saturday in 1987, a perfect day for cutting loose, celebrating and not worrying about one’s ability to get up and make it to work the next day. Little did I know that I would spend that Sunday, not recovering from a hangover, but still contemplating how I would be perceived when I got to work Monday morning.

Most of the people I worked with were significantly older than me. If I recall correctly, I was one of the first new employees at this particular chemical plant in the last five years, and most of those were local, so making friends through work hadn’t been easy. With no dating prospects either, yet determined to get out and about, have some fun and maybe even meet someone, I searched for a likely 4^th of July celebration. So I got online and typed in ‘4^th of July celebrations near me’ - yeah right! This was 1987, so no internet, cell phones, not even a lousy home computer at the time. I likely looked through the local Pittsburgh papers for adds on events.

However it came about, I decided to venture out to The Meadows, a harness racing track about a half hour away. My idea of a good time had never been to just sit in a bar, particularly alone, and hope for the best, so I sought someplace that was more entertaining and interactive. Picture a young, horse racing and gambling enthusiast instead of a lonely loser camped out alone in a bar. I was still technically alone at the track, but I was alone, surrounded by excited, cheering and happy race fans, at least the one’s who were winning or at the very least not losing their entire paycheck.

It was the third or fourth race of the evening, my second bet either way, and I was down near the rail where I could see the finish. It was ridiculously hot and humid, the sun glaring brightly as it worked its way toward the horizon, and the majority of the fans were in the large, enclosed stands, hiding in the airconditioned confines. I was young and didn’t mind, so I was one of the few down at the finish line.

I had decided to bet the favorite to win, # 8, Lucky Lindy, and the nag was actually winning on the back stretch. From the rail, it is hard to keep track of the order of the racers as they go into the final turn, but suffice to say that #8 came out of that turn in a much less favorable position. He was still in it for the stretch, but appeared to be slowly fading. Lindy’s luck ran out along with mine, as #8 finished fourth, completely out of the money.

Now I have never been taught the proper way to show indignation at a losing horse, but the universal method seems to be to hold your tickets out at arm’s length in the general direction of the receding sulky and dramatically rip them in half. You can throw your favorite explicative in if desired, but not too loudly. After all, there is supposed to be some level of decorum to watching horse racing.

I tore my tickets derisively as appropriate, omitting any added comment. The lady beside me had no such restraint. Rather than just ripping her tickets in two, she continued to stack the pieces and tear again and again, a foul utterance accompanying each rip. ‘Shit’, and the tickets were halved, ‘Fuck’ proceeded quartering, with ‘Damn Fartlicker’ escaping to go along with her final tear. She wasn’t yelling, not making a scene, just expressing her displeasure at the results. With the hum of the crowd, I doubt if anyone other than me even heard her.

That last one caught my attention, and I couldn’t have resisted inquiring further about its meaning if I had even wanted to. So I was smiling and mildly laughing as I turned. Standing bside me was an attractive young lady, not drop dead gorgeous or anything, but petite, a few inches shorter than me, brown eyes and hair to match, the hair big and curly (this was Pittsburgh in the ‘80’s, after all). She was dressed for the weather in tan shorts and a loose sleeveless blouse. She was staring down at her tickets and trying for one more split, but the pieces were too small and the stack too thick. I remember hoping that she could manage the additional tear just so I could hear what imaginative word she might follow fartlicker up with.

“Can I help you with those,” I asked between chuckles.

I was pleasantly surprised when she looked up and smiled back at me. Later on, I would think back to this moment and wish that she had replied with something like ‘mind your own fucking business’, but at that moment I was thrilled to be interacting with a pretty girl close to my own age and not being summarily dismissed.

“Maybe I should just chew them up and swallow ‘em,” she said, mimicking popping the little wad of paper into her mouth. “That would erase all trace that they ever existed.”

“Lucky Lindy?” I asked, holding up the remains of my tickets, pitifully only torn in two.

“Lucky Lindy,” she confirmed.

“If you’re still hungry, you can eat my tickets too.”

It was a stupid line, but it got the reaction I wanted, as she deadpanned her reply.

“Sorry, but there are a lot of races left, and I don’t want to fill up on tickets too early.”

The rest of the crowd melted around us, heading back inside to place their next bets and catch a little of the cooler air.

“I gotta ask…fartlicker? Is that one word or two?”

“You know, I don’t really know, but that doesn’t keep me from using it.”

“Is it a favorite of yours?”

“Only when it’s appropriate.”

The look of amused confusion told her that I didn’t get it.

“Fartlicker comes from someone being so far behind in a race that… well, you get the rest.”

“And it works for harness racing as well?”

“So long as the sulky doesn’t get in the way.”

Confession, this exchange is likely more embellished memory than fact. Suffice to say, our mutual loser status broke the ice, and we seem to hit it off from there. She said her name was Caroline, I think. No last name, and looking back a few days later I would realize, she never gave me much in the line of personal information. She was an attentive listener, so I seemed to do most of the talking, with her asking questions and prodding me along.

Not that I cared about the unequal exchange of information, because we were having fun. We laughed, we bet, we lost, and we cursed quietly and increasingly more imaginatively at the losing racers as the night wore on. Somewhere around race seven, I won a few bucks, maybe ten dollars on a five dollar bet, but I used it as an excuse to offer to buy her another beer and food if she wanted. We relocated to the bar, shared nachos and cheese fries, and watched the last couple races on the TVs. Normally, this would be the end of the night at The Meadows, but this was 4^th of July, and there were still fireworks to come.

When I asked if she was staying for the show and would she like to watch from my Jeep, sans top in the parking lot, she hesitated for just the briefest moment before agreeing. As we got up to leave, she took my hand in hers, like it was the most normal thing to do, and we strolled that way all the way out to my car.

I was driving my ten year old Jeep CJ7, the top and doors having been off ever since I had driven it out the few hundred miles in the move. I had been planning to sit in the front seats, but Caroline had a better idea. At her suggestion, we climbed onto the hood and leaned back against the windshield. After a little maneuvering and rearranging to keep the wiper from poking me in the back, we settled in to wait for the show to start. We weren’t talking much, but Caroline did scooch over close to me, pulled my arm up and put it around her shoulders and laid her head against my chest. As I sat there basking in the unforeseen events that this night had brought, wondering if I was just dreaming since this was almost too good to be true, the lights in the parking lot went dark and the first barrage of fireworks lit up the night sky.

About the third or fourth shot, I felt Caroline snuggling up closer and sort of nuzzling at my neck. The darkness and her big ‘80’s hair combined to hide what she was up to, but I had no reason to worry or not trust her, other than the fact that I had known her for all of a couple hours. As she kissed my neck, it all seemed like some erotic fantasy… until she latched on like some deranged vampire, or a thirsty, blood sucking leach. Even as the pleasure escalated through discomfort and approached painful, I didn’t immediately pull away, my thoughts veering toward kinky rather than deranged. My arm around her shoulders actually hindered my position, allowing her to lean in with her body weight, while I tried to pull her off from behind as the pain level climbed. Changing tactics, I tried to scoot back away rather than pull her off, but overcompensated and fell off the hood onto the gravel. When I looked up, it was dark enough that I could only make out a silhouette staring down at me from atop my own car’s hood. As the next firework lit up the sky, I saw a completely different person than the one I had just met glaring down at me.

“Good luck explaining that to your wife, you cheating asshole!”

Her accusation made no sense, but then neither did her apparent transformation. She was in fact the same person, of course, same clothes, same hair, but she had changed to the point of being unrecognizable. She looked at me with a glowering stare of hate and revulsion, a constant litany of venom pouring from her mouth.

The light from the firework faded, blissfully masking that leering face of fury, but the quiet it brought let me hear her nasty comments all the better. I lay there looking up at her dumbfounded for a few rounds, the brightness of each explosion illuminating her writhing features but briefly overpowering her voice, only to switch places again as each colorful flare diminished.

Along with ‘cheating asshole’, other bits and pieces stuck in my head: ‘lied’, ‘gambled away’, and ‘ruined my life’ being the most prominent. The curses were liberal and colorful as well, with bastard and fuckwad being repeated a few times each. I think I even heard fartlicker resurrected and thrown in my direction.

About this time, the other spectators in nearby vehicles began to notice our show, distracting them from the one they had come to see, and several voiced their objections. Thinking back, I am glad this spectacle occurred before the age of cell phones, otherwise I am absolutely positive that there would be a viral video bouncing about the internet as proof of our encounter. I have no desire to ever be a participant in such a video.

Without cell phones to occupy their attention, a small group sitting in lawn chairs in the bed of a pickup nearby began screaming back to, ‘Hey, shut the fuck up over there.’ Caroline did not oblige, but when they continued and were joined by others, her attention was drawn away from me to them. She slid off the hood and took a few steps toward the pickup, before whirling around to answer a fresh onslaught from behind her.

At this point, she was off my hood, which was all I cared about. With no doors to open, I was in the driver’s seat and cautiously backing away before she even realized I had moved. Grateful to be on the move, but still needing to navigate a dark and crowded parking lot, in an open vehicle no less, I made my way slowly but methodically to the exit, all the while expecting this crazed she-devil to emerge from the darkness at any moment and launch herself at me through the open doorway.

She did not, and I made it to the main road without further incident. And thankfully, I never saw her again.

All the way home, I kept reaching up to feel my neck, wincing each time at a few particularly raw spots, my fingers coming away just slightly sticky. An old Jeep with no top does not have a dome light, so short of pulling over and digging out a flashlight, assessing the damage was limited to what I could feel and my imagination until I got home.

Looking into the bathroom mirror at my apartment, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had imagined on the ride home. On the right side of my neck, near the front where it would be nearly impossible to conceal, was a large bruise, indeed raw around the edges, with a few spots of dried blood for good measure. It looked exactly like what it was, an overzealous hickey meant to brand rather than be sexy. My desire to conceal it would be only to avoid embarrassment, even though it was quite clear that Caroline’s motive was to out me to my supposed wife.

I’ve run the evening’s events through my head many times, trying to pinpoint what I might have done or said that led her to believe I was married. I never came across anything, and usually came to the conclusion that she was simply delusional.

The conversation card game night from more than twenty years ago is the last time I ever told this story, and maybe the last time I ever thought about Caroline. I say I believed her to be delusional, which is a milder version of my thoughts when I was younger. Whackjob, nutcase and even crazy bitch were the terms I thought of her when it happened. But as years go on, people’s views change. I can still honestly say that I was terrified of her at the time, which will never change, but I can now look back and feel sorry for her. I have no doubt that someone treated her badly, likely an ex-husband, possibly ruined her life as she claimed and drove her to act as she had that 4^th of July.

Did she ever repeat her combination charade / tirade with anyone else? If she had, I doubt it could have been as dramatic without the fireworks as the perfect background. I hope she didn’t, and I hope she went on to live a happier, calmer life.

As for my story, you can choose to believe or not believe it as you see fit. If you chose not to, you won’t be the first. I am fairly sure no one at work that Monday believed the story of my hickey when I gave in and took off the turtleneck I was wearing in July.