That Night...

(CAUTION: Violent content)

That night and that place weren't that different from any other college campus around the country. 

Oingo Boingo greeted us as we walked into the frat house...

"It's a dead man's party
Who could ask for more
Everybody's comin', leave your body at the door
Leave your body and soul at the door . . . "  they sang.

I had arrived on campus the night before. Debbie and Vandy ended up being room mates at the School of Mines after high school. Both of them wanted to be engineers. I wanted to be a teacher, so I stayed in Greeley attending the university there.  

It was a beautiful drive to their dorm. The road wound against the bottom of the foothills.  It was fall, we were young and we lived in dorms. What could be better?  

Debbie, always the bubbly one was grinning ear to ear and immediately looking around to find someone she knew. Vandy, the self proclaimed black witch and Stevie Nicks fan stood there a minute biting her already red cuticles before she started off for the keg. I stood there in my jeans, pink shirt and hot pink tie hoping everyone knew that Annie Hall had recently made it ok.  

The rooms were filling up quickly with jocks, and geeks, and girls. Giggly girls. Cute girls.  The kind of girls the jocks and geeks liked.  I could smell the beer that had already been spilled on the floor in several places and the faint smell of clove cigarettes from the lips of a beatnik-wannabe in the dining room.  

Vandy came back with an extra beer and an invitation to go out back.  

"There's more people out there.  And hot tubs!" she giggled.  

Oh god... I knew Vandy would end up naked in the hot tub with some guy by the end of the evening. But, it only took her an hour. 

Debbie had found the people she was looking for, and they sat on bean bags off to the side of the living room discussing the physics of fluids and how that would apply their budding careers.  

My tie and I took up residence leaning on the side of the pool table, just watching all that was going on around us.  

"Hi, my name is Scott. Do you go to school here?"  His voice and breath were too close to my ear for me to turn without breaking his nose, so I had to step forward to turn around.  

"Hi...umm, Gina, and no, I don't"  I said.

We shook hands and engaged in the kind of talk that takes place in situations like that; nervous, meaningless, flirty.  The kind of talk that seems like comfort for two, or too, lonely people. 

He liked the tie and I liked that he had touched my hand. Not because I wanted a boy... but because I wanted a human connection, because I wondered what it would feel like to kiss someone, because I had had one too many beers.  

The night crept on about as slowly as his hand crept up my leg. He was very attentive to my drinks... always making sure I had plenty, and I felt lucky that I wasn't being slobbered on by him like some of the giggly girls were now being slobbered on by the geeks and jocks. 

At some point ,  I don't really remember when, he wanted to show me his high school year book.  We weaved our way through bodies and beer bottles to his room.  The room was blue, not dark blue, but light blue, the color of icebergs in the ocean and it made me shiver.  There were two beds, his and his room mates. The latter of which, I was a bit shocked to see, was occupied by a couple who didn't know or care that we had just walked in.  

Scott took my arm and pulled me to the back where there was a  sort of room within a room  with bookshelves, a desk, and a chair.  He reached into one of the bookshelves and pulled down a black bound book with silver lettering and then flipped the pages till he found the one he wanted.  I took the book from him and brought it closer, trying to find him among the other players.  I was just about to point him out, when I was thrown to the ground. 

The carpet smelled like dirty socks and McDonald's french fries. It was blue too, dark blue.  His hand went to the back of my head and clinched my hair, clothes being pulled and stretched, and hands... everywhere hands...and I remember thinking.. "how did he end up inside of me so quickly?", but he did.. and I felt myself rip. 

I thought I heard someone whisper "stop, please stop".  

Why where they whispering?  

"Yell at him.. SCREAM at him, please, make him stop."  

I tried to look back.. but saw no one.  

He thrust so hard...I swear I could feel him in my throat, but really it was the screams that were stuck there.  I tried to focus on a cobweb in the corner, on the ceiling, but his body kept getting in the way... so instead, I tried to look through him.  

I was squinting.. the dark was so fucking bright.  Why did it have to be so bright? My head hit the desk leg as he finished. 

"Tell anyone, and I'll deny it... "  he threatened.

I laid there... for minutes...or hours, it was hard to say. I turned my head to the right and I saw a hand clutching my tie... it's knuckles where white and bulging and it wore my class ring. That same hand ran between my legs to wipe away the blood that had been painted there, and then along with another, dressed me.  

As I sat there... finally able to bring the cobweb into focus... it occurred to me that someone was playing that tape again...  

"...leave your body at the door
Leave your body and soul at the door . . . "