The Torch Bearer’s Exorcism

1988 I was in a 2 by 5 meter dorm room in a five story brick box on a Friday afternoon feeling free and adventurous but also a bit bored. It was late August and my randomly assigned roommate had made it clear on the first day she had no interest in spending more time with me than absolutely required by the living quarters. So I’d gone to find the two people on campus I knew from high school. Sitting on the bottom bunk I was waiting for them to return from their communal bathroom so we could go test my “fake” ID. It wasn’t actually; it was genuine just not mine and had been generously handed to me on my second day on campus by an older girl who lived down the hall from me. She didn’t look a great deal like me but; for a bouncer carding 20 people in a go, I figured it was close enough. My friends were my high school prom date who asked me out of pity when no one else did, and my theatre buddy who was not so much any sort of an actor although pretty consistently a huge drama queen. The door opened and in they came. Dom and Randy had brought along some others from their floor but I didn’t clock anyone else at all aside from the guy that seemed to be glowing warm bright gold. Not exactly a halo but all around him there was – to me – a visible aura and it was entrancing. Elated at the sight of him; someone I’d never laid eyes on before, utter happiness filled me. I nearly bounced in place on the mattress but caught myself. His name was David and from that second I first glimpsed him he owned me. I bowed my head trying to avoid being completely obvious. His angular but lanky build towered over the lower bunk, blue eyes under dark black hair, and I had to think to remember how to breathe so I could utter a hello and say “my name is Cherie”. It was gratifying he was NOT wearing the typical uniform of jeans, sneakers, t-shirt and baseball cap. That might’ve significantly changed the course of my university days if I’d managed to shake free of the spell through revulsion at his attire, but he was in a proper shirt and wearing real shoes. I’ve since thought back on that moment often, wondering if he mightn’t have had on some pheromone concoction making him irresistible like the boy with no own scent in PERFUME; or Matt Damon’s character in the OCEAN’s movies if that is an easier reference for you. Just being physically near David was heady to me but no one else seemed affected. My senses would heighten and I’d feel a charge but also peace and calm at the same time (the latter sensations not too familiar to me at seventeen). I imagine addicts feel a similar thrall on taking heroine. Whatever it was that he had to take me in with before even uttering a word I don’t know. He smiled at me and I was captivated. It took everything in me to keep a cool head and play it down. Not sure whether I ever truly entirely pulled that off but I tried with every fibre of my being. David said I reminded him of Debbie Harry and that was a tad disconcerting given she was born on the same day as my mother (i.e.: 25 years older than me) but I took it that he meant it in a nice way. I’d made an effort and had put blue and red streaks in my hair for my first night out on campus. The group of us went out to a pseudo Irish bar where none of us were caught out for being underage. Later I learned we were only a handful because a lot of the guys on Dom and Randy’s floor were teetotallers. Ha. That lasted about a week. By the end of the first semester there was only one guy that wasn’t coming out with us and he flunked out anyway due to lack of brains rather than having numbed them like the rest of us. Anyway, that first night with the guys was the first time I’d been able to relax and be myself since I’d done my sophomore year in boarding school (that incidentally was cut short as my enjoyment of it didn’t serve the punishment aspect intended when I was sent there). He told a funny story about how his parents had sent him to a survivalist camp and he’d been expelled from it for breaking into the kitchen at night to get extra food rations. I opened up and we talked about who we were, the music we listened to, the movies we watched, the classes we were going to take, and with every exchange I was more sure I’d met my person. At one point out of the blue David blurted out I was a rare beauty because of my green eyes and did I know only 2% of people have them? He was pretentious but felt genuine. He lacked a lot of general knowledge but that didn’t diminish his attractiveness. He’d grown up with two personas: one for his middle class educated father’s family and a different one for his trailer park mother’s. This is what drove him to pursue acting. He felt detached from the things that ran the lives of others but he’d learned to mimic to fit in. I connected with that as I’d spent my life feeling like a bird being raised by fish. My parents had issues and I’d been sent here and there among relatives as often as they were able to get away with. Everywhere I’d been I felt suffocated by attitudes and rules I didn’t identify with. I’d never been any one place long enough to make the sort of fast childhood friends other people seemed to take for granted. At the end of the night David walked me to my dorm and then we were kissing under the trees. I don’t remember the moment it started only that we were suddenly kissing, probably because it took me unawares. I’d only ever kissed three boys up to that point and it had really only been experimenting. I hadn’t felt anything for the boys I’d practised on. But when David pinned me against the trunk of a tree holding my wrists by my waist I felt my breath leave me and something flashed inside my brain. I was abruptly entirely sober. He was much stronger than he looked, maybe because he was so tall – about 6’2” – and it was a good thing he pressed up against me because I felt myself dissolving. My knees actually wobbled a moment. A stasis bubble seemed to form around us while we were under that tree because it seemed brief to me but at the same time each millisecond extended and burnt itself in my brain. I went inside after he’d gone toward his own dorm; after a large group of rowdy girls that stood too nearby for too long broke the mood, and on my watch 40 minutes were missing. No idea how that happened. I also don’t know how I got upstairs to my room but I was there when suddenly I realised I was cold. I’d been out all night without a jacket. The next day I had a 101° fever. My roommate Jessica ordered me not to breathe in her direction because she didn’t want to get whatever disease I’d brought into our unwillingly shared space. The campus health service was not helpful until the Monday when they gave me antibiotics for a bronchial infection. Yay. When I next saw David walking across the quad he was nonchalant and dispassionate. It made me wonder until he said he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten home that night. It took everything I had in me to hide how I was reeling that he didn’t remember. I wondered where the night had ended in his mind, but took him at his word because he did give off a novice lightweight vibe when we were ordering at the bar.