Falling in Love

They wore hunting jackets with Flintstone-sized pins securing the license on back. Drove pick-up trucks with Skeeter riding shotgun beside them. Plodded through dirty snowbanks in unlaced workboots, their rough, working-man’s hands chapped by the cold wind… These were the men I grew up with in that solitary Upstate town. Their football games, their Utica Club; every outing in a bar ending in a fight—fists pumping; tables overturned; the crowd—sweaty and exhilarated—huddled around to watch. Faggot this and faggot that. And whatareyoufuckinglookingat? They ate testosterone for breakfast and sprinkled it at night on their venison stew.

I dated none of them. Not one. Wouldn’t have--even if they’d asked. Which of course they did not.

What to do with a girl like me—with her hips and her darkness and one coal black eye cocked in disdain—when they desired girls the color and shape of a popsicle stick? My sixth grade teacher told my mother I thought I was better than the rest. Me, the girl in hand-me-down clothes and a free-hot-lunch card. I didn’t think I was better; I thought I was smarter—which was easy to feel when your 6th grade teacher misreads you like that.

And, finally, the night of graduation, walking across the stage—to a paltry smattering of family applause—a big boned, bookish girl who loved to smoke pot. My teachers, their breath sucked in, ready to diatribe, and me scoring 99 on the English Regents and a perfect 100 in French. This is your brain on drugs, Rachel, they tried… Oh really? And Principal Metcalf handing me the diploma, shaking his head—you could have done better than top ten in the class—but I just kept walking: across the stage, down the steps, up the carpeted left-hand aisle to the exit sign, and out into a clear June night—walking in my own deliberate, flat-footed way to the bus station on First Street to buy a one-way ticket south. The bus exhaling its way out of the dock, my cardboard box of possessions like a friend in the seat beside me.

Of course I was scared, of course I was lonely. And sometimes I thought about going back to that town as I stepped beyond the dungeon-sounding door of my apartment building, venturing onto the boulevard…

But at least there was a boulevard. And traffic lights and stores. And highways leading off to unknowable places. And people. Interesting people talking about interesting things. And different kinds of men—some of them in tight pants and sneakers with loud orange laces. Crossing their legs, playing music—lots of music—and dreaming and laughing. Not a hunting jacket among them, not a can of Utica Club. I watched from the corner, observing it all…

And one night as he sat behind me on the couch, I felt him play with my hair. Imperceptible at first, then a slightly stronger touch that thrilled the back of my neck. And I knew that this is how I wanted to fall in love... On a hot summer night, listening to music--with him tapping out the rhythm on his leg.

Eventually we would ride our bikes together at 3am, along the deserted streets of the lower North Side, feeling very much alive, the only ones awake at that hour, the only ones out falling in love…