Chapter 1: Peanut Butter Eyes

Chapter 1 of God Wears Camo, a story about four characters who switch vignettes between chapters: a writer, a homosexual, a veteran, and a minster. All their lives interconnect.

God Wears Camo

By: Samantha Hartley

 

 

Chapter 1: Peanut Butter Eyes

 

In this moment I’m losing my mind, gladly--I can finally let it go. The loopy aura of insecurity that usually surrounds me just transformed into my out-of-this-world prince, and lifted an astronaut helmet of controlled air off my head. The last party of the year fevers me ill. An overheated brain barbeques uptight lobes, but I enjoy hearing them sizzle ‘til charred--they’ll drop down to my stomach for tomorrow’s breakfast then poof! I’ll be myself again, different, but myself. Oh yeah, and I ate a weird sandwich.

Not too long ago, some shady, not-so-dapper dude screamed, “Cassie here!” and tossed me this sandwich I speak of. He ate one too, nodded, smiled (mouth full and leaking crumbs) and reassured me with a tempting stare to do the same, so, I devoured it. An acerbic taste and chunks of peanut butter (maybe?) stuck to the roof of my mouth. But my name is Clementine, I thought after tongue-cleaning the back of my teeth. Close enough.

I’m at a Speak Easy, a tawdry college one set in present day. Fellow drunkards celebrate the theme: flapper women and dapper gentlemen of the 20s. Booze serves as decoration--pick-off-the-wall kind over-indulgers break rules for in Wonka’s factory--everyone’s fat, blue, boorish, ready to be rolled out the door, kicked off the tour, and sent back home to their parents.

I feel like a top-tier lady of the night. Synthetic hairs sway from my bob-cut wig, tickling my face for a much-needed dust-off--I bob as well; long slinky pearls, layered on my beaded dress, jingle and intermingle; flicks of satin blossoms garden my contour when hands try at somatic air-dance moves; tap-worthy Mary Jane’s gild the roots of my tree-of-life ensemble--I went all out for this. Gatsby was always my favorite literary beau, but f**k Daisy.

After finishing my first year of graduate school at Middlebury College, and after long, demoralizing hours of pursuing my MFA in the wilderness of Vermont, I take a feeble stab at socializing with people instead of deer. Still a doe myself, fear-stunned in DJ lights, legs shaky from first-dance steps, I continue to frolic--bubbly libations regurgitate inhibitions from my turning tummy. Body warm from carbonated pleasures, I actually dance, me, a girl who feels weird walking across campus alone, an inflated girl, ballooned with inhaled doubt--a forever-held breath. Imagine puncturing such a gaseous bubble… what air is let out.

            With an enshrouded identity, I feel free, a roaring 20’s hooker’s soul takes place of my own--that’s what I like to think anyway when vivifying myself as a flapper character: a girl with some f**k-worthy name like Veronica or Cassandra, anything ending in an ah sound, anything better than my name (Clementine Darling). I was named by two hippies who are on a permanent trip.

Suddenly, one of the drunkards, a wobbly girl in flashy sequins, snatches a bottle of champagne out of thin air--a floating find from a wallpapered-frieze--and sprays projectile foam around the room, splashing everyone’s faces; drops hit me--beads massaging my cheeks, the silky ones that disintegrate into lavender when dropped squished onto the bathtub floor. A transitory hush follows. The DJ stops, checks his equipment, gives an ok nod, and spins-in a heavy hip-hop song, kindly for her, she screams “Fuuuuckkkk yeah!” and surviving party laughter continues. People gather to the dance floor and move rhythmically, slowly like wading sea turtles. Hearts form on the sides of my head--my ears take on life and throb with the music. I can hardly tell what is what on my own body--my arm is my nose, my leg my stomach, but they all feel good.

I hand-jive in front of a random, decorative record player with my good friend Tiffany; she pinches the end of an elongated cigarette holder with a gangly grip, teetering the flaccid stem on her hand like a kindergartener holding a pencil for the first time. We’re sick-souled kissing sisters, taking turns smoking the fashionable stick then taking turns giggling and coughing, two of a kind; the coolest not-cool girls grooving, tacky, the soiree and us--tacky in genre but separate in subgenre: the party is a lion, and we, well, are deer--both animals of different calibers--predator and prey.

            “Too bad I’m black, in the 20s, I’d be turned away at the door, or hired for help,” Tiffany jokes and we snicker, always pointing out the social awkwardness of moments, we herd crowds of elephants in the room away to make space for dancing.

Heavy-hearted, but wry in persona, we didn’t want to be those girls--the one’s correcting the party’s anachronistic faults, but comments sliver out between teeth when forced smiles forbid normal, party banter, and I say, “I didn’t realize The Strokes came out with ‘Last Night’ so long ago.” We laugh again in Beavis-and-Butthead-like croons, uh-huh-uh-huh.

Friends since freshman year, both Plain-Jane’s, we compel each other to interact with humans--two cavemen teaching each other to make fire when neither one knows how to make fire in the first place, so we just bang rocks around and hope for the best. The Mantra we must get the full college experience carried over into grad school, even more so, we hardly fulfilled it before (we hardly fulfilled it now). Surrounding laughter hugs us, and we barely hug it back--a one-sided embrace, a greeted visit to grandma’s when she crushes your bones in a passionate squeeze, and you’re stiff, wincing. Grandma’s Alzheimer’s and partygoers’ ‘shroomed judgments make all visits bearable and all human interaction possible.

Gah, I just saw an elephant, a real one, hopefully it didn’t see me.

I don’t know if I’m tripping or, indeed, I am, at full force now, but Tiff looks stunning--an avatar of beauty too inimitable to be appreciated by ruffians--a Van Gogh piece hung in a dive-bar--Van-who? She usually wears her coarse, black hair tied up in a frizzy bun, one I would poke each day and ask how many bees were making honey in there, and she would sass back, ”Well at least I beeee sweet!” Our relationship, filled with backhanded repartee, counterbalances our hard earned attempts at making friends--we like it that way. People may think we bicker, I mean, never mind. People don’t think of us at all.

But tonight, honey from her hive cascades glazing streams down her diaphanous dress--a second layer of midnight skin clinging to her curves. Silk waves let out from her scalp to play show the busy bees are on vacation--buzzed.

I widen my palm, place it on her face, and wipe it down from her head to her hip, a blind person, tripping, using an extra sense to feel her beauty.

“What the hell dude?” She side-bumps me away. Understandable. She doesn’t know my peanut butter secret.

Fervid hazard lights flash in my peripherals, a sign to pull over, agog, the blinking lights are boys’ eyes noticing her--her, not me--I can tell, and I agree. Melted-together faces obscure their attractiveness, but the point is moot; if I ever told Tiff what was happening, she would play a lost pup from Homeward Bound, drool, and scurry homeward, bound to stalk them on the internet--her wide tongue hitting the wind would be the only flapper left for me to dance with. Loving from afar, that was her thing, loving the ideas of things… it’s my thing too.

I however, not being on Facebook, am the last, ghosted girl of my generation. The realm of cyber-interfacing scares the s**t out of me--a glorified portrayal of people representing themselves through a filter, adding unneeded blinders to the mix--Santa would be real if we copied and pasted red hats on photos of homeless men, and tans would be real we used the sepia filter after vacationing in the arctic. I really liked the ideas of things, so Facebook airwaves would trap me in a cage, one where I would develop Stockholm syndrome, creating the only place fit for me to love.

Oh how I do enjoy tripping, a delectable pastime, hours and hours of a carnival ride, a real-life Facebook, but with silly-puttied photos, unfiltered, a mish-masher, a let’s-just-throw-this-whole-look-thing-out-the-window scenario--you’re green, I’m goo, the guy doing a keg stand ages by the second, so all we have is… personality, and mine is quite giggly.

Deer first made mushrooms accessible to us. I learned this in my undergrad psychopharmacology class. Fungi on some wild mushrooms are toxic to humans, but not to deer, and on long treks nomadic Alaskans would drink deer urine (scattered on edible foliage) and trip because the silly property of silly mushrooms is not metabolized, but recycled--a golden cycle of crude… silliness.

I, being the Jane Doe that I am, am proud to be the pleasurable, playful version of my self-identified animal.

            “Kate! Hey, where’s Rob?” A friendly acquaintance passes by, and I, feeling gregarious, call to her--the full college experience.

            Kate runs away, halfway to tears, she leaves us dusted in her tracks, the tire marks talking dirt behind her back. Am I that mutilated? No, only I can see that.

Tiffany whispers, “Her and Rob broke up like a month ago.”

While making a yikes expression, I accept the reminder of why I shouldn’t, and don’t try. Inept, inept in the most outmoded kind of way: socially. That’s me. Tee hee hee.

Unfortunately my school year didn’t end with quite the bang I’d hope for.

On the last day of classes, only hours earlier, beyond the swarms of celebrating scholars where I should have been full-college-experiencing, a more-or-less intervention took place between me and my professor, Professor Gould. His office--an airtight, muggy cell with aromas of freshly polished mahogany wood--alerted any visiting nose-holes that he had a PhD, and showed it off more than anyone ought to.

A scratch stung in my lower back, in a borderline inappropriate spot, and through the dense rancor of energy in the room, it twitched me off-focus. A reach for a snag would look like a rear-fondle, but unrelenting, the tinge wouldn’t let up, so I tried to allay the prickles by subtly gaining traction against his leather lounge chairs. I rubbed up and down--squeak. Mission aborted. I sat still.

Smack. He glared at my gum-crackle. Gulp.

“Have you ever thought about another profession?” he asked, detaching a pin from the grenade of a heart in my chest. I felt it go off. Ouch.

“What do you mean?”

He handed me back an assignment. My nerves fomented gut-panicked nausea. The paper, ink-stained with the blood-red indelible mark of a D, soiled my spirits. I passed without the joy of passing. Folding it in half, I slid the paper down my back--ahhhh a scratching tool.

            “I know, tough to hear.” After removing his glasses, he lolled me an eyebrow-raised, supercilious gaze, trembling through squints, he hid from the unfit sight of me behind handicapped, struggling eyes. He never took off his glasses. “As your professor for these past two semesters, I find it very difficult to reach you in your writing. You’re like… like vanilla ice cream. Good, edible, but who orders vanilla ice cream?”

I wanted to cry, vomit, express the filth of the moment and mourn my almost dead career, but refused to exude more pathetic mannerisms, refused like asking out the most popular boy in school after stumbling over his lunch table to reveal granny-panties. Some pride needed saving. I coveted the final pieces of my ego to nourish the shriveled-up parts of me.

“Okay then, vanilla ice cream, got it.” I said. Insulted, dubbed plain, blandtastic. I felt as if I just met myself for the first time, and could picture it too, me confronting me: hey I’m boring, and so are you, let’s go work at a bank. Then, together we leave the writer on the floor in the fetal position, lifeless.

Professor Gould’s stroke-tilted face gave me nothing to work with, it looked at me like I was making up words altogether--a writing-leper, diseased with the chronic plague of being dull (don’t touch!).

Sweat breathed out from my armpits, so I tucked loose fabric under them to hide my many more, plenteous shortcomings, but salty stank oozed. I sapped some up with my paper. F**k it. The grade bled.

            He continued tussling to dodge the potholes of my circumstance, and said, “I read your stories, just wanting something to happen, but nothing… well, yeah, nothing ever does. You think about things happening, wonder about them, but then that’s it--nothing happens. I want to know the heart of your characters, I want to see you live for your writing, I want you to discover real beauty, the kind that goes against yourself to find. Who’s your favorite writer? Who inspires you?”

            “Thoreau.”

He upchucked a snicker, then a strained, leftover smile to hide such judgment--cherry topped with a cough. Regardless of my feelings, despite the sincere fact of me being human, he was amused. A*s hole. “If you decide to pursue this degree, you will need to ask yourself, what would Clementine not do? That will create your best character,” he said.

            I stood up to leave. My residual sweaty stain on his calf-skinned chair would have to be the memorial of me--the closest I’d ever get to a PhD. I disturbed him. All he wanted from me was beauty, heart, something alive--beating rather than beaten. I was nothing he could show off--nothing he wanted to see. Me.

            I trudged over to the room-commanding double-doors, gave one last glance back, and saw him place glasses on to wave me off.

“It’s not what you look at,” I cried. The words purged out of me. I marched back.

            “Beg your pardon?”

            “It’s not what you look at, it’s what you see. Thoreau said that, and you might be looking at an itchy sweaty mess, but it’s hot in here and you really make me nervous, and that leather is like a heavier layer of skin no one wants, a beanbag-chair made from elephant skin, an elephant eating you from its--“

            “Clementine…”

“Sorry, sorry,” but I didn’t stop, “I feel hivey--I know I’m hivey--I’m hot, like a burning building, like I need vanilla ice cream. I know how bad this is and I’m the one looking out from the fire--I can only feel the heat to know how bad this is, but I feel it. You took off your glasses to spare yourself from looking at me, but it’s not about that. It’s not about what you look at. It’s about what you see, and you don’t see anything in me, you’ve even given up on looking at all, which is okay, probably recommended, but don’t stop trying to see me.”

            “Well, Clementine,” he squared me right in the face and simpered with appropriately leather-dry lips, “I think that’s the ‘not you’ coming out already. You have my attention.”

What would Clementine not do?

             Clementine would not trip at a costume party…

 

            “Hey Clem!” An obnoxious southern girl, and previous writing workshop seat-neighbor of mine named Barbara (goes by Babs) calls my name. Familiar screeches cause me to cower. When seeing me, she reacts as if our friendship is embedded in blood; she secret-sister-society winks at me and grabs my hand, ready to Thelma-and-Louise hand-hold off a cliff together--a tight gripping-for-life clasp--two friends ‘til the very end. With best-friend radar, my back could feel Tiff’s eyes rolling.

“Oh mah dear lord you look fab-u-lous!” Babs kisses me twice on each cheek, syrupy southern charm (gloppy honey flavored lip-gloss) saps my face--yuck, thick on all accounts, yuck--we are in Vermont, and she emanates the spirit of maple… but maybe that’s what Clementine should do: kiss people.

            “So do you!” I say, and kiss her cheeks in return.

 Caught off guard, she says, “Oh okay, thanks for that.” Clearly too many kisses, but she’s polite and adds, “You are just a peach, the prettiest peach with the juiciest insides,” reddening under cascaded layers of blush. I swear she’s f*****g Professor Gould (pretty enough for him to like) she always blushed the same way when getting stories back, and I, juicy with juices, would seep out tears.

She pinches my cheek-stickiness, fingerprints adhere, ever so slightly, we’re attached with her release--overriding my washed-out undertone. She always tried tricking me into a makeover…

            “You hafta try mah new sugarplum raspberry lip balm, its got a tint to it--a kick in the lips, like you just spent all summer kissin’ on the beach,” Babs would say in class, making a kiss-face as if I didn’t know how.

            She didn’t make sense. If you spent all summer kissing on the beach, your whole body would be burned and red, not your lips. “I’m good, thanks.”

            “Ya know, Professor Gould might let up on ya a bit if you had a pretty smile on once in a while,” she’d say, eyelashes batting and lips smacking.

            She was f*****g him.

Right now however, Babs glows, naturally, in a lambent tint of glee bred from a pure source, not a compact powder case--a newfound source for beauty, assumingly the tall, debonair-looking man standing over her shoulder. His freed face, free as a chickadee beak-chiseling its egg open for the first time and peek-a-booing flawlessly, cleanly without a mess, out from under a silky hen’s hairy feathers--his hair--oh how silky, slicked-back hair (alive-celled hair) alluring rule-the-world hair, a sand-colored cocoon I crave to butterfly-transform in--hair humming along to a jazzy tune titled dapper. He sports a pinstriped suit, swanky, constructed with artery-clogging-thick fabric--an awaiting heart attack for any woman who eats him up, which would be any woman.

Dressed for this event as if it were a contest, he must have dreamt up a prize. He doesn’t act like he wants to be here, static and merely present, he showed up to be dressed up--a business meeting attendee, or maybe a churchgoer. Perfectly pressed, he intermittently eye-surveys everyone’s drink-levels--one spill on him and his party’s over. He throws back a drink, whiskey-neat, and waits for the prize, the one he made up--the one he hasn’t seen yet.

Buttered-up on a southern-roll, he would be Barbara’s date. They are Barbie and Ken, doll-like, but there’s something off about him. He’s a stiffy like me--a frightened deer. A buck maybe, too handsome to be a social recluse, but is.

            “I must take y’all’s picture, get together!” Life-of-the-party Barbara waves her hands in a get-in-a-group motion--a mom before prom, embarrassing and annoying, herding us into cattle formation.

            Tiffany doesn’t hear Barbara, or doesn’t want to hear Barbara, either way she is aimless, and walks off.

So, as two stiff-huggers, we fit neatly together like sturdy logs resting in a pile. We pose--hands flat on each other’s backs. When I smell his cologne I’m brought back to times of Christmas cheer… pine needles?

Flash. We break fake smiles and breathe, meet eyes with more, added fake smiles, and hold our breath again.

            “I’m Chas,” he breathes out, and offers an extended hand to greet me.

His handshake, firm and memorable, commands my body with a minor, slender squeeze. Just when I thought my every body part was mismatched, he reminds me of where my hand is. He somehow reminds me I’m me.

“I’m Clementine.”

 

Reviews

[StefanC]

Some of the wording is excellent here, really relatable and fun to read as a result.
Characters are great, feel like I've met people like them before - which is meant as a good thing and a compliment.
I look forward to reading more.