LOYD BURL AND THE HOOTER’S GIRL

CHAPTER 6

Wednesday, July 29^th

HIS BANNER OVER ME WAS LOVE (Song of Solomon 2:4)

            I spun the football a few times in my hand, then got set, and boomed the brown ball high into the air with my foot. It went high, far, and you couldn’t have thrown a tighter spiral with your arm.

            The two assistant coaches that had acted like they had been indulging me with this try out and couldn’t get rid of me fast enough, now watched the ball sail through the air with their mouths hanging open. Then they both turned their gaze on me in disbelief.

            “Do it again,” one of them instructed me mildly as he tossed me another ball.

            I pretty much repeated the first performance. The other coach tossed me a third football. I was consistent. The next thing I knew the head coach was toward me grinning like a car salesman who had just sold a brand new Cadilac. He took hold of my hand and pumped vigorously, then jokingly said, “You’re hired!”

            An hour later, I was knocking on Cat’s apartment door. The keyhole darkened for a second, then a second after that, this image was replaced with Cat’s beautiful face. Below her face, her lithe body was covered with her Hooter’s uniform of a tight white top, orange shorts, flesh colored tights, white socks, and tennis shoes.

            “Happy 22nd birthday!” I told her while handing her the rectangle shaped object in my hand. It was wrapped with light blue paper and the images of her favorite cartoon character, Garfield the cat, where strewn about the gift wrap.

            She seemed almost to ignore the package and asked with eagerness, “So, what happened at the tryout?”

            “Oh,” I shrugged. “I made the team.”

            “Loyd, that’s fantastic!”

            I still didn’t understand why she was so eager for me to be on the football team. I was impressed though that she was more interested in me than her own gift. She frowned at it, even as she smiled. “Looks like a book, but it’s a little too heavy.”

            It was in fact a textbook I had bought at a library sale for a quarter for this very occasion. It was about ten by twelve, and a good two inches thick.

            “Go ahead and open it.”

            Her frown deepened. “It is a book… A textbook… On thermodynamics?”

            “You’ve always said you like to learn new things,” I told her with a straight face.

            She was silent, and her face became blank as she stared at it. As much as I loved Cat, I’d come to learn that she was sensitive, prone to depression, and her mood could turn on a dime. So I sped up the surprise. “Just open the book up in about the middle to get to your Craker Jack prize.”

            She looked at me hopeful now and cracked a little smile. She did as I instructed and an old gold-plated, heart shaped locket fell out. It was about an inch in size, and I had noticed Cat admiring it at a pawn shop. Another of the many things I had learned about Cat was that she loved antique shops and secondhand stores. I paid twenty-five dollars for it, and then twenty-five cents for the book to hide it in.

            “Oh Loyd, it’s beautiful!”

            “Just like you.”

            She kissed me on the mouth, letting it linger as if to say thank you. But then she actually said it. “Thank you! You saw me looking at it, didn’t you?”

            “Open the locket up,” I instructed. My roommate Kyle was still seeing Cat’s co-worker and friend, Mona. As a matter of fact, over the last few months, we had gone on about a dozen double dates with them. Mona had the ability to write very small, so I had her write Song of Solomon chapter one and verse two on the heart shaped piece of pink construction paper I had cut to the size of the locket.

            “Oh Loyd, you really get me!” I thought she said with a croaky voice, and the contradictory combination of a tear and a smile.

            “Did you say get me, or get away from me?”

            “Never, ever get away from me,” she giggled as she kissed me quick, throwing her arms around me and we hugged.

            Yet ‘never, ever get away from me’ didn’t hold true. Toward the end of the year, her mood would swing to the negative, and stay there for an extended period. It would not only cause her to leave me, breaking my heart in the process, but she left the entire state, moving temporarily to the west coast. But then she returned a few months later, and rapidly healed my injured heart. She also brought the surprise of a lifetime!

            My mouth took a notion, and decided to make audible a thought I was feeling, that I figured to intended to keep private. “I love you, Cat Clutterbuck.”

            She looked surprised at first. It was the first time I voiced this particular emotion that I’d been feeling for her for weeks. Then her eyes looked warm and loving, and a sweet smile was on her lips as she replied, “I love you too, Loyd Burl.”

            Although we had been seeing each other in a romantic sense, our relationship thus far was more like friendship in our behavior. We spent a lot of time talking. One of our favorite discussion points was our existence and it’s relation to God. I was always amazed at her Biblical knowledge and puzzled why she often referred to herself as backslidden.

            We did have periodic kissing sessions, but I let her dictate the duration and the passion. Upon giving her this gift, my news that I was on the football team, and mostly my affectionate declaration, our celebratory hug soon turned into indulging in a kiss. After a minute or two, she took my hand and led me to the sofa.

            Now I had always kept my hands to myself when we engaged in lip locks. So to my surprise, she took my hand and gently drew it toward one of her breasts. I in turn, slowly eased it away. This was difficult to do, as she was still in her Hooter’s uniform and looked almighty fine to a twenty-two year old heterosexual male.

            She stopped kissing me, her eyes were wide, and her gaze looked baffled. “Loyd, I was giving you an invitation to touch me there.”

            “I, I know,” I stammered. “But I’m respectfully declining permission.”

            “Why? The way you kiss, you’ve never seemed gay.”

            “I’m not.”

            “Do you not find me attractive?” she asked, even more puzzled.

            “No, no! I mean, yes, yes! I mean, no, yes you’re mind blowingly attractive.”

            “Then what is it Loyd?” she asked in a low inquisitive voice, as if she were a psychologist and I was her troubled patient. “From what I know of guys, and what I’ve experienced with guys, if you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile. Since we have been going out, we’ve done a lot of kissing now and then. That in itself is giving an inch, and not once have you tried to touch me. Now I just tried to get you to touch a private body part, something I’ve never ever initiated with a guy, and you reject me. So what gives? I not only offered another inch, that was a mile and then some.”

            “I would never reject you!”

            “You just did,” she said with both a frown and a little smile. I couldn’t tell if she was pleased with me or upset.

            “Like I said, I was being, you know, respectful.”

            “Why, Loyd? I gave you a green light to touch my chest, albeit through clothes.”

            “Not much clothes,” I laughed, this caused her frown to deepen, and her jaw clenched. “Look, Cat, I’m a listener, not a talker, so I’m pretty good at reading between the lines. Although you haven’t really talked about it much, I perceive that your really bad experience with a high school boyfriend had to do with something of a sexual nature. In particular, ‘no’ not ending up being ‘no.’”

            Her eyes got watery, and she looked away. I took her hand, and she returned her gaze to me. “Listen Cat, pulling my hand away is right up there with the most difficult things I’ve ever done. But what’s even more important to me is establishing what we have personally before we get intimate physically. If we do that, we can have both for the rest of our lives.”

            “It was my fault, too,” she said quietly.

            “What do you mean?”

            “It’s like what I said about giving an inch and taking a mile. You give an inch here and an inch there, and then you find yourself in a hotel room on prom night. You know something doesn’t feel right, out of control, very carnal, a false feeling of invincibility, a strong element of the forbidden, but everybody’s doing it, you know?”

            She looked at me like I was supposed to answer. “I don’t know, I didn’t go to prom. I hung with art nerds and stoners in basements.”

            “So you find yourself half buzzed wine coolers,” she continued. “Then mostly naked with your boyfriend, and you figure compromise. But he wants more. You’re scared and pleading ‘no!’ But then all of a sudden, something that was supposed to be a gift to your husband on your wedding night is taken from you forcefully.”

            “It wasn’t your fault at all,” I told her.

            “Did you miss the part about giving inch, after inch, after inch? It would be one thing to feel it wasn’t partly my fault if we were like you and I are. Then I could call it rape if you got forceful.”

            “I still do call it rape! Even if both are completely, you know, birthday suit and all… Or I guess it’d be less… You know what I mean!”

            “Loyd,” she said with a sad countenance. “My point in bringing this up is this. I’m not a virgin. If you feel like we’re courting, and it’s leading to marriage, and you’re wanting us to save ourselves. Well, the plain truth is you’re not getting someone who has been chaste.”

            “Even if you can’t get past the notion that what happened was partly your fault, God forgives. Don’t you believe that?”

            She nodded, looked even sadder. “When I was freshman at Whitney, I acquired a second boyfriend, and we eventually started having sex.”

            “So how many guys have you had sex with then?” I asked, feeling my toes curl. It felt like none of my business, plus I didn’t like the jealous feelings that were tormenting my mind.

            “Just the two. Once with the guy at prom, and regularly with my second boyfriend.”

            “What happened to him?”

            “We saw each other for about a year and a half. After I started my sophomore year, he got cut from the football team and dumped me like yesterday’s trash. Then he went back home to California. My friends used to call him the sexy surfer. In my mind he was the self-centered surfer.

            “It’s funny, after losing my virginity at prom, I thought, well, no point saving myself anymore. But then after Bruce dumped me like I was nothing, I decided I wasn’t going to be anyone’s plaything anymore either. So since then I’ve dated a dozen guys and had sex with none. But if you’re a pretty little thing, but don’t put out, you’re not worth a studly man’s time.”

            Bruce again! To that point I had never really known a Bruce. But now between my co-worker Becky’s Bruce, and Cat’s ex, I was beginning to not like anyone by that name.

            “Is that why you wanted me to try out for the football team? You like football players?”

            She laughed. “No, of course not! I’ve just been around the game, and you have an extraordinary talent at kicking that ball. Trust me, I’ve been to a lot of games, and I’ve never seen a ball punted as far as you can. Who knows, maybe you could do it in the NFL.”

            “Unlikely,” I replied as we began to silently gaze at each other.

            She stepped up to me with a sultry smile, wrapped her arms around my neck. “I don’t know how important marrying a virgin is to you, Loyd. I don’t really understand your scruples. You come from a religion that has a history of misdeeds. I come from a background of adherence strictly to the Bible. Yet it seems you’re the saint, and I’m the sinner.”

            “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God, Cat.”

            “The problem is, I’m ready and willing to fornicate with you right now.”

            “I better go,” I replied, understanding more than some just how Joseph must have felt while fleeing from Potiphar’s wife. Not that I am at all comparing the character of my beloved Catalina to the adulterous Egyptian official’s wife. Only the fleeing from an alluring woman.

            As I reached for the doorknob, she grabbed my free hand. I turned to her. “I know who you are Loyd Burl.”

            “Yeah?”

            She stepped up to me, misty eyed, and sweetly smiled. “You’re Loyd Burl, the most honorable of men that I have ever met. And being a waitress, I’ve seen a lot.”

            “I know who you are Catalina Clutterbuck…”

            She put a finger to my lips. “I told you I don’t like Clutterbuck.”

            Once again my mouth spoke without my full consent. “Then how about Catalina Burl?”