I Remember Christy

“I Remember Christy”
(or “An Affair to Forget”)

By: J. Montgomery Spencer

Everything began innocently enough. I was an unattached man who was passively looking for love. The thought of love was but a fleeting memory that would usually precede a fit of anger and resentment. Still, in the face of all odds, I opened up my heart to a woman and, for just a few moments, I thought that I could again play the fool.
It was a pleasant evening in June when Christy met me at volleyball in Bolingbrook. I was even a bit surprised that she actually showed up. Sure, she told me she would, and I gave her precise directions to the event. But it wasn’t more than a couple days ago that she broke our plans to meet to accompany her live-in boyfriend, whom she spoke of often in what I could gather was a symbiotic relationship.
The phone call that began it all still sticks in by brain. She called me up after dropping off Phil at the airport. As she spoke about this and that, I said I’d step outside for a smoke too. Christy was a loud smoker, and I could tell that she was smoking on the other end of the conversation. Phil didn’t know that she smoked anymore, and she could only smoke when he was out of town, which was often.
I have known Christy neigh on five years now. She was first introduced to me by my longtime friend (close friend of a friend really) Nick. Nick(or Nick Peachtree, as he was known many years ago for taking down a handle of peach schnapps in one fluid movement) was Christy’s ex-husband. Her life as I know it has been wrought with disappointment and strife. Before, during, and after her marriage to Nick, Christy and I were close. Though I always felt a certain something for Christy, I never acted upon it out of respect for Nick and my own shattered love life.
Christy pulled me off the volleyball court that night gave me a big friendly kiss like back in the “good days”. After the game she, my friend Amber, and her boyfriend Pizza John came back to my place in P-Ville for gin and tonics. The drinks flowed freely as did the pleasant conversation that evening. Christy became increasingly affectionate towards me with loving embraces and the mechanical stroking of extremities.
Sometime around one in the morning when Amber and P.J. left Christy turned her full attention to me, and like she was spring loaded, she jumped my bones right on the couch. I went into sex-mode and did what I could with the situation. When it was done, I asked her the question I was about to ask right before she shoved her tongue down my throat. “What about your boyfriend?” She gave me a few words to satisfy my query as we messed around the rest of the evening.
I of course called her the next day. She said she would visit that night, and asked me not to call her on her boyfriend’s home line. Fair enough, he had a big enough surprise awaiting him upon his return. From what Christy told me, Phil was a man who could not take care of his personal affairs. He worked out of town during the week, and would be moving to New York in the fall. Christy was that she was not invited to join him, and that was going to be the end of their romantic relationship.
Christy arrived that night, as I was finishing up a motorcycle project in the driveway. I of course could hear her Mini from the moment it entered my neighborhood. We went down to my room in the basement to watch the season finally of “The Sopranos” season five. I put the DVD in my system and we settled down in my couch/bed. I had every intention of watching that episode because it was due back to the video store by midnight. But not long after the F.B.I warning, the air became heavy with petting and I had to break away to put some music on. There was no way I was going to spend the next half hour or so doing my thing with the same 20-second track playing over and over on the DVD index.
Afterward we went outside for a smoke and to talk about this and that. I made sure to steer clear of something she had said to me over the phone the other day. Christy got Nick’s old Saturn out of the divorce. She was looking to get rid of it and said that I could have it, all I had to do was pick it up. Score! I was looking for a delivery vehicle to use when I got back to school, and a little four-cylinder Saturn with a five-speed would be optimal. I thought that if I harbored on the car issue I might queer the deal, either deal. I still was a bit unsure of what was going on here.
We watched the episode with a near re-occurrence of the previous attempt. After that we went back upstairs for a smoke. But in route we encountered the small dark mud-room to the garage, and we threw down for what must have been three quarters of an hour. All the while I thought how I was really getting myself into trouble. What if this woman is in love with me, and I am unable to fully reciprocate. The room became quite hot, and I had to change positions often when the sweat would start to burn my eyes.
We finally made it outside for that smoke. My DVD was now overdue and I would have to pay a fine, ah the price of love. On the porch Christy and I smoked a number of squares. Since I last saw her the previous winter, she switched from American Spirit to Kool. We talked about the past and how she always wanted to be with me. I of course did not feel the same way back then. During the hard times I was Christy’s shoulder to cry on, and all I wanted was what was best for her and Nick. But then as I stroked her short hair in the moonlight, I remembered our meeting last winter.
I was in Chicago that winter visiting Lydia and Kris at their new apartment. Lydia mentioned that Christy called her a few weeks previous and had her number stored in her cell phone. With my moving to Minnesota in the coming days, I took it upon myself to try and contact all my old friends before I left. Christy and I talked one the phone for a while, and we made plans to meet that night after Lydia went to sleep (Lydia was sick that week and I was watching over her). Later that night I picked Christy up at her parent’s place and we went to one Denny’s, and then to another when service became nonexistent. She wore her hair longer then I believe I had ever seen. It was a beautiful shade of deep red and she was wearing this snowsuit that was begging me to take it off. We talked for an hour or so that night, mostly about Nick and the pending divorce. I drove her home and promised to write, which I did.
Now here I was with her in my arms, the smell of sex still lingering heavy in a couple rooms of my house, and I was very unsure of what was going on. I came clean though. I brought up the reality that I was a college student and would be one for the next couple years. I said that I was not in love with her, but she stirred up feelings inside me that felt like something of that caliber was possible. She was very receptive of my words but seemed more preoccupied with how she was going to explain this development to her boyfriend.
A light rain began to fall when we parted that night. As she drove away I threw up my arms and said, “Hell, what’s the worst that could happen?”
The weekend came and Phil came back to Claridon Hills. Christy and I communicated only through e-mail, as Phil would not have me calling upon her. I was anxious to know what would happen next, but Christy’s e-mails seemed evasive as if she would only give me enough to keep me at bay. The anticipation was driving me around the bend.
The next week I fell into my old habits and went on a daylong drinking binge. Throughout the day, I must have drunk a fifth and a half of gin and mixed drinks. By midnight I was well oiled and on a mission to see my love. After a few attempts and late night calls to my mother for Christy’s number, I arrived at Phil’s place. Christy was waiting for me under a tree outside the apartment complex. I don’t think she saw the vomit on the side of the car, but my speech was only a slight giveaway to the gin that must have been streaming out my pours on that muggy night.
I left satisfied that night and we made plans to meet again just as soon as circumstances allowed. That was the last time I saw Christy. We exchanged a number of e-mails, full of plans for her to come down that night, the next night, and the one after that. Yet for all those words I spent the next week staying up till four in the morning in my patio, reading my books with one ear tuned to the passing traffic for the sound of that little British motor to turn into my neighborhood.
Christy of course didn’t blow me off. Every morning I would find an e-mail with some reason or another why she could not make it the previous night. During the day I would keep the phone by my side and jump in anticipation every time it rang, all the while knowing that it would not be her call. Last I heard from Christy she was going to New York for the week (I can only presume this was to go house hunting with Phil), and then would be in Wisconsin another week for some job thing. I went on a little vacation myself, and have heard nothing since.
I suppose that things couldn’t have turned out better. Although I’m not the kind of guy who tries to hook-up as a matter of principal, however the spring air does something to me. I get all frisky, and I have the urge to make a woman scream in the throws of lovemaking. So once again I have fulfilled my yearly quote as it were. I think Christy sold her car, which won’t keep me up at night. I’ve lost cars before; some of them were actually mine in reality, not just in theory.
Yet at the same time, I feel a profound loss. I did open my heart to a woman, a friend in good standing at that, and had all my doubts and fears realized. I’ve gone though all the scenarios in my head. Maybe she was doing this for kicks. Maybe it was to get that Phil to wake up and realize how much he needed her. Maybe it just wasn’t in the cards. Maybe God wanted me to know what it feels like to be the other woman (man in this case, but six and one-half dozen the other), not that I prepared any rabbit dishes this month (however I wish I could say that I left a spider plant boiling on her stove, and maybe I will in the re-write) Maybe Nick knew a thing or two when he tried to have her committed when he left her. That last bit was a bit hurtful, but I am a very empathic man, especially towards myself.
So now I have not but to turn to my music, and end with an epitaph. It’s a few bars from an old Warren Zevon song, which I doubt anyone knows.

Heart-jinxed condition, never sure how I feel.
Try to separate the real thing, from the wishful thinking.
Sometimes I wonder if I’ll make it without you
I’m determined to, or make my stand.
And if after all is said and done.
You’ll only find one special one.
Leave the fire behind you, and start.
I’ll be playing it by ear,
left here, with an empty handed heart.