Crush
Title Page chapter one: chapter two: chapter three: chapter four: chapter five: chapter six: chapter seven: chapter eight: chapter nine: chapter ten: chapter eleven: chapter twelve: chapter thirteen: chapter fourteen: chapter fifteen: chapter sixteen: chapter seventeen: chapter eighteen: chapter nineteen: chapter twenty: chapter twenty-one: chapter twenty-two: chapter twenty-three: chapter twenty-four: chapter twenty-five: chapter twenty-six: chapter twenty-seven: chapter twenty-eight: chapter twenty-nine: chapter thirty: chapter thirty-one: chapter thirty-two: chapter thirty-three: chapter thirty-four: chapter thirty-five: chapter thirty-six: chapter thirty-seven: chapter thirty-eight: chapter thirty-nine: chapter forty: chapter forty-one: chapter forty-two: chapter forty-three: chapter forty-four: chapter forty-five: chapter forty-six:
Crush A Novel Laura Susan JohnsonCrush
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“Split” from
Women I Have Known and Been.
Copyright © 1992 byCarol Lynn Pearson, Copyright © 1993 Gold Leaf Press. Used bypermission.
Summary: Tammyand Jamie have been destined to love each other since earlychildhood, but is their love strong enough to withstand the trauma of their pasts, along with the hateful outside
This book is dedicated to:
Myparents who love me as I am MyUncle Lionel Clyde “Bob” Purkey To the memoryof Matthew Shepard And to all of the “Tammys” and “Jamies” out there.
author’s notes:
It should be noted that although there may be similarities between “Crush” and the true story of Matthew Shepard, whose brutal attack in Wyoming made headlines in the fall of 1998, “Crush” is entirely a work of fiction. Like many bystanders, I had heard about the hate-crime by watching CNN, but I never learned any of the details or followed the trial of his killers. I have only recently read Judy Shepard’s inspiring tribute to her beautiful gay son,
The Meaning of Matthew: My Son’s Murder in Laramie, and a World Transformed
, two months after the completion of “Crush.” Anysimilarities to Mr. Shepard’s storyare completelycoincidental.
There are four hospitals in this book: U.C. Davis Medical Center is a real hospital and is located near downtown Sacramento, California, not in the town of Davis, CA. For clarity’s sake, I created the fictitious “Davis Hospital” to which Tammy drives Jamie after Jamie is attacked by classmates. “Saint Paul’s Hospital,” also a fictitious creation, is located in West Sac, CA. “Yolo CountyHospital” in the cityof Woodland is also fictitious.
book one: love’s first kisses chapter one: prologue thames lee mattheis (december 30)
Interrogation room, Sommerville Police Department
“Please state your full name,” the first officer says, and I do, as it reads above.
It’s like the English river, pronounced “Tems.” Everyone calls me “Tammy,” but it’s
not
the girl’s name, it’s pronounced “Temmy” (As if they even sound all that different from one another!). Mom’s made life a lot harder than it has to be. First of all: She named me after a
river
. The woman isn’t even English! Our ancestors were French, Greek and Irish. Second: She decides to nickname me “Tam” or “Tammy,” which is an Irish form of the name “Thomas.” Third: I get teased constantly that “Tammy” is a girl’s name. And fourth: The way it’s pronounced “Temmy.” My life has been spent spelling it for people, teaching them to pronounce it correctly, and fending off the guys calling me, “Tammy, Tell Me True!” Mom could have named me “Thomas,” so I could be nicknamed “Tommy.” She could have named me “Timothy,” so I could be nicknamed “Timmy.” But no, I’m named after a river, with a weird nickname that’s perceived as girlish, which everyone has to be taught isn’t even pronounced phonetically.
As I sit here in this claustrophobic gray cubicle, my eyes tracing each graffiti-carved inch of the metallic table before me, I contemplate how much mylife has changed in the past few weeks since I came home from L.A. to help Mom.
How different I am.
In spite of how love once touched me in high school many years ago, and before discovering an unforeseen tenderheartedness for stray cats not many years ago, I used to have only one true goal driving me, and that was to
hurt
people. It was myonlyreal source of joyand fulfillment.
Disregarding the chill in the air drawing this year to a terrible close, a conclusion I never in my wildest dreams would have imagined, large beads of clandestine sweat are forming on the nape of myneck.
No, it
wasn’t
.
I only
wanted
it to work that way.
And since it didn’t, I couldn’t keep it up. Deceiving women and men didn’t reallygive me the thrill I wanted.
I had become evil.
And I wanted to be
happy
being evil.
But I could not.
I continued to love someone I’d left behind, and I saved a kitten from certain death. Saving Bootsy was a catalyst, an act of kindness that sparked myheart back to life.
And I could not ignore the real me, the longing in myheart to be human again.
To care, to love.
To love and to be loved back.
I
didn’t
love being mean. I
didn’t
love hurting people the way I’d hoped I would.
And I missed myfriend. I didn’t get awayfrom him bymoving three hundred miles away. He was always with me, day after day, year after year, always in mydreams, asleep and awake.
I missed him. I had never stopped missing him, from the day I left him behind to tryto “find myself,” to the dayI was called home.
He means more to me than anything.
No matter how mean selfish and narcissistic I had wanted to be, I loved him.
I still love him.
And he loved me.
I want him to
love
me, present tense.
But I think he’s going to die.
I want to go back in time, not years, just hours, just a day. I want to do what myinstinct told me to do.
I can’t. I can’t do what I want to do. I can’t go back in time.
I didn’t tryto end his life, contraryto what the police think, but he wasn’t safe to be left alone that night. I had a premonition.
I failed him.
Dozens of bodies at my feet, in a wasteland I’d created, women and men, crawling blindlyand weeping for me to assuage their pangs. I sat above, smiling down at them like an evil goddess, like Kali, luxuriating, listening to them wailing their misery, their cries dying slowlyuntil everylast voice quieted and all the bodies stilled.
He’s just mytype, or what I had once thought mytype. Big, tall and craggylike HueyLewis. No delicacyabout him. I had fun once or twice, bringing down a guylooking like this. It gave me a heady feeling, to conquer the kind of man that everyone assumes, byhis looks, is “manly.”
I’m pretty. I don’t mean to sound conceited. It’s just something I’ve been told too manytimes not to believe.
Jamie’s prettytoo. Prettier than I am.
Because he never has
cared
about that kind of thing. Not like I have.
And I used myprettiness to harm people.
The first time I took down a “man’s man,” I was twenty-eight. I thought I’d have a hell of a challenge. I thought he’d beat the shit out of me for hitting on him. I was wrong, wrong, wrong. He fell like a leaf in October, the big brute.
But by then, the thrill of soul hunting had passed. I had thought that I could resurrect it, and find nothing more titillating and satisfying than snatching him, body and soul, and then leaving him desolate and aching for more of me.
Deliberate, precise, just plain heartless, I’d made capturing and collecting people’s love without giving anything back my supreme objective in life.
I’d toppled many women, the number somewhere in the sixties or seventies, before I’d moved on to men. I hadn’t had more than maybe four or five guys before I decided I was finished playing games with their lives and mine.
It was those kind of men…players, fratboys, meatheads, the kind of men who eat like pigs and burp loudly, drink beer and then piss on sidewalks, worship both playing and watching football and stack themselves on ‘roids until they become butterball turkeys in their later years, that I’d practiced on.
But always, there was something in the way of me enjoying myself totally.
Always that beautiful little face in the way, obstructing my view. That delicate, refined visage, the face of an angel, the face of a child-man, a face so exquisite, so unique so unforgettably beautiful, that not even the most glamorous movie-star can begin to compare…
cop.
“Please state your current residence!” squawks the second
The tape recorder in his hand has a little glowing red light on top. I lick my lips, knowing that the words that are about to slip through them will be sucked onto the shiny entrails of the audio cassette. Forever.
My mouth is dry, tastes bitter, like I’ve been chewing on a cake of Ivorysoap.
I fell in love for the first time, ever, sixteen years ago. I ran awayfrom that love. And I stayed away, for a long time, before Mom fell, before I was called home.
“Please, can I have a soda? I’m so thirsty.” The moisture trickles down my back, cooling it, before being absorbed by the elastic of myJockey’s.
I’d never been in love with anyone before him, and I’ve never been in love with anyone since.
I finally received…no…I finally accepted, truly accepted his love onlydays ago.
The second police officer leaves for a moment and returns with an ice cold can of Dr. Pepper. “This okay?”
“Anything,” I mutter through stickylips, popping it open with a refreshing “sssst!” sound and gulping several freezing swallows before releasing a quiet belch.
“So,” begins the rugged-faced cop, “these…uh…journals…”
Now, I’m in jail, accused of a violent crime.
“Prettysick stuff, wouldn’t you agree?” Rugged Cop asks.
“Yeah,” the second cop shudders.
I tell the cop that I didn’t do it, that I didn’t hurt Jamie, that I’ve never hurt anyone, at least not in the way they’re
thinking
. Guilt rears its head again, and I begin to confess my sins. I tell them that I’ve killed manypeople
emotionally,
not physically, that I was a serial soul stealer.
“A
what
?” sneers the Rugged Cop.
I repeat myself and he says, “No, what you are is a pathetic piece of
shit
who deserves to burn in hell.” I wonder if it’s because of the crime I’m being accused of, or because of who the victim of the crime was…is....
“I wrote in those diaries when I was twelve, thirteen years old…I was angry…I was a
kid
…”
“The way these are written,” the second cop says with a repulsed shiver, “I’d sayyou’re capable of committing a crime this violent.”
“I was onlya kid!” I reiterate angrily.
“Keep your temper,” warns Rugged Cop.
“I didn’t do this, I swear it…”
“I’d like to ask you about the bruise on the back of the victim’s neck,” Rugged Cop scowls. “What’s that from? It almost looks like a hickeyor something.”
They don’t laugh, they don’t spout innuendoes. Still, under the surface, I feel the attitude, and it has me wondering just how many allies we even have around here in the wake of this brutal beating of which I have been named the chief suspect. Do they
care
about Jamie? Do theycare about him at all? Or do theythink he deserves it, like I deserve to “burn in hell?”
I try to tell the police that I love my boyfriend, present tense, that I’d never, ever hurt him.
That I’m not that boyanymore.
That when I
was
that kid, I was in pain, and, yes, I acted out, but I’ve never hurt anyone…not physically.
I try to tell them, but my despair muzzles me. My natural propensityto blame myself for all that has gone wrong, even after I tried to get Jamie to take the fateful night off, even after I begged him to let me go to work with him, asserts itself, and my uncooperative lips crumple.
I don’t think theybelieve me anyway.