Two Truths and One Lie

Tommy was my best friend in high school. He kept me sane, but he probably got me in a fair amount of trouble too. My next to last year of school, I was living with my grandmother; it's a long story. Tommy would come over and pick me up, and we'd go do our normal hanging out for awhile. We were going to go mess around one Saturday, and he asked if he could spend the night, since it was kind of a long way back to his house. I checked with grandma, and she said he could.

We did whatever it was that we did during the day, and later that night, Tommy decided that he wanted to go see his girlfriend, Kim. No surprise, as grandma's was about halfway between Tommy's and Kim's. The thing was, it was getting late, and grandma was asleep on the couch by this time. So we snuck out my bedroom window- something I never did- coasted Tommy's car out of the driveway, and pushed it down the street a couple of houses before starting it.

Tommy had a pale primer green 1965 Nova. It idled semi-loud, had bench seats, a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer pull on the end of the shifter that fell off at least once a ride, and the seatbelts were pull-tight lap belts. The horn was weird- it had the part right over the steering column that you could lay on in emergencies, but it also had this thin, semicircular piece of plastic that hung underneath it that acted as a sort of lever for light beeps. This was the 1980's, so it also had a cassette deck, and sometimes Tommy would wire his home stereo's tower speakers into the back seat so we could jam to whatever rap or rock we were listening to at the time.

Tommy had a bad habit... well, it was good for him... of picking me up to hang out, but eventually making it to his girlfriend's house to pick her up too. We'd ride around for a bit, joking and having fun, but then we'd park somewhere, and Tommy would say, "Chris, go for a walk." I'd sigh, and go find somewhere to plant myself while they did their thing in the backseat. That was clearly the plan tonight too.

As it was late by the time we got to Kim's neighborhood, Tommy drove to a nearby street, parked in a cul-de-sac in front of someone's house, and walked through a strip of trees to get to Kim's street. He then walked to the other end, Kim snuck out, and they made their way back to the car where they intended to make out. In the meantime, I was waiting in the front seat, and thinking about this now-routine part of our hangout times. It was the middle of November, and it was cold. I said to myself, "There is no way I'm going for a walk tonight," and I stretched out on the front seat laying on my back, and pretended to be asleep when they got to the car.

They got in the backseat, were whispering a bit, and then it got quiet as they started kissing. I soon heard Kim say, "No, Chris is in the front."

"He's asleep," Tommy protested.

"What if he wakes up?" she argued.

"He sleeps like a rock," Tommy assured her.

After a few seconds, Kim asked, "Are you sure he's asleep?"

Being the good friend and apparent wingman that I was, I let out a short snrk snoring sound, and Tommy said, "See? He's asleep," and that was all I heard for several minutes as they proceeded to get busy.

Then the problem came in. Laying on my back, my head was propped on the armrest of the door for a pillow, and it was starting to hurt my neck. I thought, "If I 'wake up,' and Kim stops, Tommy is going to killme." So, I lay still, and tried to hang in for a few more minutes. A couple of minutes went by, and I couldn't take it anymore- I was going to have to move to get comfortable. I thought about it for a minute, and decided the best thing I could do was quickly roll over to my side, and make a few verbal noises like I was rolling over in my sleep. I decided it was the best plan I was going to get, and so I rolled over...and wasn't quite comfortable when my knee hit the horn.

In the span of what was five to ten seconds- probably closer to five- a couple things happened. I was up front, freaking out inside. "Oh, crap! WhattaIdo? WhattaIdo? If I take my knee off the horn, Kim's going to know I'm awake, she'll stop, and Tommy's going to kick my ass! If I don't take my knee off the horn, the people in this house we're parked in front of are going to wake up, come out to check, Kim's going to stop, and Tommy's going to kick my ass! WhattaIdo? WhattaIdo?"

At the same time as I was trying to figure out what to do, Tommy and Kim are in the backseat freaking out. "Oh, shit! What's going on? Oh, shit!"

"His knee is on the horn!" Kim hissed. "Grab it!"

"You grab it!" Tommy urged quickly. "You're on top!"

About here in their hot-potato game of "grab his knee," I had decided, "Fug it. I'm not naked," left my knee on the horn, and tried not to bust out laughing.

"I'm naked!" Kim pleaded.

"So am I!" he said, now in a panic, "and you're on top! Just grab his knee!"

Kim kind of gave out one of those I don't want to do this groans, and quickly leaned over the front seat to grab my knee. As her hand gripped my knee, I simultaneously twitched my knee off the horn, and snapped my head around to give a sleepy-sounding, "What? What's going on?" What I wasn't expecting, but wasn't complaining about, was the eyeful of right-in-my-face that Kim had hanging over the back of my seat. Maybe it was that I just didn't get to see such sights very often, but in retrospect, they were beautiful.

"Your knee was on the horn," Kim whispered quickly.

Hoping she hadn't noticed me taking in her sights, I sleepily moaned, "Oh, sorry," and rolled back over on my side, getting both my knee and my neck in more comfortable positions.

Amazingly, the people in the house never came out to see what was going on. Nor did they turn on any lights. Looking back on it, they were probably inside laughing their asses off at what they could probably see fine in the night's bright moonlight.

Kim had quickly moved back to Tommy after I rolled over. After a minute of making sure they weren't about to get busted by any adults, Tommy must have made a move to continue where they left off, because I heard Kim whisper, "Nooo, Chris is up front, and he's awake now."

"Nah," Tommy assured her. "He's back to sleep by now."

"Nooo," Kim said again, "He might wake back up."

"He sleeps like a rock, remember?" Tommy said. "He probably won't even remember this."

"I think he saw my chest," she whispered.

I smiled to myself.

"He won't remember that either," Tommy assured her. "Too bad," he joked.

Again, he must have tried, because she said, "I don't know if we should." After a few seconds, she asked, "Are you sure he's asleep?"

Snrk, I snored lightly, thinking, "This shouldn't work twice, but she wants to get back to it too, so..."

And sure enough, I didn't hear anything else for a few minutes, beyond heavy breathing. They finished what they were doing, got dressed, and Tommy walked Kim back to her house. By the time he got back to the car, I was sitting up in the front seat. I wasn't sure how he'd feel about me being awake, so I pretended to still be shaking off my nap. "Kim get back in without waking her parents?" I asked.

"Yeah," Tommy answered as he started the car, and pulled away from the curb. We were maybe two hundred yards up the street when he said calmly, "You were awake the whole time, weren't you?"

I busted up laughing, and said, "Hell yeah, I was!" and he busted up laughing too.

We got back to the house, and grandma had closed my bedroom window. I used my key to get in the back door. She wasn't approving of us sneaking out, but she said, "Next time you go somewhere, use the door."

Tommy lived down the street from a Vietnam vet named Wayne. Wayne was the Vietnam vet stereotype of the time: long hair, long beard, smoked... something that wasn't cigarettes, liked his anti-government and conspiracy theories, and lived in kind of a ramshackle house with his like-minded wife, trying to stay as off-the-grid as possible. Tommy liked to smoke the stuff too, so whenever he was home and wanted to smoke, he'd go to Wayne's. I went with him a few times, but I didn't smoke, and wasn't completely comfortable around Wayne. He never really did anything untoward, but I think it just weirded me out that he talked to us like adults, which for me at least, nobody did.

Then the day came that Wayne's bill-and-job-avoidances finally caught up with him, and they were packing up to move. Tommy and I went over to help him load up. Wayne assured us that "The Family"- an underground railroad sort of group consisting of loonies whose rampant paranoia was equal-or-better to Wayne's- would get them to a new place. Also, since we were helping him, if we ever needed it, The Family would be there for us as well. I silently wondered how easy it would be for a couple of teenage boys to suddenly disappear in broad daylight, and never be heard from again.

The move was not executed with any kind of organized plan beyond "pick stuff up and get it on the truck." They were apparently planning to leave most of the furniture behind, and were sorting through their possessions as they went. Tommy was getting paid a little bit for helping- possibly in dime bag amounts; I wasn't sure. Wayne wasn't really expecting me, so he wound up giving me his Atari 2600, and I think a Pac-Man cartridge. Game systems weren't very far beyond that at this point, so I was cool with that.

We were in-and-out of the house a few times, and on about the third trip in, I looked at some mostly homemade weapons hanging on the wall: an axe, a club with some nails, a bat, nunchucks, a few other things, and a spear. It caught my eye, because I'd never known anyone to actually own a spear, and this one was different. The branch that made up the shaft was about an inch-and-a-half thick, and like most branches, it wasn't completely straight. I don't remember what the spear tip was made of, but I seem to remember it being crude. It was stuck in a smaller branch piece, and that was lashed to the longer branch by shoelace, or twine, or something. Feeling a bit out of place, and Wayne acting a bit ornerier than usual, I had the inane need to make small talk. "That's an interesting spear," I offered when there was a break in the ranting.

Wayne, said, "Oh, that?" and walked over to take it off the wall. An outcome I was neither looking for, nor liked. He showed it to me up close, talked about using them in 'Nam, and started walking around the packed living room with the spear still in his hand. The couch was sitting in the middle of the living room floor, and I was standing behind it at one end, near the front door. While talking, Wayne made his way to the front of the couch, standing at the other end. The spear was by his side, pointing forward from the thumb-and-forefinger side of his fist, aimed in my general direction, and it was then that he looked at me and said, "I'm going to throw this spear at you. Which way are you going to jump?"

Tommy and I exchanged glances, but he said nothing. I looked at Wayne, because I wasn't sure if he was being literal or hypothetical. I looked to my right, which was the wall of weapons blocking my way. Then to my left, which meant I would have to jump over the couch into a bunch of crap piled on the floor, and probably right in the path of the spear. The front door was close, but I didn't think I could turn and run out of it before Wayne could put the spear in my back. I certainly couldn't run forward, because that would put me running towards Wayne. I looked at Wayne, and then the spear, and then Wayne, and said nothing.

"I'm going to throw this spear at you. Which way are you going to jump?" Wayne demanded in his conspiracy rant voice.

I looked at Tommy again, silently pleading for a clue as to whether Wayne was serious or not. He said, "Just answer the question, man. Which way would you jump?"

"Is this something he's done with you?" I asked.

"Dude, just answer the question," said Tommy.

"Well, I don't know!" I half-shouted. "It depends on whether he throws it overhanded or underhanded! If he throws it underhanded, I'm not sure I have time to jump anywhere!"

Tommy looked at me slightly taken aback, and then to Wayne like it was the weirdest thing he had ever heard. Wayne finally broke his stance, and gave a slight nod. "I'm impressed. Most people your age would never think of that," he said as he walked the spear back over to the wall. "In fact, most people would never realize that a spear could be thrown underhanded," he added, now looking at Tommy. "Most people think you have to heft it up over your shoulder, like you see in Tarzan movies all the time. You do not. It can be thrown just as well underhanded." He put it back on the wall.

Tommy looked at Wayne quietly, clearly impressed to be learning this new information from his veteran friend. Then he looked at me with a doubtful smirk, and said, "How did you know that?"

I looked at him and shrugged. "Saw it in a comic book. In New Teen Titans Annual #2, the assassin Spear throws his spear underhanded like that," I said, proud of my life-saving comic knowledge. I looked back at Wayne, who looked slightly dubious over my source, and tried to smooth it a little with, "Before that, I had never even thought of a spear being thrown like that. In fact, I haven't seen that before or since." I shrugged lightly, hoping the declared randomness of my find put Wayne back at ease in his position as guardian of this important knowledge. Seeming thus satisfied, he changed the subject, and an excruciatingly long hour or so later, Tommy and I were finally out of there. Wayne was gone the next day, and I never saw him again. As far as I know, neither did Tommy.

Tommy was every bit of six foot two inches, so at five foot nine inches, he towered over me just enough. He was confident, had dark black hair, a charming smile, and when I was standing next to him, girls didn't see me. This is why I was always third wheel on his dates. Girls just didn't show any interest in me when he was around. Tommy meanwhile, was up to his neck in sex-starved girls.

So it was fortuitous that I met Susan in my English 11 summer school class, with no Tommy in sight. We sat near each other, and I finally got up the nerve to ask her to a movie. We kissed our way through most of the Dudley Moore version of Arthur, and dated most of the summer. The time came that Susan met Tommy, and being the good friend and wingman he was, he suggested a double date with Susan, me, him, and Kim. Susan was all for it.

The night we went out, Susan and Kim got along instantly, so as a group, we were having a great time riding around in Tommy's '65 Nova, laughing, joking, and carrying on. Tommy drove into an office park, made his way over to what would eventually be an off-ramp from the parkway into the park, and backed up to the edge of the construction barriers. The Powhite Parkway was being built at the time, and at this point, the concrete had been poured and hardened, but there was not yet any traffic on it, other than the construction vehicles that were at work further down.

We marveled at the sight of an untraveled highway for a couple of minutes. It was just this massive stretch of unused concrete. With no functioning streetlights there yet, the stars were clear, it was dark, and our conversation kind of quieted. That was when Tommy said, "Chris, there's a blanket in the trunk. You and Susan go for a walk."

"To where?" I protested.

"Fine. Just get out of the car," he said.

"Oh," I said, and looked at Susan.

"Oh," she said at my thick-headedness, and took my hand as she got out of the car, pulling me along with her. I probably blushed that I didn't get the hint right away.

Tommy popped the trunk, we got the blanket, and spread it out behind the car. We sat down together, held hands, and looked up at the stars. I started to make small talk, and Susan said, "Shut up, and kiss me."

I looked at her in surprise, but with a smile, and said, "Yes, ma'am, shutting up, m--," and the rest was lost in her kiss. We kissed long and hard, and longer still.

Kissing was pretty much our mainstay. Susan had prior experience with past boyfriends, but I was still a virgin. The most I had ever done I had done with Susan during the summer, but we hadn't gone all the way. Either for fear of pregnancy, or lack of privacy, or both. But here we were now, with only Tommy and Kim nearby, and they certainly weren't paying any attention to us by now. We were hot and breathing heavy, and Susan moved her hand to a place I wasn't expecting. I think my breath caught for a few seconds as I looked at her, unsure if she was really suggesting what I thought she was. "Are you sure?" I whispered.

She took my hand, and moved it to another place, and smiled. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure," she whispered back.

I'm sure I fumbled at it a bit in my inexperience, but we moved pretty quickly after that, and before I knew it, Susan was my first. We laid there together until Tommy and Kim were ready to go.

On the way back to Susan's, Kim couldn't contain her excitement that Susan and I had finally slept together. She thought it was cute, and giggled all the more when she saw I was both grinning and self conscious about it. Tommy just smirked at Kim's excitement. Susan just smiled, and squeezed my hand as she laid her head on my shoulder, curling up against me on the backseat. Kim hopped up-and-down on the front seat as she squealed her excitement, and then she lunged across the seat, and kissed Tommy on the cheek.

That was what distracted him, making him miss the pick-up truck that ran the stop sign. Unfortunately, the pick-up truck did not miss us. Tommy's head smashed into Kim's mouth, giving him a concussion, and he broke his wrist trying to hold onto the steering wheel.

His head smashing into Kim threw her back against the passenger door, which opened, and dumped her out of the car. She was hurt pretty badly, but after several months of physical therapy, she was back to full function. She carries some nasty scars on her back, left arm, left hand, and the left side of her neck. Her face healed, but she has three false teeth now.

Susan was already leaning against me, so she was thrown against me harder, her head breaking my jaw. I sort of twisted to my right, and her body pushed me against my door, which cracked my right arm, but didn't break it.

Me spinning to the right sort of caused Susan to glance off of me, and she fell into the floorboard, which broke her neck, killing her.

I can't describe the horror of that moment, and don't really want to try, but let's just say I'll never forget the look of Susan's dead eyes staring up at me. Never.

Tommy and Kim broke up. I don't talk to either of them anymore.

At one point in my life, I saw the opportunity to see one of the comedians I enjoyed watching on specials aired on television, Gallagher. If you don‘t know who he is, he‘s a very smart comedian, and one of the big prop comedians, whose most famous bit was the Sledge-O-Matic. Imagine my excitement that I could see him locally, and as I was reaching the end of my time in college.

Having purchased a ticket, I was determined to not only see him, but get a chance to get his autograph, or even just a chance to speak with him. I had planned to go see the show two hours before it started, but my mother and grandmother persuaded me not to. As it was, I left home and arrived at the show one hour before it was to start. This meant I had to stand in line, outside the doors, and I figured I would miss out on that opportunity.

Then it happened. I was standing in line, talking with another person, when we all heard a familiar voice. We all turned around, and low and behold, Gallagher himself was standing their, joking about that we were more people buying last minute tickets. Soon, I saw one person asking to have a picture with him, so I turned to the man I was speaking with, and asked him to take a picture for me, and I asked Gallagher for the same opportunity. He agreed, and as we shook hands, the picture was taken. But that wasn‘t the end of it.

You see, as the picture was taken, Gallagher was not ready, and ever the wise comedian, started saying he wasn‘t ready, because you have to think about how you are going to look on the mantle. For those who do not know, putting the picture on the wall or on the mantle was the forerunner to putting it on Facebook. During that bit, the person took a second photo, where Gallagher is saying this, as I laugh. After that, a third photo was taken, and it was mantle worth. It was a good time, but that wasn‘t all of it.

The day or so after, my mother had come home from work, and told me her one co-worker at the time had gone there. She had married a guy I had gone to school with. As my mother told me, they had seen me getting my picture taken, and her co-worker’s husband had stated that he thought he had gone to school with me, not realizing it was me. Her co-worker had stated to him that she thought she worked with my mother. They had both been right, and from what I heard, they were a little miffed, but not upset per se, but it was one of the choice moments about that. It even made up for not getting a little splatter on me from the Sledge-O-Matic bit. Honest to God truth.

In one of the most trying times of my life, I had the misfortune to be in automobile accident. Luckily there had been no injuries, but the car I drove had been totaled. So I had to get a new one. It was not so easy to do however, do to a few reasons.

First off, I had not fully owned the car, as it was my father’s. This made me a first time buyer, and given the lack of built up cash at the time, it made it difficult to buy one outright. This meant I had to get a used car.

This got further complicated due to buying it as is. For those who don’t know what that means, that means buying the car in the state it is in. I could luck out, and get a good car, but more likely than not, I’d get a car that needed a good deal of repair, repairs that would total at least twice the amount of the car.

As luck would have it, this is exactly what happened. I had found a car, and shortly after getting it, it broke down. The amount of repairs did cost more than the car was worth. There was no way I could pay for the repairs, and the person who sold the car to me wasn’t responsible since I bought it ‘As Is’.

For the next few months, I had to rely on friends and family to get me to and from work. I ended up having to sell a lot of my possessions during that time to get the funds to pay for another new car. During that time, I had to struggle to make ends meet, because I also had to pay for my wedding, since both my wife’s family, and mine, couldn’t pay for our wedding. I swear, had it not been for the love of my wife, I wouldn’t have been able to have the strength to get through it all.

And that’s the honest truth.

Many years ago, I had gotten a chance to go to Atlantic City. Now while I didn’t have much money to risk, being money conscious from a young age, I took one hundred dollars for gambling. As it turned out, I spent some of my time at the blackjack tables. Amazingly, constantly making five dollar bets managed to last a while, and I didn’t feel odd being such a low roller when others were placing bets of one hundred dollars or more.

Eventually, one of the hands played out in the most unique fashion. The deal dealt out the cards, and had their face up card as a six. Everyone around me, who all had totals from seventeen to twenty, signaled they wanted to stay. I was in the middle of the group, and the dealer looked at me, asking if I wanted a card.

I looked down at my cards, and looked again at the dealers up card. Many people recommend that when you see the dealer’s up card as a six, you stand. The logic behind this is that the dealer is assumed to have a card value of ten, giving them sixteen, and they must hit. Odds dictate that the next card they draw means they will bust. With this knowledge, I told the dealer I would stay.

The dealer looked puzzled, and I am sure the others looked horrified. The dealer then broke form. They asked me if I was sure. Again, I confirmed I wanted to stay. The others must have gotten horrified at the idea of what was happening. The dealer told me I could take another card. For a third time, I confirmed that I would stay, making the others think I was a complete moron. This thought probably hit them when the dealer said, “Sir, you only have five.”

She was right about that. I had a two and a three. This is the smallest possible two card total to have without the option of splitting. It is true that I could have taken another card, with no risk to myself at that point, but I was literally playing the odd. I again confirmed that I wanted to stand, making all the others at the table question my intelligence, and maybe my sanity. It is quiet possible some were also plotting to get back the money the lost on my idiocy.

As it turned out, the dealer‘s down card was a nine, giving them a total of fifteen. The dealer hit, as I expected, and their total gave them twenty two. Everyone was relieved, and later, one person who was at the table who had been part of the group I came with told me how the others appeared to be reacting. I then told him what I had noticed. If I had indeed taken a card, I would have still been able to take a second, but those first two cards dealt in the following hand would have both given the dealer a win over all.

Years later, and this is still one hard to believe Blackjack story, but it is one hundred percent true.