My Cleveland Story
Read An Excerpt
Part Four
1986/87 School Year
The Best Year of Our Lives
I have learned that the countless paths one traverses in one’s life are all equal. Oppressors and oppressed meet at the end, and the only thing that prevails is that life was altogether too short for both.
When the hard winds of change blow through your life, they blow away a lot of structures you thought permanent, exposing what you thought was trivial, buried and forgotten...the small things are lasting things.
The best part of having friends is you are allowed to be fools with them.
Two women played important roles that summer, causing the biggest rift between Mate and I ever.
We first knew of Jennifer Martin when she was a pretty fair athlete at another of the schools in our conference. She was a big busty girl who played volleyball, basketball, and threw the shot and discus. She handled herself well as a high school jock, especially since she was carrying about twenty-five pounds of useless baby fat on her frame. She didn’t really bloom in the looks department until she went off to school. Wow!!! Did she change. She got into weight training and aerobics and just went crazy, turning herself into a physical piece of work, and even got her hoops game together enough to walk on and make the varsity team at the University of Toledo. She turned in to a big, athletic, sexy young woman full of confidence.
Mate met her at a bar in Lakewood the week school let out. Jennifer had just graduated from UT with a degree in elementary education, but was going to go back in the fall as a graduate assistant in the women’s basketball program.
Mate at the time was on the prowl for his usual summer squeeze. This lucky young lady had to meet two important criteria. Number One: She had to like the big three; beer, baseball, and sex; not in any particular order. Number Two: She had to realize and accept that the relationship was going to end the first weekend of the high school football season when there was, of course, no time for frivolous things like a girlfriend. He wasn’t like a lot of coaches who needed a wife or girlfriend at every game and waiting for him outside the locker room after a win or a loss. You’re suppose to leave that shit behind in high school, where Mate had.
It was love (or lust really) at first sight. They made a good pair, she was a great tag along, plus Mate loved the fact that she was going back to school in the fall. “Ain’t that great,” he told me, “no big break up scene. No accidentally bumping into her around town or seeing her at a Browns game.” He was so proud of himself and his new summer girlfriend.
Mate and Jennifer out in the right field bleachers on Sunday afternoons. Mate and Jennifer closing the Harbor Inn on Friday nights. Mate and Jennifer keeping me up all night at our place several times a week.
I thought it was just another of his summer romances and didn’t notice that anything was amiss until we took our basketball team down to Columbus for Ohio State’s team camp. Whether it’s for a basketball camp, a Buckeye game, or the state wrestling tournament, going to Columbus as coaches is almost as much fun as going as students when we were in college. You did your coaching gig during the day and at night you went with all the other coaches over to the Varsity Club and got hammered. You get a bunch of coaches together pounding beers and they gossip more than the women at the beauty parlor on a Saturday morning. By the middle of the summer, most of the teachers/coaches are in prime drinking condition and the nights are long and fun.
After the first day of camp, and with the kids safely in the hands of the camp staff, it was time to go to The Varsity Club. Except Mate was out cold!!! He said he was exhausted from spending the weekend with Jennifer up at Kelly’s Island, and that he’d be his same old self the next night.
But the next night came and went and he couldn’t answer the bell. That had never happened before, and let me tell you he was catching a lot of shit for it. People were asking, “Where’s Mate? Where’s Mate?” Most of our Columbus crowd remembered Mate from the state basketball tournament of several years earlier when Mate stood up on a chair in the middle of the back room, shook a can of Bud, and then snorted the whole thing up his nose, just to shut up some young coaches just out of college who thought they were cool shooting beers and getting sloppy about it. With most of the beer up his nose, and the rest sprayed on his face, he threw the empty into one of the youngsters laps and said, “Come back when you can do that asshole.”
While we were cleaning up to go out Wednesday night, his first night out, I glanced up and saw Mate stepping out of the shower and noticed the map of North America embroidered into his back with sucker bites.
“What the hell is that?” I said with mock concern.
“What?”
“Those marks on your back. Did Jennifer do that to you?”
He turned and glanced over his shoulder into the mirror. He turned towards me and said with a smile, “That ain’t nothing,” and pointed to the one leading up to his genitalia.
I have been around guys in shower rooms showing off their girlfriends sucker bites since I was in grade school, but I had never seen anything like this. They were everywhere. I mean everywhere. Every nook and cranny. Every patch of skin had something on it. And the coloring was phenomenal, dominated by the colors of the rainbow with a slight neon tint.
“You know when this summer is all said and done we’re going to have to have a little talk about her. What an athlete!” He said with an illegal smile.
I didn’t have to wait until the end of the summer to hear about her. That night was a great night at the VC. We ended up in a group of about twenty, including a few females. Some old friends from my OSU days, a couple of guys who coached in the Columbus area who went to OWU with Mate, some guys we coached against up in Cleveland.
One thing lead to another, everyone was buying beverages for everyone else, and the story telling was outstanding. I don’t remember what lead up to it, but I got Mate to show everyone the topographical map of Argentina that was in the middle of his left ass cheek.
“OOh! OOh!” People exclaimed as he got up on a chair and dropped his drawers quickly to show off the hickey on his bare bottom. He let everyone stare at it for several seconds for affect, and then quickly pulled up his pants.
“Show the Altoona Islands,” I said, and he rolled up his sleeve and showed the bruises leading up his upper arm onto his shoulder.
“Now Idaho,” I continued, and he lowered his shirt to show the mark that started above his right nipple and ended at the bottom of his neck.
The crowd was rolling. Mate was really hamming it up with some bumps and grinds.
“And, for the grand finale for today’s geography lesson, North America!” And Mate turned around, and pulled up his shirt. He did a slight body builder flex that showed off the muscles in his back. He then removed his shirt completely, showing off the giant hickey on his back that resembled, of all things, a map of North America.
We had accumulated quite a crowd by then and everyone was just dying with laughter. The comments that followed were brutal, but nobody was laughing harder than Mate.
“Mate, you’re not doing it with undomesticated animals again, are you?”
“Mate, when did you get into tattoos?”
“Did you do that with a vacuum cleaner with a clitoris?"
That night when we went back to our dorm room and we lay in the dark in our small twin beds trying to cope with the summer heat, Mate elaborated about his summer with Jennifer.
“Now, you know, I like sex as much as the next person. I mean, I’ll be the first to admit that there might be a bit of rif raf on my resume, but there also is some talent. But nothing beats this summer with Jennifer. On the all time list she checks in there behind you know who, but the thing is she is wearing me out. If we go out, there is always one in the car after I pick her up. I mean, Jesus Christ, how old do you get before you stop having sex in a car? If we go to the movies, her hand is always on the big fella. You’d be surprised at all the places we’ve done it down by the Stadium. I never thought I’d ever say this, but the girl is wearing me out.”
By the time double sessions were going to be coming around, he was going to be dragging his ass through practice like an old hound dog.
I’ll always have a soft spot for Jennifer because she was my first experience at what everyone calls today ‘phone sex.’ When we came home from OSU after our team camp, she went up to work a couple of weeks of girls camps at UT. She and Mate went almost two weeks without seeing each other. Mate was gone somewhere, and I went down to the Flats with a couple of buddies on their vacations for some afternoon cocktails. I got home around dinner time and fell asleep on the glider on the front porch. I was awakened by the phone, and I half asleep answered it.
“Mate,” I heard Jennifer say.
“Urg, Org, Dung,” I responded, my mind still half asleep and suffering from cotton mouth and hot pipes. I guess she thought I was Mate because she continued on.
“I miss you so much. I miss you so much and all I can think about is licking every inch of your body.”
“Mmmm,” I said, slowly becoming conscious.
“I just want you to know that everyone is downstairs eating dinner, and I’m up in my dorm room with nothing on except the A.C. and my vibrator.” Then she really got going. It is really hard to put into words the sounds I heard next. They were a combination of a lot of things. A good size dog with her tail caught in the door... Tom Waits on one of his early albums...
In between these bursts of sounds, in a low husky come-fuck-me voice, she went on and described all the things she was doing to herself with her vibrator. She touched it everywhere, and stuck it in every possible orifice. “I’m now running it along the crack of my ass wishing it was your tongue.”
I knew she was close to the end when she started to pray. “Oh God...Oh God...OH GOD...OH GOD!!! she said in a voice that crescendoed to a scream. Then, without saying a word, I heard her breathe heavy for five or six seconds and hang up.
When Mate came home from where ever the hell he was and I told him what happened, and he just smiled. “What did I tell you, a real blue chipper.”
The other woman that played an important role in our lives that summer was Maggie Williams. If Jennifer was Mate’s summer squeeze, then Maggie was mine. I ran into her at a teacher’s workshop at the end of the school year, then a couple of weeks later at a happy hour. She was about our age and teaching in an east side school district.
I knew we knew Maggie from sometime/somewhere else. I knew it was from the first year or two out of college, but I wasn’t sure from where. It just didn’t seem important, we knew so many girls like Maggie back then.
The short time that summer we were together was fun. Both being teachers, we spent a couple leisurely days doing the art museum, a concert at Blossom, and a day on the beach at Cedar Point. When we became physically involved things were good. She had a slight touch of full bodiness about her, which I like, and she enjoyed sex and all the neat things two people could do with each other.
Over the course of the summer, even though we lived together, Mate and I saw very little of each other. I’d be off someplace working a basketball camp, he’d be working a football camp or visa versa. He’d be out east visiting friends from his Wesleyan days, I’d be down in Cincinnati with some OSU buddies. And when we were both around, he was spending a lot of time with Jennifer.
It was when we were both around, that things were getting a bit stressed between us because of Jennifer. She got in the habit of hanging around our house in the morning or late at night with just a T-shirt and panties on. We had girlfriends in the past do this, but none with the body, youth, and raw sexuality that Jennifer possessed. When she was hanging around with her what seemed like always hard nipples protruding out through her shirt, and her tanned hall of fame legs stretching out from her perfect butt, you could not concentrate. It got to the point where I would leave the house, I just couldn’t handle it. She was one of those women who fully clothed could give every guy in the room a woody, let alone when she was close to naked.
I was kind of pissed at Mate for that, but I couldn’t figure out why he was kind of pissed at me.
Mate knew Maggie from whenever I originally knew her, but it wasn’t until half way through the summer that he realized that we were an item. It seemed to bother him for no apparent reason, and I thought maybe it might just be the time for us to go our separate ways. Maybe, finally, find my own place to live, we were approaching one of those birthdays that ended in a zero and sooner or later you stop living with your buddies. We were pushing the envelope on middle age, and maybe it was just time.
Maggie was not around our place a lot anyway. She definitely preferred her place to ours. The older ones were like that. Our house always had people coming and going, even at times Connie and Manny still took the place over with friends, spontaneously to go through our record collection and sit around and eat pizza. For Jennifer, the college like atmosphere was what she was used to, but Maggie had outgrown it years earlier.
Her place was one of those stately old colonials in Lakewood, off Clifton near the lake. It was clean and comfortable, with hardwood floors and lots of women things like matching throw pillows and a canapé bed. Her place reflected her, a classy professional woman.
We had gone to a movie, out to eat, and then to her place to make gentle love. We were snuggled up when we finally started the conversation we knew we had to have soon. What we were going to do when the summer ended? And, as far as I was concerned, was it going to end the next morning with the start of football practice? She being a teacher, I knew she had been through a few of these summer flings. I really liked her, and thought this one might last for awhile.
I had told her about Mate’s criteria for a summer girlfriend, and so when she said, “ Am I suppose to disappear after tonight?” I was not prepared for what she said next.
“You know, that’s why I cut it off with him. I wanted a little bit more than that.”
“What? When?”
“You know...six or seven summers ago when we were all taking summer classes at Cleveland State.”
“You guys dated?”
“Well, as you probably remember, I don’t think any of us really dated back then. We did have a thing for awhile...”
I let go of her, rolled over on my back and stared at the ceiling.
“What’s the matter?” She said.
“Nothing. Just stretching, that’s all.”
She rambled on about her fling with Mate without giving too many details, I could only imagine, and I kept staring at the ceiling.
Oh my God, I said to myself. I’ve been doing one of his. That’s why he was pissed at me!
Believe it or not, that had never happened. At least, as far as I knew, it had never happened. Guys are usually very territorial with their women, and I knew that we were. Going back to high school Mary Ann Sladky was one of mine, and Kathy Miller was his. Beth was one of his, Colleen was one of mine. In college, Mary Jo Collins was one of mine, Shelly Gordon was his. The list went on and on.
And not just with girls we were involved with or had a fling with. This also pertained to an unwritten criteria that usually referred back to who discovered or first saw someone.
Mrs. Jankowski, the fiftyish secretary at school with the great wit, was mine. Krissy, the sleazy janitor, was one of his. Megan, the cute blond at the video store, was mine. The tall red head at the grocery store deli department was his. We never knowingly ever crossed lines.
I lay on the edge of the bed still staring at the ceiling, and she rolled over and cuddled up along my side. I closed my eyes and pretended that I dozed off. I kept pretending even as she started to kiss the side of my neck and started to stroke me. Her skin felt cold and clammy, instead of soft and warm. I was non responsive to all of her actions. Visions of her in bed with Mate giving him a hummer filled my mind. Finally, she gave up and fell asleep.
When I left her place early the next morning, I knew it was over between the two of us. I sneaked out of her place unnoticed at the crack of dawn, and got back to our place to ride with Mate to practice. Mate was already up, sitting at the kitchen table drinking a coffee and reading the paper.
“Five minutes and I’ll be ready to go,” I said.
Mate was becoming, in our old age, one of those coaches who couldn’t wait for summer practices to start. I, on the other hand, still equated the start of football with the end of summer and that still depressed me.
On our way to school, he rambled on about what we were going to do in practice, while I read the sports page and tried to wake up at the same time. I was the head coach, but he was the defensive coordinator, and the first day of practice was always conditioning and defense, so he ran things. When we got near the school he changed the subject.
“Let’s talk about women for a minute,” he said. “Let’s talk about Jennifer Martin and Maggie Williams.”
Oh, Oh, I said to myself. This is it. I’ll have to find another place to live.
He admitted that he felt the tension between us over the summer, but felt with some changes and the start of the school year things could get back to normal. He told me it was over between him and Jennifer. “I told her yesterday. She took it O.K. We’ll have one more go at it this weekend and then she’s back to school for good anyway. I’d never make it through doubles if it kept going like it was.”
We had gotten to school and he drove around back and pulled into one of the empty spaces by the locker room doors. He parked the car, turned off the ignition, turned in his seat and faced me.
“And about this Maggie Williams thing,” he said. “Just tell me one thing.”
“What?”
A slight smile crossed his face. “How did I taste?” And before I could react, he bopped out of the car and went and greeted a group of the kids who were waiting to get in the building.
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