How You Feel By James Stegall... I ve never had much use for a girlfriend,... but the girls decided I should have one. Mr. Stegall lives in Cottage Grove, Oregon, and is presently in Army Reserve training, serving as a psychiatric specialist. In September, 1994, he will enter Western Oregon State College in Monmouth. He wrote and submitted this story during his senior year at Cottage Grove High School. Among his major interests are music, the Guess Jeans Girl, parties, sports, electric guitar, cars, and thrills. He writes: I m into the expatriate authors of the twenties. My goal is to write like Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) sings. In ten years I see myself as F. Scott Fitzgerald, without Zelda or the hangover. Other stories by Mr. Stegall have been featured in recent issues of Merlyn s Pen. The white office was comfortably warm and full of the bright blue summer outside. It was early summer, June, and the fresh, sharp air had no hesitation in it yet. It was very clean, both outside and inside the clear windows. But Jeremy hated this room. Smile, Jeremy, girls liked to tell him. You look so unhappy. He smelled the room s air air that said nothing was ever done here; he observed no tangible accomplishment. The school district s psychiatrist sat behind his big desk in his leather chair like a crisp fifty-dollar bill snug in a leather wallet. Tell me what to buy, his demeanor said. His hands rested up behind his big head. Jeremy dropped into the metal chair and looked at him angrily. Hi, he said. The man s clear eyes moved slowly from the bright window to Jeremy s face. You have a job, don t you? he asked. What s that supposed to mean? Jeremy demanded. Nothing important. The psychiatrist smiled again. He was maybe forty years old and he had straight teeth. I notice things, he explained. Then his smile faded. Your grades are slipping, Jeremy. They ve slipped quite a lot, to be honest. The superintendent requires that I ask you why. You made me come here for that? Yes. Jeremy shrugged. I ve been working a lot, he said. Oh. The man found a gold pen on his desk. Well, I can talk to your boss. Go ahead. The psychiatrist was smiling at him. He slid the gold pen into his chest pocket and crossed his hands on his knee. You look like a very tense person, Jeremy, he said. We re not having a session or anything. You re not in therapy. I d just like to have a talk with you, and I d like you to be honest with me. Maybe we can accomplish something. Dishonesty s a symptom of intelligence, Jeremy thought. I don t lie, he said. All right. Jeremy leaned back in his chair. What do you want to know? Work doesn t ruin grades. Tell me what does. The question required nothing of Jeremy, and his back remained flat against his hard chair. But Jeremy had decided that he was sick of this man, and his loud cologne, and the school district s routine grade checks. My grades haven t dropped below average, he said, setting two fin- 1 MERLYN S PEN MAGAZINE SENIOR EDITION DECEMBER / JANUARY 1994
gers against his chin. I ve never been below average in my life. Why don t you ask me what you want to know? I wanted to know that, the psychiatrist conceded. He leaned forward in his chair. But there is something else. Jeremy looked at him. How long did you date Heather Ryeland? Jeremy s eyes widened. Then he glanced away. Whenever the thought of Heather came to him, he lost his smooth control lost it utterly. Two months, he answered. The question hurt Jeremy. He took the words automatically through his heart and then through his head; that was the sequence through which his control shifted whenever the thought of Heather came to him. He lost his smooth control. He lost it utterly. So he answered with honesty, Two months. Only two months? Now the psychiatrist leaned back. That s a short time. Commitment becomes an issue in high school, you know that, Jeremy? On average, a high school relationship will last longer than any you ve previously had. He paused. Have you seen anyone else? No. Time means love to the young, the psychiatrist was trying to insinuate. I hate this man, Jeremy thought. Why didn t it work out? Was it just a bad relationship? Why are you asking me this? Jeremy s hatred was melting into heartache. His heart was subverting his indifference. It was the best thing I ever had, he said. She was the best thing? Yes. The man looked at him. You mean she was good for sex? I never slept with her. You respected her? Suddenly the psychiatrist s clear gaze turned to Jeremy s face. Did you love her, Jeremy? he asked quietly. Jeremy breathed. His honesty collapsed under the risk of a confession. I m seventeen, he said. Jeremy s answer seemed to undermine some conclusion the psychiatrist had previously made. He leaned back in his leather chair, frowning. What made her the best for you? he asked, watching Jeremy. What made her better for you than any other girl? I can t explain it. Try. I Jeremy looked at him. The night was clean and cold. Electric neon made the tall face of the theater crackle against the night. As they left through the glass doors, a loose wind swept through the empty black parking lot, kicking up white garbage. God, it s cold, he remembered Heather saying. Jeremy looked at her. He didn t have his coat, but he could have slipped his arm around her, he could have told her how he felt. He could have... But his hands were in his pockets, and it was too much to pull them out. I don t know. I ve never been much for dating. It s probably because of my mother: she hates my going out. She s overprotective. Sometimes I think she s jealous. She s from the South Mississippi and she s got that whole Southern complex with manners. She s stubborn, too. On the West Coast no one really cares whether or not you say please or thank you. In California they care about the result, in Oregon they care about the process, and in Washington they care about what you started with. Everyone s too protective of their livelihoods especially lately. People from Washington are all obsessed with money, with saving money and with losing it. Californians care about spending it. Oregonians spend it when they have it. Those are pretty much the only areas of the country I ve seen: the South and the West. It s given me a little perspective. I wonder sometimes why I m aware of that sort of thing. It doesn t do me any good. Intelligence never does you any good unless you re smart enough to know how to use it. That s another intelligence altogether. I hate stupid people. I hate people who can t understand what s going on. I always understand what happens to me; but there s nothing I can do about what I understand. That s the problem with my generation. 2 MERLYN S PEN MAGAZINE SENIOR EDITION DECEMBER / JANUARY 1994
Maybe. I don t know. I ve lived here all my life. Everything s based on money in a small town. When you re young, no one cares about who you are, only if you look good and wear expensive shoes and the sport you play. Only when you get older does personality start to have anything to do with social standing. By then it s too late, though; the social order s established. You ve got to preplan for that sort of thing. The psychiatrist s clear gaze turned to Jeremy s face. Did you love her, Jeremy? I ve been lucky: I ve always had good clothes and a knack for catching a football. It won t get me into college, but coaches like me, and friends go along with that too. Knowing sports gives you friends anywhere; you ve got something in common with everyone. All my life I ve gone through school being part of the better group. I like being popular. But I ve never really had a best friend. I ve had so many friends that I never came close to any of them. Now I know that there are no best friends in a small high school: there are only boyfriends and girlfriends. That s something I didn t understand until I got a girlfriend. I ve never had much use for a girlfriend. I ve never cared. But I m a junior. So this year the girls decided I should have one, and I was introduced to Heather Ryeland. I liked her all at once. I don t know. I suppose I was infatuated. I don t really have much confidence, and it becomes most apparent around girls. Girls want either complete honesty or complete wit, and I m not good at either. I m never good enough for a girl. When I talk to a girl I feel like I m just spreading my arms out and announcing Here I am! Am I good enough? and I m always afraid she ll say no. But I ve never really cared. I just didn t talk to girls. I talked to guys. Guys don t require anything of you. You stay yourself and that s okay. But girls when I first saw Heather, I lost my perfect memory. I couldn t remember her face. It was as if every moment I saw her I lost her into something totally new, something I had no idea of what to do with. I was infatuated. I thought I was in love. But I didn t know. I couldn t know. I didn t know her, but I wanted to do something, anything to make her know that I wanted her. I couldn t come out and tell her. I couldn t even think about doing that. So I went to a florist s shop, bought her a dozen roses and had them delivered at school. They arrived in a vase full of ice. It made your hands cold to hold them. I remember exactly what she did when she got them. She stood holding the big bouquet, looking at me with her bright eyes, and she said, smiling at me, You re crazy! Crazy about what? I asked. I think I said the right thing. Actually, I should have said, Crazy about who? But I didn t. I shouldn t have given her roses. That was a mistake. All roses can do is die. But girls love roses. They keep them even after they re dead. I should have given her a bracelet or something. But I didn t. It didn t matter to her, though. Anything I did was enough. It was only a matter of time after that. I asked her to be my girlfriend on the first of April, and she said yes. She said yes! You know, I think the word yes is the only worthwhile thing a girl ever says. It s the only word you ever want to hear. So now she was mine. And I had no idea of what to do. I would look at myself in the bathroom mirror in the morning and say, Well, Jeremy, you ve got her. She s yours. She s all yours. But I had no idea of what to do. And I felt a little used. I had been set up. But I told myself I didn t care. I would go along. I decided to just stay near her and let her lead. She liked me. I knew that she liked me, so I would let her go out of her way for me. And she did. The thing is, being set up like I was, I felt that I was just playing out an act for all the people around me. I saw Heather and I saw that she was pretty, and that, if I wanted to badly enough, I could convince myself that I really did like her. Because I know now that to begin with, I didn t like her at all; she just made me nervous like any girl does. That was the first part of my problem. No, that s the real problem. I convinced myself that something was true when it wasn t. Maybe it s bad of me to have done something like this but it s me who got hurt, really. Not her. I m the one who tried to build up something out of nothing. Then, when I really had convinced myself, I realized that none of it was true Wait. No. Is that falling in love? Is the process of convincing yourself No. God. I don t know. For a while I thought things were really beginning 3 MERLYN S PEN MAGAZINE SENIOR EDITION DECEMBER / JANUARY 1994
to happen, that maybe I did have everything figured out. Everything was working for me. I liked the idea of being in love. I liked her. I liked holding her. For a while she knew more about love than I did, and there were so many things that she could teach me. Life looked good. I was in love with her kiss. I was in love with the way she looked at me, in love with her voice over a telephone line, in love with the way her blue eyes rolled diagonally whenever I made her laugh, and Here I am! Am I good enough for you? I m always afraid she ll say no. the way the sunlight could catch her beautiful hair. I loved her hair God. I was absolutely in love. The realization was a sudden thing. I had never been so happy in my life. All of my world revolved around her. All of my thoughts centered themselves on her. All my opinions compared themselves to what Heather would have thought. I was no longer just me. I was part of a relationship. I had become us. It was the best feeling I had ever had. It was the best time. I felt alive. I felt so completely alive. As if that were the only time, the only way to be. Everything was so completely new. With Heather, the world became a new place. I called her to break up with her; that was a weak thing to do but I didn t care. I didn t want to have to see her. I didn t want to have to deal with her touch. When I did it, her voice dropped into a tremble and she was quiet for so many heartbeats I thought maybe she had hung up on me, or lost the phone. But there was no dial tone so I hung on. I sat there with the receiver against my mouth, staring ahead, listening. I don t know what I was listening for; I was feeling for something really, I think, feeling for an understanding of what was going on. I knew she was there on the other end of the line. But she had been quiet for so long that I began to think I had created the entire thing, and that maybe none of this was real at all. There was only me with the phone and my idea of her. I began to imagine what she would say to me, and that maybe she had set the phone down and was coming to my house, coming to hold me. I was a little scared by that idea and I glanced at the door, wondering if I had locked it. Then I heard her voice rise back up to a whisper, her breath come back against the phone. And her voice cried out against the receiver. Oh, Jeremy! Oh, Jeremy I don t want it to be like this! I have to go, I said. I have to. I ll see you. I set the phone down with my eyes half-closed. I could see her face in my mind. I knew her well enough to imagine her expression, and the sight of it hurt me. It hurt me. I remember looking away from the phone to the table beside it. There was a glass full of ice on the table, and I sat and watched the ice melt. God. Ice melts too fast. Jeremy fell against the metal back of his chair and ran a hand over his eyes, rubbing his hot forehead. He glanced through his red fingers at the psychiatrist. The man was watching him blandly. You didn t tell me why you broke up with her, he said. Jeremy s eyes opened wide. Isn t it obvious? No. Explain it to me again. Jeremy blinked. He let his breath escape. I can t explain it. You felt you were lying to her, the psychiatrist told him. Yes. Jeremy sank down onto the chair, so that his legs were straight out against the floor. He could feel the cold metal against his arms. Jeremy was slowly releasing his anger and bitterness. He was losing his control. The man went on apathetically, as if he were explaining the story to himself without the benefit of Jeremy s perspective. And you felt that you never really loved her. Yes, Jeremy said dejectedly. His head bowed forward. He looked down at his hands. He watched his fists and his veins. But you did love her in the end, the psychiatrist concluded. I don t know. Jeremy lifted his face and tossed a sudden hand back to his forehead. He scraped the sweat from his eyes and clawed at his hair. He sat looking at the white walls. All right, the psychiatrist said at last. Now I 4 MERLYN S PEN MAGAZINE SENIOR EDITION DECEMBER / JANUARY 1994
want to know what made you break up with her. I want you to tell me why. Tell me why you should have cared about anything but the love. Jeremy lay back in his chair, staring forward. Because if the process isn t pure, then the resulting love can t be pure. His voice exploded wetly out of his lips. Didn t you understand what I was saying? What did I just talk about? That s too complex to be the truth, Jeremy, he I shouldn t have given her roses. That was a mistake. All roses can do is die. said. You were never that serious. The psychiatrist chewed his lower lip. That s just the excuse you ve made for yourself. You told me about the attitudes of some states; I don t care about that. I want to know your attitude. Tell me. I live in a state, Jeremy growled. But you re aware of the attitudes. So naturally, you would rebel against them. No. Yes. Human impulse is to rebel. Come on, Jeremy. I think you did rebel. Jeremy laughed suddenly. Fine, he said, sitting up straight, you explain it all to me. A tension was building in his throat. I will, the psychiatrist said. You loved the girl and she loved you. But you didn t want love. You broke up with her so you could understand not only love, but what it s like to lose love. You were playing a game. Jeremy blinked. No. Yes. Frowning suddenly, the psychiatrist leaned forward in his leather chair. He held Jeremy with his steel-colored eyes. You just sat here and told me that you think you re smarter than everyone else, he said. I think that s what you did. You played a mind game with that girl. She loved you, but that wasn t enough for you. No. Yes. Jeremy s confidence had begun to collapse. His need to confess was overwhelming him, it was flooding him. The room had become a weight on his lungs. His breathing was rapidly becoming slow and short; the sweat had grown cold on his eyelids. His red eyes went to the white walls. His hands grappled the arms of his metal chair and his eyes thrashed along the white, clean walls, as if he could accuse the entire world around him, the entire wall of experience and stupidity that held him back. As if he could knock it all down. He wanted to break it all up. He wanted to wreck it all. He was better than all of them! Oh, God, Heather Jeremy s eyes settled inevitably upon the psychiatrist in front of him. All right, the boy said softly. Then Jeremy screamed. He let the scream escape his soul, his mind, his heart. He let himself yell: All right! I don t know! I don t know why, all right? How am I supposed to know what love is? How am I supposed to know how to live up to that? How do you think I feel? I hate stupid people. I hate people who can t understand what s going on. You don t understand any of this. You want to know why I broke up with her? I was afraid. Now Jeremy swallowed, slowly. The psychiatrist sat in his leather chair, watching. You bastard, Jeremy breathed. His gaze spiraled back to the walls, to the clean corners of the ceiling, the bright windows. You re all bastards. Oh, God. God. Why are you doing this to me? For several heartbeats the white room was silent. The psychiatrist sat watching Jeremy twist in the metal chair. He watched calmly. He sat in his leather chair and received the outburst as if it were a tangible piece of information that he could hold up and explain, as easily as a father would explain auto repair to his son. Then the man looked down at the boy, and a sadness came into his eyes. I m doing this for Heather, he said. Last night Heather tried to commit suicide. Jeremy could taste the coolness of her breath on his closed lips, and the scent of her hair. He could feel her heart, and how near she was, how close she was to his soul, how close she was to pressing him completely out of himself. He floated above himself, above his inhibition. The blue light from the television released everything into a silken world, a long liquid smoothness that made Jeremy want to whisper his love into her soft neck. Slowly, deeply, take her lips... now ease away... look into her eyes. 5 MERLYN S PEN MAGAZINE SENIOR EDITION DECEMBER / JANUARY 1994
Now smile. Into the raspberry softness of Heather s mouth Jeremy sank. He expanded on each touch she offered, returning it, magnifying it. He made her want his breath, made her want his soft words at her earlobe, made her tremble against his heart. His arms tightened over her, holding her until there was no longer any possibility of escape, until he had her all for his own and nothing else existed. God, Jeremy thought. God. Then he knew. Stepping from the shade of the building, he blinked up at the summer sky and watched wind shove the white clouds around. Then his eyes fell to the black parking lot where his car sat by itself in the center. He took a breath. He had the name of a hospital in his pocket. 6 MERLYN S PEN MAGAZINE SENIOR EDITION DECEMBER / JANUARY 1994