CHAPTER THREE: “The Evelyn Era”
Hell’s Café.
I always thought the name was funny. It was the name of the coffee shop we always hung out at during the three years I lived in this town. I still don’t know why it was called that… there’s no Swedish word that spells Hell.
Anyway… We were all gathered at Hell’s Café around noon the day after I had come so close to losing my virginity. My friends from my home town had arrived too, Rob, Johnny, Andrew, Tommy and my cousin Andy. We were going to throw one massive party tonight.
“We need more booze”, Stephen says. Stephen was one of those guys that when I first saw him I thought we would never be friends. Me and Pete both thought so when we came to this town and realized we would be in the same class as this guy. He was no hard rockin’ dude, and looked like a wimp as far as I was concerned. At that time I still believed that Metal dudes were the only guys worthy of my friendship. Stephen, however, quickly proved that wrong and became one of my best friends ever – even though he did sport that ridiculous hair cut.
My hard rockin’ girlfriend, Evelyn, sat next to me. Close to me. Her hand rested on my leg, and she was brushing up against me. I had a hard-on tucked away in my pants that begged for relief.
“Yeah, we do. I don’t have much to drink at all”, she says.
“All I’ve got is some moonshine”, Rob informs. “And it tastes like shit”
It was always me people would turn to when they needed something from the liquor store. I looked older than most, and I probably had more guts than most when it came to that sort of thing. Pete speaks up.
“R.E.H. You can do it, right?”
“Oh, please do!”, Evelyn chimes in and looks at me with puppy eyes.
I didn’t have much to drink myself, because I was more interested in what me and Evelyn would be doing later tonight than I was of the party itself. I wanted some alcohol, to loosen up a little. I wasn’t looking to be totally plastered the way I always was. But… I figured a bottle of whiskey wouldn’t hurt any.
“Sure. I’ll give it a shot”, I said and grabbed a napkin to write down what everyone wanted. We all agreed that we buy a couple of extra bottles ‘just in case’, and I ended up with quite an impressive shopping list. I knew, from experience that one or two bottles was usually easy to buy – whereas a list like this one would most likely warrant the dreaded question: “You got ID?”
I walked down the stairs of Hell’s Café and wandered onto the street. It was only a five minute walk to the nearest liquor store, and when I arrived I walked inside confidently. During the walk there I had memorized the list, knowing I didn’t want to stand there with a crumpled up napkin in my hand reading it like a book. I stepped up to the counter – booze was only sold over the counter. You couldn’t just grab a shopping cart and fill it up yourself.
“I need three bottles of Famous Grouse whiskey, four bottles of Bacardi, a bottle of…”, and I kept rambling what I needed. The woman behind the counter was looking less than amused, but intently listened to me as I read out loud from my memory. My enthusiasm started to wear down as I neared the end of the list. I knew that look she had – it was the look of a woman who was humoring me. When I was done – there wasn’t a trace of a smile to be found on her face.
“You got ID?”
I had done this before. I had my routine.
“Sure”, and I started rummaging through my wallet. “Aw, shoot! I must’ve left it in the car. I’m parked just down the street. Do you really need me to go fetch it?”
“Please do”, she says and immediately pushes the button that brings up a new number on the board. I guess it beats hearing a loud and clear ‘NEXT!’, as she looked away from me.
I go back to Hell’s Café. Just as my head appears in the staircase leading up to our table I hear the groans and sighs of disappointment. They all knew I had failed, because they didn’t hear the clink-clank sound of bottles in a plastic bag as I came up the stairs.
“Shit dude”, Stephen says. “Go to the other place, up on Main Street. Sure they’ll let you buy!”
“That place is always really busy on Saturdays”, I tell him. I didn’t really want to go there. I had a feeling today was not one of those days that I would successfully buy any booze.
Everyone started begging me to do it. I tried telling them someone else could go, but they insisted that I do it. Finally I agreed. I walked to the other place, came inside and it was packed. I waited, and I waited for my turn. There was this one elderly man I recognized, because he had rejected my purchase once before. I was hoping I wouldn’t end up being served by him.
BLING! My number appears on the board. I check which counter flashes the digits I’m holding in my hand. Of course – it’s the cranky old man. I didn’t even come to a full stop in front of him. I certainly never had the opportunity to draw breath and begin my order before he speaks to me in a stern voice.
“If you still got your ID in the car, don’t bother trying kid”.
Yeah, he recognized me alright. I walk out in shame. That was majorly embarrassing.
I return to the coffee shop. We go through the same process again, and finally I have agreed to try the third and last liquor store. It was a little further away, and required a short bus ride. The other’s chipped in for the fair, as I refused to pay for it – seeing as I was doing them all a favor.
An hour later, I was greeted by loud cheers and applause as I walked up those stairs again, with a loud and clear clink-clank sound accompanying me. When I saw them all sitting there drinking their coffee and clapping their hands, I raised the plastic bags full of various kinds of liquor toward the ceiling.
“PAAARTY TIIIIIME!!!!!”
“YEAH!!!” All of them screamed in unison. Other guests at Hell’s Café were not quite as amused.
And, party we did. I quickly finished my bottle of whiskey. Always drank it straight out of the bottle back in those days. I was a tough ass son-of-a-bitch, and that’s how you drank your whiskey, damn it! Of course, drinking like that had its draw-backs. One always became flat out of his mind drunk. Somewhere along the lines I lost track of where Evelyn was, and I was okay with that for the time being. I would take care of that virginity issue later – right now I wanted to party hardy ‘til the cows came home!
I talked to my friends from back home. We drank like mad, music was loud and one or two had already passed out and lay unconscious on the floor or on a couch. One or two had taken refuge in the bushes out back and were puking their heads off. Everything was just the way it was supposed to be.
And, now I was horny. I could barely stand up straight, but now I was horny. Because so many people were at the party, we hosted the thing in three different student apartments. I hadn’t seen Evelyn for a while, that I could remember, so I figured she must be over at Stephen’s place.
I stumble over there, still drinking yet another Heineken. I had about ten of them that were originally going to be all that I was going to drink. Instead, I had already finished a bottle of whiskey, and was probably on my eighth or so Heineken.
I stumble upon Andrew and Johnny as I walk into Stephen’s apartment. The door is of course wide open – anyone is welcome.
“Andrew! Johnny! You crazy ass mother-fuckers! Where you been all night?” I just realized I hadn’t seen much of them. Nor had I seen much of my good old friend Rob.
“We’re partying, dude!”, Johnny shouts as he grabs hold of my neck and head butts me. It was one of those things that he and I always did when we were drunk.
“Where’s Rob?”, I ask once I can see straight and the stars in front of my eyes begin to fade. Andrew and Johnny both walk away from me – quickly. Stephen shows up.
“Stephen, my man! Hey! Seen Evelyn ‘round here. I’m looking for her”.
Stephen doesn’t really look like he’s in a party mood right now. He looks like something is bothering him quite a bit.
“Hey, man. What’s up? It’s party time dude. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Evelyn…”, he starts.
“Yeah Evelyn, dude. Where’s she at?”
“Aw, fuck man. You don’t wanna hear this shit”. He finishes off the beer he’s got in his hand and puts the empty bottle down on the kitchen counter. He walks over to the fridge, which is about four steps away.
“What the fuck do I not wanna hear?”
“Come here, dude”, and he motions for me to follow him into the kitchen – where less people will see us. “Evelyn took off”.
“What? Whaddya mean? She went back home?”
“No… fuck!”, he drinks about half of his new beer. “Evelyn and Rob…”
“What about Evelyn and Rob? What the hell have they got to do with one another?”
I had known Rob since I was a kid. There was no way he would take a girl from me. If he had I was going to fucking kill him. That was how I felt right then and there.
“I’m fuckin’ sorry, dude. But, they took off. Got in a car and I think they went back to your Home Town.”
I smashed my bottle of beer into the sink. Beer and shards of glass sprayed everywhere.
“I’m going after those two fuckers!”, and I had every intention to.
It took a lot of my friends to hold me back. I was screaming and kicking. I wanted to go after them and I was going to kill Rob for stealing my girl. Somehow, the others managed to get me to drink enough booze that I ended up passing out in Stephen’s shower stall, where I had done a fair share of puking too. I have vague memories of people holding me up straight and showering me, fully clothed, to clean me up.
The next day, hung over like never before, I took a bus and went back to my home town. I was still pissed off beyond belief, and I’m kind of lucky that I never did find Rob anywhere. He had heard the news that I was coming after him, and so both he and Evelyn decided to hide from me. Turns out it was Pete who made the call, and I thanked him for that. Things could’ve turned really ugly if I’d gotten a hold of Rob that day.
On Monday, after I came home from school, the phone started ringing. I pick it up. I hear sobbing on the other end of the line.
“I’m so sorry”, Evelyn says.
I didn’t know what to do. I liked this girl a lot, and I really didn’t want to lose her despite everything. I was silent, as I didn’t know what to say.
“We didn’t do anything. Honest to God.”
“People saw you two kissing”, I say as-a-matter-of-factly.
“You know what I mean… we didn’t do… that.”
Somehow, that was a relief to me. Somehow, I believed her.
We continued to talk for quite a while, and she told me how she thought I was too drunk that night, and that she felt I pushed her away because I was hanging out with my buddies all the time. She explained that she became really drunk herself, and that it didn’t seem like such an evil thing to go hook up with Rob. She said she wasn’t so sure I wanted to be with her. I thought it was all bullshit, and that it was indeed a big deal. But, I wanted to give her another chance, so I was going to forgive her. Rob, maybe not, but her I would forgive.
There’s no make up sex on the phone. But there is make up promise-of-sex on the phone. We agreed she would come back over the next weekend, and it would be all about me and her - and that big party back in my home town of course. There was a big party every weekend back in those days.
I thought it would be nice to see her in my old home town. Rob, of course, was not going to be at the party we were going to. He was still afraid of me, and probably rightfully so at that time.
When Evelyn came over, she was beautiful as ever. Things between us had been really good over the week as we spoke on the phone, and she was loving and kind to me when we met again. We didn’t speak at all of what had happened the previous weekend. That was the past, and we were now looking to the future.
The not-so-distant future was that same night. At the party – when history repeated itself… sort of.
It was an outdoor party, and we were out by the river on a field of grass surrounded by bushes. It was a common place for parties in my old home town. When I wandered around, looking for Evelyn who once again had disappeared on me, I found her making out in the bushes with Stephen.
Outraged, I walk up to them.
“What the fuck is going on here?”
Stephen doesn’t even seem to react. He just rolls off her and looks off into nowhere. Obviously he’s completely wasted. Evelyn, however, reacts in shock.
“It’s not what you think!”, she says.
“Do you think I’m fucking blind or something?”
And, then Stephen has the nerve to start projectile vomiting. He misses Evelyn by inches, but drenches himself in that vile stuff coming out of his mouth.
“He’s sick”, Evelyn quickly states. “I was just trying to make him feel better and he was all over me. I didn’t mean to kiss him”.
I knew Stephen well enough to tell that he would not do this to me. And, if indeed what she said was true – it was certainly not something Stephen would have intended to do. Strangely enough I wasn’t angry with him at all. Both of us ended up taking care of him, and we brought him back to my mother’s place where we were able to lay him down on a mattress on the floor, and where he passed out.
With him on the floor next to us, and my mother in the next room – there was no sex on the agenda that night either.
The next day, Evelyn returned to her home town, and me, Stephen and Pete all went back to college town. That same night, as I was watching TV there is a knock on my door. Pete was out somewhere that night, I don’t remember where. As I open the door, I see Stephen, who has finally managed to regain some color in his face after last night’s zombiefication.
I see there’s something on his mind, and I let him in. We sit down, and I figured he wanted to talk to me about Evelyn. I was right.
“Listen dude. I’m sorry about last night”
“Yeah, I don’t know. Was it you or was it her?” I knew if there was anyone who would answer me truthfully as to who it was that initiated the make-out between the two of them, Stephen was the kind of guy that would fess up to it and take the consequences.
“I don’t know, really. Maybe both of us were guilty of that”. He looks at me, almost expecting me to punch him in the face. I wanted to know the whole story, so I let it slide for the time being. Besides – I knew he wasn’t interested in her. Like I said – Stephen was not a hard rockin’ dude, and he wasn’t into metal, crazy hair chicks. I still couldn’t quite figure out why he had been kissing her in the first place, because she was so not his type of girl.
“I was really fucking drunk. I don’t know if I came onto her, or if she came onto me, but you know how it goes. When you’re drunk you’ll kiss any pair of lips that come close enough.”
“Yeah, but Evelyn’s my girl.”
“I know. You can hate me all you want, but you know I wouldn’t do that to you.” I knew that was the truth. Then he said the thing that I should’ve listened to, and listened carefully to. “You’re not going to see her any more, are you?”
We had said goodbye that morning, and she had kissed me. She had once again told me how sorry she was, but that she liked me a lot – she really did.
“I think I will”, I told him. “Things are going to get better between us. I just know it.”
It was that rubicon heart of mine speaking. I had my heart set on this girl, and I had decided that this was the one I was going to lose that damn virginity with… and besides – she had once promised me a threesome with her sexy friend Leah. I was not going to pass up that opportunity.
We didn’t see each other for a few weeks after that. We spoke on the phone a lot, and things were wonderful when we did. I started to really believe that next time we got together things would work out just fine. The bad stuff was behind us.
There were times I was wondering, though, if she was faithful to me over there. I knew she was experienced, and that she had quite a few fuck buddies back home. My rubicon heart promised me that she was as faithful as I was to her.
Over time, I had also been assured, from very reliable sources, that Evelyn and Rob had in fact not had sex that one night. I even spoke to Rob once on the phone, as he assured me of that as well, and said he was so sorry about what he had done, and that there was no excuse, but he hoped we could be friends again. I had told him I would need some time. Right now, if I saw him, I was liable to kick his ass still.
The next time I saw Evelyn, we were back in my old home town again. It was only a two hour drive from college, so I went back there quite often on the weekends, to party with my old childhood friends.
That was the last time I saw Evelyn. That was the time when she crossed the line, and after which there was no turning back. There was no longer any possible way that I would be able to trust her again after that night.
The party was wild, as usual. And, as was equally common during those parties, I lost her somewhere along the line of time.
Someone lost their virginity that night. That someone was not me. It was my childhood friend Andrew who put his love inside of Evelyn. To this day still, Andrew and I are not on good terms. It happened on the lawn behind the house where Andrew lived. I had walked by there, and they had been right in the middle of it – noticed me, and kept silent hiding in the darkness. I never knew how close I was until his brother, Johnny, told me the story.
“He’s really sorry you know. You should forgive him. You know how desperate he was to lose his virginity, and you know how stupid he becomes when he’s drunk”, Johnny assured me. It was Johnny who was the closer friend of the two, and I never had a problem with him.
“There’s no fucking way I’m going to forgive him”, I told Johnny. Johnny wasn’t going to stop being my friend, even if I was a sworn enemy to his brother. But, he would’ve of course preferred it if the two of us could sort things out.
When Evelyn called, begging for my forgiveness, crying her heart out on the phone, I told her to go fuck herself, because that was all she was good at anyway.
I gave up on women. I gave up believing in them, anyway. I was back to random make-out at parties… I was not going to give my heart to anyone ever again. It’s not like I was in love with Evelyn – not the way I felt about that girl Priscilla from back home. With Evelyn it had become more like an obsession, which focused mainly on the fact that I was going to get laid, and that she would be so freakin’ good at it. And I was going to have a threesome with her and her friend. That was all out the window now.
Still, I had decided to give her my heart. I had given her everything that I had, and I had not once cheated on her, even when we were apart for all those weeks. I didn’t really look at other girls, because I had committed to her. I wasted a few months of my life believing in her. Never again!
It wasn’t all good. I found myself enjoying some good fondling and kissing with girls at parties, but I was back where I was before. I didn’t dare ask a girl to be mine. I was too scared of what would happen if I did. It wasn’t only rejection that worried me any longer… what if they turned out to be two-timing bitches like Evelyn? I didn’t want to go through all of that again.
I focused on my dreams of becoming an actor. When a local television station back in my home town wanted to make a low-budget amateur series, me, Pete and Stephen all went over there on the weekends and landed parts in the series. It was being produced by the film club me and Pete had been part of for many years, so there was no auditioning required. We just signed up.
At the first meeting over there, we discussed what we wanted to be in the series. All of us actors got to choose a part that we wanted to play. No script was written yet, so we all had the chance to create our own characters. Something that we thought would be fun to play. The premise was a bunch of kids graduating, and the series was to follow their lives after school as they entered adulthood.
Immediately I thought of my sister, who had passed away of an overdose Heroin about four years earlier.
“I’d want to play a troubled kid, who’s hooked on drugs. You know. A nice guy and all, but drugs are ruining his life”. I wanted to do this to honor my sister. It was important to me.
“Sounds like a very good idea”, the producer and director Eddie says. I’d known him for many years, and always thought of him as a really cool adult.
“I could be the girlfriend”, I hear a female voice speak up. I look around the room, and I’m surprised to see a very attractive blond with her hand raised. “You know. Who tries to help him, but it’s really hard, but I stay with him because I love him”. She looks at me. Winks at me. I am stunned. Is this a new brand of flirting I’m being subjected to here?
“Julie”, Eddie says. “That sounds great. What do you think R.E.H.?”
“Sure… yeah, why not?”, I look over to her and she smiles at me.
Julie. Wow. She was kind of hot too. We spoke briefly after the meeting, and said that we’ll see each other next week when we were due for another meeting, and when a draft script would be presented. Actually, they never really used a script. It was more like a bullet list, of some scenes they were going to shoot, and us actors mostly improvised the scenes as it were.
When back at school we skipped class one day. Well, we skipped class quite often to go for a cup of coffee instead. Too often, it would prove. The acting school sucked the big one, and even acting class itself was rotten, and our teacher was a drunk. It was me, Pete, Stephen, Sue and Emelie who did most of the class cutting. We were the ones who always drank ten or so cups of coffee on any given day. Emelie was the gorgeous blonde who I would’ve fallen in love with if it wasn’t for the fact that she had a boyfriend she’d been together with since she was fourteen. I always secretly wished that relationship would end, so I could swoop in there like a knight in shining armor.
This day we decided not to have our coffee at Hell’s Café, but at a place in the mall instead. Our drunken teacher was often seen at Hell’s Café, cutting class herself, smuggling a flask in there to spice up her coffee. When it was acting class we were avoiding, it was best to drink our coffee at another place, so she wouldn’t run into us there.
“So, you think this girl… Julie, right?... is sweet on you?”, Emelie asks.
“I don’t know. I was kind of surprised at that whole ‘I’ll be his girlfriend’ thing”.
“You better believe it she’s sweet on him”, Pete butts in. “She was drooling like a rabid dog in there”.
“Yeah, right”, I say.
“No! I saw her, dude. She was looking at you the whole time.”, he changes to a high pitched teasing voice. “R.E.H.’s got a girlfriend, R.E.H.’s got a girlfriend”.
Everyone’s laughing.
“Yeah, that’s really funny guys. Doesn’t mean she wants me you know”.
I wasn’t really all that interested. She was good looking and all, and I figured if the opportunity arose, I would be glad to give up my man-cherry to her. But, she was not girlfriend material as far as I was concerned. Then, again. No one was girlfriend material anymore. Unless…
I opened my pack of Marlboro’s and found the pack empty. Stephen quickly offers me one from his pack, but I declined. I was only on my fifth cup of coffee or so. We had at least an hour or two before we were going to leave this place. I didn’t want to bum cigarettes the whole time. I got up from my chair.
“I’m just goin’ over to the tobacco store to get me a pack of smokes”.
The tobacco store was just down the hall in the little mall we were at. I had bought many a pack of cigarettes there. This time something occurred that probably changed the course of my entire life. It was one of those deciding moments in fate.
I walked in to the tiny store. I had my eyes fixed on the cigarette case – on the Marlboro’s in particular.
“Pack of Marlboro’s, please”, I say.
And then the world stopped turning. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The blonde girl behind the counter turned around and went after the pack of cigarettes I had asked for, and I guess it was a good thing she turned her face away from me. My jaw unhinged, went dropping to the floor, and my eyes bulged right out of their sockets. I stopped breathing.
It couldn’t be?
She gets the pack of cigarettes and turns back to face me. She was the most beautiful, sexy, hot and cute girl on the face of the earth. Her wonderfully wavy blonde hair falling over her shoulders like angel hair. Her petite and simply perfect body swaying as she walks back to the counter and puts down the pack of Marlboro’s on top of it. Her baby blues fix on mine, and a smile worth dying for spreads on her face.
I swallow.
“Priscilla?”
“Yes.”, she says. That smile still cutting through my heart. I’m done for. My rubicon heart is beating like crazy in my chest. What was she doing here? Why was she behind the counter at the tobacco store I had purchased my smokes at so often? She lived in another town, and I didn’t think I was going to see this beautiful girl ever again. The girl I had secretly been in love with since I was thirteen.
She’s got a name-tag on. She might think I picked up her name from there. I did confirm that what could not possibly be really was, by checking that name-tag.
“I don’t know if you remember me. We went to school together.” I was so nervous my voice failed me, and my hands were shaking.
“R.E.H… Of course I remember you!”
Right then and there, I knew. No one else would ever compare to Priscilla. She was the one and only girl I could ever truly fall in love with.
This'll be the last Tuesday that I have to be in at work at the place I've been earning my paycheck for the last four years. I'm kind of excited about that. It's starting to look like my demands will be met, but nothing is final on that yet...
That sign says "Build & WOOD" in Swedish
A WOOD swing set at the playground
Stainless steel is a METAL
A METAL gate
Heavy METAL !!!
WOOD and METAL slide
