Lost Time Incident

December 05, 2003

Knock, Knock

When I was a young kid, still had a paper route, I somehow managed to get a girlfriend and the hows and whys still escape me. She had been sexually active with her last boyfriend, but I was unsullied in that regard and she was eager to get down to sullying.

Using a level of denial and doublethink known to most teens with a religious background, I attempted to hold on to my virginity, but my hormones and her lips were an effective lobbying team. We compromised, initially, by settling for exchanging spirited bouts of oral sex at every possible unobserved opportunity.

I mentioned that I still had a paper route. I was fifteen years old. Every Sunday, I got up at the ungodly hour of 5 a.m. to put newspapers together, then wheeled them up and down the street I lived on, pulling them behind me in a rickety personal grocery cart, bent from the immense weight of weeks of Sunday editions. There was never a soul on the streets.

So the story I wanted to tell you about took place early on a Sunday morning. The important details: The last time my girlfriend and I had been together, she had forgotten a half-empty 1 lb. bag of M&Ms at my place. Also, her parents were planning to move to another town, but on the Sunday in question were out of town. Also, she invited me to come over to her place before my paper route for some, uh, romance.

So I woke up at 3 a.m., more groggy than a newly neutered cat, and hopped on my bike, M&Ms in hand. It was a twenty minute bike ride to get to her family's apartment. The whole time, I had butterflies in my stomach at the prospect of once again sliding my (still technically virginal) erection into her hot mouth.

Now, she had told me that she planned on staying up all night and would be waiting for me to arrive. She also told me that she would leave their porch door open so I could let myself in and surprise her in her bedroom. After all, she reasoned, she might fall asleep and she didn't want to risk sleeping through the sound of my knocking at her door.

Besides, she said, it would be sexy if I just slid into bed with her and found some way to wake her up.

She lived in a subdivision that, like many subdivisions, was composed of cookie-cutter apartment buildings. All the lawns were well-kept, all the cars parked in driveways were waxed and shining in the morning dew. Everything was quiet as I crept across the lawn and up to her porch door.

I softly slid the door open and walked in to the darkened apartment. From the back of the apartment, I heard a television on. So that's how she stayed awake all night, I thought to myself. Then I bumped into a recliner.

Funny, I thought, I thought the recliner was further along the wall to the right of the porch door. Oh well, they're moving soon, they must have stuff a little re-arranged.

So I carefully made my way towards the back of the apartment. My girlfriend's bedroom was down the hall on the right and her parents' bedroom was at the end of the hall. The television was on in her parents' bedroom. I poked my head in, but no one was watching the TV. And then I heard snoring coming from her bedroom.

She fell asleep. And then I seriously had this thought: My love snores? Yeesh. Yes, my adolescent romantic mind immediately drifted towards our shared future and whether or not I'd be able to stay happily married with such a loud snorer. These were some ripping, regular snorts.

Well, maybe I'd manage to always go to bed first, I figured.

So I moved into the dark bedroom and carefully put the M&Ms package down on her sidetable. Now, I thought, what's the gentlest way to wake her up?

I reached out, grabbed her right foot, and shook it a little. The snoring hiccuped, then continued. I shook a little bit more firmly. The snoring stopped.

A deep, masculine voice came from the head of the bed: "What do you want?"

This isn't my girlfriend/I'm in the wrong apartment/I have to get out/He's not surprised to see another person in the apartment/Who else could be here?/He's a guy, probably a girl.

The above thoughts all went through my mind in the space of about one second. And when that second was over, I opened my mouth and in a squeaky, terrified falsetto, I said, "Nothing."

All the blood in my body felt like it rushed to my ears as I used every ounce of will I had to slowly turn to the bedroom door and slowly, calmly walk out while every animal instinct in me screamed at me to RUN!

I made it to the door, took long steps through the living room, went out the porch door, slid the glass door closed as quickly and quietly as I could. Every second, sure that the man in the dark bedroom was going to come roaring out after me to kill me.

I hopped on my bike and raced across the lawn, down the street, through back streets, ears cocked for the sound of police sirens.

Somehow, I made it home, heart pounding and paranoid. I went back into my family's house and crept upstairs, got back into bed. I stared at the ceiling, wondering how long my heart could possibly keep up its current rate. Still, no sirens. No cops pounding on the door. No need to see if I could stay cool while saying "I was in bed, I had to sleep, I have a paper route and I needed my rest."

Twenty minutes later, I crept back downstairs and started putting Sunday newspapers together.

Later that day, my girlfriend asked me why I didn't show up. I told her that I almost made it... I was probably just next door. All those apartments look alike, especially when you're not awake yet and it's dark out and more than anything your mind is on sex.

And ever since then, I've wondered what that man thought when he got up later that Sunday, yawned, looked over at his glowing digital alarm clock and noticed the mostly empty bag of M&Ms sitting next to it.

Posted by Michael at December 05, 2003 11:15 PM