Chapter 53: Another Meltdown

February 20, 1983, McKinley, Ohio

Clarissa and I lay together for about fifteen minutes before I heard voices and a soft knock on the bedroom door.

"I think the posse is here," I chuckled.

"Bummer," she sighed.

I reluctantly released her, and we sat up on the bed, leaning back against the wall.

"Come in!" I called out.

Sandy opened the door, and I could see the rest of the gang was with her.

"Anything interesting going on in here?" she smirked.

"Just the lesbian girl talking to her best friend!" Clarissa smirked.

"You could have knocked me over with a feather!" Sandy said, shaking her head. "How long have you known?"

"Since I was twelve. The big lug next to me helped me get ready to come out."

"Let's just say it explains a LOT that I couldn't quite figure out about you!"

"Seriously?" I heard Lee laugh from behind Sandy. "Are all you straight folks THAT clueless?"

"Pretty much!" I laughed. "I didn't know until she told me, and we were already friends at that point. How did you know?"

"Just a guess, but an educated one. Things she said; things she did. It all reminded Robby and me of how it was before we met each other and were willing to admit it to each other and then be open about it. It's one of those things you can't understand from your side of the playing field. It's probably similar to all of us not being able to truly understand the shit Clark, Larry, and Carter go through because they're black."

"That makes sense," I said.

"What about Angie?" Sandy asked.

Lee laughed again, "No way! She's the most uptight, straight chick I've ever seen in my life. Whatever her problem is, she's not a lesbian. Well, obviously, I can't say for sure, but I don't see it. I wasn't totally sure about Clarissa but close enough because of stuff only someone who had hidden in the closet for years would see. How was your date, Clarissa?"

"Great! We're doubling with Mike and Janey on Friday! She's coming to visit."

"And my sister and her friends will be here on Saturday," I added. "They obviously can't come into the dorm, so I'll have lunch with them, and we'll hang out somewhere for a few hours."

"Clarissa," Sandy asked, "mind if I borrow him for a bit?"

Clarissa laughed, "After that dance with Jennifer and Laurie, I think he needs it!"

"That was insane!" Sandy agreed.

Clarissa kissed my cheek, got up, and left the bedroom. Sandy came in, shut the door, then sat down on the edge of the bed.

"This is where you tell me you want to start dating Rudy, isn't it?"

"No, this is where I talk to you about things, not make a unilateral decision."

"Which is what I said. I didn't say you were going to tell me you WERE going to start dating Rudy, just that you WANTED to start dating Rudy."

Sandy nodded, then moved back to lean against the wall, sitting close but not snuggled.

"I sort of did expect to meet someone like him; but not just yet!"

"I don't think the timing is up to us," I said gently. "Sometimes someone walks into our lives unexpectedly, and we have to deal with things we weren't necessarily prepared to deal with."

"Are you talking about you? Or about me?"

I smiled, "Both, I guess. For me, I was thinking about Janey."

"Is that her given name?"

"No. It's Janelle Catherine Riley. The 'O' was dropped when her great-great-grandfather came over from Ireland. His last name was O'Riley. In church, her chrismation name is «Екатерина» (Yekaterina), which is the Russian version of her middle name. There's no 'Saint Janelle' in the Orthodox church of whom any of us are aware, and that includes the monastery where we buy our icons."

"So all Orthodox kids have to have a saint's name?"

"At least a form of one, yes, though converts often use their middle names, which Russians don't really have, or work with the priest to select a patron. I'll decide on my kids' names based on who I want their patron saint to be."

"Your middle name is Peter, right?"

"On my birth certificate and Social Security card. Besides that, except for school and my driving license, it's 'Petrovich'."

"So your kids would be Mikhailovich? Or Michael?"

"If they're boys. Girls would be Mikhailovna and probably Michelle on their birth certificates. My sister is Elizabeth Petra or Elizaveta Petrovna. The middle name is always the dad's name with either a masculine or feminine ending — v-i-c-h for boys, v-n-a for girls, with an appropriate vowel before it. What's your dad's name?"

"Roger."

"Well, that doesn't work very well because there really isn't a Slavic equivalent. You could fake it with 'Rogerevna', but that sounds weird. Grandfather?"

"Steven."

"Easier. That's «Степан» (Stepan), so you'd be Sandra Stepanovna. And actually, if we're going to do this correctly, you'd be Alexandra Stepanovna."

"Alexandra? But my given name is Sandra!"

"I can't help it if your parents gave you a diminutive nickname for your first name!" I chuckled. "That would be like my parents naming me 'Mischa' or like the non-Russian girl in school whose parents named her 'Larisa'. I called her 'Lara', and she was totally confused."

"But the movie..."

"Yes, the movie. Most people watch Doctor Zhivago and get it backwards — they think 'Lara' is her given name and 'Larisa' is a diminutive, but that's backwards. Her name is 'Larisa Fydorovna Antipova'. Lara is diminutive, similar to Tasha calling me 'Mishka', which is the equivalent to my sister's 'Mikey'. To call me 'Mike', you would say 'Mischa'."

"All that just to figure out a name?"

I laughed, "Oh, it's worse. Technically, the diminutive for Alexandra is 'Sasha', like Tasha's little sister. Tasha's given name is Natalya. I could call her Natasha, Nata, Talia, Natulia, or Tashenka, depending on context! And if you think THAT'S bad, you also have to decline proper names the way you do any noun in Russian."

"Decline? I sort of remember that from English."

"We don't really do it in English, but it's a way of indicating number, case, or gender. What I'm talking about is 'case'. In English, other than making nouns plural, the only place you do it regularly is with pronouns. 'I, me, my, mine' and 'we, us, our, ours' are the subjective, objective, dependent possessive, and independent possessive cases."

"Holy shit!" Sandy laughed. "You do that for ALL nouns?"

"It becomes automatic when you speak it. And that's mostly why I sound like a retarded six-year-old when I speak Russian because I mess up noun declension. I suppose the best example in English would be saying something like 'me go to mine car' instead of 'I go to my car'. Then add in getting gender correct, which is similar to Spanish and French, and you can see the problem."

"Yep!" Sandy laughed. "Retarded six-year-old!"

"And that's the kind of stuff Clarissa and I are dealing with in Latin class. Latin does the same thing."

"And I thought French was bad!"

"Here's an example before we go back to our discussion. If I'm saying 'That's Michael's Car', it's «Это машина Майкла» (Eto mashina Maykla). Do you hear the difference in my name from «Меня зовут Михаил» (Menya zovut Mikhail), which is 'My name is Michael'. It's that «а» at the end in that first sentence which is the declension, but the interior vowels shift as well."

"No wonder you have trouble!"

"Yeah. The only way to do it right is speak it all the time like they do at Tasha's house. Anyway, enough of that rabbit trail! Back to people walking into our lives when we don't expect. What do you want to talk about?"

"Rudy asked me to go out with him on Friday."

"And Janey and I have a date on Friday, as I said. It's really only a concern if his expectations are different from reality. Or if YOU feel it's wrong to fool around with more than one guy."

"That's why Katy broke up with you, isn't it? So she'd feel free to do that if she wanted?"

"I think that's part of it, yes. In fact, probably a big part of it, but it's also because of the expectations the guy had. They aren't steady, but I think he was expecting her to only go out with him, even if it's not formally going steady. I can't blame him, really. But that's all speculation because I don't know for sure, AND because I told her I wouldn't move in with her in the Fall."

"So what do you think?"

"All I can say is go out with the guy and see where things go. I mean, unless you plan to marry me at some point."

Sandy laughed, "I thought we were past that."

"So did I, until you showed up here worried about a guy asking you out. May I be blunt and perhaps a bit insensitive?"

"Sure."

"If we're just screwing for the fun of it and for 'stress relief', and it doesn't mean anything, why are you worried? And if you ARE worried, then WHY are you worried?"

"Shit," Sandy sighed. "This is exactly what you were struggling with when you raised that question before."

"Welcome to my world," I grinned, taking her hand in mine. "Sandy, if you want to date him, date him. If you don't, don't. But if I'm the reason for not dating him, then you need to decide exactly what it is you think we're doing. And we need to talk about it because that means I might need to reevaluate what I'm doing!"

"You know, I always felt your view that sex fundamentally changes people was reading way too much into it. Now I'm not so sure."

"I've made a few mistakes in that regard."

"Jocelyn?"

"Not before the accident, but after, yes. And others."

"Me?"

"I don't think so, no. But our sexual relationship HAS changed our relationship, don't you agree?"

"As you said, I wouldn't be sitting here discussing it with you if it hadn't. Would I hurt you in any way by going out with Rudy?"

"I don't think so. It's not like I'm only seeing you. And we never agreed to be exclusive, or I wouldn't have been with Kristin, to name one example."

"I know this is going to sound tacky and maybe even crude, but I bet she'd be a willing replacement!"

I chuckled, "Clarissa made that observation last night when Kristin behaved in a way that Clarissa really respected."

"How so?"

"She didn't freak out about Glenda, understood that Clarissa needed time alone with me when she came back from walking Glenda to her dorm, likes me, likes sex, and is generally pretty smart."

"Do you and Clarissa talk about everything?"

"In nauseating detail at times, but yes. I discovered my soulmate, and she's a lesbian."

"Not Jocelyn?"

"I thought she was, but given what happened between us and what I have with Clarissa, I'm not so sure."

"That kind of sucks, doesn't it."

"You mean because I can't marry my soulmate? No, actually not. Clarissa and I plan to go to medical school together, serve our Residencies together, and work together for the rest of our lives, if possible. We can do that even if we're not married. In some ways, it's easier to not be married and do that."

"Your wife will accept that?"

"Clarissa and I were talking about that. Anyone I marry, or she decides to be with long-term, will have to accept our relationship. I suppose you could say my criteria for a spouse have tightened up a bit. Orthodox and willing to accept Clarissa as my best, closest friend, with whom I'm intimate in every way EXCEPT physically."

"Who's going to sign up for THAT?"

"That's the sixty-four-dollar question. It's something I'll need to talk to this hypothetical spouse about, and Clarissa will have to talk to her long-term girlfriend about, and maybe even the four of us will have to talk together to negotiate the ground rules."

"Well, you can be sure I'm going to stick around and pop popcorn because THAT is going to be interesting to watch!"

"No kidding," I chuckled. "But unless Clarissa suddenly decides she prefers male secondary sex characteristics to female ones, there isn't another solution. And I don't expect that to happen. That's not how sexual orientation works, at least as I understand it."

"Same here. I mean, my understanding. That looney-toons Calvinist preacher who runs around campus thinks you can just decide to stop being gay; I think that's nuts!"

"What do you want to do?"

"I'd like to go out with Rudy on Friday night."

"Then do that."

"What about us?"

"Would you feel like you were cheating on him?"

Sandy was quiet for a moment, "Not yet, anyway."

"Then we have at least until Friday."

"Think they'll mind?" she smirked, squeezing my hand.

"The gang? I think they expected us to fool around! So no."

"Good!" Sandy laughed, turning and pushing me onto my back.

Thirty minutes later, we put on robes so we could head to the shower. I opened the door, and the gang, who were sitting on the couches, all applauded and whistled. I blushed, but Sandy laughed, and we went down the hall. When we finished our showers, we came back to my room to dress, and I chuckled because someone had changed the sheets.

I grabbed the laundry bag, soap, and a roll of quarters, went down to the laundry room, emptied the bag into the washer, added soap, put coins in the slots, pushed the lever in, and waited for the machine to start. Once it had, I went back upstairs.

"Was that you?" I asked Clarissa when I sat down next to her.

"Yes. Kristin came looking for you while you and Sandy were 'talking'! She said she'd be back around 3:00pm. I figured it was best to remove any evidence!"

The rest of the gang laughed. I glanced at my watch and saw it was about 2:45pm.

"Has anyone seen Angie?" I asked.

Everyone shook their heads or said 'no'.

"I saw her roommate earlier," Sophia said. "But she was talking to a guy, and I didn't want to interrupt."

"Pete, Jason, and Larry are organizing a basketball game for 3:00pm. Guys and girls, mixed teams," Robby said. "They asked us to show up."

"What about short girls?" Sophia laughed. "I could be covered by Dustin Hoffman!"

Everyone laughed.

"Then you'll just have to outsmart them!" Lee challenged.

"Let me go see if Kristin wants to join us," I said.

I left and went down the hall to 'girl territory' and knocked on Kristin's door. I told her the plan, and she agreed she'd play. She needed to change into sweats, so I said we'd meet her at the elevator, and I went back to my room to change. Ten minutes later, all of us left the building and walked to the gym.

Other than Pete, Jason, and Larry, none of us were very good, but we had a lot of fun and gave Clark and Carter some good-natured ribbing about not being able to play basketball any better than the rest of us. While we were playing, I wondered what Clark would say if he knew that he had made Emmy pregnant and that she'd had an abortion, but it wasn't my place to tell him, and as I'd said at home, it was too dangerous for anyone to tell him. It would be interesting on Saturday when Liz, Mindy, and Maggie came to visit, and Emmy didn't come with them. I'd just have to say I had no idea why and advise the girls to say the same thing.

We played for about two hours before we headed back to the dorms, exhausted and sweaty. Everyone showered, dressed, and headed to the cafeteria for dinner. I was happy to see Glenda join us and sit next to Clarissa, who was sitting on my right. Kristin was sitting on my left, at Sandy's invitation, which told me everything I needed to know about Sandy's intentions, at least in the short term.

When we finished dinner, we headed back to the dorm to relax for a bit before study time. I had just sat down when the phone rang. I got up to answer it.

"Mike," I said into the phone when I picked up the handset.

"Mike? This is Anna Wilson, Angie's friend from Cincinnati. Do you remember me?"

"I do. Is something wrong with Angie?"

"She's here in Athens and is a complete emotional wreck. I can't make heads or tails out of what she's saying. I found your home number in her address book, and your mom gave me your number at school. I thought maybe you would know what's wrong."

"I know this is going to sound clichéd, but it's complicated. Hang on a sec."

I picked up the desk phone and, carefully stretched the cord into my bedroom and, shut the door, then set the phone down on my desk.

"Sorry," I said. "There are people in my room, and I needed some privacy. How much do you know about what's going on?"

"Mostly just what she's told me before about the two of you."

Which told me very little, and I needed to be careful about what I revealed or said. That required a bit of thought, so I delayed by taking a different tack.

"How did she get there?"

"Her roommate brought her. I didn't know she was coming; she just showed up."

"Has she said anything at all?"

"Not that makes any real sense."

I had several options, none of which seemed good. Given that what Angie was saying wasn't making sense to Anna, I wasn't sure she knew much at all, except perhaps that Angie was in love with me. What I felt Angie needed, and quickly, was to talk to her counselor, but I couldn't reveal that to Anna without Angie's permission. And I wasn't sure Angie would make the call in the state she was in. But I had an idea.

"Anna, could I get your phone number? I need to call someone, but I promise I'll call you right back."

She gave it to me, and we hung up. I took out the card Doctor Hart had given me and dialed his home number, which he'd printed on the back of the card. He answered on the second ring.

"Doctor Hart? It's Mike."

"Mike? Is everything OK?"

"With me, yes. Angie had a meltdown, and I need to get in touch with her counselor. She works at the hospital and Angie calls her Ginny."

"Virginia Underwood. I know her quite well. Where is Angie now?"

"With a friend at Ohio University in Athens. I have a phone number."

"Let me call Ginny at home and have her call Angie. My advice to you is to let Ginny handle this."

"That's why I called," I said. "I couldn't think of any other good options."

I gave him the phone number, and after we hung up, I called Anna and let her know that Angie would receive a call and that she should encourage Angie to take it.

"Who?"

"Someone she knows who can help her with her issues," I said, trying to not reveal any confidences.

"Do you know what's wrong?"