The Art of the Grilled Cheese Sandwich

In the fall of my freshman year at university, it happened somehow that I was the one to stand in line for tickets to an upcoming concert. Never mind that I’d never heard of The Talking Heads, that I had little interest in pop music. My roommates stressed that I had to be on line early, before the Ticketmaster office even opened. “They sell out like zap,” my roommate said.

Dutifully I set my alarm, dutifully I hiked the two miles from the campus dorms to the shopping center north of town where Ticketmaster had an office, the money for tickets in my wallet. I didn’t realize that it was inside one of the department stores, so I wandered around for twenty minutes, wasting valuable time. Finally I discovered the location. I hurried down the hallway. I could see through the glass double doors that there was already a line. I reached the door and opened it. A girl was just behind me. “After you,” I said, letting her ahead of me. There were twelve people ahead of us. We waited. Several of the people in line kept looking at their watches.

After a while, the girl turned to me and said, “How many tickets do you need? I’m just getting for me, so if you want I could get you three.” I knew the maximum number of tickets any individual could get was four; I was supposed to get four. “Three would work,” I said, thinking I didn’t really have any interest in the concert; it was, after all, over my budget, not even including the train ride to the city and back. But then it occurred to me that our tickets would be for adjacent seats, and suddenly I wanted to be attending this concert sitting next to this girl.

“We shouldn’t count our chickens,” she said. “They go really fast.”

“Like zap?” I said.

She laughed. “You a big Talking Heads fan? Well, obviously you are or you wouldn’t be here.”

I thought about bluffing. But I knew I couldn’t. “Actually,” I said. “Actually I don’t know much about them.”

“Oh,” she said, surprised. “Oh, well, then you’re in for a real treat. Assuming we can get tickets.”

Just then the line started moving. It went slow. The guys in front kept checking their watches. “Come on, come on, come the fuck on,” one of them muttered.

“I’m Laura,” the girl in front of me said, having turned to face me.

“Ned,” I said.

She offered her hand. “Hi, Ned.” She was looking right into my eyes. I was looking right into hers. I’d never seen eyes like that, so beautiful and so close.

“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go,” the guy in front chanted not quite under his breath.

I wouldn’t have minded if the line took forever.

“I’m really excited about this concert,” Laura said. “These guys are the best. You’ll see. You’ll never be the same.”

The line shuffled forward. Only two people in front of us now. And then the clerk pulled down the shutter. Sold out.

“Aw shit, aw fuck, aw fucking shit,” the guy in front said, pounding his fist into his palm before storming off.

Laura looked at me. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s okay. Anyway you won’t have to sit next to that guy.”

“Hey that’s right.”

I didn’t add that she also wouldn’t have to sit next to me. I felt deflated. It must have shown in my face.

“Hey,” she said. “Sometimes they add a second show.”

I nodded.

“Well...” she said.

“It was nice meeting you,” I said. “I guess I’d better be getting back to campus. It’s a long walk.”

“Oh,” Laura said. “You walked out here? Now that’s dedication. Here, I’ll give you a ride back.”

She had a Mustang convertible, turquoise, polished to an impressive gleam. The car was from one of Mustang’s first years, but it looked brand new. When she started it up, it growled like motorcycles, but after roaring out of the shopping plaza parking lot, the car purred.

“You know what, Ned?” she said as we glided down the main road back to campus.

I waited for her to tell me.

It took her a few seconds to make up her mind. “Your name. Ned. It’s what I call things that hurt me.”

I didn’t know what to make of this. After a few more seconds, she explained. “Sophomore year I took a basic psych course. One of the articles we read was about naming your pain. They do it for cancer treatments and stuff like that. You give your tumor a name, and then you banish it.”

“You had ... cancer?”

She laughed. “No, I just named my periods. I called them Ned.”

“Did it work?” I asked.

She grinned at me. “Sometimes. The pill works better.”

We were on the other side of campus now, in a neighborhood of old two-story homes, some prim, some shabby, some friendly, quite a few blocks past the freshman dorms. I hesitated bringing up that I was just a freshman, as if she couldn’t tell. The Mustang turned onto a shady street and a moment later into a graveled drive. “Home sweet home,” Laura said, getting out of the car. I got out, too, and followed her up the two steps of the somewhat dilapidated wooden porch to a rickety screen door of a house that seemed to be prim, shabby, and friendly all at once. “My friend and I rented this place, the top floor, but she’s hardly ever around—shacked up with her psych professor.”

“The same one who... ?”

“That’s right.” As an afterthought, Laura added, “We took the course together and my friend named her ills Humphrey. That was the name of the teacher. Jeffrey Humphrey. Pretty ironic, huh?”

By now we were up the wooden stairs to the second floor. “Very ironic,” I said, as Laura unlocked the door and led me inside. “Have a seat,” she said, gesturing to a somewhat shabby but very friendly overstuffed sofa, partially covered by blankets of blue and gold. “I’m going to give you a Talking Heads concert.”

Laura picked an album from the stack on the floor next to a bookcase, slid the disc from the cardboard jacket, and set it on the turntable. “I just know you’re going to love this,” she said. She lowered the tonearm to the record. The music started.

Maybe part of it was Laura’s enthusiasm, or her interest in me, but right away I was hooked on Talking Heads. Laura sat Indian style on a heavy but also threadbare oval rug of cream and gray, facing me, looking at me while we listened. It was strange. It was exciting. When the record ended, she flipped it gracefully to the other side, confidently lowered the tone arm again, sat back down on the cream and gray oval rug, and patted a place next to her right knee. “Come listen with me.”

As gracefully and confidently as I was able—I manage not to trip or creak or stumble onto her—I sat next to her. She swiveled so she was facing me. Two or three songs later we were kissing. In the years since then, I’ve attempted countless times to replay how it was we achieved our nakedness, but I’ve never quite managed. I was wearing ordinary jeans and an ordinary gray tee shirt and white socks and gym shoes, and all these came off, somehow, without me standing up, but who had a hand on what is beyond me. I do remember looking down at my white jockey shorts, my erection bowing the front seemingly to breaking, the head of my cock nearly above the elastic. I remember her smiling at the sight. Maybe she helped me off with them, at some point; maybe they simply melted. She was wearing ordinary jeans and ordinary white cotton panties and a button-down blouse and an insubstantial bra. These all vanished. My fingers want to remember the feel of those buttons, of those breasts, of those buttons on her breasts, but the kissing occupied all that was the little of my mind. The kisses were slow and exploratory at first, then fierce and passionate. I’d never kissed a girl before. It was everything I’d thought it would be and more. We were still kissing when the album side ended, and the speakers were making those endless scratchy surf noises, but we kept on kissing, and not too long after that we were magically naked on the thick but threadbare oval rug, kissing, touching, entwined. “Be in me now,” she said, the simplest possible command, and she shifted, and I was there, and there was just the suggestion of resistance, the hint of barrier, the give of something that was also taking, like breaking through thin ice but also like sinking in river mud but also like unscrewing a vacuum sealed jar of baby food but mostly like nothing else in the world, and I was in her. It was everything I thought it would be and more. I’d never felt anything so wonderful. So impossibly good! She shifted again, and I was lost. “Oh yes,” she sighed. “Come in me now.” I was already coming. She was watching me carefully, her lips slightly parted, as I continued to pour into her. “Oh, yes,” she sighed again and again. “So good. So good. Stay in me. That’s right. Mmmm.” I stayed in her, and after a while, I don’t know how long, it could have been five minutes, it could have been ten, we started up again, and we didn’t stop for a long time. It was like a dance and we were each other’s music. I don’t know how many times she came, her hot wet center clenching my cock, our bodies juddering together. After the last time, she rolled off. I was still hard, sticking straight up. “You’re so good,” she said, staring into my eyes while her fingers lightly traced my phallus, skimming the slick skin gently up and down. “Mmmm, so good,” and then she sat up and bent down and swallowed me, or at least the top half of me, but just for a moment. “Yummy,” she said. “Do you want some lunch?”