The Victim

Lance Jenkins was thinking about the girl who sat next to him in class today. How had he not noticed her before? She was a tall blonde with incredible legs. He’d had trouble concentrating on what the professor was saying because of those legs. The highlight of the day was when she’d smiled at Lance when he caught her eye. Was that a signal? Next week he’d definitely say something to her. Maybe think of a question to ask or a comment to make. It had been two months since Lance had broken up with Seneca. Who was he kidding, she’d dumped him. Hurt like hell at the time but he’d bounced back. He was totally ready for that chick in class, Definitely talk to her next week. Lance looked at his watch, about quarter to five. Not much to look forward to the rest of the day. Laundry, dinner, studying then to bed fairly early cause he had an early morning class. Maybe smoke a joint with Rob. Should call home and see how Mom was doing. She’d been down with the flu for a week. Lance thought back to class. He was obsessed with that chick’s legs. He imagined her naked. Oh man, he thought, to really see her naked would be incredible. But was Lance setting himself for disappoint? Girls like that usually had boyfriends. Hell she was probably living with someone. Lance thought maybe he’d be better off asking out that new girl who’d moved into his apartment complex. What was her name? Sarah? Yeah that’s it. She’s cute. The mental image of her from the day before wearing cut offs and smiling at him was his last thought before the bullet entered the back of his skull. There was a moment, a fraction of a fraction of a second of pain then blackness. Nothing. Lance fell to the ground with a thud. Dead.

Twenty-three years old. Raised in a comfortable suburban home with a younger brother and an older sister a dog and a cat and two wonderful parents. It had been a mostly idyllic childhood. Lots of friends, a few enemies. Some really cool teachers and some who were jerks. The broken arm when he was nine. The first joint when he was twelve. First kiss when he was thirteen. The trip to Yellowstone. The trip to New York. The trip to Disneyland. His first NFL game. Loss of virginity at sixteen. Being really good at football, making all conference but later the realization he wasn’t good enough for college ball. The girlfriends. Marci senior year. They were so close. So happy but she went back east for college. There was the incredible freedom of college. Meeting new people from all over the state and outside the state and even from outside the country. Getting drunk sometimes. Great parties. Finally getting interested in school. Settling into a history major. The first trip to Europe. Seeing London and Paris. In the MA program. The decision to  someday be a high school teacher and football coach. His brother Sean doing great getting a football scholarship to Notre Dame. Big sister Deena getting in law school. Life had had some ups and downs but Lance had mostly been happy and there was so much to look forward.

Had been. He was laying face down on the street now. No warning. Just dead in an instant. No future. No present. Just a past that would only exist in other peoples’ memories. Their versions of HIS life.

The person who’d shot Lance was on the roof of a three-story apartment building. His name was Corey and he’d actually been in a Freshman English with Lance before dropping out of school. As soon as he’d shot Lance he shot a girl named Tina who was walking toward Lance and had just realized that she knew Lance from a party. She was going to say hi but then saw him fall. Almost before she could react a bullet hit her in the forehead and she too was dead.

It was a busy street just off campus with lots of students leaving for their residences or coming to campus for an evening class or to study. It took a few seconds after the second victim fell before people reacted. Some screamed. Some hid behind a car or tree. Others ran. Several made 9-1-1 calls.

The first two targets were easy but now people were moving erratically or hiding. Corey started shooting wildly. Most of his shots missed but he did had four people. Two died, one instantly, one later that night. Two were injured. 

Corey scrambled down off the roof  he’d used as his sniper’s nest, using the fire escape. He’d do the rest of his damage on foot then use his pistol  to shoot himself. He ran into a store and started shooting. Two more people died and two more injured. For some reason he couldn’t make himself go beyond the first cash register. He felt it unsafe to go further into the store. Corey stepped outside and immediately started shooting into a laundromat. One person got a superficial wound. He looked up and down the street. There was nothing interesting and all the noises blended together and sounded like obnoxious white noise. Corey’s head hurt like hell. He noted some of his victims laying in the street. More than anything else it made him think of the video games he played. But he couldn’t find anyone else to shoot. He looked up at an apartment and saw faces in the window. He started shooting. He wounded two more people.

Then the cop cars came. Corey crouched into a shooting position. A police sharp shooter who Corey couldn’t see hurriedly got in position. Corey took aim at a police car and fired. In the next instant the sharpshooter’s shot hit Corey in the throat. For a second, almost two, Corey felt horrible, the rush of blood, the choking in his throat the incredible pain but then he too was dead.

In the aftermath people were baffled. Sure, Corey’s father said, Corey had struggled with mental problems but nothing all that serious, some depression, social anxiety. He’d had trouble making friends and had had no luck meeting girls. But there was never the slightest indication…..

The victims were mourned. Six dead. Another paralyzed. Memorial services were held. There was a candlelight vigil. Crisis counselors were on hand. Families of the victims expressed sorrow, shock and anger. Everyone was angry. Everyone was saddened. Journalists and commentators picked over the story for a week. Politicians spoke of the tragedy of this senseless violence, they offered thoughts and prayers. One of the state’s senator’s offered a gun control bill. It died in committee.

It was as dead as Lance Jenkins. 

Sexual Lessons From the Revolutions, The Sarah Levin Affair

The following story is set during the Third World Liberation Front Strike at U.C. Berkeley in early 1969. It was in the original draft of my as yet unpublished novel, The Blood of Love.

We were taking a five-minute break during a meeting of the White Allies of the Third World Liberation Front at Sarah’s house. It was in the early days of the strike. I barely knew Sarah. She’d always seemed overly-serious to me, rarely smiling, impatient with side chatter or quips. Sarah had long dark frizzy hair that was evidently immune to brushes. She wore glasses with huge rims, no make up, frumpy dresses or baggy jeans. But she was not unattractive. There was an earthiness to her, she had big brown eyes and a pleasant welcoming face — on those rare occasions when she smiled. I’d always considered her the ideal activist: well-informed, zealously dedicated and intelligent. Beyond that I’d given her little thought, so was surprised when she strode over to me and whispered in my ear, “after the meeting breaks up would you care to stick around and talk?”

Why the hell would she want to have a one-on-one conversation with me? Though I was active in the strike, I didn’t have a significant role and rarely spoke in meetings. “I’ll miss my ride home,” I told her. Sarah lived in central Berkeley a healthy walk from my house. 

“Don’t worry about it, I have a car.” 

She wanted to talk to me enough to give me a ride home after? Okay, I said, still baffled.

Sixty minutes later everyone was leaving and Sarah’s housemates were preparing for bed. My friend, Cyrus Hart, who had been my ride over, asked if I was ready to go. “I’m sticking around for a bit,” I said. Cyrus looked as confused as I felt.

Once everyone was gone, Sarah sat down next to me on her lumpy sofa. 

“So what did you want to talk to me about, Sarah?”

“Nothing serious,” she said and for the first time since I’d known her, she smiled broadly.

“Oh?” My confusion doubled.

“Look, let me be straight with you, I thought you could spend the night.”

“Me?” A dumb question. But I was in an advanced state of befuddlement.

“Do you have a lover, David?”

“Not exactly, no. I have a girl who’s back in Minnesota —”

“I don’t either. Too busy.”

“So…you want me, you want us to —”

“I thought we could try it. No commitments. Just give each other pleasure.”

I hadn’t been with anyone since Jada, who was different from Sarah in too many ways to count. Since that bastard Ian had dumped Cordelia — thank God — I no longer felt compelled to have compensatory sex. But it had been awhile — one month and eleven days — since my last fuck.

“Well? Did I freak you out? Are you thinking about it or what?”

I looked at Sarah. She took off her glasses. Goodness, without them on on she was pretty. One part of my anatomy was ready to take Sarah up on her offer.

“I’m on the pill, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

I was silent.

“Okay, well, if you’re not into it, that’s cool I — ”

“No, no, that’s not it. You took me by surprise. Can I ask you, first, why me?”

“Ahh, good question. Well, David, you’re attractive and frankly I haven't done it with a goy in a long time. Hey, maybe you’ve never done it with with a Jewess. A lot of the other men around the committee have someone or don’t turn me on.”

“I turn you on?” 

“Don’t sound so surprised. So what do you say? You’re not queer are you, which is cool if you are but — ”

“No, no, I’m —”

“Is it that you’re a virgin? Because that — ”

“No. I’m experienced.”

“Well?”

I’d warmed up to the idea and now that I was looking closely at Sarah, saw that she was attractive in an unconventional way that I wasn’t used to. So by way of answer I started kissing her. After a few seconds Sarah broke away, “I take it that’s a yes.”

The next morning while driving me home Sarah asked, “so are we cool to do this again?”

“For sure.”

“Great. I’ll let you know when.”

I had a lover again, this time one who would set the terms for our assignations as she had set the terms while we were in bed. As when she ran a meeting, Sarah was totally in charge and specific about what she wanted done. This was new to me — I enjoyed it.

Sarah was also loud during sex, while I took this as a great compliment. I worried about waking her housemates, especially if walls were thin.

A few days later Sarah was next to me on the strike line, “you want to get together tonight?”

“Sure, why not come to my place?”

That she did. Benny and Rupert were home. I invited them to join us while we smoked pot. As the four of us talked it soon became obvious that Sarah liked Benny as they were fellow Jews born into activist families.

After we repaired to my bedroom, Sarah gave me an unsolicited rundown on my housemates. “Rupert has a lot of affect to him. He’s pretentious, but also bright. Benny could be a cousin or brother to me. It sounds like we've got identical parents.”

“Maybe you want to be with Benny instead of me,” I said half-joking.

“No way. It would feel incestuous.”

“Okay, so what’s your capsule review of me?” I asked.

“Extremely intelligent and extremely cute.”

That was prompting enough for me to start kissing Sarah but she put a hand firmly on chest pushing me away.

“Not yet, young man. I’ve got a few ideas for how we’re going to approach this.”

I was intrigued.

“We’re going to strip naked then lay facing each other about an inch apart without touching while talking dirty. The first one who touches the other loses.”

“So what happens after someone ‘loses’?”

“We fuck. But you’ve got to legitimately try to restrain yourself.”

“I’m game.”

Naturally I lost, though I managed to hold out longer than I would have expected.

Sarah woke me up in the middle of the night and not only told me that we were going to make love, but exactly how. Sometimes she proposed a conventional coupling, other times she came up with something out of the back pages of the Kama Sutra (a book she had a careworn copy of by her bed). I was perfectly happy for Sarah to dictate the what’s and how’s of our love-making being constantly amazed at her innovations. Sex with Sarah was not not only enjoyable but, given its permutations, I was getting a great education that I could share with Cordelia.

I knew our relationship wouldn’t last, but I also knew I was going to thoroughly enjoy however much of it there was.

Between fucks we talked. More accurately, Sarah launched into political monologues with me asking an occasional question or offering a comment. Sarah spoke of the strike, the war, women’s liberation, the oppression of gays and anti-semitism. Usually she spoke in long breathless paragraphs. There was something calming about listening to Sarah despite her nasally voice. I was frankly not used to being in bed with such a verbose, articulate, intelligent woman. It was like I was having lectures mixed in with my love-making. I was not falling in love with Sarah but I had tremendous admiration — as well as lust — for her. I realized that we were using each other but as there were no illusions on that count it was fine. I liked have a sexual and political mentor. Sarah liked having a pupil willing and able in both departments.

During the TWLF strike I saw Sarah almost every day, either on campus or at a meeting. We never spoke, other than to arrange our next assignation, of which there were usually two to four a week.

We eventually settled on using my house as the walls were thicker and thus housemates were not disturbed by Sarah’s prodigious vocal accompaniments to our love-making.

With one exception we never did anything socially other than fornicate. The lone exception was a party at Steven’s. Sarah had asked if we could have one of our trysts. I started to say my usual, “love to” when I realized it was the night of Steven’s birthday party for Jason.

“There’s a birthday party tonight for a friend that I can’t miss it. Why don’t you come with me? We’ll have a few drinks, leave early then go back to my place.”

“This is NOT something we do as part of our arrangement,” Sarah replied as if I were violating the terms of a contract.

“The exception that makes it the rule,” I offered lightly.

Sarah looked grim as if pondering a serious issue. I thought she might be angry. Seconds went by as she remained in studied concentration.

“Surely there’s no harm in — ”

“All right. This one time. We’ll go for a couple of hours — tops.”

“Good deal,” I smiled.

Steven, Jason and several others were wearing party hats. Guests blew on noisemakers of the variety usually seen on New Year’s Eve. Along with the usual booze in the kitchen there was the biggest birthday cake I’d ever seen. In addition to saying “Happy Birthday Jason,” a large fully erect penis was drawn on it with icing. It was Jason who pointed that feature out to me, saying, “this part is for me,” as he squealed with delight.

Sarah and I walked onto the back deck where Izzy greeted us, the two knew one another. “We lived in the same dorm freshman year and had a couple of classes together,” Izzy told me. The pair started chatting in the way of old friends catching up, so I circulated the party wondering if they were comparing notes on me. The idea initially made me paranoid but then I convinced myself that they’d certainly both award me high marks.

When I re-united with Sarah she told me that Steven was also a past acquaintance. “Where did you know him from?” I asked, assuming it was a class.

“We were lovers.”

I nearly spat out my drink. I’d have been less surprised if Sarah had told me they had worked in the circus together.

“We met at a meeting of gay, lesbian and bisexual students,” she told me as if that summed up the whole affair.

“What were you doing at a meeting of gay, lesbian and bisexual students?”

“David, I fit in the third group.”

“You’re bi?”

“Please, David, bisexual and yes, I’ve enjoyed sex with women as well as men although lately — especially since I started in with you — I’ve had a preference for men.”

“But Steven, he’s —”

“There was a time when he experimented with the ladies, or at least with me.”

“My God.”

“So you learn something new every day my gentile lover.”

“But how was he, I mean did he enjoy —”

“It was clear from my experiences with Steve that his heart wasn’t in it. Oh, he tried and did a passable job, but he himself told me it simply wasn’t for him.”

“My God.”

“Let’s drop the subject.”

I did but I wondered if I should pursue it later with Steven. Maybe he’d be mortified that I knew. Then again given his willingness to discuss anything, he might be glad to talk about it. 

Later Sarah and I were on the sofa when Steven joined us.

“My dear David, please tell me that there has not been a cosmic error, inform me here and now that you have not paired off this malodorous creature.”

“Hi, Steven, nice to see you,” Sarah said.

“Hello darling, it’s been ages. Aren’t you a few centuries too old for comrade David here, not to mention a million times too earnest?”

I might as well have not been there.

“David and I are seeing one another solely for the purposes of  sex. This is our one and only ‘date.’”

“What witches brew did you concoct to lure my young friend?”

“Steven, you have not lost a whit of your charm, understandable given that you hadn’t any to lose.”

Finally I was addressed. “David, did you know Shakespeare based the witches in MacBeth on Sarah. Although he had to tone them down lest anyone believe such a creature possible.”

“Yes David and did you further know that Edvard Munch’s The Scream is a painting of someone seeing Steven naked.”

I was enjoying Sarah and Steven’s verbal jousting but suddenly felt emboldened to bring up their affair. “Sarah tells me you two were lovers.”

Steven’s head lurched backwards for one of his patented cackles. When it finished he said, “my failed experiment with heterosexuality. Suffice to say that Sarah made me even more gay. Merciful heavens, of all things we met at a gays meeting. Maybe that’s why I no longer attend them.”

“How’ve you been, Steven?” Sarah asked.

I left the two to chat for a bit while I tracked down Izzy. As much as I looked forward to whatever sexual games or gymnastics Sarah had in store for me later, I wished I were spending the night with her. But Izzy was talking to a man of about her age, in my imagination it looked a certainty that they were destined to spend the night together. I sulked off. 

When Sarah finished catching up with Steven, we left, walking to my house in silence. I had images of Sarah and Steven fumbling together in bed and other images of Izzy and I attaining incredible crescendoes of love-making. By the time we go to my place I determined to turn my focus on Sarah, I veritably drooled in anticipation of what she would have us do in bed. But much to my surprise once in my room Sarah merely undressed, got under the covers and signaled me to join her. What followed was what I described to Rupert the next morning as: Basic Love Making 101, A Review. Pretty pedestrian stuff but enjoyable nonetheless. In the aftermath I asked Sarah why she’d opted for standard fare. 

“I only wanted to be held, kissed and screwed. It felt good.”

I didn’t pursue the matter any further.

As it turned out we got together only more time, four days later. Sarah had us slow dance naked, then perform what is called a sixty-nine, the first time I’d attempted this tricky maneuver, one that I found vastly overrated. After that we made love in several different positions. I was beginning to feel like it was a bit too much, as if Sarah had us going through all manner of contortions only for the sake of it. There was something desperate and sad about such exertions. I could sense that our relationship was running out of steam.

The next time I saw her was the day the strike ended. Sarah walked up to me in the middle of Sproul Plaza, “Thank you David for the incredible sex. I enjoyed it. You’re a good lover and a real mensch. I’m sure you’ll stay active in the movement. With the strike over we’ll not be seeing each other so often, anyway it’s time.”

Oddly, I was relieved. “Thank you too, Sarah, our time together was  a lot of fun, I’ll always remember you fondly.” I gave myself full marks for a gracious exit.

Sarah looked at me as if in sympathy then kissed me on the cheek, the first public display of affection we’d shared.

As I watched her walk off campus, I had the conflicting feelings that Sarah and I could never have lasted and that she was absolutely fantastic and I wanted to bring her back home with me. But I knew the relationship lasted exactly as long as it should have.