Billie Girl

Chapter Sixteen

Since we didn't make love, it left us with plenty of time to just talk.

One story I never forget was how, at the age of thirteen, Blake had a girlfriend who was twenty- one. She was a God-fearing girl, but had not yet found the right man to marry and was willing to give up her once-cherished virginity as well.

They first made love, he told me, while walking on that path near my house. The one where everyone walked their dogs. There was a small stream that flowed next to the path, and there were small over-pass bridges. He made love to this older woman under one of those bridges. She had initiated the whole thing by suddenly shoving him to the ground where he tumbled down a small hill and almost slid into the stream. She then straddled him in a most aggressive way.

Her name was Belinda, and she was planning to leave him very soon to go to Law School in Indiana. Blake said she was petite with long straight brown hair that went down to the small of her back. She wore triangular spectacles that gave her that sexy librarian look. I asked Blake what the first time was like for him, and he said it was much better than it had been for Belinda who told him she didn't plan on doing it again for many years. He said it hurt her quite a bit and she limped as they walked back on that path towards her house.

She later broke his heart by attending a Radiohead concert with another guy. Blake got so riled up that he waited outside of the stadium with the intention of confronting Belinda and her date. After the show, when the concert-goers streamed passed him, he stood perfectly still, but never spotted her. He was so upset that night he vomited right there in front of the stadium and finally had to just sit down on the concrete. Security had to carry him away to be treated at a medic station where they called his mom, and she had to pick him up.

Oh yes, and shortly thereafter he was hospitalized for six days because he refused to eat anything but chicken broth. He told his parents he was trying to stop time.

Some other facts about Blake...he only wears black cowboy boots with his black jeans. Even his socks are black. Some more cool tidbits about Blake for one: he wore oversized boxers. And yes, they were black too. And when he spoke to you, he never looked away, even for a moment. It was like his eyes were drilling a hole into yours. When he threw a party, he used to station himself in one spot and let the party come to him. He never danced, but he would stand near me and watch me dance alone.

For seven years he could not get over Belinda. I was the first girl that got him to stop thinking about her. He never tried to win arguments. Suddenly he would just say, "I don't want to argue" and leave a verbal spar midair, and neither person got to win. He loved to kiss my hands. He loved my mother because she was still beautiful and he said he couldn't wait until the day I started to resemble her. Girls came onto him all the time and he told them, "If you knew what my feet smelled like out of these boots, you would not be so keen on me." even though it wasn't so. His feet smelled just fine. He rarely shaved, preferring to leave the "five o'clock shadow" stubble look. That is unless he was growing a beard, which was quite often. He had bedroom eyes which meant that, with his messy mop of brown hair, it always seemed like he had just woken up. And yes, one last thing: he had a very special scar on his right arm from back when he used to cut himself. He told me that when he cut himself (after the incident at the arena with Belinda) he could just concentrate on the physical pain and stop going over things in his head.

With a hunting knife he had carved a scar into his arm which looked like: B + B. Which were our initials: Blake plus Billie. Though sometimes I doubted that and was sure that it really meant: Blake plus Belinda (his first love). Either way that scar proved that he, like me, loved way, way too much.

Blake was always happiest when he was talking to his friends. That's all he lived for. He loved to keep in touch with everybody, and I thought that was admirable. There was still no way I could keep track of all of them. Some lived in New York, some lived in Israel, Los Angeles, St. Louis, and he didn't keep in touch with them on Facebook. Nor did he text them. He kept in touch the old-fashioned way: he called them personally. And he was relentless. If they didn't pick up, he left messages. And if they were busy, he would ask when they would be free, and he jotted down the time. Then he called again at that specified time. He was more persistent than a telemarketer. On the bulletin board in his room were time zones, best times to call, phone numbers, and pictures of his friends all pinned up like a crazy collage. He told me he was not going to let Facebook change the way that he perceived reality. He said it wasn't enough to just press a "like" button and leave it at that.