I met Rudy on the #11 Lincoln Avenue bus after I had finished my shift at Goldblatts. The bus doors screeched open and in he strolled. He had this really curly brown hair, and his face was clear except for this one beauty mark near his jaw, and his teeth were straight and white. I was eighteen. My expectations weren’t that high.
He sat down next to me and said, “What’s going on?” and I said, “Not much. How about you?” and we exchanged pager numbers by writing them in red ink on the backs of our hands.
Four dates later, we ended up at his place for the first time, well his ma’s place because he still lived there. Rudy and I started making out on his bed and there was groping both ways. I pulled his hair and slid my hand down his naked chest, the hair soft between my fingers, but as my hand went lower, I discovered that wasn’t the only thing that was soft on him.
“Umm…” was all I could manage. I had a boyfriend the beginning of senior year and he was my first. It lasted thirty seconds – the sex and the relationship.
“My ma is going to come home soon, we should stop,” he said. I got off of his lap and headed home, thinking that maybe he just needed more time to get excited.
Two days later was Valentine’s Day. Rudy met me outside of Goldblatts and we boarded the Lincoln bus, grabbing the last two seats next to each another.
“I got something for you, Baby,” is how he gave it to me and I mean it as in a small heart-shaped box of chocolates with a yellow 20% off Walgreens sticker on it and a naked Valentine’s Day card. “I didn’t have time to shoplift the envelope,” he said.
I glanced at him and then around the bus. Did anyone else hear my boyfriend of four dates, who was clearly able to work yet still lived with his ma (who paid all the bills and still gave him money) admit that he shoplifted my Valentine’s Day present? (instead of: to see if anyone else caught that my boyfriend of four dates, who was clearly able to work, and still lived with his ma who paid all the bills and probably still gave him money, shoplifted my Valentine’s Day present.)
“Why did you take it? I thought you got money working construction with your uncle.”
“Just open it,” and the way he said it, I expected it to be the best thing he ever stole from Walgreens. I mean what else had he taken from there? He always had Juicy Fruit. He always had a Snickers or Peanut M&Ms on him. And he sure loved his hair spray.
The Valentine’s Day card had five panels. The front panel had these two little gray bunnies on it. One wore a tie and the other wore a pink dress with white lace trim. The boy bunny, with his paws behind his back, held a bouquet of pink and white flowers.
Some Bunny Loves You was sprawled across the top. Each panel featured the bunnies: holding hands, cuddling on the couch, swimming in little bunny swimwear. The last panel said Happy Valentine’s Day to my Bunny! In his messy handwriting, Rudy had written: Baby, I really like you, but I’m not sexualy atracted to you. Happy V Day! –Rudy.
I didn’t know what to think or say. I didn’t know what was worse — to hear, at eighteen, that I was hideous to my own boyfriend or the fact that I was dating a guy that couldn’t spell sexually attracted. After all, in two months I would be on my way to college to study English Lit.
The bus stopped and some old man with a long black coat got on and sat in the seat across from us. He smiled at me and I forced a smile back. I was still in shock. Then he looked at Rudy but didn’t smile.
It didn’t matter, though, because Rudy was looking down at the card the whole time with a big smile plastered on his face, “I’m going to go over to Pollo’s to get some.” And by some you’d think he meant sex. You’d think he was going to go lay his friend with the light blue eyes they called chicken in Spanish. But he meant some as in weed (which I wasn’t into because I was naturally high and had the munchies to prove it).
“You just wrote that you aren’t sexually attracted to me in a Valentine’s Day card.” I said it as a statement. The bus hissed and then jerked forward. The old man peeked over at us.
“I wasn’t able to get it up the other day, so it must be you,” Rudy said staring at his hands.
“Why does the problem have to be me? Maybe it’s all that weed you’re smoking.”
“Why do you have to bring weed into this? It’s not the weed or the blow,” he said, reaching into his pockets and bringing out some of that potentially-and-most-likely-lifted gum.
“Blow? Isn’t that cocaine?”
“No one says cocaine, Baby.”
Who was this guy? All I knew was that he worked construction, he was 19 or 20, he still lived with his mom (which is why we rushed the last make out session because she’d be coming back from her shift bagging groceries at Jewel’s), and that he called me Baby in an endearing way.
Now that I think about it, it might have been because he couldn’t remember my name.
“So, you coming to Pollo’s with me or not?”
“Rudy, you just told me you are not sexually attracted to me in a Valentine’s Day card,” I repeated very slowly. “And you want me to go to chicken’s house, so you can get drugs?”
“Drugs are bad for you, son,” said the old man, who was now leaning towards us. His little white mustache was thick and looked like whip cream.
Rudy just looked at him and shook his head, “Then don’t come. I was going to give you another chance to see if you could do it for me.”
“You give her a chance?” the old man chuckled. I never wanted to high five a stranger so badly in my life. “Son, I don’t know why she is even giving you the time of day,” the old man said before reaching up and pulling on the cord. A bell dinged and the bus slowed. Rudy just rolled his eyes. The old man waved at me and I waved back as he got off the bus.
“I’m not going with you,” I said. Sure, his hair was brown like chocolate chip muffins and he was a good kisser, but he just made me hate Valentine’s Day for the rest of my life.
“Fine, whatever, Baby,” he said as he stood to pull the cord the way the old man had; only he didn’t wave as he left.
“What’s my name?” I yelled out the window — too late — as I watched him walk down the street, hands in his pockets.
A couple of months later, I got a call from a number I didn’t recognize, but the voice was familiar.
“Baby, it’s Rudy. It wasn’t you. I’m in rehab and I got a hard-on this morning. I’ll be getting out soon. I want to see you.”
I often wonder how long he kept talking before he realized I was no longer on the line.
Cyn Vargas holds an MFA in Creative Writing-Fiction from Columbia College Chicago. She was selected as a writer-in-residence at the Ragdale Foundation, was the winner of the 2013 Guild Literary Complex Prose Award for Fiction, and also received two top citations in Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers contests.
Her work has appeared in Word Riot, Curbside Splendor, Split Lip Magazine, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing classes and performs at various literary events around Chicago. She writes because it’s her way of legally exposing herself in public. www.cynvargas.com