Waffling (Excerpt from Coming Out Of Indiana)

I met a girl in the first grade and though I can’t honestly say that I fell in love with her at that age, as I think about her now, my gut tells me I did. By the second or third grade a nickname somehow crept into use and from then on we all called her “Waffle.” Throughout grade school I told people that Waffle was my girlfriend. I don’t know that she thought of our relationship the same way, but I had convinced myself that it was so. Every year from first until fifth grade, I bought her a heart-shaped box of chocolates. One Valentine’s Day I graduated to a loftier present. My mother helped me pick out and buy Waffle a little necklace. It had only cost a few dollars, but it was jewelry and jewelry is what you buy a girl to announce that you wish to be taken seriously. When we began entering puberty I stopped delivering the perennial boxes of chocolates. I still loved Waffle as much as I always had, but adolescence brings a fear of disapproval from one’s contemporaries that can outweigh even the warmest feelings toward a “girlfriend.” I decided that I needed to grow out of a childhood display of affection and tried to play it cool.

I didn’t hit puberty; puberty hit me. Hard. It happened to me well before it did to most of the other kids my age. Overactive sweat glands helped ensure that nobody would mistake me for being cool no matter how I tried to play it. I worked hard at becoming a character who did not care what others thought of him. The truth was that the way others perceived me was the only thing on my mind. There’s nothing remarkable about feeling like you’re under a microscope at that age. The adolescent brain is a spilled chemistry set where the right hormones have been sloppily doled out in the wrong proportions. It was going to be a long journey from boy to even the very small beginnings of manhood, but even I found that little by little, my body and my awareness of it would slowly transform.

The year between age 15 and 16 was a momentous one. Girls had started to notice me just a bit. During that summer I had worked to find the right glasses, grow and style my hair. When high school reconvened at the start of my sophomore year, the student body assembled in the gym for an introduction by the faculty. As I walked up the steps of the bleachers, I spotted Waffle ahead of me in the line marching into the gym. She had always been lanky and angular, but now her long limbs folded neatly into a body that had recently grown subtle curves. The most prominent of those curves were on display and held in place by a white tank top that, without any bra beneath it, was decidedly unqualified for the job. Had it not been for the unbuttoned flannel shirt that intermittently covered the thin film of taught white cotton, she’d have incited a riot.

With only a few steps to go up the bleachers I paused, waiting for the line of classmates in front of me to continue. As I stood there, staring at her, she turned to take her seat. She twisted in place to find the section of bleachers that she was about to sit on. When she spun around I could see more curves. Her hips had widened a bit, drawing the waistband of her low-slung bell-bottoms taught. She was facing me, but looking down. Then when she began to sit she looked up. Her eyes caught mine. She bolted out of the seat she’d just taken and made a beeline to me. Her approach ended with a hug. Then she backed off a few inches and attacked me with sweet questions. “Oh my God,” she began. “I saw you come into the gym. You look so great, your glasses… your hair… what happened to you?” All of the attention and the fact that we were nearly chest-to-chest put me back on my heels. I was overwhelmed because this was genuine interest, it was tinged with sexuality, and it was all from Waffle.

Days passed, and Waffle found me once again at school. “I’ve got something for you,” she said. She handed me a rainbow of wrinkled tank top. She had tie-dyed it for me. I was speechless. The fact that she’d bothered to think of me was beyond gratifying. On top of knowing that she’d thought of me enough to make something especially for me was having the shirt itself. For it was a constant reminder of the feeling that it sent through me when Waffle had put it in my hands. The shirt offered tangible proof of her affection. I rarely wore it because, unlike my Cher albums, I couldn’t simply go out and buy a second to keep tucked away in a pristine state. It was my one and only, so I treated it like the irreplaceable treasure that it was. Wearing it would require a special occasion. Until one rolled around, I was happy just to have something from her in my possession.

A few weeks later Waffle handed me an opportunity to get even closer to her. She said, “I want you to go to this party with me.” I could see there was more to come so I waited patiently. “We’re going to get high,” she said. I was so obsessed with fitting in that I hadn’t yet looked into the possibility of breaking rules. The only parties I’d ever attended were associated with our church youth group. Waffle was such a free spirit that I felt like letting her chaperone me through new social and psychoactive frontiers would give me the balance of security and excitement I craved. I would use the party to debut my tie-dyed shirt. It would be my official “going to get high” uniform.

The flirting continued for the rest of the school year and into the next summer. We never dated, we just spent time together. We talked. Waffle would tell me the latest developments about the boy she was dating. I marveled at some of her stories and envied how freely she lived. We brushed up against the boundaries of where my role ended and where her boyfriend’s began, but I never crossed the line. True spontaneity is simply too big a risk for the hopelessly self-conscious.

Light and Love…

Me, my husband, and our girl Alex in Battery Park

Welcome to “Coming Out Of Indiana”. I’m Eddie Casson and I’m going to be sharing stories of my life- farm stories, city stories, dog stories, and stories of living and forgiving. I am writing a memoir and I will be sharing excerpts from my book. I’ll be posting often and hope you visit often.

Rock Dust (In the Beginning)

It happens in a flash, life. And it’s strange watching the outside get old while the inside feels the same. I’ve never felt young on the inside.

As a boy I would watch my mother’s reflection in her dresser mirror while she added the finishing touches to her hair and makeup. Through a cloud of Final Net, I would squint my eyes tightly, and she would remind me of Doris Day in Midnight Lace. Like all the women I adored watching on television and movies, she was beautiful.

It was exactly how I dreamed of being when I grew up. How I dreamed the world should be – filled with beauty, and glamour. I didn’t understand that a boy from the Midwest was expected to be a certain way. It was a way that I certainly wasn’t, and would never be. But beauty and glamour played no part in that expectation.

Through the thick white rock dust I could see my grandfather working the wide flat shovel. Seems there had been several types of rock to choose from and Papaw had been painstaking with his choice. Base Rock; finish rock, wash rock and pea gravel. The rocks were apparently irregular in size making it difficult to spread. Never particularly caring what anyone might hear or think, Papaw believed in expressing his opinions.  About every third Goddamn brought a gasp from Mom who was standing in the window, wide-eyed, with anticipation of the dust and grit that would (by her account) find its way inside the house.

Papaw was hilariously irreverent with his Goddamn this and Goddamn that. I was used to the men in my immediate world – my father calling me stupid and useless, with every free moment spent in church being told to be perfect. Papaw was instead wonderfully outrageous. He was my hero.

Papaw took his projects very seriously. As a truck driver who hauled rock, gravel and coal for a living, this project was intense. Papaw seemed to hold expert knowledge and skill in pretty much everything he was interested in. My father found this high level of expertise unbearable, and this perhaps explained his absence that morning. And even though Papaw threatened to drop the Goddamn shovel and walk away if my father suddenly appeared, he nonetheless talked for years about breaking his back alone, while being covered in rock dust.

Our house sat up on a hill, away from the Pike Forest road. It was small with no trees, but after my Papaw was done, it had a very elaborate rock driveway. Behind the house was a field. It was enclosed in a rusted barbed wire fence, with a gate made from wood beams and sheet metal. You could look out across the wide-open space and see our horses drinking from a small pond. A few feet from the gate was an old barn with a black tarpaper roof. One of my designated chores was shoveling horseshit out of the barn into a wheel barrel. For someone who wanted to grow up and be glamorous, this was nothing less than pure torture. Flies dancing around my head, and the horrible smell filling my nostrils. I gagged dramatically. Rolling the wheel barrel down an old dirt path leading into the woods on this particular day, I cleared my throat and began singing “The Morning After” from ‘The Poseidon Adventure.

Afterwards, sitting on the seat of the rusted out old tractor, I took a bite of my baloney sandwich and looked across the field. These were all the things found on a farm in the middle of Indiana.

“Boy, you do something right the first time and ya’ll only have to do it once.” A piece of advice Papaw reminded me of throughout my childhood. That night standing and looking out over the newly finished driveway, Papaw beamed. The rock dust had settled and almost glistened under the setting sun.  Walking the entire length of the winding driveway, he made a final inspection. I had no idea what this driveway would come to represent, but someday I would find out.