the love life of joel hoagland (page 3)

“Come to think of it, I haven’t really seen you with any boyfriends, Tamara.”

“Well then you’d better start paying more attention.”

“Joel, you’re going the WRONG way!” Fid butted in. “Tam, Joel does have girlfriends. Lots of them.”

The police car whooshed past them, sailing through the red light at the next intersection without slowing.

Joel was grinning again. “That’s right. There’s a reason my mom sends my sister along whenever I might happen to be alone with a girl.”

“It sucks,” said Fid.

“You’re telling me,” returned Joel. “Could you girls go for a cup of coffee?” Joel eased to the curb next to a local greasy spoon diner without waiting for a response. Tamara didn’t say anything.

Five minutes later they were fogging up their coffee with half ‘n half, trying to mask the burned staleness of the local brew.

“I’m going to tell you about one of my girlfriends.” said Joel. “I’m sick and tired of everybody thinking I don’t have girlfriends, so here’s the lowdown on one of my early ones.

“It was the summer of my 15th year. Our family was spending the vacation at a youth camp in Quebec, Canada. Our parents thought it would be great for us kids to have a french immersion experience, so off we went. There were two weeks of kids camps, during which I worked in the camp kitchen as a dishwasher. I also did various other jobs around the campus, from mowing lawns to skimming the pool to delivering a freshly cleaned and trimmed kerosene lantern to each cabin every night. But then the high-school camp came along, and I was transformed from linguisticly challenged day-laborer to fashionably American wonder boy. The girls seemed to like my pidgen French, and I enjoyed their tutelage. Early in the week I had fixated on a girl named Karenne. To me she was absolutely beautiful. She had wonderful big hair, the peak of fashion in the 80’s.

“The ironic thing about me as a cassanova,” Joel leaned toward the girls across the table in a conspiratorial fashion, “is that I’m actually very shy.” Tamara looked at Joel as if he had silvery-green skin and had just debarked from a flying saucer. His sister rolled her eyes and stared out the darkened window. “I didn’t know how to approach Karenne,” Joel continued, “so I resorted to the tactic of staring intensely at her whenever she was in sight. I didn’t just stare, or glare, I bored holes in the atmosphere. I smouldered, beaming telepathic messages of love directly into her brain; I sent her sonnets of love that would melt her heart and send her rushing into my arms.”

Tamara wanted to laugh, but she tried not to, looking down at her coffee and pressing her fist against her mouth. Fid glanced at Joel, glanced at Tamara, paused a beat, and then deliberately delivered a snort. That’s all it took; both girls were laughing uncontrollably. Joel waited, smiling, and nodded as if to assert the truth of his claim.

“Finally Karenne could bear it no more, and she instructed her hand maiden, a cute brunette with a unisex haircut named Nichole…” Joel paused with a slightly confused expression. “The girl was named Nichole. Not the haircut. Anyway, Karenne sent Nichole to me to ask ‘Joel, pourquoi tu est fashe contre moi?’

“After asking Nichole to slow down and repeat herself about 12 times, I finally comprehended that Karenne had assumed that my intense smouldering signified that I was somehow angry at her. I hastily assured Nichole that nothing could be further from the truth. I explained that this was customary way for stylishly American boys to indicate their amorous intentions. I don’t think Nichole bought it, but she did deliver to Karenne the important nut of the message: I had fallen hard, was smitten, and had a ‘thing’ for her.

“So began my preliminary conversations with Karenne. Nichole was always present for these stilted, cross lingual talks, and did most of the talking. It was not long before I began to notice that while Karenne was the queen of a that was beautiful, a chap could do alot worse than Nichole. She was witty, vivacious and downright scandalous. Realizing that my intrest was in Karenne alone, she went so far as to suggest that perhaps I needed two women; one to wash me and one to dry me. I was mortified and pleased. Mortified because I knew there was something fundementally wrong with this idea. I could not help but imagine a household with two women, and I couldn’t imagine it without seeing some profoundly broken hearts. But I was pleased with the surfeit of attention. At best I had a choice to make. It was only Tuesday, but this week of camp was going very well in my estimation.

“By Tuesday evening things were beginning to slide. A girl named Gilenne, with whom I had never even conversed, was spreading the tidings of my heartfelt confession of love for her. My first reaction was simply to ignore her claims. Surely this rumor, as completely unfounded as it was, could not gather steam. By wednesday morning I was confronted with my mistake: she had it that we’d spent the night together, and sealed our love for each other with long affectionate kisses on the mouth. Horrified, I rushed to Karenne (and Nichole), who were understandably confused. I swore these rumors had no basis in the truth. I barely knew who Gilenne was. Karenne (and Nichole) were skeptical and impressed.

“Gilenne a vision of awkwardness. She wasn’t fat, but was possessed of a certain solidity of limb which ruled her out for me, with my preference for petites. She had short, dull brown hair, done in some faded mix between Shirley Temple and a twenties bob. I found it to be wholly undesirable. Her skin was clear and healthy, but her nose was cute and buttonish; not to my liking at all. Truth be told, I couldn’t make a very adequate accounting of her appearance, because her lies put me in a position I did not relish; she made me revile her.

“Looking back, of course, I have to give her her due as a very enterprising young woman. Clearly she would have known that girls like the georgeous Karenne and the witty, pixielike Nichole tend to have better luck in getting boys’ attention. But she had figured out that reputation was near the core of a man. She was already playing hard ball while the rest of us were still playing T-ball.” Joel paused his story as the waitress came by with a pot of coffee, and accepted a refill.

“So which of those three girls is the ‘girlfriend’ in this story?” Tamara asked.

In your comment please indicate which of these options you choose and give a reason why.

A. Joel says, “Haven’t you been listening? Karenne, obviously!”

B. Joel says, “I wouldn’t have thought so at the time, but now I know it was Nichole.”

C. Joel says, “I gotta say, I really wonder whatever became of Gilenne.”

D. Joel says, “Whoa, look at the time! I gotta get you home.”