Sam

Living on your own can sure change the way you look at your parents. I got along great with mom and dad now that I'd seen what it was like to support myself. I was tired of my bad roommates and I wanted to make a frest start. I was only 17 so I didn't feel too bad about moving back in with the folks for awhile.

I was isolated out in Rocklin, a suburb of Sacramento where my parents had built a house. My friends would come visit, including Gretchen, but we were just friends again and I had little chance of meeting new girls. I hung out in my parent's garage painting and lusting over the neighbor across the street. A young mom and housewife, she was perfect fantasy fare. I never got up the nerve to do anything more than say hello when I walked across the street to get the mail from cluster of mailboxes which sat in front of her house.

Christian and I signed the rental agreement on a one bedroom apartment in downtown Sacramento. We'd be moving in on my 18th birthday. Gretchen and I caught the bus to check out my new place. We peaked at it from outside and got some coffee around the corner. I could walk around the corner and get a cup of coffee. That ruled.

We walked my neighborhood and beyond. A light rain started and we stopped at a construction site for shelter. We found a working elevator to make out in as it went up and down the steel framework that would someday be a building. We were so close to going further as we rubbed our bodies together and let our hands wander beneath each others clothes but we were afraid someone would catch us and so the clothes remained on. It was dizzying and wonderful and then more coffee and more rain until finally we had to get on seperate busses toward home.

I was excited about this new life and I was excited at meeting girls who lived downtown or on distant planets as of yet unknown to me. I didn't call Gretchen for a while.

My friend Ryan and I went dancing. I met a girl and while I didn't get her number, I did find out she worked at a popcorn and candy store in Old Sacramento (the tourist section of downtown.) Eventually a visit to her work and still no phone number would let me know nothing was happening. For now though, the night was young and I was ready to meet more girls.

We wandered through a parking lot where we came across a VW Bug with three attractive young women inside. Amazingly we convinced them to stop and then to let us in their cars. Ally was adorable with very short brown hair and a long neck, but I set my sights on Sam. She had soft honey blonde corkscrew curls and she was feminine in every way. Once in the car the girls wantd to know where they were dropping us off.

"We're going wherever you're going." we shouted. Ryan was a strange one. He looked strange with bulging eyes, a rail thin face and body and a long mohawk. He acted even stranger. Ryan would smash the state by spewing nonsequiters and pointing out the obsurdity of everyday life. We were back out of the car before it even got out of the lot. I had two phone numbers in my pocket.

I ended up at a diner with Ally a week later. I talked about Sam.

"Oh, you wear white tube socks. That's cute." Ally observed.

I was sure she didn't mean cute. I was sure she meant 'What a dork.' These girls came from family's with money, more money than I was used to anyway, and I felt self concious about not being rich. The truth is my parents were fairly well off now, but I didn't feel like I could blend in with the upper middle class as well as I'd blended in with the poor. I'd grown up in very different circumstances. I liked to be able to blend in though. I wanted to be able to win the acceptance of everyone I met, weather I really wanted that acceptance or not. If I was not to be friends with a person that was fine, so long as it was my choice, on my terms.

I scrounged up some money and asked my mom to take me shopping as I was without a car. She insisted in chipping in a few dollars of her own to help me get some new duds.

With my cool new clothes I was ready to hang out with Sam. I called her up and we met for coffee. I walked her to her house where she lived with her family.

"I've got to practice my cello." she told me. "You don't have to go, but, you know, it'll be pretty boring."

"I'd love to see you play the cello." She showed me in. Nobody was home and she didn't seem weird at all about having me join her in her bedroom. There was only one chair, the one she'd sit on to play cello. She offered to grab somthing for me to sit on but I told her I'd be comfortable sitting on the bed. The bed was raised up on stilts with a desk underneath it. I sat up near the ceiling, looking down on this gorgeous seen of a beautiful girl playing a cello, which I decided then and there was the sexiest instrument in the world. I wasn't getting anywhere with Sam but I loved where I was. I'd escaped my day to day life, at least for a moment. I pulled out my notebook and tried to draw the image with as few lines as possible. I would continue playing with this drawing for the next few months.

I saw Sam and Ally again when I went to Ally's graduation. It was strange having my class graduating and I hadn't really gotten much done durring the year I'd skipped. That was the last I saw of Sam. I'd see Ally again.

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