Caroline

The interrogation was brief.
“Have you been drinking?”
I nodded in the affirmative.
“Do you live around here?”
I pointed towards home and nodded again.
“What were you doing out there?”
“She doesn’t love me.”
“Oh. Can you make it home?”
Again a nod.
“Well, then get out of here.”

I met Caroline at a high school theatre festival. I saw her across the lobby of a theatre and was mesmerized. There was something about her. She had a smile that just sucked me in. Of course, at the time I was standing next to my girlfriend Lori, who I loved dearly, so I just smiled like an idiot. Throughout the two-day festival I would see her at shows and at workshops and we finally got to talking. We exchanged addresses and began the longest written relationship I ever had with another person. We wrote each other weekly for almost 3 years. I lived in the suburbs of Chicago and during that time she lived in southern Illinois, the Azores islands and Iowa. I really had a thing for this girl. She was absolutely lovely and had a habit of sending me pictures just to remind me of that fact.

I dropped out of college after a year and moved into the city to live the good life. Caroline was attending college in Iowa and her choir came to town. She stayed with me. I spent the day playing tour guide and that night we fumbled around in bed. I felt like Casanova, some worldly man showing her all that I knew. In retrospect it was pretty pitiful, but at the time I was ecstatic. She left the next day and we continued to correspond. I was absolutely head over heals for her and I thought she felt the same way. The following spring she invited me to visit her at school. I took a week off work and drove like a madman to the middle of Iowa. I was on fire the entire drive. This was going to be it. We were going to fall madly in love and she was going to come home with me.

I pulled up to the school after calling from the outskirts of town. She was waiting. She looked better than I had remembered. I jumped out of my beat up Toyota pick up ready for the loving embrace of the woman of my dreams. The look on her face was not what I expected. It was a look that can only be described as “oh” and a disappointed “oh” at that. I hoped that it was the truck, or the 8 hours of driving, but it was most likely the beer gut or the fact that she had a new boyfriend. However, we spent the day having fun. I met her friends and we hung out. At one point one of her friends pulled me aside to inform me that I wasn’t getting laid. I was okay with that. My plan was to be the consummate gentleman and romance my way back into her good graces. That night we talked, I expressed my feelings, which were very unrequited, and then we went to sleep in separate beds. The next day was tense. I started to notice all the good-looking, chiseled frat boys who were noticing Caroline. I was neither chiseled or a frat boy and Caroline noticed that. I began to see that we were not going to be married, have children and grow old together. The next morning I left. (I have never returned to Iowa.) I drove with my broken heart to Macomb, Illinois where my best friend, Keith, was attending college. Being my best friend and hearing my story, he new just what I needed. Alcohol. We proceeded to get drunk and he told me stories about having sex with a fat girls. It made me feel better. I rose the next morning and made my way back to Chicago. During the drive my grief returned. I could see clearly that I was going to die alone, blind and drooling in a flophouse in the outskirts of Shanghai.

I got home and began to act like a complete moron. I began drinking again. I called Caroline and told her how much I loved her and assured her that I would win her back. She was kind and understanding but let me know that I was wasting my time. I had 2 roommates and they were very understanding as I drank myself back into a lovelorn stupor. March in Chicago that year was shitty. And as I plowed through the last half of a bottle of Southern Comfort I decided I needed to get out and take a walk. I staggered out the door into a sleet storm. We lived a half a block from Lake Michigan and that was where I headed. When I got to the beach the wind was ferocious and sleet was blowing horizontally. I looked up at the sky and began to give God a piece of my mind. “WHY GOD?! WHY DOESN’T SHE LOVE ME?! WHAT KIND OF A CRUEL JOKE IS THIS?!??” I was like Lear on the heath. I finished off the bottle with a sloppy gulp and hurled it into the storm. It never landed. I charged down toward the water. At this beach there happened to be a concrete break wall that went about 50 feet out into the lake. I made my way to the end and proceeded to pass out.

Suddenly there was a bright light. I opened my eyes and was looking down a tunnel of white light. “Thank God, I’ve died.” was my only thought. I put my head back down and closed my eyes. A few minutes later someone was kicking me. “Shit, I’ve gone to hell” was my next thought. I looked up to see a Chicago police officer standing over me. He was not at all happy to be standing on a slippery concrete wall 50 feet out in Lake Michigan in a sleet storm. As waves crashed onto the wall I dragged my shivering, soaked, drunken carcass back onto the beach.

After my wet conversation with the very understanding cop, I weaved back to my apartment a broken man, unable to find love and unable to died a tragic death, the police cruiser behind me the whole way. My loving roommates then let me fumble at the door for almost 30 minutes while I tried to work my key. When I finally made it in, I walked into the living room and fell face down onto the floor.

My roommate, Denise and her boyfriend got me into bed. They were concerned about me choking on my own vomit so they told me a story about how Janice Joplin had died by choking on a bologna sandwich. So I fell asleep on my stomach and woke up on the floor. I never spoke to Caroline again.