77. young love

I thought my first boyfriend was love, and when we broke up, I cried for weeks. But after the puppy love came a relationship which shattered my previous understanding of the depth of affection two people could share. 

His name was John Thomas Douglas Dittmer, Tom for short, and he was beautiful. He was a free-spirited hippie with an easy laugh, a killer smile, and the most beautiful green eyes that I lost myself in. He had thick, lustrous, honey blond hair that he wore long, shaggy, and totally unkempt. He chain smoked Camel filters, listened to Grateful Dead, and was never seen wearing shoes. He had calloused hands, a voice that almost growled when he was being protective, and a temper that no one fucked with - but of course, he never directed it at me. I was his “Chickie,” a nickname that to this day, in memory only, softens my heart. I loved everything about him. 

I met Tom one warm winter day while hanging out behind the Roma Cafe in downtown Davis. Since being politely invited to leave conventional high school on account of my truancy, I’d taken to spending the school-time hours behind Roma, smoking cigs and drinking coffee with my girlfriends - Marja, Maya, and Savannah. I was with Marja the day I met Tom, which was a blessing, because she and I had been best friends since seventh grade, and had the easy kind of friendship which doesn’t require words. 

Tom rolled up in the alley behind the cafe, sans shoes, with another local stoner kid named BC. It stood for Brian something-or-other, I can’t remember now. Doesn’t matter. BC and Marja had been casually hooking up, an on-again, off-again Roma Rat romance that revolved around weed, forties of Snake Piss (what we called King Cobra), and whatever other drugs BC might be able to score. BC was older than us, around eighteen or nineteen, and though he didn’t have a car himself, he often hung out with kids who did. Some of them even had their own apartments, which was like, totally revolutionary for us at the time. 

The day he showed up with Tom, they’d been cruising around in Toms dark green pickup truck, smoking bowls and listening to the Dead. Though I’d been kicked out of school, I was still rocking preppy girl style of my cheerleader days, and that day I was fitted out in tight bootcut Gap jeans, a white sweater from The Limited, and white adidas sneakers. My hair and makeup were perfect, as always, and I was in a total funk, because the narc-ass Davis PD had just jacked my brand new pipe. 

I was lucky, really, because if the small blue glass pipe had been used, I could have been arrested for possession of paraphernalia. Thankfully, since it was brand new and clean, I got away with just watching some douchebag cop break it on the pavement, then give me a lecture about being a loafer. 

Tom was a turning point in my life. He represented the choice between the conventional path and going my own way. I ran away with him to San Francisco and slept on a dirty mattress in some random dudes house in the Tenderloin. When they started getting all coked out and trying to hit on me, Tom protectively bailed us out into his truck, where we camped out in Golden Gate Park. 

I remember waking up next to him, my head on his chest, inhaling deeply the musky scent of man, and feeling a strange sort of peace. We’d wake and bake, then have slow, sweet sex, kissing in a way that made me feel like I was the only woman he’d ever love. Everything we did together made me feel grown up - smoking cigarettes in the morning, drinking coffee, talking about philosophy and politics and dreams for the future. 

Tom was originally from Nebraska and he often talked about going back there, buying some land, and farming. With a mischievous grin, he’d poke me gently in the ribs and tell me I’d make a hell of a farm wife. Something about the way he said it made my heart sing. 

I would have done anything for Tom. I was utterly, totally, completely devoted to him. I loved him with every fiber of my being, and after losing him, something inside me broke. 

It was spring, and the warm valley air smelled of blooming flowers, loamy earth, and heady weed smoke. The latter wafted from the yard of a small duplex on J street, where Tom’s dark green truck was parked in the driveway.

The intoxicating combination of scents normally would have lifted my spirits, but anxiety plagued me. Walking into the enclosed front yard, I shifted my book bag and told myself I was overreacting. Tom was known for taking off for days or weeks at a time and not answering calls. It was just, usually I was exempt from his incommunicado status. But not lately.

Tom lounged on the front stoop, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette and looking every inch the dirty, disheveled hippie I loved so much. Shaggy, dirty blonde hair flopped across his forehead, obscuring his eyebrows, which raised almost imperceptibly upon seeing me. The expression of surprise quickly vanished and was replaced with a lopsided smile.

“Chickie, what are you doing here?” Tom rose from the stoop and wrapped me in a one-armed hug. He smelled of tobacco smoke and man musk. My heart soared hearing the pet name roll off his lips.

“On my way home from school,” I said, “and thought you might be here. What happened in the city? I called you like fifty times the past few days and your phone was off. I was really worried. Is everything okay?”

Again, the smile, but it was half-hearted, not reaching his eyes. “Yeah, everything’s good,” he said, “I’ve just been busy, working, you know. I got stuck in the city because the dude who was supposed to buy a pound just bailed, and I had to wait around.” Tom leaned over to put out his cigarette, then pulled a bag of American Spirit from his shirt pocket and started rolling another. “I gotta pay off that DUI. My phone died, and I lost my charger.”

I nodded, though none of that explained him not calling. I dropped my backpack unceremoniously on the pavement and motioned to the concrete step. “Can we sit? Smoke a bowl?”

“Oh, yeah, actually, chickie,” he said, looking somewhere past me, “I can’t right now. I gotta take care of some stuff. Later, okay?”

I felt myself flush as tears stung my eyes. I blinked rapidly, willing them not to fall. “Tom…” I said softly, “I feel like something is off - you know, like, with us.”

Tom shuffled his feet and looked at the ground, then took a short drag off his cigarette. “C’mon, Chickie, I’m just busy. No worries, okay?”

He wouldn’t look me in the eye, and I felt my throat tighten and stomach turn. “Tell me what’s really going on,” I said. “Please, I’m begging you.”

He met and held my gaze, and I sank into his deep green eyes. He flicked the cigarette on the ground and then sighed, his shoulders sagging defeatedly as he exhaled. “Look, everything is fine, I promise. I’ve just had a lot of things on my mind, Jamie.”

Her name hung between us in the silence. The moment stretched into a gaping chasm where there had once been trust, hope, love. 

Jamie. Jamie, his ex. Jamie, the meth addict. Jamie. 

My lip quivered as I spoke, and the tears which had threatened to fall now spilled silently from my eyes, rolling down her cheeks with solemn grace. 

“My name’s not Jamie,” I said. 

“Ah, shit,” he said, sinking back to the stoop and burying his head in his hands. “Shit, Chickie, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

The ground shifted and gave way beneath me. What was once solid had become untenable, shifting sand. Tom had become my world, and now the world was ending. With her name, just like that, we were over.

***

I felt the loss of Tom as a physical pain, like part of me had been involuntarily excised and cast off. A hot knife, stabbed into my father-wound, the place of betrayal, and twisted until the agony was complete. I missed him like I would a limb - phantom pain and all. For a moment after I woke up in the morning, I felt okay, until I remembered the loss, and the remembrance sent searing pain through my entire being. 

All the hope I had for men to be trustworthy was gone. I thought of my mother, of her collapse at the news of my dad leaving, and I understood her. I understood the moment that she sat in the closet, lost to the world, walking the razor’s edge of contemplation on taking her own life. I understood the numbness with which she walked through the world, the despair which kept her bound to her bed, the anguish of knowing she was, as she’d always suspected, not enough.

***

Excerpt from 'Sugar to Salt,' a coming-of-age memoir that may never be finished. By Amelia Travis. In loving memory of Tom, who left this world too soon.