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You Never Really Know

I never really paid much attention to that little phrase. But lying in bed this Friday morning, I can’t seem to get it out of my mind. How could I have done what I did? Where did it come from? Was this part of my character just lurking there for all my years, hidden beneath the surface? Who am I, really? And what other perversities am I capable of?

Looking back, now, the fact is that ever since I was a little kid, it was not too uncommon to hear that expression bantered about in my house.

When a well respected member of the community, Dr. Harold Wilson, was hauled off in handcuffs, eventually convicted of molesting an eleven year old boy, there was my mother, with her “you never really know”.

When my dad, baseball fanatic, sat in front of the television set and watched Mark McGwire plead the fifth, all he could say was “ you never really know”.

And I remember how Jonathan, my older brother, sat me down and told me the sad news of Grandpa’s death.

He had been diagnosed with lung cancer at the age of sixty one. The doctors said they had caught it early, and after chemotherapy, he was given a clean bill of health. I was very close with Grandpa. I spent a lot of time at his house, what with he being widowed and living just a couple of doors down from us. He seemed okay to me for quite a while, but the cancer had quietly spread. For a few days prior to his passing, my dad told me not to go to his house, that he wasn’t feeling that great.

“You never really know”. Those were my brother’s words to me when I told him that I thought that the doctors had said that Grandpa had beaten the cancer.

I guess one has to be taken by surprise by a meaningful event, something real personal, to get to the stage where that phrase flows reflexively from the depth of one’s soul.

I’m now a sophomore at Monmouth College, which is in walking distance from my house. Anyway, it was Thursday night, party night, kind of late, and I was just hanging out with a couple of out of town friends who live in the dorms. They wanted to go to this pub, Doggies, which is on the outskirts of town, a good fifteen to twenty minute drive. Except no one had a car.

“David, go knock on Bobby’s door and see if he wants to go. He’s got wheels”, Andy said to me.

Now everyone started getting on Andy’s case, saying there’s no way they were going anywhere with that bigoted S.O.B.

“He’s crazy, man. On election night, when Obama clinched it, he goes around the bar cursing out every black person in sight. They would have killed him if we didn’t drag his sorry drunk ass out of that place”, Randy chimes in.

“Hey, we just need a ride to get there. After that, he’s on his own. We’ll always be able to find a ride back with someone else. You guys feel like staying around here all night?”

With that, Andy made his case. And since I was on better terms with him than the others, probably because I had the least to do with him, I was the logical candidate. So I climbed up the two flights of stairs and walked through an empty hallway. I knocked gently on Bobby’s door and there was no answer. I was ready to walk away, when I realized there’s this kind of soul music emanating from his room. My curiosity just got the better of me, I guess, and I turned the handle on his door, and to my surprise, it was unlocked.

Now I know walking in was a really stupid thing to do, but in my wildest imagination, I couldn’t have come up with the chain of events that followed.

There’s this scented candle burning. Jasmine, this attractive black girl who I know from my Political Science course, and kind of like, is naked, straddling Bobby. When Bobby catches a glimpse of me through the corner of his eye, he lunges towards the door, throwing Jasmine to the floor. He locks the door, with me inside.

Jasmine’s humiliated, and angry as all hell. She gives me this strange, half come-on, half revengeful look.

Anyhow, I have to tell you, from here on end, I think I’ll be using the expression, “you never really know”, in quite effortless fashion.

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