Platinum Rush (part 1)

obsession in Savannah

Blood was oozing over my white leather, kitten heel sandal. It was the first day of class, and I had just badly stubbed my toe on the propped-open door of the classroom. I’d gotten distracted by a cute guy.

I walked over to an open desk acting like I couldn’t feel my heartbeat throbbing under my toenail. Attendance was taken, and I learned that the cute guy’s name was Tony. I kept hoping he would say something to me one day, but he didn’t. And I never said anything to him throughout the entire course of The History of Graphic Design.

On the last day of class each student had to present a final project. I don't remember the specific assignment, but I do remember thinking that the illegal music streaming site Tony built in high school, and from which he was earning over $60,000 a year in subscriptions, didn’t really meet the requirements for a final in The History of Graphic Design.

And I have a thing for people who act like the rules don’t apply to them.

Later that year we had another class together. And I saw that he would leave after the professor took attendance. Just get up and leave.

I decided to ask him out. I even wrote it down in my day planner: “Ask out Tony” jotted on the October week that college students got a discount at the carnival.

The day came to “Ask out Tony.” At class, he didn't leave after the first fifteen minutes; so I thought he'd stay until the end. (We were only allowed four absences.) Halfway through, he got up and left so quickly that even though I rushed to pack my things and run through the hall and down the wooden stairs after him, he was already at the end of the block when I got outside the building.

I yelled his name. He turned around expressionless and walked towards me. I asked if he would go to the fair with me on Thursday. He said no, he had plans.

I had been turned down for dates at least a dozen times in the past year and twice just in the past two weeks for this exact invitation to the fair — once by the garage-rock loving student DJ who had the late-night radio shift before me and again by the curly-haired barista at Gallery Espresso. So I wasn't surprised. But I was surprised when he said "Can I take you to dinner another time?"

We exchanged phone numbers and then walked in opposite directions.

When we saw each other in class again, he said that he had texted me. I laughed, “Oh I don’t have a cell phone. I have a landline that I never answer. It goes straight to an answering machine after one ring.”

He asked if I’d like to get sushi for dinner that weekend. I did, and I thought it would be fun to do a double date. I wanted to bring my friend Reba along. She was a receptionist at the same architectural firm where I was a receptionist. And she shared my interest in earning more than $6 per hour by possibly becoming a stripper — both things I brought up at the sushi dinner double date.

I was twenty years old and hyper feminine and self-absorbed and certain of my successful future in the fashion industry.

Tony was twenty-one and one of the strangest people I'd ever met. He believed that within a few decades his brain would live in a computer. He loved electronics as if they were dear pets. He liked the pulsing, breathing glow of the Apple logo on his MacBook, which he kept standing on its side instead of lying flat, saying it was better for the disc drive. He was obsessed with house music and particularly with Daft Punk and their motorcycle helmet robot heads. He loved all colors but especially red and silver.

I loved his deep voice and his squinty eyes and colorful, popped-collar polo shirts. I loved how he taught me things I knew nothing about: mostly computer geek stuff. He started by telling me I should not be using Internet Explorer and Yahoo! to find things on the internet. Within one week of knowing him I was not only using Google, I had an account on OiNK, an invitation-only private BitTorrent site. He set me up to seed the entire Adobe Creative Suite which gave me a seed-to-leech ratio so high that I was able to download any music I ever wanted.

We both loved music. Just not the same kind.

I lived in such a shitty apartment that I called it “the dungeon.” It was a low-ceiling, basement level of one of those historic Savannah townhouses, also known as a garden apartment. A Thai woman ten years older than me was living in the apartment when I moved in. The carpet was filthy and had fleas, but neither of us could afford a vacuum cleaner. So I bought a few rolls of duct tape and covered the carpet in strips, then pulled up the tape all sticky with hair and dirt and bugs. My bedroom had no window at all. The window in our living room faced a gravel parking lot between an Irish pub and a 24/7 gas station. It was not uncommon to see men at night pissing on the side of our apartment. The dungeon was infested with cockroaches, and I had to buy a mosquito net to keep them from crawling on me in my sleep.

But it didn’t occur to me to be embarrassed by my apartment, and after our sushi date I later invited Tony over to my place for dinner. I decided to buy shark filets even though I’d never cooked anything in my whole life.

I’m not exaggerating. I had never even fried an egg. I lived off Frosted Mini Wheats and microwaved frozen dinners and Cold Stone Creamery cakes. Tony came over and the shark dinner was gross. He invited me to come see his place.

Goodness gracious, Tony’s apartment. It felt huge. Twelve foot ceilings and windows looking out over handsome Gaston Street. His kitchen was big and his living room was spacious and his bedroom was, too. His apartment had a turret! Like a fairy tale castle.

His place looked like it had been done by a professional interior designer. Because it had. His mother was a professional decorator and sister of one of the most famous interior designers in America.

I was used to guys with mattresses on the floor and showers covered in grime. I didn’t even know life could be like this for a college kid.

When I saw Tony in class again, I asked him to skip and hang out with me. He said he couldn’t because he already had four absences, and the professor told him he would fail the class if he left early again. Instead, Tony handed me his apartment keys and said I could go to his place. Then he said I should go to his place, and that I could go to his place whenever I wanted.

He followed through on that comment by always leaving his garage door unlocked for me.

One day I came over and sat next to him on his feather-stuffed sofa, nuzzling into his brightly colored polo shirt while he took hits from his bong. House music was playing as always; endless monotonous-to-me DJ sets from Europe.

I picked up a long, rectangular metal thing off of his coffee table and said “What is this?” He asked me what I thought it was. I said I had no idea.

“Try to guess,” he said calmly. I looked at the symmetrical rows of square-ish cavities on one side. I shrugged. “What does it look like?” he asked me.

I said that it looked like a telephone hotel. “That’s a good guess. That’s kind of what it is,” he replied. And then he explained it was an Ethernet switch and how it worked.

Tony was the first guy I ever met who treated me as if I was easily capable of knowing anything he knew.

I didn’t have to prove to him that I was smart. And he didn’t let me hide my wits behind my curled hair and high heels and declared fashion major.

All the time, I felt like I had to demonstrate that I wasn’t stupid. I was accused of plagiarism in college twice because the professors couldn’t believe what I turned in to them was my own writing.

Once when I walked up to my graphic design professor to let him know that I would need to leave class early, I began to explain that Target — “is having a really big sale?!” he interjected.

“Funny,” I said. “No, Target is interviewing me for a design job.”

But back to Tony. He was good looking and his voice was so deep and his apartment felt more like home than my own, and he was making what seemed a fortune to me from his cyber streaming scheme. A cease and desist letter from the BBC was taped to his fridge next to a letter written by a prison inmate praising his site.

I loved how he lived his life as if anything was possible and the rules simply didn't apply to him.

He drove us to breakfast one Sunday but there weren't any parking spots because it was church time. He double parked on the street and got out of the car. When I told him he cannot leave his car there, he said “There is nowhere else to park.”

After we ate breakfast and returned to his car, there was a parking ticket on his windshield. When we got back to his apartment, he tossed the small, white envelope into a pile of other identical small, white envelopes and then turned on his music. Four-four-beat electronica pumping out of speakers in every room, even in his bathroom. He seemed to know something I didn’t. He seemed kind of amazing.

Once while cuddling in his navy, high thread count sheets, I said he is such a distinct character that he should be in movies. He said matter-of-factly, "I think I'd like to be an actor. Maybe in my next life." He wasn’t saying “next life” in an adage sort of way. He meant it.

He believed he’d live forever through technology. There was such a profound sense of possibility in this boy that I felt like we were made from the same substance. I felt related to him.

I liked the way Tony teased me. Curled up on his couch with as much of my body as I could get into this lap, he pressed my open palms together and made a fist around my index fingers. With his other hand he reached behind my neck and flipped my long hair over into my face. I couldn’t see and instinctively tried to brush the hair out of my eyes but he squeezed my fingers preventing me from moving my hands. I squealed from being unexpectedly immobilized. He laughed.

Another time, I accidentally knocked over my water glass on his coffee table. I looked at him the way a toddler looks at their parent after making a mess, waiting for his reaction to know whether or not I should be sorry, and he said slowly, “You fuck up my whole life.” I thought that was funny because days earlier he told me I was the most profound thing to happen to his life.

And the kissing was otherworldly. I went to class one morning with a purple bruise on my bottom lip so large that someone asked if I had just eaten a grape popsicle.

"Nahhhh. I was makin’ out allllll night long," I said dreamily on two hours of sleep.

I decided I wanted to lose my virginity to Tony. I got on birth control for the first time; the shot.