Jake and Darcy, Part Six

My thoughts are suddenly very scattered.

I make a left on Tuckerton and head out towards Tabernacle.

One of the things I like about Jen is that she enjoys talking, and unlike me, she is very good at it. She can turn the mundane into something interesting. And living where we do, there is a lot of mundane to be had. Well, there used to be, before my brother decided things should take a different path.

She’s rooting through the backpack.

“What did you bring?”

“Refreshments.”

“Oh, I already ate with my mom.”

“Not food, moron.”

“Oh.”

Jen rummages in the backpack and pulls out a CD. This experiment was not successful on our first date. I’m not real opinionated about music, but there are some things that I will not tolerate. One of the things that I like, but am not sure about, is Jen’s confidence. It borders on pushy at times. On our first date, she brought a CD she had burned.

Normally, I’m of the opinion that whoever is driving, picks the music. Those are the rules as I understand them. Anyway, she sticks this CD in and the first thing I hear is some travesty called ‘Umbrella.’ It’s a testament to how cute she is that I didn’t open the door and push her from the car without slowing down.

“What do you have tonight?”

“Oh, just a disk I burned today.”

She pops it in, and ‘if I say to you tomorrow…’ fills the car.

We’ve come to a pretty quick understanding about music on our dates. Nothing sappy, and none of that techno shit. She says I don’t give it a chance because I’m a guitar player. I think it’s because I don’t need 25 seconds to figure out if something sucks.

“I love this solo.”

“It’s not bad. How come you never have played guitar for me?”

“I know this is going to sound pretty harsh, but I don’t play for anyone but me. If that makes sense.”

“Yeah, Jess said she only heard you play once because she came over without calling first. She said you were good.”

“I’m ok.”

“You got any plans for this weekend?” Jen asks.

“Nope. I’ll probably hang with the guys Friday. I think Hogan is having one of his blowouts.”

“Ok, I’d love to go with you.”

This is the confidence becomes pushy thing that I was talking about. And again, I have no idea what to do about it. I look over at her and she starts laughing.

“You thought I was serious, didn’t you?”

“I wasn’t sure.”

“Don’t worry, you go out with the guys Friday. What do you have going on Saturday?”

Now this is very weird. On our previous dates it was never mentioned whether we would get together again. I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t sure what to say. I assumed Jen would call me if she wanted to go out again, and she did. That’s what I liked about her confidence. I guess she had thought more about the future than I had. I don’t know, maybe she was making sure I was safe? I immediately stopped this line of thought, because I would never figure it out unless she told me herself.

“I don’t think I have anything going on.” Non committal. I like it.

“Ok, well, maybe we can catch that movie Saturday.”

“That sounds good.”

We come to the intersection of Tuckerton and Carranza road. Dixon’s is sitting on the corner. I look in my backseat and see the baseball. Just hours before, when I was in Dixon’s picking up the baseball, I had no idea things were going to take this turn.

I make a right on Carranza Road. This is not a heavily populated area. In fact, much of this area is in Wharton State Forest, a collection of brush, pines, and cranberry bogs. It’s actually a very pretty area.

There have always been rumors that there was a mental hospital for female nymphos nearby. My friends and I would hope that the nymphos would escape and ravage us. We were 15 or so and decided to pack some food and look around for it. We didn’t find the facility. What we did find were ticks, squirrels and a whole bunch of thorns.

'Carranza' is a code word of sorts. It sits out in the middle of Wharton State Forest. There’s pretty much nothing around, and as long as I can remember, mothers were always telling daughters ‘don’t let him take you out to Carranza.’ If you didn’t have a place to go with your girlfriend, Carranza was always the place.

I was not disappointed as I pulled off of Carranza Road into the sandlot near the memorial.

The ‘memorial’ is a cairn in the middle of nowhere. It has a bird and some footprints on it. The story is that there was this Mexican pilot, Emilio Carranza, who was dubbed the Mexican ‘Lindbergh’ who decided to fly a peace mission. He boards his plane in New York and takes off. He makes it as far as the pines of Jersey and crashes. He was found by some cranberry or blueberry worker in this Godforsaken place and a memorial was built. Every year, one of the local lodges has a ceremony in Carranza’s honor. To this day, no one seems to know what the hell Carranza was accomplishing by flying this mission. Well, other than getting dead, which he did quite well.

Anyway, when Jen whispered ‘Carranza’ in my ear it was a pretty good bet that tonight would involve getting laid.

Fuck. I didn’t have any condoms. I thought we were going to the movies, and I was so surprised that I didn’t pick any up on our way here. I guess it would have to wait for another night.