Fat Jersey Blues

Nothing Happened

24 Nothing Happened after C.K. Williams Nothing happened in the dark stairwell but what she allowed to happen. Our tongues did what tongues do. Her mouth tasted of caramel corn. I forgot her name long ago, but when this visits me, I hunger for it. She wore a purple, ribbed top. My hand went where it always tried to go & she let it, languid in the mildewed stairwell of the Traymore Hotel. When my friends & I said Nothing happened, we meant She wouldn’t let me fuck her. When this visits me, I assure myself nothing happened though I already know it. She let me do whatever I did. Some of us had never done it or done anything (as we also said), but good luck then or since sussing out who had or hadn’t. I’d seen her on the boardwalk, leaning against the railing. The wind tossed her hair, a wiry, shoulder-length tangle of black ringlets. I walked up & said things & she laughed, a miracle during the moments she laughed in the night wind off the surf & a miracle each time I’ve recalled it. What was I doing in the Traymore Hotel? Wherever I went, I went there for the rest of the night. She wore thin gold hoops in her ears & a braided leather thong around her left wrist. Whatever happened next involved Sunday newspapers on the beach with her family, the surf folding over itself, morning breeze cool. Someone fiddled with a transistor radio the whole time, the father glaring & silent as we all read. She wore a blue bikini. My God is all I can say about what that meant. After awhile, she grabbed my hand & tugged me past the jumble of blankets & towels & coolers up the beach & across the boardwalk into the lobby of the grand hotel gone sagging & mildewed & up the stairs & into a chaotic room with a canopied bed. 25 My fear of the father had vanished the moment she ran her free hand through the black ringlets that haloed her head as we strolled nearly naked across the boards in the sun. Though nothing happened, I wish it had. She turned to me at the foot of the bed & lifted her arms round my neck & rested her forehead on my chest & poof—nothing. If she revealed more than she already had, surely I’d remember. I can smell the salt in her hair this second. I was seventeen in Atlantic City & walked the threadbare carpet of the Traymore Hotel barefoot. ...