Hades' Melody. JD Belcher

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       CHAPTER TWO

      On a cool, rainy evening en route to a sociology class I was taking in the Forbes Quadrangle building, I saw the person I’d been wanting to speak to for some time—a black girl who I’d seen on several occasions coming in and out of my apartment building. She was traveling from the opposite direction and carrying an umbrella, though it was only sprinkling. Her aloof nature, apparent independence, and the fact that she was one of the only girls residing in our living quarters captured my curiosity.

      “Don’t you live in my building?” I asked as we neared one another. “The one on Louisa Street?”

      “Yes, I think so,” she answered.

      “My name’s Jovon,” I said, extending my hand. She took it loosely and told me her name was Nicole.

      “Well, I have to get to class, but I’ll see you around.

      Maybe we can hang out sometime.”

      A few days later, I was sitting on my couch in the living room with the front door open when Nicole, and another girl with shorter hair and lighter brown skin, walked past and up the steps. I shouted out a hello into the hallway and asked what apartment she lived in. She said 18.

      When I couldn’t take the suspense of knowing whether Nicole telling me the number of her apartment had been an open invitation to visit, or just a forced act of politeness, I pulled together enough courage to knock on her door. She kindly invited me in, sat me down on her white leather sofa, and we started to have the kind of conversation that two people who seem to be interested in one another partake in—one that quickly takes off like an airplane, then lasts all night long. We asked each other questions about our past, how we ended up choosing Pitt for college, and what each other’s interests were. I told her how I went to school for two years in Alabama, and she said she was a psychology major and a transfer from Ohio State. She also loved music. The Notorious B.I.G., Janet Jackson, Foxy Brown, Tupac Shakur, and Lauryn Hill were her favorites, and she owned all their music and others—an entire box of CDs and tapes. Though she made fun of my taste in Nirvana and The Smashing Pumpkins, we found other similarities that brought us closer together—particularly the fact that she liked to get high.

      I was both intrigued and fascinated by the idea of smoking weed with Nicole, and up until that point, I had never gotten high with a girl. Simply being in the same room alone was enough, but the thought of lighting a blunt with her seemed like bliss.

      It wasn’t long before I brought a bag and a box of cigars upstairs and began a process that would last long after our college years were complete. I found myself knocking on her door more often, and she gladly continued to invite me in. We listened to music, smoked, and laughed our hearts out, day after day, until the very act of meeting in her apartment became habitual. During our initial encounters, I kept my guard up, not wanting to fully undress and reveal the marijuana-addicted pot-head that I truly was, so I kept quiet about my personal preference to indulge. But Nicole was the type of girl who could read my mind.

      In subsequent visits, after we’d smoke a blunt, she’d ask, “Why don’t you roll up another one?” As if I’d say no. She totally demolished my sensibilities about smoking too much weed. At the time, I thought she was sent from heaven. She was one of the coolest, most interesting people that I had ever met in my life. For the most part, she seemed like the loner-type—very self-sufficient, introverted. Yet, even in those initial stages, I sensed that there was more to her.

      We got in the routine of meeting literally everyday after class up at her place or on the fire escape in the back of the building. We’d climb to the very top to smoke cigarettes and chitchat. For some reason, Nicole never wanted to come to my apartment and seemed odd-ly afraid of others. I invited her over several times, but she always refused. In response, I’d acquiesce to ease her shyness and just go upstairs.

      The more I got to know her, the more I noticed that she didn’t have many friends on campus. But it didn’t matter to me, I was more than happy to spend all my free time with her. She had an allure that made me comfortable enough to talk about anything and everything.

      She made me feel appreciated and wanted—I ate up all the attention. During the day, I’d go to class or to work, then round off the evening by picking up a bag of weed and meeting at her place. I stopped spending the night at my apartment altogether and started sleeping on her couch. I’d wake up in the morning, go back to my place to shower and dress, then start the day all over again. It created a waste of an apartment, but again, at the time, I thought it was well worth the sacrifice. Hell, I was living the life. I had everything I ever needed and could want while being a student at Pitt—food, shelter, woman, and weed. The one and only downside was that I began to lose touch with my guy friends, a pricey forfeiture that would haunt me for years to come.

      As close as she and I were becoming, and though we had even crossed the line and once slept together, I hadn’t “officially” acknowledged our relationship as more than just a friendship. I’d go out on dates with other girls and then afterward call Nicole to see what she was doing. There were times when I’d throw small

      ‘get-togethers’ in my apartment where I’d invite other lady friends and Nicole. I treated her as if she was my buddy and lover but never took thoughtful consideration of how she felt about it. It was an inner issue that I had to deal with. Oddly enough, she never once complained or said she had a problem; most likely because she knew that she didn’t have anything to worry about. I was hers.

      Nicole moved out of the apartment above me to one inside a complex in the trendy Shadyside neighborhood on Fifth Avenue. After Owen left school at the end of the semester and went back to Florida, I moved upstairs to Nicole’s old place because it was larger, gladly paying the $15 dollars extra per month in rent. The time that followed was one to remember. Instead of going up the fire escape to visit Nicole, I’d ride my bike or take the bus back and forth from my pad in Oakland to her flat in Shadyside, which was a much-welcomed change from the norm. I had also acquired a consistent weed connection СКАЧАТЬ