Jubilation

Jubilation.
Shall I tell you a story? Yes, I know I'm a story teller and so I'm always telling stories, but I haven't told this one often because I'm in it and I'm not proud of my part. No sir, not proud at all. It's just that you've been kind an’ all and this sipping whisky is going down sweetly, and you seem like a nice sorta guy, so I thought I might share it with you.

You see, Joey and I were friends, good friends. Hell, we'd been friends since we went to kindergarten. He was always a little runt and I looked after him in school, so the other guys didn't pick on him. Not that he was weak or anything, no he was a good kid, but I was a lot bigger than him, so I looked out for him. Our lives went along very nicely, thank you Ma’am, ‘til we went up to State College. Even then our Freshman year went without a hitch. I played as much football as I could, well that was what my scholarship was for, wasn't it? And Joey worked hard at his college studies and hard, if not harder, as a short order cook to make ends meet. We came from a small town in Maine where Joey's father made furniture for the community. It was good furniture, solid and functional but didn't sell for the big bucks and the family struggled to put Joey into college. He was the first of the Harpers ever to get that chance and he was working hard to justify it.

It was in the first semester of our sophomore year that Joey met Cecilia. She had transferred from another college up north. I don't know why but it seems that something had happened and her parents, who were loaded, thought she'd be better off with a fresh start. Perhaps she was better off but Joey certainly wasn't. I don't know what she saw in Joey. He didn't seem to be her sorta guy at all. She was a looker and no mistake. Her legs didn't quit, and she had a face that turned heads and caused bulges in all the guy's sweats as she passed. For some reason she chose to take up with little Joey and he fell so hard you felt the crunch clean across the campus.

It wasn't long before she moved into his room with him. Hell, she had a great room in the Sorority House, but she slummed it with Joey. Cecilia had everything, but she began taking away the little Joey had. His grades began to drop, and he began skipping lectures. He even missed some shifts at the diner and it wouldn't be long before they gave him the bum's rush. He couldn't see what was happening. He was blinded by her. Loads of the guys thought he was the luckiest sucker on campus but I was worried about him.

In the end I went over to his place to see what I could do. He wasn't in the den, so I went to the door to his bedroom; it was open a crack so I glanced in. Joey wasn't there but Cecilia was. She was lying in bed with the sheets a mess round her. It was the middle of the afternoon so it was clear what they'd been doing. She spotted me straight away.
“Why come in honey,” she said, “don't be shy. You’re Joey's friend, aren't you?” She sat up in bed and I swear she let the covers fall on purpose. She raised one arm and played with her hair, reclining like one of those paintings. “Well,” she said, “I can see you're pleased to see me.” She was darned right. I had the biggest hard on and she knew it. “Come here, big boy, we'd better do something about that.”
“Joey,” I croaked.
“Oh, Joey's in the bathroom down the hall. He's cleaning up. We've had our little session, baby but you know, I'm still hungry for something like you got there in your jeans, lover.”

I know I should have backed out of the door, red faced and clutching my groin but it was my dick that was doing all the thinking at that moment and it wasn't until I was inside her that my brain started to kick in. I was screwing my friend's girl in his bed. It was too late, and I knew it. That bitch knew it too. Somewhere in that sexual haze I knew that Joey had seen what we were doing. He'd come back from the bathroom and seen. He never said a word, but he'd seen. Cecilia never missed a beat, but I knew she knew it too and was pleased.

She moved back into the Sorority House that afternoon. From what I heard there was no big scene, she just moved out and never thought of him again. He thought of her though. He took to mooching about outside the Sorority House hoping to catch a glimpse of her. He made his other friend’s lives a misery just going on about how much he loved her and how much he wanted her back. They were embarrassed by him and for him. Joey never mentioned what he'd seen and I sure as hell never told a soul but some of the guys gave me funny looks and some sniggered when I passed so I reckon Cecilia wasn't too shy to tell what we did that afternoon.

A while after that Joey disappeared. He just dropped out of college and I haven't seen him to this day. Cecilia went through the rest of the semester in much the same way as before then she too left. I heard she was whisked away to some clinic by her parents. We never heard the reason, but I hope, to be charitable, that the worst of it was an unwanted pregnancy. I got on with college life and graduated with a reasonable degree. The football didn't work out. It seemed I was destined to be a journalist and a writer, and I have had some little success.

I didn't find out what happened to Joey for a good many years. I met at a convention, as one does, the editor of our small-town newspaper. He told me what Joey Harper had done when he dropped out of college. He'd gone home. It seems he told his parents that he hadn't felt right about academic life and the big city, so he'd come home to join his father in the furniture business. He thanked them for their hard work to send him to college, but it wasn't for him. Then he'd set to and made a life for himself in his home town. His father had been sceptical about the chances of making enough money to keep them all, but Joey had used his hands, which had shown that he had inherited his father's abilities, and his brains, which had got him to college, to make the business work. When that boom came when people wanted Shaker and Amish type furniture in their houses, Joey's company had cleaned up.

I asked the editor if Joey had ever got married. He said he had. Seems there was this girl called Cissie who waited tables in the diner where Joey would go for lunch. She was a girl we must have known at school, but I hardly remember her. She was from one of the poor families who lived in a tarpaper shack in the Maine woods on the edge of town. I don't remember her clearly, but Joey did, and she remembered Joey. Seems he'd had a crush on her in kindergarten. She'd always been dressed in over large hand-me-downs and took a deal of joshing from the other kids. Joey had seen off one or two of the worst kids and she had been grateful. She'd recognised him as soon as he'd walked into the diner. It took a while for him to notice that when his cup was empty she was there at his elbow to fill it for him. Now I'm not saying she wasn't a good waitress to everyone, but Joey got the special treatment. Well, it seemed like no time at all, and three years is no time in a small town, before they were Mr and Mrs Harper and settling down to raise a family. Both of their kids went to college and did well for themselves.

Joey became a pillar of the community. In fact, he became Mayor. My editor friend tells me he was a shoo in and will be Mayor until he doesn't want to be Mayor anymore and the town of Jubilation, Maine will be sad when that happens.

So, there you have the story. I've only told that story to two people now. The other guy was another writer I met in a bar in New York City. God, I was smashed, or I wouldn't have told it. His name was Paul. He said he liked the story and he had an idea for a song about Cecilia. I believe he did write something of the kind but that was a long time ago, late sixties I think.