saintwithascope

Tonight has reminded me of the time I packed my bags, hopped a train and moved to Virginia Beach.

I was 23 and sick of the hand that Texas had given me. I was jobless, womanless, and about to lose my apartment. I had met a girl named Candice who was on vacation in Texas the year before and we kept in touch. She told me I could crash on her couch. I figured, why the hell not?

So I arrived in Virginia Beach and Candice met me at the station. She had a sign that said "Elliott." She didn't really need a sign, I remembered exactly what she looked like. About 5'2", 100 lbs. milky white skin and short black hair. She also wore nerdy glasses and had a fondness for playing D&D.

She drove me to her apartment in her '96 LaSaber. We got up, had a few drinks, caught up on where our lives were and then I laid on her couch and she went to her room and went to bed.

She had taken a week of vacation so she could show me around town. We went downtown and to all the shops first. I didn't have any money to buy anything so we just window shopped. Then we went to the coast and walked out on the pier. There was a juggler and a cotton candy stand. So we got some cotton candy and watched the juggler for a bit. I put fifty cents into the view finder thing they have on piers to look out over the ocean. I didn't see much except for open ocean. I wanted to be out on it. Pulling up fish or something. I wanted to be on the open sea. She told me that she knew a guy who had a boat and she would try and get us to go out on the ocean. We spent the rest of the day walking up and down the beach, then went back home, had some drinks and I slept on her couch and she in her bed.

The next few days were about the same. She showed me different parts of the city, the cells that the British kept American prisoners of war in back in the 1770's.. They must have been horrible conditions. The cells were just rock walls with steel bars. No light and puddles of stagnant water sat on the floor. We visited other places that had historical significance. We loved checking out that kind of stuff because we were both big history buffs. It was nice.

On Thursday we drove out to the Appalachian mountains near Kentucky, took us a whole day to get there, but we got a camp site and set up near a river. We fished for a bit and cooked up the two little crappie that we caught and had them for dinner. Then we sat around the campfire and just divulged all of our hopes, dreams, secrets and regrets. That bottle of Jim Beam didn't last very long and we were out of cigarettes. So we decided to go to bed. We finally made love in the tent there in the woods of the Appalachian mountains on Friday night. We woke up Saturday morning and drove back to Virginia Beach. I don't think we spoke a word to each other the whole time. Just listened to Bright Eyes and took in the scenery. That night I slept on the couch and she slept in her bed.

On Sunday she told me I should go back to Texas. I still don't really know why. Candice and I had such an amazing connection. I guess she might have been afraid that I'd be a bum, or maybe that I was just using her to get away from myself. She might have thought that she wasn't ready for a commitment or that what had happened that night in the woods was a mistake. Whatever the reasoning, I got back on the train Monday morning and rode it back to Texas, and I never heard from Candice again... I often wonder how that girl is doing.

The experience defiantly changed my outlook on life, and every thing I've written was the absolute truth.

Except for that I made Candice up, she never really existed.

And I've never been to Virginia Beach either...