WIP: DYNAMIC DUO OF THE OZARKS

The cafeteria in the Student Union was an adequate place to escape the snow and cold on that Thursday. Winter had struck the Ozarks with a hateful vengeance, as it had done in the rest of the United States. Everyone seemed to be in the mood for hot coffee and soup for their lunch. They were listening to Mykel tell about his first day at the radio station.

“The old lady, from the John Birch Society, hands Lovable Lance this petition, from people, who want the radio station to stop playing rock and roll music, and Lovable Lance held it up in front of her face and ripped it right down the middle! It was so cool!” Mykel told the group, from Bonner Hall, sitting at the table.

“They showed that on the TV news last night,” Dennis said. “We were in Keith Smith’s room and he had his TV on the news. I told Tommy I thought I saw you standing behind some of those people.”

“I might have been in camera range,” Mykel said. “I think both TV stations were there and the newspaper.”

“I bet that woman got those names on the petition out of the phone book or got them off of tombstones,” Slick said. “White people are shifty like that, when they are trying to get their way.”

“Some guy gave us coupons for that fried chicken they sell at the lunch counter at the drug store,” Clint told the others. “It comes in a little box with mashed potatoes, a roll and slaw. So we drove over there and got some Tuesday night.”

Owen slipped into the cafeteria like he was being followed by Mafia hit men. He kept glancing from side to side and behind him. He was selected his food with hands trembling. He sat down the table from the others, looking uncomfortable. His art class portfolio, seemed to be in disarray, like the contents had been stuffed into it in a hurried manner, as if he was fleeing for his life from a threat.

“Owen, move down here and sit with us,” Mykel commanded the nerdy fellow.

“Well, I don’t know…if I can…something happened in class and I should be alone,” Owen stuttered and stammered. He was white as a sheet, like he was haunted by the vindictive ghost. “And the girls are here…”

“Owen, we don’t bite! You’ve sat with us before at lunch,” Sherry tried to coax Owen into joining them.

“Don’t sit down there alone, Owen honey,” Silvy pleaded. “If you are having a bad day, we can give you some comfort. We all have bad days.”

“If you are having problems with your class, maybe we can think of something that will help you make a better grade in that class,” Kathy reassured him.

Owen tucked his head down and averted his eyes away, “That’s the problem! I saw something in class, that I never thought I would see at school and I don’t think I can even look at a girl right now.” Everyone at the table was now confused, but also incredibly intrigued by Owen’s situation.

“Owen, move down here and tell us what the problem is,” Clint ordered. “We won’t be judgmental.”

Owen, somewhat reluctantly, got up from where he was sitting at the end of the cafeteria table, picked up his tray and portfolio and moved over to a seat by Mykel. He turned so he was looking at Mykel, Clint, Slick and Dennis, trying not to make eye contact with Sherry, Kathy or Silvy.

“I went into Drawing 2, which I always go to at 11 o’clock on Thursday. We have been drawing figures. First with wood dolls, then manikins, then live people who would pose for us.”

“Did they make you draw a corpse?” Silvy asked in horror.

“No, but it was just as bad,” Owen answered her, trying not to look her in the face. This was irritating the girls that he was trying not to look at them. “There was a girl, on the platform, where the people who pose usually are, sitting with a big sheet over her. All I could see was her head sticking out from under this sheet. When we all seated and had out our drawing supplies, the instructor pulled the sheet back and this girl was naked!”

Everyone reacted with surprise. The girls began laughing with the realization that this was why Owen was avoiding eye contact with them. The boys of course reacted with excitement and hooting.

“Okay, Owen, tell us where this class is and can we come to class with you?” Slick asked jokingly.

“I’m going to sign up for that class next semester,” Dennis laughed.

“Owen, have you not seen a naked girl before?” Clint asked with more seriousness than the other boys.

“Not even seen a picture of a naked woman in Caviler or Playboy?” Mykel asked.

“No, my parents would get mad at me if they caught me with those kind of magazines,” Owen answered. “My mother does even want me to see her without her clothes.”

“I thought you boys said you wasn’t going to judge Owen!” Kathy scolded the guys. “Owen, don’t pay any attention to them. It’s perfectly fine to be unnerved by seeing a girl naked for the first time.”

“And don’t worry, we all pretty much look the same naked,” Sherry tried to reassure him. Unfortunately, Owen began to turn a mix of nausea green and embarrassed pink.

“But that isn’t the worst part,” Owen explained. “I was so nervous that I was trying to get out of there as soon as I could, when class was over. I knocked my pencil box off of my desk. I was trying to pick everything up as fast as I could and that girl got down off of the platform to help me pick up my pencils and erasers. She was STILL NAKED! I mean, she was real nice trying to help me pick my stuff up, but I wish she had put her clothes on first.” Then, a look of terror crossed Owen’s face. “Oh no! There she is! She is getting something to eat!”

Slick looked around to the buffet area, “Is she still naked?”

Clint laughed, “As cold as it is toady, she isn’t going to walk from the art department to the Student Union in the nude.”

“Which girl at the buffet is she, Owen?” Mykel asked. The boys were now staring at the three girls going through the line. One was a chubby girl with curly, red hair and freckles, another was a girl with thick glasses and her blonde hair in a ponytail, and the third girl was an attractive, exotic girl with a tan complexion and jet black hair, in a beehive.

“The girl with the black hair,” Owen identified the young lady, who was the first naked lady he had ever seen. “She’s not from here. She has a foreign accent.” The young lady got a cup of coffee from the machine and began to look for a seat.

“Owen, if that is who you saw naked, you should consider yourself a very lucky fellow,” Slick chuckled and the other guys agreed.

She spotted Owen and waved at him, then began walking over to the table. “She’s coming over here!” Owen screamed, as the attractive young lady made her way toward the group. He began to tremble.

“Hello! I’m glad I found you,” the attractive girl, with a pronounced accent, greeted Owen, who was getting nervous, seeing her again, even though she was now dressed. She reached in her coat pocket and pulled out a wooden protractor. “I found your protractor, after you left the class room.”

Owen sat with his mouth ajar and mesmerized look in his eyes. “Uh…uh, thank you! I…appreciate it,” Owen stammered to the young lady. The expression on his face, coupled with his awkward response, could be read like a book. It plainly said “I’ve seen you naked.”

Kathy, always the facilitator of hospitality for the circle of friends, spoke up, “You can join us for lunch, if you like.”

“Thank you!” She, slipped off her coat, which caused Owen to cringe a little, maybe expecting her to still not have clothes on underneath. She then sat down with next to Owen and across the table from the girls. Owen looked as if a grizzly bear was sitting next to him. The guys were watching this with amusement. Mykel noticed they had the same look on their faces, they had, at Kathy’s little mixer in the dorm suite, when Sherry put her leg across his lap. “I see you in Art Building often. Are you an art major too?”

“Yes, m-m-my name is Owen Stickley.”

“My name is Farrah Darabi, I am a sophomore art major, specializing in sculpture and my minor is in art history.”

Owen seemed to gain a little more composure, but was still not exactly a ladies man. “You’re not from Missouri, are you?”

Farrah just smile and politely replied, “No, I am from Tehran, the capitol city of the country of Iran. My father works for the government and I am part of a cultural education program where they send students to Western colleges to study.”

“So, you are along way from home?” Owen stated the obvious, but Farrah nodded her head and agreed. “I’m from here in town. My parent’s house is about two miles from the college.”

“Do you like Missouri?” Kathy asked before taking a drink of coffee.

“Yes I do. I like how pretty the terrain is in the spring, summer and fall,” Farah gushed, then added, “But I’m not enjoying this cold and snow.”

“None of us are,” Mykel groused. “I’m originally from Vermont and the one thing I hated there was the stupid snow. At least in Missouri, it is only around for about two months. In Vermont, it snows in November and hangs around until April.”

“We probably should introduce ourselves,” Kathy apologized to Farrah. “My name is Kathy and this is Sherry and Silvy. Next to Silvy is Slick and beside Slick is Dennis. Across from them is Clint and Mykel. We all live in the same dorm as Owen. Sherry and I were originally in Shelby House and Silvy and Slick were in Carver House. We all had to relocate to Bonner Hall for this semester.”

“That dress you are wearing is really pretty,” Silvy admired Farrah’s outfit, which was a dark blue dress with large white buttons down the front.”

“Thank you! My father went on a business trip to Dallas, Texas and he took my mother and I with him. He and Mother bought it a big store, I think it is called Newman – Marcus. I really think he paid too much for it. Are all clothes in the United States expensive?”

“No no, we can show you places to get clothes and save money too,” Kathy said. “We know where to find the bargains.”

“Robert Hall, Mode-O-Day and Newburys,” Sherry added. “You can get good stuff cheep at those stores.”

“And if you need underwear, Katz, Kressgee and Woolworths usually have a sale on panties,” Silvy explained. “Three for a dollar.”

Mykel whispered to Owen, “You should give your new friend a compliment. Chicks like when boys compliment their clothes or perfume.”

“That dress is really nice and I like that perfume your are wearing,” Owen complimented Farrah as Mykel suggested he should do.

“It is patchouli,” Farrah explained. “It is quite popular in my country.”

“I like it, it smells like Top Job” Owen said with a smile, not realizing that he had just given Farrah the most awkward compliment in the history of romance.

The three girls covered their mouths because they were giggling. Dennis nearly fell in the floor laughing. Slick slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand and then slid it down his face, mumbling, “Oh Lord, he is no Romeo.”

“So what kind of art is your passion?” Farrah asked Owen.

“I like to draw,” Owen responded. “I would like to be a comic book illustrator like Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko.”

“Who illustrates the comic strip about the pilot, named Steve, in the newspaper?” Farrah asked. “The artwork in that comic strip is so wonderful.”

“I think you are talking about Steve Canyon,” Owen answered, like he had suddenly become an expert on the subject cartoonist. “That drawn by Milton Caniff. He is a legend in the business.”

“Which would you rather do, after college, draw comics for a newspaper or for a comic book?” Farah interrogated her new friend, like he was applying for a job. Surprisingly, Owen must have recovered from the shock of seeing Farrah naked and felt comfortable enough to tell her the friction his plans for the future were causing with his parents.

“Either one would be nice, although I would rather work in comic books, because the story lines are less serious. I would prefer stories about superheroes or monsters to stories about doctors, lawyers and detectives. My parents want me to become an architect. They want me to transfer to the Rolla School of Mines and studying engineering. They say I would make more money and it would be a more respected profession.”

The girls got up to go to their classes, “It was nice meeting you, Farah. I hope we can see you around campus,” Kathy said.

“It was nice meeting you as well.”

The guys got up to leave for their classes, “Wait! You guys aren’t leaving me here!”

“Owen, we have classes to attend,” Clint said.

“You and your friend are hitting it off nicely,” Mykel reassured him. “You can talk about art classes and tell her about Spring Valley.”

The guys and girls left the two new acquaintances, alone in the cafeteria, to talk to each other. When they left the cafeteria and got out into the hall, Slick and Dennis began laughing about Owen’s earnest but clumsy compliment to Farrah.

“You smell like Top Job! That’s what a woman longs to hear a man say to her,” Slick laughed.

“He looked at her the same way a possum, on the highway, looks at your car is heading towards it,” Clint chuckled.

“From what I have heard, girls from other countries are kind of hairy,” Dennis laughed. “Maybe that is why he was scared of her.”

The girls were not finding any of this joking about Owen and Farrah amusing. “Will you boys cut it out! I think it was very sweet that she was so concerned and showed interest in Owen. Most girls would have laughed at Owen for dropping his stuff, but she had helped him pick his stuff up,” Kathy scolded the boys. “Probably this is the first time a girl even attempted to talk to Owen.”

“She seemed like a very sweet young lady,” Silvy added. “Imagine being so far away from home.”

“And would you guys be able to talk to me if I was naked,” Sherry asked, as she reached over and rubbed Mykel’s hair, with a giggle. “Would you, Mr. Daring?”

Mykel didn’t know what to say to that. Would Sherry really take off her clothes in front of him?