Must Be The Season of the Witch: the Eritrean

^{When I look over my shoulder,
What do you think I see?
Some other cat looking over
His shoulder at me
And he's strange, sure he's strange.
You've got to pick up every stitch,
Beatniks are out to make it rich,
Oh no, must be the season of the witch,
Must be the season of the witch.
Donovan - Season of the Witch}

As these things go, RAM was banging the hell out of my girlfriend, although I didn't know it at the time. If he knew I was writing this right now we'd both be drunk and laughing our asses off about it. That's just how it was with me and him. Sure I should have been supremely pissed off about it but...well...you know, a good friend is forever and a piece of ass is only as good as the last time you got laid. Regardless, I was one beautiful loser.

n fact, the night my father died, RAM spent the night on the couch in the living room. At 3:00 AM, my girlfriend woke up and answered the jangling phone. A phone call at 3:00 in the morning is never good. Even a friend high on acid won't call you at 3:00 in the morning. Junkies definitely would not do that. It would take away from their high or rather their low as the case may be.

That morning she took me to the bus station and I was on my way to something few of us care to envision. The last thing I was thinking about was her spreading her legs for his ass. In fact, I wasn't thinking about it at all. Then she drove back home fingering herself and getting lathered up about seducing him. Anyway, that was what she told me later. Knowing her, it was believable too.

When she arrived back at the apartment, RAM was fast asleep until she grabbed his morning wood and started sucking his eyeballs out of their sockets. That is how she was. Don't ask me why I put up with that shit. I never understood why.

Thrusting her snatch on his wood that morning was the first time she seduced him and they hammered each other like that for months afterward. She had a mystical power over him and I. Neither of us figured it out for months. Years later after she was out of my life, we shared stories and discovered that we both liked it when we could do her while having her stand on her head. She prided herself in being gymnastic like that.

For awhile however there were 3 of us she was banging; enter the Eritrean, a petroleum engineering student. He was an odd sort (a mystical Coptic Christian) and friends to both of us. I met him in class and invited him out to dinner with my girlfriend and I one evening. From that moment on, she was all worked up about him and the mystical aura that always surrounded him.

His one passion besides my girlfriend was the liberation of Eritrea from Ethiopia. Of course the Ethiopians could'nt allow that because they would otherwise be landlocked to the outside world.

There would be times I saw him around campus arguing with Ethiopian students. Had they been white, you would have seen their red faces and jugular veins bulging. The arguments were heated. The Eritrean was friends with only one of those Ethiopians. I am not sure what their bond was but it was there. I never figured it out because most of the time they spoke in another language, some kind of South Semitic language I suspected.

"I wanna fuck him." she said one humid, sultry summer evening underneath the huge elm tree.

"You're a fucking slut." I said to her in jest.

Well...you know...call a spade a spade.

Unknown to me at the time, she was already planning her strategy to get him to nail her, regardless of whether or not I acknowledged her. I know just how she would have done it too. She would have put on one of those sweet cotton summer dresses with no panties or bra on and sat on a chair in the shade of that big huge elm tree just outside the backdoor. Then during some kind of political discussion about the oppressed people of Eritrea. Then she would do it, I can see it now, she would hike up her skirt and show him her pride and joy and that would be it; end of political discussions. What else could he do?

"Leave him alone damn it." I said.

But she couldn't be denied. I should have known better. I imagine it would be some kind of trophy for him to hammer a pasty-white American woman with 'Greek toes'. He could take that back to a desert monastery and repent for a millennium if he did. I doubt that not one Eritrean would have believed him.

"He believes in this weird form of Christianity." she said. "I don't really understand it. I wanna find out more about it."

Yeah dude...I know how you like findin' out about things. I had to chuckle about that.

One time I saw him on campus and we chatted about stuff. He was interesting and I always asked him questions about Coptics and The Ark of the Covenent.

"Oh yes," he said, "It is in Ethiopia. Guarded by the the Coptics. I hear it is beautiful."

"I thought you couldn't look at it." I said.

"Special priests can, if they take precautions and wear a special apron." he replied. He was intense and serious. I dropped the subject. I never heard any more about it or discussed it with him.

That summer was fun despite all this. My girlfriend and I and numerous friends and we would go to the lake to lay around, get high and make bar-b-q. One afternoon the Ethiopian and Eritrean came with us. It was unmercifully hot and me and my girlfriend sat in the shade. It didn't bother the other two.

"She's a witch." he blurted out after a sip of beer. It came out of nowhere it seemed to me.

"Well...you got four letters right." I said. I thought it was an insightful comment.

"No," he said, "She really is a witch. I don't know much about white witches."

I noticed how serious he was. It hadn't occurred to me until he said it that there might be something to his comment.

I just assumed that he had be screwing her for the last couple of weeks. Sex gets to the souls of people if you care to look there.

"Because she is a witch," he said, "something bad will happen today I fear."

People and friends started arriving and more meat was thrown on the bar-b-q...more beer was drank. The Eritrean sat and watched everyone, including his Ethiopian friend. The lake, Lake Thunderbird, was placid as always. Everyone drank too much beer and ate too much. My girlfriend and I left by 6:00 that evening. We were both beat and tired.

I was in class that Monday and after the first class on my way to calculus class I ran into the Eritrean.

"The Ethiopean drowned at the lake yesterday." he said. He was saddened by this.

"He didn't know how to swim." he continued. "I will pray for his soul."

After that I never saw the Eritrean again. He quit seeing my girlfriend and I eventually left her. There is a cost to being a witch, even a good one.