Quasi in Hades

I was a 21 year old virgin.

I WAS a 21 year old virgin. No more. Gloria fixed that.

I still couldn't believe it. I'd been worshipping the goddess that was Penelope and hadn't really even noticed Gloria. I mean, I tutored her in Statistics, but I tried not to look directly at her. I found that my scarred visage was frightening enough for young women (or older women, or men or just about anyone), but they really got creeped out if I looked at them through my permanently half-closed eyes. I was the Phantom of the Opera.

So, I never really looked at Gloria. The memory of her screaming and slamming the door in my face was always fresh in my memory. She had been terrified of me. I think she only agreed to allow me to tutor her because Penelope asked her to, and well, she was failing the course.

It wasn't until later when she told me that my scars weren't so bad once you got used to them, that I became more comfortable around her. I envied her the ability to get used to my deformity; I'd never been able to. But at least, she wasn't terrified anymore.

It took me a long time to realize that she didn't need my help with her course in probabilities. Once she started grasping statistics, with my help, she was off to the races. Later, I felt stupid that I'd been trying to teach her that second course; I was to find that she could probably have taught me.

And my first thought was wrong. She told me that I could tutor her so I could still spend time around Penelope. I believed that. The same way I believe that she needed me as a tutor more than one day a week; more than two days a week; finally, more than three days a week. I thought she was trying to be nice, making me dinners when Penelope wasn't there for me to drool over.

I'd always been intelligent, smart for my age. Why did it take me so long to see how stupid I was? It wasn't until she took me to a movie that I got a clue. Just like Colonel Mustard probably got a clue when Professor Plum hit him over the head with a lead pipe in the Observatory.

Yes, I was that dense.

Gloria was leaning against me in the theater, first pressing her shoulder against mine, then later laying her head on my shoulder. It felt nice. I hadn't had any sort of intimate contact with anyone since, well, since I became what I am. A freak show.

In the flickering light of the theater, I looked down at the face, the beautiful face of this girl. My heart was beating in my ears, and I was anxiously breathing in shallow, desperate breaths. She felt me eyeing her, and without moving her head from my shoulder, looked up at me and said, "You know I love you." Then she pulled my head down and kissed me.

The world had changed in that instant. Suddenly, I wasn't a scary hobgoblin any longer. I was young and I was loved.

Gloria pulled my arm around her and snuggled closer to me for the rest of the show.

I sat trying not to sob, watching the movie through eyes blurry with tears. I was loved.

We were an item. We went out, had dinners, danced, and even when on picnics. And after my Valentine's Day surprise, we made love. I got to feel, to study, to absorb the essence of her. I was loved.

I'd thought Penelope was a goddess, and she was, in the cold, remote way of a classical goddess. She was always kind to me and had always seemed to see me without judging me by my scarred and disfigured face. But in the end, I was no different to her than a tree she liked. She was far above mere mortals. Even further above subhumans like me.

But Gloria; if Gloria wasn't an Aphrodite, she was Gaia, the mother of us all. Yes, she was beautiful looking, in a warm, loving way Penelope would never achieve, but it was her feelings, the depth of her emotions that made her amazingly beautiful.

Her physical beauty was shadowed somewhat by her nerdy glasses and studious look, but naked, in bed, I swear no other women could be more enchanting or alluring.

She never seemed to notice in public, as I couldn't help but notice the looks and comments from others when we passed. "What's she doing with that freak?" was a not uncommon question around campus. And the looks? Well, if seen someone step into dogshit, the look they have on their faces when they look at their messy shoes only approaches some of the looks, we were given.

But I didn't care. I was young, in love, and spent almost every night in the arms of a wonderful, loving lady. Nothing would ever take this feeling away.

We were together that summer, with Gloria only going home for a week at the beginning and the end of summer. We both were taking summer courses, and I had gotten a job monitoring several professors' science experiments during the summer. Gloria was disappointed that I couldn't accompany her on her trips home; she really wanted her family to meet me. I wasn't sad to have an excuse not to visit. The thought of meeting her parents was frightening to me.

My junior year of college was paradise, made so by Gloria. But June was rapidly approaching and with it an event that I feared. Gloria's sister Judy was getting married, and Gloria had made me promise to accompany her home for the wedding. I would not only be meeting her parents and siblings, but all her friends and relatives. When she had returned from Christmas break with the news of her sister's engagement, I'd blithely agreed to go, but as the months flew by, I felt like a man on death row.

It wasn't as bad as I expected. Gloria must have sent them pictures of me, because Walter and Rose Madden hardly flinched when Gloria introduced me to them, although their face probably ached as they tried to maintain the smiles they sported. But they were nice.

I could tell at dinner that they were trying to get a look at my scars without being obvious. I decided it was probably better to just bite the bullet. Gloria's love gave me courage to be open with her family.

"It was an accident in chemistry lab, in high school. Someone switched a beaker of water with isopropanol and that caused the solution to explode in my face. The nitric acid and glass shards did this to my face. I was lucky my eyesight was saved." I tried to say that with a smile. I still forget that my smile looks like an evil grimace.

Walter dabbed his lips with his napkin. "Well, couldn't they fix it with plastic surgery? Surely there was a large settlement that would cover the damage?"

"My mother didn't know too much about the law and the lawyer she got was not a good one. He took the first settlement the school district offered. He was working on a contingency, so for basically one phone call he collected a third of the settlement and disappeared. Medical bills ate up the rest, just to put me back together." I nervously drank some water to ease my throat. "They tried some, but I'm prone to keloids, so this was the best they could do."

Walter stared at me for a couple of moments, then shook his head and returned his attention to his plate. We ate in silence for the next few minutes, then the girls started talking about the wedding. My face stopped being the topic of conversation, and Walter and Rose seemed to accept me as I am.

Her sister Judy was not as sanguine about my face. Her recoiling was like a flashback to Gloria's initial reaction to my face. No, she didn't scream and slam a door in my face, like her sister had. No, but she gasped and involuntarily pulled back from me when she first saw me. Even after she collected herself and moved forward to shake my hand in greeting, her mouth formed a quivering grimace as she tried to force a polite smile to settle on her lips. She failed and moved away as soon as she could.

Gloria stayed with me and shepherded me through all the meet and greets and dinner with her family. She did go off with her sister for the bachelorette party, leaving me to join the groom's bachelor party, which turned out to be simply, poker, cigars, and porn. I wasn't popular with the group. I'm good with statistics and probabilities and the only benefit my mutilated face provides is that it is a perfect poker face. I won everyone's money.

The next day, Gloria, Judy and Rose, went down to decorate the church. They were arranging the flowers around the altar and hanging bouquets at the end of each pew. Her dad, Walter, had gone golfing. I was at loose ends and decided to walk down to the church. It dated from the 1800's and Gloria had told me how magnificent it was. I decided to go check it out, hoping to get into the choir loft, where there was old Erben Pipe Organ which I really wanted to see.

Plus, I hoped Gloria would be done with the decorations and we could spend the day together.

The stairway to the choir loft was not hard to find in the vestibule. There was a rope strung across the stairs denying admittance, but I figured I could go up and come back down without being seen, so I stepped over it. In the choir loft, I peeked over the railing and saw my love and her sister putting the bouquets along the aisle. Rose was adjusting the arrangements on the altar. The groom was there too, talking to his future mother-in-law. I could hear the girls talking as I moved back to get a look at the Erben.

I didn't know enough about the organs to discern whether this was a model from the 1830's or 1850's. I knew the '50 model was slightly larger, but only by a matter of inches. I wished I had brought a tape measure with me to get some dimensions. I suspected the later model, given the age of the church, but whichever it was, it was gorgeous. The church had done a wonderful job of maintaining the organ, with the woodwork lustrously polished and the keyboard almost pristine, with only a few chips or worn spots. Pretty good for over 150 years of service.

I heard "Quasi" float up from the conversation, and started to pay attention, eavesdropping on the girls. "...scars are a lot worse than you told us. They're even worse than in the pictures."

"Yeah, hey, what kind of name is Quasi, anyway," I heard the groom yell. I looked to see him walking down the aisle towards the girls.

"It's just a nickname," Gloria said. I think she was reluctant to tell them it was short for Quasimodo.

But the groom was on to it. "Short for Quasimodo, ain't it? That's his real name, for sure." He laughed at his own humor.

Gloria rushed to my defense but stumbled over her reply. I think she meant to say, "It's Carl" but it came out "S'Carl."

"SCAR-ALL? THAT'S HIS NAME? How fucking appropriate!" The asshole dissolved in a fit of laughter.

He probably thought he was being clever, but a 9-year-old neighbor kid had beaten him to the punch, over five years ago, right after my accident. She was the first one to turn Carl into Scar-all. It was the main reason I was willing to go along with Quasi. Somehow, that was less hurtful than being taunted with my own name.

I sat down on the step of the organ platform, lost in realizing that Gloria's family were only being polite to me, the freak their daughter had brought home. But it only got worse.

I was distracted by a sharp retort by one of the sisters. I hadn't been listening, but the volume of their banter suddenly boomed through the church.

"NO! No, no, no." The girls sounded the same, so I still didn't know who was objecting so loudly.

Then I heard Gloria, more quietly but still louder than normal. "You have to include him. He's, my date."

"NO, NO, NO. Damn it, Gloria, he won't be in my wedding pictures. You'll go off and forget about him eventually, like you always do, but he'll be in my wedding pictures forever. His ugly face is the only thing anyone will ever notice." Judy's voice broke. "You can't do this to me."

"Judy, I love him. I'm not going to leave him. He'll be part of the family." My heart swelled with Gloria's announcement.

"No, Gloria. You've done this before. That blind girl in middle school who you were glued to so everyone would ooh and awe over how wonderful you were, how you were sacrificing your own playtime to help the poor unfortunate." Judy scoffed. "Once the admiring audience died down, I don't think you ever even saw the girl again."

"Millie's mother told me to stay away when I failed to warn her about the curb, and she fell off. It wasn't my fault. I'd only stepped away for a minute." I had to strain to hear Gloria. She sounded embarrassed.

"Yeah, well what about that boy in the wheelchair you insisted on taking to prom? 'Oh, look at Gloria! So kind to that poor boy.' You just eat it up, don't you?" Judy gave a shriek in frustration. "Now you want to ruin my wedding so everyone can see how kind you are to the poor scarred faced freak. 'OH, ISN'T GLORIA SO WONDERFUL!"

As I started down the stairs, I could hear Gloria crying. "It's not like that. It's not..."

I stumbled out of the church and back to the Madden home. I was shattered. I thought back to the times when I overheard her friends trying to convince Gloria that she could do better than me, that they didn't understand how she could look at my mutilation without having nightmares. "Oh, you have to see beyond his scars, to the person he is," she would say. I realized now butter was melting in her mouth.

"He's so lucky to have you," her friend had said. "Oh, no, I'm the lucky one!" was her response. Yeah, right. At the time I'd been elated at her love. Now I wondered how I could be so fucking gullible.

When I got to her home, Mr. Madden was home from golf. I wiped my eyes dry and told him my mother had called with an emergency. "I'm going to have to miss the wedding. Please tell everyone how sorry I am and thank them for inviting me."

I packed and began the drive home. When my phone rang, I let it go to voice mail. When it wouldn't stop ringing, I turned it off.