Tammy and Annie

TAMMY AND ANNIE

We met through a bloke I got chatting to who played a few songs on his guitar at a coffee house I was biding my time in. He invited me to eat pizza with him after the gig with his two friends Tammy and Annie. They pretty much straightaway invited me to stay at theirs for a few days, something that could only happen to a European in a provincial US town; had it been a major city or had I been an African or a Mexican, no doubt they wouldn't have dreamt of asking me so soon. They made up a cosy bed for me in the living room, gave me a key and showed me where the breakfast ingredients were, since they'd both be out at work in the morning. These are the perks of hailing from the foggy land of the Beatles and the Stones, a land where dishonesty and crime must surely be unknown. 

Although it was unsaid, I was more a guest of Annie's than Tammy's. Annie was the hospitable one, the one who worried about other people's wellbeing. Tammy was the one who looked for what other people could give her. Annie worked with old dying people as a care nurse and Tammy waitressed in a daytime cafe. They both came from small towns in the country and met as roommates when they moved to town. Both were refugees from Hicksville: in Annie's case to be where people were nicer and liked nice things; in Tammy's case to be where better people would appreciate and entertain her, this town merely a staging post for somewhere big like Boston or New York. Tammy was a good deal shrewder, funnier and quicker-witted than Annie. She saw straight through Annie's trusting, simple down-home character - it was everyone she'd grown up with - and could boss and manipulate her at the drop of an eyelid or the flare of a nostril. Annie thought the world of her best friend Tammy, with her sophisticated intelligence and her beauty. 

Tammy was certainly attractive, and she had big plans as a model and had signed up to an agency, but she wasn't beautiful; fuckable is a better way to describe her. She was blonde, short and zaftig but her face was graceless, almost cutely peasant-like with a stub nose, but instead joyless and sleepy. Hers was a face that would age bitterly; she had youth and sex on her side in the meantime, and was determined to use it. Her future as a model wasn't so much Vogue, it was more likely bleak porn. 

Annie was dark-haired, slim and tallish, but she she hunched awkwardly as though she were about to be clipped round the ear at any moment. While Tammy would enter a room slinkily, making sure men's eyes were drawn to her gait, Annie would hurry past apologetically, as though she were blocking everyone's view of the TV. Annie was not unattractive, but neither did she know how to exude sex appeal, unlike Tammy. Annie talked too much about nothing in particular, had buck teeth, and was the last to get jokes, but the one who enjoyed them the most. 

Annie was thrilled with me because not only did I miraculously pay attention to her, I actually came from London England, and I even played the guitar. By the second evening we were making out and I moved into her room. Tammy was amused by this turn of events and allowed herself a little smirk. One evening the three of us went out for dinner to a Chinese restaurant with Tammy's boyfriend Carl. Carl was a regular guy who worked as a cook, liked a beer and a doobie, and was happy to talk to me about soccer, since everyone he knew dismissed it as a girlie sport. Carl was far too unambitious and easygoing for Tammy, but at least he could buy her the odd meal, and he was good-looking enough to be seen with. As we sat at the table, Tammy wore her scheming face, and enjoyed the fact that I noticed it, unlike these other two yokels. She then proceeded to play footsy with me under the table, giggling occasionally in order to watch me feign ignorance in front of the others. Later that evening when she went to bed - Carl had gone home - she put on her best Mae West and told me where she'd be if I wanted to visit her when Annie was asleep. Of course, I never did. Lust battled conscience for a bit, but in the end fear of a sticky situation won the day. 

Despite Tammy's mind games and exploitation of Annie, they were the best of pals and did everything together. Unless her modelling career took off, Tammy didn't have anyone other than Annie, and she was smart enough to treat her kindly most of the time. What they did have in common was a romantic notion of an exciting, culturally sophisticated world out there, full of people who do things and know things, and aren't boring like the boys and girls back home. I hope I was nice enough to Annie, that I wasn't too impatient when she'd blather on about little things. I hope I didn't look down my nose too much at her and her provincial taste in music. I hope I remembered to be extra nice to her; she was like a grateful puppy receiving strokes instead of kicks, like she never expected anybody to bother to be nice to her. In the end though it's probably doormats like Annie who have a happier old age than the likes of Tammy, for whom life doesn't deliver when the road ahead disappears.