I wish I were making this up. I really do.
A few years back during my undergrad days in Illinois, I met a very particular girl in one of my creative writing classes. Let’s call her Raquel.
Raquel was a very talented fiction writer (quasi-romance stuff), and really also quite attractive — about 5’7’’, blonde, and green-eyed. We had been flirting in class for some time and I decided to take my chances and ask her out.
Now, I don’t want to give off the impression that she was a nut-cake, or implicate anyone with certain proclivities as being strange. To each their own. But what was so extraordinary about her fetish was that it didn’t have to do with latex, whips, or costumes, but pre-historic reptiles.
Our first date was off to a fantastic start. I picked Raquel up and took her to this popular little pizza place (the Spago of the college world). We chitchatted about our weird writing teacher, our likes, dislikes, and some of that other basic “getting to know you” stuff. And then she hit me with it.
“I, uh, I really like dinosaurs.” She said, smiling and sort of half-laughing.
“Who doesn’t?” I responded, thinking she was just making conversation, “Dinosaurs are great.” I wasn’t lying by any stretch. I like dinosaurs as casually as the next person. She smiled back at me. We paid the check and then I drove her back to her dormitory.
“Would you like come up?” Raquel asked.
“Jackpot!” I thought. As she opened her door, I smiled to myself. “She liked me, I liked her. She’s taking me into her room… this is going to rock.”
When I entered, I quickly noticed there were several plastic molds of various dinosaurs adorning her bookcase. A tyrannosaurus-rex. A triceratops.
Maybe a brontosaurus.
In the corner of the room by the window there was a Styrofoam pterodactyl hanging by some fishing string.
I picked up one of the plastic dinos from her bookcase, inspecting the cheaply painted eyes. “That’s Mr. Jefferies,” she said.
A couple of warning bells should have gone off at this point, but when it came down to it, I was thinking less about creepy plastic dinosaurs, and more about her… blonde hair.
As Raquel and I started to kiss, Mr. Jefferies was still in my hand. When I put the plastic dino back on the shelf, she backed away from me slowly and sat on her bed, hiking her back towards the headboard. Raquel reached down and pulled the comforter away from a corner, signaling me to come to her. And as I walked over, about to join her in her bed, I looked down only to see her bed sheets, covered in brightly colored raptors and stegosauruses…
Raquel and I decided to go on a second date the following week. I had asked her if she wanted to accompany me to a party my friends were having. She quickly accepted.
It was as much fun as a new relationship can be. We drank and stole kisses from one another at the party. My friends thought she was funny and easygoing. It was everything anyone could have asked for. Until later that evening…
I offered to take her back to my place for a change — after all I had already seen hers.
We were still a little buzzed as we walked up the stairs to my place, taking a break every now and then to make-out.
When we arrived to my bedroom she looked around. Everything was clean and orderly – much different from most boys in college. But what was so peculiar is that after a minute or after inspecting her new surroundings she became somewhat cold. She didn’t want to kiss, or flirt, or even talk for that matter. It seemed that this “new relationship giddiness” had been sucked dry.
It became clear that this night was not going to be a repeat of our last encounter, which I was fine with, albeit a little confused. At the time I bone-headedly decided it might be “her time,” or that she jut didn’t want to do anything. Which was okay by me, but realistically, I was more concerned that our blossoming duo had gotten sour.
When I pulled up to her dorm, we kissed goodnight. She paused for a moment.
“Well one thing’s for sure… you don’t like dinosaurs nearly as much as I do…”
Oh, how right she was.
The next night Raquel called me and told me she felt a cold coming on so she was going to stay in. I offered to bring her some soup and watch a movie, to which she was more than willing.
We relaxed in her dorm room for a bit while we enjoyed the soup I brought. When we were done she rushed to her DVD player and popped in a movie. The bright and happy Raquel that I knew the first night we went out.
All of a sudden the all to familiar opening theme to Jurassic Park came on with the DVD menu.
“Do you… have any other movies?” I asked.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I love this movie. It’s just that I watched it on TV about a week ago.” I said.
“I don’t really have a lot of DVDs.” Raquel stated, disappointingly.
“Oh…”
“You know… I think we should call it a night. I’m starting to feel my head getting stuffy.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah… I’m sure.”
And that was it, really. I left that night never to return. Calls went straight to voicemail. In classes for the rest of the semester Raquel remained cordial, but never as open or flirty as she once had been.
I think of her from time to time, wondering how her life is, wishing her the best, and hoping she found someone who had scales for skin.
