The Night I Touched Charles Barkley's Stomach

Then there was the night I touched Charles Barkley’s stomach. I’m pretty sure I killed somebody that night. Lyn’s kids had left to spend six weeks in the summer with their father in Wyoming. We were without the kids for the longest time ever in our relationship, so it meant time for us to figure each other out. Having the kids away didn’t increase the amount we drank, it just made the activity easier to accomplish. Drinking was what kept us together.

The night I touched Charles Barkley’s stomach, our dinner was a steady diet of alcohol. We had no interest in food; just the numbing oblivion that each sip promised. Whenever we went out, our typical custom was to drink a couple of beers while we were getting ready. Since Arizona had an open container law—which meant the passenger in the car could drink while driving, but the driver could not—we would typically split a beer on the drive to our destination. We honored both traditions that night. Finally, before we met up with Lyn’s friends, we stopped at a bar called Fat Tuesdays for a couple of powerful frozen daiquiris.

The night I touched Charles Barkley’s stomach, we hung out at the Arizona Center in downtown Phoenix. The Center was a type of complex, popular in the ‘90’s, where groups of different people could enjoy a night out together. Our goal was to have a different drink in each section. We had Bud Light at the piano bar, vodka and cranberry juice at the disco, shots of tequila at the country/western bar, shots of Jagermeister at the hard rock section, and at the sports bar, it was back to Bud Light.

The sports bar was where I saw and touched Charles Barkley’s stomach. He was huge. Everything about him was big. I’m only 5’4”, so he was a full fourteen inches taller than me. His hands engulfed the glass he held, his bald head was a 16 pound caramel bowling ball, and his shoulders reached from one end of the bar to the other.

The night I touched Charles Barkley’s stomach, he stood several feet away from me, watching a rerun of the previous year’s NBA Finals: Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls vs. Barkley’s Phoenix Suns. He kept screaming at the TV, as if the louder he was the easier it would be for him to somehow change the outcome of the series, which the Suns had lost in six games.

Barkley was not one of those celebrities that surrounded themselves with an entourage of friends or security personnel. He didn’t need it. He was big enough, tall enough, and strong enough to protect himself. The task of getting close enough to touch him was not difficult.

The night I touched Charles Barkley’s stomach, I simply walked up to him, looked up, reached out, touched his stomach with my right hand, patted him and said, “What’s up Charles?” His stomach was softer than I imagined it would be, yet my hand bounced back rather quickly.

He looked down at me, nodded, found a gap in the crowd, and quickly moved over maybe ten feet as he continued yelling at the screen. I was a lunatic fan who had invaded his personal space.
After I touched Charles Barkley’s stomach, I immediately turned into a giddy little girl. Lyn was standing with one of her friends at the bar, oblivious to what I had just done. I ran to her, jumped up and down and repeated, “I touched Charles Barkley’s stomach, I touched Charles Barkley’s stomach!”

Lyn rolled her eyes at me, and with disgust said, “Big deal. Who gives a shit about Charles Barkley?” She clicked her beer bottle with her friend’s, took a long pull on it, and turned away from me to finish her conversation.

It was the first and last time I would ever touch someone famous. Touching Charles Barkley’s stomach—as it turned out—was a bad omen.

The Arizona Center was 23 miles from home—a long distance to be drive after drinking all night. We should have called a cab. We should have tried to find a hotel. We should have asked someone in our group for a ride. We should have slept in our car. We should have done anything else except hand over our ticket to the valet.

I don’t remember much of what happened from the time we left the bar to the time I initiated a chain reaction. I only know we were heading home on the Superstition Highway toward Chandler, and I was the one who was driving.

I seem to remember traffic moving at a steady pace, but the roads were slick because it was raining. I believe I remember looking over at Lyn and seeing her asleep with her seat belt on. Every time I replay the scene out in my head, I remember we had the radio on in the car playing at maximum volume. The last thing I think I remember before I slammed on the brakes was seeing the frightened expression of a woman; the headlights on Lyn’s car illuminating her horrified face. I am convinced this woman was stopped in the left lane of the two lane highway; her car was perpendicular, the passenger door facing us and the oncoming traffic. She appeared as if she was sliding over from the one side of the car to the other.

When I finally reacted to the non-movement of traffic in front of me, I yanked the wheel to the right avoiding the woman’s car. A vehicle behind ours immediately—and with the force of a car going 55 miles per hour—slammed into us sending shattered glass everywhere. The impact crumpled Lyn’s side of the car.

Lyn shouted at me, “Get the hell out of here!” I looked over at her and did not react. “Get the hell out of here!” she hollered. “Get the FUCK off the highway, now!”
I looked over to my right and found an opening on the shoulder which allowed me to drive away from the wreckage. With shaking hands, I put the car in gear, released the clutch and began to flee the accident scene.

“That woman was sleeping in her car!” I started shouting. “Why would someone be sleeping in her car in the middle of the highway?” I yelled to Lyn.

Lyn was calculating our next move. “Get off at the next exit, now!”

I got off the highway, pulled the car into a vacant parking lot in an industrial section of town, and got out of the car. The passenger door did not open, so Lyn slid to the driver’s side and then out of the car. She kept walking around the car and shaking her head in disbelief. “We need to get home, and get that mess off of the streets,” she said. Her hands were shaking, but she seemed to make specific decisions like she was a seasoned criminal. Lyn insisted on driving us home. We rode in silence.

When we got to the house, Lyn pulled the car into the garage and quickly closed the outside door. I looked over at her in the kitchen as she slammed her keys onto the countertop. “Don’t say a fucking word,” she said. “I can’t deal with this now.” She walked around the corner to our bedroom, took her clothes off, and got into bed. Lyn passed out right away.

I tried to go to sleep, but I was tormented by what had happened. I kept thinking about the woman’s face—her small eyes growing larger as we almost crashed into her. I’d close my eyes and see her mouth jerk open, screaming in fear. I got up from the bed and started pacing around our room. I fell to the floor next to the bed, curled myself into a fetal position, and cried uncontrollably.

Lyn was finished with me. She jumped out of bed and began scolding me like one of her children.
“I am trying to get some sleep here, you fucking pain in the ass!” she screamed. “Can’t you just be thankful we made it home? Can’t you just be happy we’re not dead?” She shook her head in disgust. “Who cares about what happened? I told you we will deal with this in the morning!”

The next day and for a few days thereafter, I called the highway patrol to see if anyone reported an accident, but no one had. I searched through the Arizona Republic, but I never saw an article about a horrific accident on the Superstition Highway. Lyn contacted her insurance company and informed them that she was, in fact, the victim of a hit and run accident. They proceeded to offer her their sympathy along instructions on how to get her car repaired as soon as possible.

I made plans to move out.

I could not take being with a woman who had no regard for anyone else but herself. I could not take being the miserable person I was turning into. I could not take Lyn. I could not take myself.
I moved into a two-bedroom apartment with a childhood friend who had recently moved to Arizona. We moved to Tempe, about a mile from ASU.

Lyn didn’t seem too upset that I was moving out. She remained in the house with her kids and we decided to continue seeing one another. It seemed more like a formality. Neither one of us was able to do what was necessary. Neither one of us had the courage to just make a clean break and move on.

I started hanging around with a group of guys that went to ASU who lived two floors above me. We went out to the bars every night. I began seeing less of Lyn but we “officially” remained a couple. The house was still in my name, and I would spend a night or two there each week when the guys didn’t have plans or were home studying.

I started taking a free fiction workshop offered at the University and was writing again. The first story I wrote was called “Sunday Morning Drinking Vodka,” about a guy who felt trapped in a relationship with a woman with three children. The night my piece was up for discussion in class, I was told my story needed a sad ending. My classmates said with the lack of resolution, it came up flat. I knew what they were suggesting, but the true ending had yet to be written.

After we discussed my piece, the class took a break. I went to the pay phone to check my messages. Lyn had called. On the machine, she told me it wasn’t working out. On the machine she said realized the act of moving proved I didn’t have my head or my heart in the relationship anymore. On the machine she told me she didn’t love me anymore.

I decided to leave class early and find out what was going on. I drove over to the house. When I pulled into the driveway, I saw an unfamiliar Jeep in my spot. I parked behind it so its owner couldn’t leave unless I moved first. When I walked up to the house, all the lights were off.

I walked to the backyard and saw—through the sliding glass doors of what once was our bedroom—a man frantically putting his shirt on and Lyn doing the same.

I pounded my fist on the glass. “Hey!” I shouted.

The man looked right at me. I recognized him. It was Lyn’s boss’ son, who I met several months before at a dinner party.

I continued to pound on the glass. “Let me in you son of a bitch!” He smirked and me and shook his head. I ran toward the front door. It was locked. I ran back to where I was. Lyn was in the bedroom.

“It’s over, Cory!” she shouted through the glass. “Get out of here!” Lyn reached over to her nightstand and grabbed the telephone. She called the police, who seemed to have arrived as quickly as she hung up the phone.

Two police officers—one man and one woman—helped defuse the situation. The male officer spoke with me on the driveway. He informed me that if I didn’t want to get arrested, I had to leave. I tried telling him the house was in my name; she was the one that had to go. I could hear Lyn tell the other officer her children were in the house, and she was afraid I was going to hurt them all. I never touched her in anger.

“It’s over,” she kept repeating. She looked over toward me and raised her voice. “It’s over and you have to leave. I don’t want you here anymore.” She looked at the female officer, no longer shouting. “I don’t want him anymore.”

I had nothing to say to that. Another guy had entered the picture, just like I had when she moved to Arizona. He was new to her. I was no longer needed. She would use sex and alcohol to lure him as my replacement.

I left and drove back to my apartment. As I was driving, I thought about what happened that evening. I thought about how a relationship that lasted eighteen months had been minimized into one night of sex with another man. I thought about how I felt when I first came to Arizona—alone—and how that feeling returned. I thought about how my experience in Arizona should have been so different. It should have been filled with social justice, simple living, community and spirituality. I thought about what the people in my class had said that night and how it all seemed to make sense.