I am sitting in a drab, pale blue colored room. Surrounded by sad, solemn faces. All waiting, like me, to end one life and resume another. I’ve forced myself to go numb inside. If I let one emotion trickle in, it would turn into a waterfall or tidal wave and drown me in my sadness, regret, anger...
It’s raining outside. Normally I like the rain, the way it clings to trees, grass, windshields, making the world sparkle and gleam like Christmas and then when it’s gone the world is left a little cleaner, the air a little fresher. But today, it’s suffocating. Water running down windows is washing me away. Every drop of rain is filling my lungs. Every blue-gray puddle I pass reminds me of death.
On the way in, an innocent looking girl standing under the shelter of a huge black umbrella gave me a judgmental stare and a pamphlet. It was a last minute attempt to change my mind. A last ditch effort to have me reconsider the choice I was about to make, as if I hadn’t already considered both sides. As if, I hadn’t visited every website, read every article, made a thousand pro-con lists.
I really wanted to tell the girl that I was on her side once upon a time and that this isn’t really me. The woman in front of her is all an illusion, a series of misguided decisions, influenced by insanity and loneliness.
* * *
Throughout all of my high school years, I’d looked forward to going away to school. My mom had always told me that people were more accepting in college. You could be different and still fit in. Guys were different too, she’d said. I’d like college. Silly me, I believed her, like when I was little and I’d believed her when she said that if I peed in the pool, it’d turn green. It was never really true, just a lie to get what she wanted. She wanted me to go to college.
My dorm was located in the University City district of Philadelphia. Towers Residence Hall at Drexel University. It was a gray concrete fourteen-story building, located conveniently across from a 7-11 and a row of brownstone houses. From my window seat I could see a small park, complete with beach volleyball courts and an AstroTurf soccer field. It all seemed so perfect, so picturesque.
When I toured the colleges, I had quickly decided Drexel was the school for me because it was so full of life. The campus was in the heart of Philly; there was even a subway stop across from the library. Even during the summer, students milled around, carrying shopping bags and talking animatedly about parties they’d gone to and concerts they’d seen. With so many different people on campus, it seemed unlikely that I wouldn’t be able to find friends.
School started in late September and it appeared as though all of my fellow freshman had already been there for years. They all had huge groups of friends; all of their days were filled with plans and their nights with parties. I didn’t know then that these so-called relationships were superficial and very few would remain consistent beyond the first few months of freshman year, and so I wanted to be a part of them.
I was never what you could consider popular in high school, a source of much anguish, but nonetheless I had managed to find a solid group of friends to hang out with. When I moved to Philly, from the suburban sprawl that is Long Island, I expected to quickly have some semblance of a social life. I was shocked when this didn’t immediately occur.
My first weekend at Drexel, I sat on my bed, reading and listening to music, as my floor-mates primped and pre-gamed, yelling up and down the hallways:
“Yo, Sara! Can I borrow a black bra?”
“Sure, if you wanna give up some alcohol.”
“Ugh, fine! What party are you going to anyway?”
“Ummm that frat house on Powelton? You know, the big one with the lawn?”
“Oh, yea! Sounds fun, I heard those guys are really hot. Maybe we’ll stop by.”
I don’t know why I didn’t have the confidence to go up to one of their open doors and see if I could join in the fun. Instead I just sat on my bed, listening to their progressively slurred screaming, until all were gone and the halls were quiet again.
Three weeks into the year, and I still had no one, no real friends. My family was hours away and everyone from back home went to school miles and they were occupied with their own lives. I couldn’t help but feel like the whole world was moving forward, and I was barely treading water.
* * *
I am in a room adorned with various posters, some touting the benefits of contraception and others depicting diagrams of proper condom application, all messages that most of us have sadly missed or forgotten. I look at the girls huddled around me. Most are young. Some have brought moral support. Others are alone, like me, desperately trying to hide the mistakes of the past. Some are crying and others are stoic. They too have built up that internal dam.
I look down at the pamphlet. A smiling, happy baby stares back up at me. Flipping through the pages, it seems as though they’ve found a collection of the world’s cutest, bounciest, well-behaved infants and toddlers, all of them looking up with bright and eager eyes, pleading for their lives with the women they know will be reluctantly reading.
“I don’t know if I can do this.” I say meekly to the girl sitting next to me as the guilt further cements itself in the pit of my stomach. She turns to face my direction, her big, brown, tear-filled eyes never quite meeting mine. She can’t be more than sixteen.
“What else are you going to do?” She replies, as one single tear breaks free from her eye.
* * *
I was never actually alone. I had a roommate, Christina, who promptly began to drive me insane with her incessant talking. The sound of her fake nails clacking away on her keyboard late into the night, became more like nails on a chalkboard, slowly but surely eating away at my sanity as I tried to fall asleep. She was always in the room. When I woke up in the morning, she was still in bed, farting in her sleep, and remained there until after I left. When I came back from classes in the afternoon, there she was. One day when I walked into the room, she was sitting on the ground painting dots in various shades of gray on pieces of paper strewn about the carpet.
“Oh my god Liz, you won’t believe this assignment I have for my design class. It’s crazy, I have to make 50 different shades of gray and arrange them in order from dark to light. Isn’t that so weird? I mean, when I’m an interior designer, what is this going to do for me?” Of course I’d get stuck with someone who wanted to be an interior designer.
As I looked at her side of the room, with its overly coordinated sheet and comforter sets in various animal prints, and her walls adorned with Dali posters, that she thought were artsy, and I just saw as pretentious, I couldn’t help but pity the poor souls that were duped into hiring her.
“Yea, that is pretty strange.” I responded with disdain.
She continued talking, despite the fact that I wasn’t listening. After a few weeks I’d developed the uncanny ability to block her out. It wasn’t until I heard another voice that I started paying attention. I looked at the door to see a short, round, Hobbit-like girl with disheveled brown hair talking at me.
“Liz. Heyyy Liz!” It was Rene, the only person in Philadelphia that I could remotely consider a friend. She was perpetually stoned and left the scent of weed behind her whenever she walked away. I could smell her from my bed, at the opposite side of the room.
“Liz, you wanna hang out with some of these guys I met?” She asked me.
“Oooh, guys?! Can I come?” Christina squealed obnoxiously.
“No.” Rene was as irritated by her as I was.
“So how do you know these guys?” I asked on the walk over to their building, the honors suites on the opposite side of campus.
“Oh, well this one guy, Chris, is in my AVF class and I ate lunch with him and his friends, and they’re all really cool.”
I didn’t care if they were cool, they could’ve been the biggest assholes in Pennsylvania and I’d probably hang out with them, just as long as I had plans and could get away from Christina.
We walked into their suite and were bombarded with the mixed scent of sweat, stale beer and cologne. A group of five guys turned away from a red cup covered table, the only furniture they’d bothered to purchase, and looked at us.
“Hey! You’re just in time for beer pong ladies!” Said a tall guy standing at the head of the table. Judging from the empty cans strewn about the floor, they’d already been drinking for some time.
“You! Hey, you,” Another tall kid with long curly black hair and piercing green eyes called to me. “Be on my team. I need all the help I can get over here. I’m Jeff, by the way.”
“Uh, sure,” I responded. “I’ve never really played before though.”
“That’s cool. Those two are completely gone anyway,” he said, pointing to our opponents, both of whom had that glazed-over look in their eyes. “So what’s your name?”
“Oh, yea. I’m Liz.”
“Ok Liz, so basically you have to get this ball,” he said, holding up a white ping-pong ball, “Into the cups over there on their side. Easy enough, right? Go for it.”
I threw the ball and missed the cups and table completely, and the ball went flying down the hall of their suite.
“So that probably wasn’t good, huh?”
“No, not really, but whatever you’re a beginner. It’s all in the wrist, kind of like basketball, you know? The wrist flick is what makes the shot. Watch me.” He threw the ball and it gracefully arched into the front cup. “See, that was easy right. Now they have to drink the beer in that cup cause I got it in.”
As the game progressed fewer of our cups remained, and my shots were getting no better.
“I see you haven’t really mastered it yet. Let me help you.” He said, putting his arm around me, the way people on TV or in movies do, when some guy is teaching a girl to play golf or pool, it’s all really just a ploy to achieve physical contact. I never thought those things would happen to me, so I missed the obvious move. Together we threw the ball, his arm guiding mine, and it landed perfectly in a cup.
“See! Awesome!” He gave me a wry smile and put his arm around my waist.
After a several games, most of which were lost due to my utter inability to make a shot, I was significantly drunk.
The first few shots that I actually made were accompanied by platonic high fives, but as the night wore on and got blurrier and blurrier, these high fives progressed to celebratory hugs, then seemingly innocent kisses on the cheek, and finally, after our first and only win, an excited kiss on the mouth. Apparently Jeff had morphed from a benevolent teacher to an instructor with ulterior motives and everyone had noticed but me.
* * *
“Elizabeth Austin?” A nurse dressed in head to toe white, with long blonde hair and pale, almost translucent skin, calls from a door leading to the back. I stand up and walk nervously over to her. My stomach is twisted into knots, my hands are shaking and my legs don’t want to support the rest of my body. My heart is pounding like when you’re riding waves at the beach and one takes you by surprise and you can’t tell which way is up and you think you might never find the surface, that you might never breathe again. My lungs want to explode.
“How are you today Miss Austin?” Her name tag says Mary. She takes my hand and leads me back to an exam room. She starts explaining what’s going to happen, how I’ll feel after the procedure. The doctor comes in and gets me ready. Their mouths are moving but I’m too lost in my own thoughts to listen. Everything is like a horrible dream and I keep trying to wake up, hoping I’ll be back at home, in my bed with the sun shining in through a big, open window and my dog is laying next to me waiting for me to get up and play. I keep trying and trying but I won’t wake up.
* * *
Before I even really knew what was happening, Jeff was taking my hand and we were stumbling down the blurred hallway to his room. It felt like I’d slept with my contacts in; nothing was in focus and my eyes felt heavy. My feet didn’t make it off the floor with every step.
“Let’s watch a movie. I’m not tired.” Had I been in the right state of mind, I would’ve recognized the deeper guy-world meaning behind “watch a movie.” I would’ve known that ‘watch a movie” was yet another ploy for physical contact. It was just a cheap method to get girls into their rooms and ultimately their beds.
“Ok! I’m not tired either.” I chirped. I didn’t want this night to end. And in my drunken fog, this was a way to prolong it forever.
He put on Orange County, as I climbed my way into his lofted bed. Twenty minutes of Colin Hanks and we were sloppily making out. His breath tasted like beer and peanuts, but I didn’t care. I was finally getting the attention I’d wanted, but had been denied, since coming to Drexel. This was my mom’s prophecy about guys in college being fulfilled. Nothing was going to stop it, not even the quiet utterance of “I don’t have any, you know, protection.”
He didn’t call me the next day, or the day after. A week. A month. It’s not like I had expected a relationship. Even as it was happening, I had on some level known that it was a one-night stand. I had never done that before. I’d always been the kind of girl that needed a relationship. My last boyfriend and I had dated for three months before I’d even made out with him.
I had pretty much known the moment it happened or at least the morning after that something within me had changed. I once read a story about a girl who woke up one day and was in labor, she hadn’t even known she was pregnant. That girl had to have been completely out of touch with her own body because before the missed periods, before the strip turned pink, I knew. I knew because I could feel it- a strong attachment, an almost animalistic instinct to protect something, but what? I knew.
And that was it. That was the shitty moment in life everyone experiences; where they’re forced to grow up, despite all self-preservationist instincts to stay young forever. Life tried to prepare me. It sent me curve balls and important decisions to make, but I just let other people handle it all, and now? Now I was screwed. Now I was forced to grow up in a second, go from 18 to 35 in less than a minute.
And that’s how I wound up where I am. That is the sordid, sad and regretful tale that brought me here: The Planned Parenthood Elizabeth Blackwell Health Center on Chestnut, just five blocks from school.
“If it was a boy, I would name it Thomas,” I say blankly to Mary, the nurse, “and if it was a girl, Melissa.” One tear escapes me, and the dam is broken. Every emotion I have been holding in comes flooding out in a torrent of hysterical crying as the doctor injects a sedative. I try to fight off the drowsiness, but despite my best efforts, the white light of the room slowly fades away and everything turns to black. My thoughts are silent, the guilt is momentarily gone, for the first time in months, if for only a second, the waters are calm, the sun is shining and I can finally just float.
Monday, December 3, 2007
At Sea
Death and Taxes
Sam and Megan sat across from each other at the breakfast table. It was 4:00am or 4:30. Neither of them was sure of the time, because the clock on the wall was broken. Sam sipped his drink of whiskey and water.
“So what’s he like?” Sam asked breaking a twenty minute silence.
“What is who like?”
“The other guy you’re fucking.”
“That doesn’t seem like an appropriate question.”
“Just trying to make conversation.”
The two fell silent again. It was unbearably hot even in the early morning hours. The apartment was stuck in a seemingly endless New England summer. A light ran fell outside. The clouds darkened the sky, that was usually beginning to brighten at that hour.
“For starters, he reads better books than you?”
“Oh really?” Sam asked “Like who?
“Ezra Pound”
“You know he was a poet , right?”
“Of course,” she said. “Why?”
“We’ll you said that this guy read better books, that implies novels. Pound was a poet and a shitty one at that. And on top of that a Nazi sympathizer. I bet this guy also reads Celine.”
“You have something seriously wrong with you.”
“Thank you.”
Sam finished his drink and poured himself another.
“Fucking poets,” he said.
“What’s that supposed to mean.”
“Nothing, like most poetry, or just a simple statement of what seems to be your new past time.”
“and you wonder why I’m leaving you…”
“I don’t wonder why,” he said. “I wonder when.”
“That was clever, asshole.”
“I’ve given up trying to figure out what’s running through that 8 pound blob of mass you call a brain.”
“You always were such a charmer.”
Sam finished another drink and poured more whiskey into his glass.
“Neal doesn’t drink,” Megan said.
“I don’t like him,” Sam replied.
“I figured you wouldn’t.”
“What kind of man doesn’t drink?”
“Plenty of people don’t drink.”
“Hemingway drank. Bukowski drank. Those were men.”
“and they were both assholes.”
“Touche.”
Megan looked at the clock on the wall and remembered it was broken. Her cell phone was still on the dresser in Sam’s room and she did not feel like getting up to get it.
“Don’t you have work soon?” she asked.
“No. I took the day off.”
“Why?”
“I was gonna surprise you and take you to the beach. I had a lunch and some wine packed and everything.”
“Really?”
“No, but I did buy a shit-ton of wine.”
“You’re such a prick.”
“It’s shitty wine too.”
“I bet.”
Sam got up and grabbed the three boxes of wine. HE placed them on the table. He tapped one.
“See…cheap.”
“So what are you going to do with your day off?”
“Well, I was thinking about quitting drinking and turning my life around, but I’ll probably just watch re-runs of Seinfeld and get drunk on wine. You know? Modest goals.”
“Sure. Why set the bar high?”
“Exactly, especially when you know you can’t reach it.”
Megan stood up and got a glass from the cupboard. It was dirty. Sam always put glasses black without washing them. Megan rinsed the glass out as best she could in the sink. There was no soap.
“See, if you leave me, who’ll wash my glasses?”
“I’m sure you’ll live,” she said filling the glass with wine.
Sam put his head down on the table. Megan wondered if the whiskey had finally gotten to him. He’d drank three quarters of a bottle in the hours that she’d been there and he was drunk on whatever else before she’d came. She felt a faint pang of concern. Sam lifted his head.
“So this is really it, huh?” he asked. His was voice wavering a bit, so much so that Megan was caught off guard.
“Yeah. I think it is.”
“I suppose I can’t blame you, but I do so hate blaming myself for anything.”
Megan laughed.
“There should be more fanfare,” Sam said. “I should be with another woman and/or you should be breaking dishes and screaming horrible things at me. I could punch you, even. It would give me more street credibility.”
“You can punch me if it’ll make you feel better,” Megan said. “Just once though. Two black eyes would be terribly unattractive.”
“Nah. I couldn’t.” The misogyny is all an act.”
“I know.”
“What will I do without you?”
“You’ll probably keep on writing in drinking, like you did before and during your time with me.”
“ Who will love me?”
“Oh please. Don’t think you’re fooling me with this vulnerability shit, and even if you were, it’s not at all becoming on you.”
“I’m serious. It’s easy for you to find someone else. You’re beautiful and charming. You and I both know I’m an asshole.”
“You could try not being an asshole.”
“How does one do that?”
“The first step I would take would be to stop drinking.”
“I don’t think I’d like that.”
Megan got up from the table and finished her glass of wine. She went into Sam’s bedroom and got her phone. She’d left many other things in Sam’s apartment, but they weren’t worth much. She’d come back for them later, if at all. She walked back to the table.
“Listen, It’s 5:15. I’m gonna go.”
“Alright.”
Megan brushed Sam’s shoulder, as she walked past him. Sam was sitting with his back to the door and he did not turn around to watch Megan leave. She lingered a bit in the doorway. Sam began filling his glass with whiskey again. She wondered if he was actually capable of finding another woman or if the buck stopped with her. She shut the door and walked out into the parking lot of the apartment complex. It was still raining
You Were Warm, Like Rose Pink And Coffee Stains
March 27th was the first day that didn’t require a jacket in four solid months, so it was the perfect day for Lloyd to kill himself. But before committing his heroic act, he thought himself obliged to bid all those places he had fallen in love with one final adieu, and this is how he ended up on a bench under a willow tree in the Public Gardens. When he was young enough to still enjoy things like the Swan Boats, Lloyd’s mother brought him here to throw bread at the begging ducks’ heads while a sullen teenager paddled the adorably red, flat boat around the shallow pond. Two days later she died of a brain aneurysm while reading to Lloyd Make Way For Ducklings, something he never quite forgave Robert McCloskey for.
He thought it appropriate to do his last deed in that place that would lead to his greatest heartbreak. There were no razor blades to the wrists nor nooses around the neck in Lloyd’s final plan; he decided to quietly down a vial and lay under the willow tree, letting it’s drooping, nurturing arms be the last of his views of this world he no longer belonged to. Not that he ever did belong. At an early age Lloyd came to the conclusion that he was not like other children when he watched his first television show and was disconcerted to see that no one else’s closet consisted of strictly fire-engine red pants and stark white t-shirts. When Lloyd went to elementary school he noticed that none of the other children were wanting to discuss Durkheim and how religion is the social solidarity of our society. During the middle school years he took less interest in how he was the only seventh grader to spend their weekends inside the walls of the Museum of Fine Arts, editing their fourth opera in an overstuffed armchair underneath Michelangelo. And Lloyd certainly knew that he was the only teenager to celebrate their sweet sixteen by meticulously counting how many bricks were used to construct the southern wall of the Old State House. But that’s just how Lloyd was, and he reflected upon this as he sat and watched a duck bob underwater to get at the plant life growing beneath the murky water’s surface.
On the other end of the same bench under the same willow tree watching the same duck bob sat Allison, a pretty yet meek Christian girl who had just handed over her virginity to a father of two. Needless to say, it was not her ideal vision of a day going smoothly. How would she tell her evangelical parents that she would no longer be joining them in the Lord’s eternal kingdom? Some how she didn’t think they would be very pleased upon hearing news of how their delicate flower had lost it’s petals to their pleasant neighbor who, turns out, only agrees to eighteen holes of golf every Saturday with Allison’s father in order to to get himself his own piece of the Virgin Mary. As far as Allison was concerned, she was done for, and the only answer to this heathen act lay in the barrel of the gun that was tucked inside the waist of her jeans, hidden by her monogrammed sweater. Her only solace was the thought that her damned mess would leave something warm for the ducks to eat for dinner. Surely the mucky treasures that baked at the bottom of the water were not enough to keep even a duck satisfied.
Lloyd never had a girlfriend; the world doesn’t allow the ones who don’t belong to love the ones that do. And Lloyd knew this and accepted this fact after he slipped a valentine into Susy McDuggan’s locker in the fourth grade and she reciprocated the gesture by lovingly spitting in his left eye. After that he decided to only love turtles because people were just things for him to avoid; also, turtle’s don’t have salivary glands. Lloyd no longer noticed pretty girls, of even the ugly ones for that matter, so it was puzzling to him when he noticed himself noticing Allison who seemed to be noticing something that wasn’t there in front of either of them. He wondered if that something ever noticed her back. He was fairly certain she hadn’t been there when he had sat down, but then again it had been some years since he took part in reality. It was odd to Lloyd to be sitting in such close proximity to something that had the ability to see him back, as he made it his number one priority to only sit by things like dictionaries and vases and the occasional turtle. So he was caught off guard when the pretty girl turned to meet his stare, something one would never experience from a dictionary, and it no longer mattered who had been sitting down first.
“I know what you are thinking,” were the first words that had been said to Lloyd since last September when someone had apologized for stepping on his foot in the farmer’s market at Copley Square. Lloyd was silent, unsure of how to use his voice box; one of those “use it or lose it” types of things.
“I know, and I’ve had that exact thought until I realized that I was a fool. You should know that. You should know that I was a fool.” Allison stared at Lloyd as if she were catching him rummaging through her closet and discovering the old diaries from eighth grade that she had stashed away, embarrassed but what they had to say of her.
Again Lloyd was silent. Allison turned her stare to the duck that was now perched on the stone edge of the pond. Unable to look away, Lloyd struggled to find all the words he wanted to say, how he wanted nothing more than to turn everything back and to put the world in reverse. He tried to figure out how to form the words to explain that he all he wanted was to make the leaves drift back up onto their respectful branches and to make the books go back into fountain pens and to take all the words that were never meant to be said and put them back into strangers’ apologetic lungs. He wanted to tell Allison about all the sentences he had never said and about all his lies and his facts and his stories and his truths that could sound like lies if not said at the correct time of day. He would tell her about the lives he wasn’t living and the ones he would grow to live. He would tell her of his vial and how he wouldn’t need it anymore because maybe he could be OK if he could just sit on this bench with her and her monogrammed cardigan for the rest of time.
Lloyd opened his mouth to say these things, beginning to form his tongue and lips into familiar feeling shapes when he realized the ground under his sneakers was starting to tremble and his ears were filling with an overwhelmingly loud roar that was vibrating the air. Taking his eyes off Allison, he raised his face to the sky to meet the underbelly of an abnormally low flying commercial plane that seemed to be gliding in slow motion above the tops of the trees. As he stared, perplexed by this occurrence, Lloyd thought that he could faintly hear a pop that had been almost drowned out by the noise of the massive engines, and thought that he felt a warm slime on the his cheek that had been facing Allison. When he looked back to face her, Allison was no longer sitting there but instead seemed to be napping on the ground next to the bench underneath the willow tree with its drooping, nurturing arms.
Whether for Castes
It’s later than it ought to be and the streets are completely empty. The tired lights shine on stubbornly, trying to compensate for the lack of sun. The cold air bites into the exposed skin of my face and hands and so I do have not have ability to protest when he opens the door for me. If the temperature were higher by ten degrees I would have found the time and patience to debate over formalities. However, a late night caffeine kick was calling my name and I reason it couldn’t hurt if for a few moments he felt glee at performing a gentlemanly task. After mumbling a thanks, I march up to the counter and without a thought order the elixir for exhaustion. He stands shyly next to me and asks for a tea. The coffee shop owner takes a look at the two of us and a smile overtakes his weathered and wrinkled face. The barista behind the counter let her eyes linger over the silent statue at my side before starting on my coffee. Unknowingly I inch closer to claim my territory. The owner hands me my coffee and lets his fingers awkwardly touch mine, staring too closely into my eyes. I hand over a bill before my date can even reach into his pocket. The owner hands over the tea and gives my statue a little wink.
I sit down first at a table beside the front window. I want to have the option to look at something interesting if the time calls for it. My companion sheepishly sits across from me, the table too wide for the two of us. We are the only customers, the room bare and made of wood, where echoes effortlessly bounce off the walls. I use both my hands to grasp the paper cup and wonder, why him? Why did I choose to bring him out of anyone else? I haven’t spent any of my free time seeing anyone and here was my first human contact in days. By deduction, he was the only soul at home on a Saturday night who was willing to go out and walk with me and listen to my bumbling. It wasn’t a secret how he felt. I stare at my hands and the wood grain of the table. It is uncomfortable to look into his eyes. I know how he always looks at me. I know how he studies my face with intense precision. When I look at my hands, I feel him staring. I look up suddenly and glance into his eyes, catching him off guard. He gives a small smile and looking at him becomes too difficult. His eyes are filled with too many promises. He looks at me with such endearment that it becomes embarrassing. I look over his shoulder and tried to keep my proud voice at the volume of a whisper. The coffee shop is too quiet, too hollow, and I was simply trying to fill the void.
You see, that night in the coffee house I looked into his eyes and foretold the future. Back then, I predicted the day that we had together last week. We walk in sync down a cold rainy street together with our arms linked. I am not so angry at the world and I have learned that gentlemanly tasks are few and far between. I hold my red umbrella over our heads and he complains that he cannot see where I am leading him. I actually have been happier than I have felt in the past few weeks. A smile remains plastered on my face from when I first met him at the park.
It’s still the early evening as it should be and the streets are filled with people rushing home from the rain. The rhythmic sounds of tires on wet pavement compensate for my wet wool coat. The moisture in the air kisses the exposed skin of my face and hands and he did not have the ability to protest when my hand squeezes his upper arm. If the raindrops would fall slower by ten percent we might find the formality to not stand so close. However, a quick hesitation from walking was calling my name and we reasoned it couldn’t hurt if for a few moments to wait under an awning until the sky stopped crying. After whispering a declaration of love, he steps up to me and without a thought plants a kiss of appreciation on my lips. I kiss shyly back and wished for another. The guitar shop owner inside takes a look at the two of us and a roll of the eyes overtakes his bored and begotten face. The customer inside lets his eyes linger over at our still statues before continuing his browsing. Unknowingly I find myself staring at him to analyze my conquest. After a quick judgment call, I say a quick goodbye and turn away before my date can even reach for my hand. The guitar shop owner delivers a knowing look and shakes his head in understanding.
You see, that afternoon on that Manhattan street I looked into his eyes and I saw the present state we were in. I had a vision of that night we had so many years ago. He told me I was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. He made the mistake of telling me to think about that. He procrastinated and took three years to finally act upon his observation and show his appreciation. I am not so romantic about the world and I have learned that true gentlemen take action in the immediate. Instead of turning around, I conjured up an image of his face. It was of his reflection in the coffee house window, a ghost of his face. I find it easier to bear. A reflection carries no promises in its eyes. I find it difficult to not get frustrated with his shortcomings. He has always been too quiet, too hollow, and I foolishly try to fill the void. I actually am even happier than when that stupid grin was glued to my face.
You see, that moment I realized I was holding my red umbrella and I left him as a fool in the rain.
Stars Fading But I Linger On Dear
When I was a child my mother, my sweet mother, used to sing me to sleep. Her favorite was “Dream a Little Dream of Me” by the Mamas and the Papas. The whistling, the chorus, the verse, the everything.
Now listening to this song, on constant repetition, I feel comfortable, calm and certain everything is in its right place.
My mother, the band’s loyal fan, would patiently sing this to me every time I wished to hear the melody. Slowly rocking me back and forth in her arms. I remember her scent, the texture of her arms, and her cool breathy voice whispering into my ear. I remember the sensation of feeling perfectly safe. I remember the simple feeling of life being perfectly in its place. The simplicity of childhood, of family, of pure love.
I cannot listen to this song without thinking of this kindness, this pure simple loving kindness. It takes me back, not to a childish era, but that of a refined and easy life. The life of a mother just loving her daughter. The life of a daughter perfectly happy with a mother’s love, nothing else.
If only life could be this easy. If only I could be as comfortable, calm and certain all the time. If only I could have my mother slowly rock me back and forth breathing love into my ear. If only I could time travel.
But what if? Why not? How come?
I believe it could happen. Why not? Anything is possible. I can still be a sweet hippie child, cradled in the arms of a mother with nothing to give but love, with nothing of need except love.
Homeward bound I am, wrapped up in the idea of what is ahead. A break of love, kind simple love. A break of comfort, calm and certainness. A break full of a mother, a daughter, a song, and loving arms. A break of the past come back to warm my heart and soothe my mind. Restore my life. Repair my heart heavy with burden. Heavy from lack of simple love.
On Discipline
I spent two whole days crying in Virginia. The hotel was beautiful and accommodating, but I could not stop myself from thinking about how unhappy it was all making me feel. And yes I might have exaggerated a little when I said I spent two whole days crying.
In the fall of my ninth year in school my father, the great golfer, gained a spot in the coveted United States Amateur Golf Tournament in the hills of Western Virginia. I remember the plane ride from Dallas to Raleigh, then the commuter flight from Raleigh to God-Knows-Where, Virginia. I remember the car ride from God-Knows-Where, Virginia to the hotel through the black application mountains with my father trying to avoid the deer. And most of all I remember the majesty of the front of the hotel, with the illuminated clock tower that hovered over the large deep front porch. That image, the image of the old world, was something so contrasting with the modern life that I lived day to day. That was the last night I spent in awe of this place, for when morning came I realized that this old world, as much as I admired its beauty and simplicity, did not suit me well.
The hotel had made a mistake; it placed a family of four in a small two-bed suite. My father had made a mistake; he had brought his city daughter to the middle of a country resort in a town so small it did not contain a grocery store.
The view from the room that my brother and I shared was green. There was a large tree just to the left of the wall of windows that distorted the view of the rolling hills that lead to the green bowling lawns in back of the hotel. The bowling lawns however where shadowed by the large mountains that stood watching in the background. Basically, the large mountains shadowed everything from the hotel to the little toy town. I spent two mornings listening to my father getting ready while reading the breakfast menu, and watching the golfers walk across the bowling lawns.
At first my brother wanted to experience everything the hotel had to offer, particularly the shuttles that took the guests from each activity to the next. This was back in the day when my brother based his friendships with other people on personality rather than looks, which caused him to make friends with all of the drivers. From the moment he woke up to the moment he crashed into sleep he had a sense of go go go. Nothing could stop him, he wanted to play cricket, ride horses, gallivant in the town, swim in the pool, and watch my father play golf. None of those things interested me, yet I had to entertain my mother by agreeing to join.
The horse ridding was horrible. The smell of the barn, the flies swarming the horse and the incessant talking of my pubescent brother squealing with joy. My mother, my brother, the guide and I started down the dirt trail on the side of mountain. To the left I could see straight down at least 20 feet, and to my right was this vast expanse of green trees lit from behind by the sun. It was beautiful, there is no doubt in my mind even 6 years later that this resort was beautiful, but I could not relax, not when I could tell my horse was not comfortable with a person on its back. Especially when this uncomfortable horse could not walk in a straight line. I pulled, he pushed forward. Our struggle continued for twenty long minutes until I surrendered to his strength. He bucked, I yelled, and from then on I was pulled by the horse, who was in turn pulled by the guide. That horse from Western Virginia was the first and last horse that I have ridden.
As the shuttle sped through the darkening woods and my brother continued to talk the driver's ear off, I could not stop thinking about how I could not control that horse, and if I could not control the horse then how was I supposed to control myself? I have always had a problem with discipline, and even though I have been aware of this I have not been able to come to my senses and do something about it. That night as I ate and watched pro-wrestling with my brother in our room, I could not stop thinking about how I had no control over myself. I thought about how in 3rd grade I had cried during a social studies class because I knew that when I grew up that I would start smoking. I thought about how I had grown into this scholarly procrastinator, and I had not even reached high school. I thought about what the future would bring if I continued to not have control over myself, and above all I thought about the obscure surrounding that brought about this revelation. The horse, the woods, the shuttle. All of it added up made me realize that I needed to start learning how to implement self-discipline.
I could not sleep that night. The wind howled and the large green tree kept scratching the window. A storm was coming, from the north the weatherman said. Around 4:30 am I decided that I had had enough of trying to fall asleep so I turned on the light and pulled out a book. The rain started at 5:15, waking my brother up and causing a dog from a nearby house to start barking. By 5:30 my brother had fallen back asleep while the rain continued on and I charged through Gore Vidal's Palimpsest. I charged through the witty narrative that depicted his youth, the time he spent in the military, the house he bought in communist Cuba and the emotion and drive that Mr. Vidal experience through it all.
I remember being woken by my mother telling me it was time for breakfast. I remember rolling over in bed causing one the pages of the memoir to rip. I remember how ironic it was that I fell asleep with a book next to me without even trying when I had tried so hard before. I remember getting dressed and walking down to the dining room with my book in my hand, and feeling comfort in the hardback cover. I spent the rest of that day studying every word Gore Vidal said, reading multiple chapters multiple times, drinking hot chocolate and sitting on the expansive front porch. I watched guest come and go in the shuttles and saw golfers arrive back at their temporary home dumbfounded by the course that demolished them. I listened to the elderly couples sitting around me talking about the beauty that stood before them. I even got up to wander around the hotel's land, exploring the Roman architecture of the spa and seeing the bowling lawns for the first time without a glass panel standing in between us.
I wrote all of this down, everything from the moment I woke up in the morning with dark circles under my eyes to the golf gala that my family attended that night. I had found a purpose that morning, reading about the life of Mr. Vidal. If he could be this involved with so many things he loved, then what was exactly stopping me. Why was I being dragged down by this persistent lack of discipline? I had to do what I wanted. I could no longer be just dragged around like a follower. I had to become who I am, not something that other people wanted me to be. Instead of doing something because I had to, I wanted to do something because it would turn me into a better version of myself.
I remember having another night of restless sleep, of tossing and turning. I starting crying because I had become irrationally overwhelmed with the idea that this purpose would only last in the state of Virginia. I remember waking up and having a cup of hot chocolate. I remember sitting on the great wide front porch with my mother, watching the bellmen load up the rental car. I remember my father not talking on the long ride back to the airport in God-Knows-Where, Virginia. I remember writing down everything I saw, from the green trees to the deer grazing beside the highway. I remember coming back to our house on Windsor Parkway, and writing down a detailed depiction of my room and realizing that I had started my life over again but this time with a purpose.