asato_muraki (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
asato_muraki) wrote2008-12-07 12:04 pm
asato_muraki) wrote2008-12-07 12:04 pm
Mnemosine Files: The Crimson Thread
Warning: This post contains schmoop. It is completely true, no matter what you might think by the end. I won't apologize for it, but I will stash most of it behind the cut, to spare you.
In the spring of 1988, I was in my second semester as an undergrad. Up to that point, I had presented myself to my fellow students as shallow and not terribly bright, in the hopes that people would like me. I was always in the middle of activities, and generally left the all night study sessions in favor of having a fresh brain for the tests. My attempt to reinvent myself had been thwarted by the school's practice of posting a list of all the students with 4.0 averages on every door in the student's center. My cover was blown.
I had studied a lot less than the fellow I was dating, and although he was also on the list, he became somewhat passive-aggressive about it. I think he needed to feel like he was smarter than me. It was a great relief when he said, "We just have different values" and we went our separate ways. I was free. Then I realized that everyone assumed I'd broken his heart somehow, and the circle of friends we had shared had begun to close me out. That was fine, too. The theater geeks were more fun, anyway.
On a day late in April, I dressed nice and put my hair up. This was my signal to myself that I was now going to reinvent myself again, this time being more honest with myself and those around me. I was not at all sure how to do such a thing, except I knew I should stop hiding my studious nature.
I set out for the library, a suitably public place to be seen studying. It was directly across the Oval from my dorm. It was a sunny, late afternoon, but it had rained several days previous and the grassy Oval was still squishy. I was wearing my favorite shoes, so I took the brick path around, instead of cutting across. Didn't want to sink in the muck.
That path led past the brick-paved Chapel entryway, where they were practicing for the Greek play, due to be performed on an upcoming alumni weekend. This was a classics project, so not the usual theater crowd. The play was Antigone, and the scene being rehearsed featured Crion, played by a fellow I knew in passing.
Standing behind him, watching, was a god.
The sun was lowish, hitting him at just the right angle to make him glow all over. It caught in the fine blond hairs covering his arms and legs. he was wearing shorts that hit at the knee, and standing barefoot about three feet back from his shoes. His shoes were in exactly the same position as his feet, which amused me. It was like he'd been picked up and put behind them without moving a muscle.
His hair was red-gold and hung past his collar; he was tall and broad-shouldered, strongly built. I usually go for the smaller, sensitive/brainy type, but who is to say a big boy can't be brainy? He had a pretty face, and I've always been a sucker for that. His mouth had a sensitive look to it, and he had the perfect nose. I've always had this strange thing for a strong, aquiline nose.
The closer I got, the more aware I became that I was staring, but I had to see the color of his eyes. I couldn't look away until I had that last bit of information.
Gray-blue, like the sky when the sun gets low and the vibrant blue starts to bleach away.
Directly beside the area where the play would be performed, there stood a tower with stairs at its base. It's an obelisk, a memorial to the school's graduates who died in the world wars, with lists of names are engraved on each side. It had a street light at the top that came on at dusk. The students called it the Virgin Tower, saying that if you sat there and the light came on you were a virgin. Or if the light went off when you sat down, you weren't. The story varied according how rare you happened to believe virgins were, I suppose.
I decided to sit on those steps and study instead of the library. They were having a break in rehearsal when I approached, and my acquaintance was talking to the gorgeous stranger. I came up and said hello, waiting expectantly for the other boy to take a breath and introduce us. He did, then went right on talking the boy's ear off. He was a prospective student that my acquaintance had been asked to show around campus. I hesitated a moment, hoping to be let in the conversation, but it didn't happen. The guy I knew didn't even give the boy a chance to speak, much less anyone else. I melted away and sat down, heart thumping in my ears.
It was very easy for me to be flirty and outgoing with people who did not affect me quite so much. But I this time I clammed up and started to sweat, hoping he would speak to me. I took out my book and read, praying that they would start rehearsal again soon so the boy would be free from Mr. Chatterbox.
The E.Roy came by and stopped to talk to me. There is a lot I could say about E.Roy, as our association was excellent story fodder. Imagine Chris Elliot with dark red hair, covered in fur and about half as charming. Half as charming as Chris Elliot. O_O
He saw I was reading Emerson, and he seemed to think he knew a lot about Emerson because that was what the E in his name stood for. He started talking about A Room with a View (the movie-- I don't think E. Roy read actual books), apparently comparing himself favorably with the character of George Emerson (played by Julien Sands). I have no words for absurdity of the comparison. It makes my brain short out.
Now, I was young and naive, and tried to correct his misapprehensions regarding New England Transcendentalism (not to mention the idea that all things named Emerson were somehow the same thing) but he would argue over the silliest, most patently inaccurate points. You might wonder whether he was merely yanking my chain. I don't think so. A few years later I was saving a paper to a hard drive in the library because I had forgotten my own disc, and I found a file titled "Dumbass." Finding that irresistible, I soon discovered that it was a paper written by E. Roy for a class -- one he had paid a smarter but impoverished student to type for him. It made no sense at all, and my Beloved read bits of it aloud for the delectation of the other poor slobs stuck in the computer lab at 11pm. (Remember, I'm old -- back then the Internet was a porn-free educational tool linking the resources of universities.)
In his defense, I had deliberately been presenting myself as a person not terribly preoccupied with academics. *shame*
The golden-haired godling came and sat a few steps below me and to the left. I wanted to talk to him, but felt suddenly shy. I took my irritation out on poor E. Roy, thoroughly pinning his ears back on every topic he brought up. That was about as rude as I was capable of being back then. I did finally ask him (politely) to please go away as I had work to do. He didn't, and I was, at the time, physically incapable of being harsh enough to get my point across. I was stuck.
He finally left, but only after my impossibly beautiful boy had moved on. I was crushed, for a moment. Soon I had put the incident entirely out of mind.
Fate dictated that we would meet again. In fact, overhearing my impassioned argument with E. Roy actually made an impression on my young godling. He thought about it, and how he would love to have a conversation with someone so passionate about ideas. That and a full academic scholarship. ;) Once you factored in the cost of room and board, it was about as expensive as his second choice school. He later confessed that the conversation he overheard and the pretty but argumentative girl influenced his decision.
He came to school there the next semester, we met cute, that first meeting having largely slipped our minds. We started talking in the library, then gradually we would meet when it closed. We'd walk around the campus and talk philosophy, history, literature. He never once pretended to know something he didn't actually know, although he knew quite a bit about Eastern philosophy that I had never encountered in my mostly private, Christian education.
When we got too cold or too tired, he'd walk me to the door of my dorm and say, "I look forward to continuing our conversation." It became a sort of joke, how we never ran out of things to talk about. I'd read something during the day and make mental notes to find out what he thought of it on our walk that night.
I was positively beside myself with wanting to kiss him, but I couldn't bear the thought that maybe he didn't like me that way, and kissing him might mean an end to "our conversation." His company was much too stimulating for me to feel comfortable with the risk.
Only a week passed before he kissed me; things did change, but not in a bad way. Our conversation has lasted twenty years, through all sorts of interesting and challenging phases of our lives. But still, I remember every time I ever saw him. I remember that he looked in the door of the first dance that semester, while I was dancing with someone else. I remember his group's entry in the New Student Orientation lip synch contest. All of it well before we started talking. I remember these things because he stood out, just seeing him struck a chord inside me, like the lovers in the Japanese tale, connected from birth by an invisible string.
Our conversation changed the course of my life, in profound, fundamental ways, but that is a much more involved topic, and most of you stopped reading several paragraphs ago. ;) You'lljust have to take my word on that one for now.
It's hokey, and sappy, and it makes people uncomfortable. I remember how my co-workers would laugh when I celebrated our "anniversary" on the 7th of every month that first year of our legal partnership, and how the laughs turned to whispers when he'd send me flowers for no reason, some ten years later. I remember learning that I shouldn't talk about my Beloved to certain people I worked with, because my happiness hurt them, made them feel that I was gloating over my good fortune.
One lady I worked with, still outrageously in love with her husband of 20 years, would call me over to her desk and we'd whisper together about the sweet things our Beloveds had done. We knew we could talk to each other, and *awww* and giggle about our lovers without causing each other grief. We were like conspirators, effectively isolated by our marital felicity.
Sometimes I think, if it hadn't rained in the days before that day, if I had stayed in my dorm to read Emerson, or if I hadn't been wearing my favorite shoes, then I might not have passed by that way, or decided to hang out and watch the play practice, basically erasing everything that followed.
So, the course of my life was changed utterly by three days of constant rain and an unusual fondness for a particular pair of shoes.
In the spring of 1988, I was in my second semester as an undergrad. Up to that point, I had presented myself to my fellow students as shallow and not terribly bright, in the hopes that people would like me. I was always in the middle of activities, and generally left the all night study sessions in favor of having a fresh brain for the tests. My attempt to reinvent myself had been thwarted by the school's practice of posting a list of all the students with 4.0 averages on every door in the student's center. My cover was blown.
I had studied a lot less than the fellow I was dating, and although he was also on the list, he became somewhat passive-aggressive about it. I think he needed to feel like he was smarter than me. It was a great relief when he said, "We just have different values" and we went our separate ways. I was free. Then I realized that everyone assumed I'd broken his heart somehow, and the circle of friends we had shared had begun to close me out. That was fine, too. The theater geeks were more fun, anyway.
On a day late in April, I dressed nice and put my hair up. This was my signal to myself that I was now going to reinvent myself again, this time being more honest with myself and those around me. I was not at all sure how to do such a thing, except I knew I should stop hiding my studious nature.
I set out for the library, a suitably public place to be seen studying. It was directly across the Oval from my dorm. It was a sunny, late afternoon, but it had rained several days previous and the grassy Oval was still squishy. I was wearing my favorite shoes, so I took the brick path around, instead of cutting across. Didn't want to sink in the muck.
That path led past the brick-paved Chapel entryway, where they were practicing for the Greek play, due to be performed on an upcoming alumni weekend. This was a classics project, so not the usual theater crowd. The play was Antigone, and the scene being rehearsed featured Crion, played by a fellow I knew in passing.
Standing behind him, watching, was a god.
The sun was lowish, hitting him at just the right angle to make him glow all over. It caught in the fine blond hairs covering his arms and legs. he was wearing shorts that hit at the knee, and standing barefoot about three feet back from his shoes. His shoes were in exactly the same position as his feet, which amused me. It was like he'd been picked up and put behind them without moving a muscle.
His hair was red-gold and hung past his collar; he was tall and broad-shouldered, strongly built. I usually go for the smaller, sensitive/brainy type, but who is to say a big boy can't be brainy? He had a pretty face, and I've always been a sucker for that. His mouth had a sensitive look to it, and he had the perfect nose. I've always had this strange thing for a strong, aquiline nose.
The closer I got, the more aware I became that I was staring, but I had to see the color of his eyes. I couldn't look away until I had that last bit of information.
Gray-blue, like the sky when the sun gets low and the vibrant blue starts to bleach away.
Directly beside the area where the play would be performed, there stood a tower with stairs at its base. It's an obelisk, a memorial to the school's graduates who died in the world wars, with lists of names are engraved on each side. It had a street light at the top that came on at dusk. The students called it the Virgin Tower, saying that if you sat there and the light came on you were a virgin. Or if the light went off when you sat down, you weren't. The story varied according how rare you happened to believe virgins were, I suppose.
I decided to sit on those steps and study instead of the library. They were having a break in rehearsal when I approached, and my acquaintance was talking to the gorgeous stranger. I came up and said hello, waiting expectantly for the other boy to take a breath and introduce us. He did, then went right on talking the boy's ear off. He was a prospective student that my acquaintance had been asked to show around campus. I hesitated a moment, hoping to be let in the conversation, but it didn't happen. The guy I knew didn't even give the boy a chance to speak, much less anyone else. I melted away and sat down, heart thumping in my ears.
It was very easy for me to be flirty and outgoing with people who did not affect me quite so much. But I this time I clammed up and started to sweat, hoping he would speak to me. I took out my book and read, praying that they would start rehearsal again soon so the boy would be free from Mr. Chatterbox.
The E.Roy came by and stopped to talk to me. There is a lot I could say about E.Roy, as our association was excellent story fodder. Imagine Chris Elliot with dark red hair, covered in fur and about half as charming. Half as charming as Chris Elliot. O_O
He saw I was reading Emerson, and he seemed to think he knew a lot about Emerson because that was what the E in his name stood for. He started talking about A Room with a View (the movie-- I don't think E. Roy read actual books), apparently comparing himself favorably with the character of George Emerson (played by Julien Sands). I have no words for absurdity of the comparison. It makes my brain short out.
Now, I was young and naive, and tried to correct his misapprehensions regarding New England Transcendentalism (not to mention the idea that all things named Emerson were somehow the same thing) but he would argue over the silliest, most patently inaccurate points. You might wonder whether he was merely yanking my chain. I don't think so. A few years later I was saving a paper to a hard drive in the library because I had forgotten my own disc, and I found a file titled "Dumbass." Finding that irresistible, I soon discovered that it was a paper written by E. Roy for a class -- one he had paid a smarter but impoverished student to type for him. It made no sense at all, and my Beloved read bits of it aloud for the delectation of the other poor slobs stuck in the computer lab at 11pm. (Remember, I'm old -- back then the Internet was a porn-free educational tool linking the resources of universities.)
In his defense, I had deliberately been presenting myself as a person not terribly preoccupied with academics. *shame*
The golden-haired godling came and sat a few steps below me and to the left. I wanted to talk to him, but felt suddenly shy. I took my irritation out on poor E. Roy, thoroughly pinning his ears back on every topic he brought up. That was about as rude as I was capable of being back then. I did finally ask him (politely) to please go away as I had work to do. He didn't, and I was, at the time, physically incapable of being harsh enough to get my point across. I was stuck.
He finally left, but only after my impossibly beautiful boy had moved on. I was crushed, for a moment. Soon I had put the incident entirely out of mind.
Fate dictated that we would meet again. In fact, overhearing my impassioned argument with E. Roy actually made an impression on my young godling. He thought about it, and how he would love to have a conversation with someone so passionate about ideas. That and a full academic scholarship. ;) Once you factored in the cost of room and board, it was about as expensive as his second choice school. He later confessed that the conversation he overheard and the pretty but argumentative girl influenced his decision.
He came to school there the next semester, we met cute, that first meeting having largely slipped our minds. We started talking in the library, then gradually we would meet when it closed. We'd walk around the campus and talk philosophy, history, literature. He never once pretended to know something he didn't actually know, although he knew quite a bit about Eastern philosophy that I had never encountered in my mostly private, Christian education.
When we got too cold or too tired, he'd walk me to the door of my dorm and say, "I look forward to continuing our conversation." It became a sort of joke, how we never ran out of things to talk about. I'd read something during the day and make mental notes to find out what he thought of it on our walk that night.
I was positively beside myself with wanting to kiss him, but I couldn't bear the thought that maybe he didn't like me that way, and kissing him might mean an end to "our conversation." His company was much too stimulating for me to feel comfortable with the risk.
Only a week passed before he kissed me; things did change, but not in a bad way. Our conversation has lasted twenty years, through all sorts of interesting and challenging phases of our lives. But still, I remember every time I ever saw him. I remember that he looked in the door of the first dance that semester, while I was dancing with someone else. I remember his group's entry in the New Student Orientation lip synch contest. All of it well before we started talking. I remember these things because he stood out, just seeing him struck a chord inside me, like the lovers in the Japanese tale, connected from birth by an invisible string.
Our conversation changed the course of my life, in profound, fundamental ways, but that is a much more involved topic, and most of you stopped reading several paragraphs ago. ;) You'lljust have to take my word on that one for now.
It's hokey, and sappy, and it makes people uncomfortable. I remember how my co-workers would laugh when I celebrated our "anniversary" on the 7th of every month that first year of our legal partnership, and how the laughs turned to whispers when he'd send me flowers for no reason, some ten years later. I remember learning that I shouldn't talk about my Beloved to certain people I worked with, because my happiness hurt them, made them feel that I was gloating over my good fortune.
One lady I worked with, still outrageously in love with her husband of 20 years, would call me over to her desk and we'd whisper together about the sweet things our Beloveds had done. We knew we could talk to each other, and *awww* and giggle about our lovers without causing each other grief. We were like conspirators, effectively isolated by our marital felicity.
Sometimes I think, if it hadn't rained in the days before that day, if I had stayed in my dorm to read Emerson, or if I hadn't been wearing my favorite shoes, then I might not have passed by that way, or decided to hang out and watch the play practice, basically erasing everything that followed.
So, the course of my life was changed utterly by three days of constant rain and an unusual fondness for a particular pair of shoes.
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*hugs* That's awesome.
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Well, when I start to dwell on the things in my life that are less than optimal, I remember how extraordinarily lucky I have been to have a man who stuck by me through the rough stuff, and still loved me when I was at most unlovable. It's not something anyone really deserves, I think. If I never have any other blessings in my life, this will still be enough.
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And isn't it terribly sad that people can't be happy for your happiness, but have to take it as some sort of in-your-face personal insult? Which, when you think about it, is probably the reason they're unhappy in their relationships to start with.
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Given the Greek play, I think it must have been Fate.
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