Love and Other Wrong Reasons: A Bench in Fiddler's Green Part II

    In November, I woke from a dream. Funny. Despite the fogginess of those summer days, I can remember that dream quite clearly. I was in a gathering hall, maybe a lunch room. Above all of us it was fairly dark, but we seemed lit by candles and local lamps. By "us," I mean everyone from that summer. They were all there. If I had kept looking, maybe I'd find everyone else I'd met--the room seemed large enough for it--but everyone around me was from that summer. I searched around until I found L_____. She was holding a cup of something, as if this were some cocktail party, and smiled as I approached. The conversation is lost, as distinct words in dreams often are, but I remember saying something like:
    "It is so good to see you. I never really got a chance to tell you that I really appreciated our time together. It meant a lot to me and I really loved getting to know you. I wish we would have had more time together."
    We fell into a concise but front conversation. I woke after that and wrote it all down--which I'm sure is still tucked in my closet at my mother's house--before falling back to dreamless sleep. I missed L____. Tremendously. I had this moment with her, this moment of honesty and of clarity. Despite never coming forward with my feelings for L____, that time still feels... intimate, I guess. Another word may fit better, but it escapes me. We were un-pretentious and unguarded around one another. That sort of thing may be easy for many people at that age, but it stands out. No matter what followed--months, years down the road--I will always appreciate that time with L____. I don't appreciate it for what it became (which I'll get to), but for what it was. Those quiet card games and walks, that last night being close to her, it defined a real innocence (despite adolescence) of what I should expect or desire in a partner, whether that partner might be a friend or something more.
    In the morning that followed--it must have been a Saturday because I remember writing it immediately--I wrote L____ a letter. I hope she still has it, tucked away in a shoebox, forgotten in a closet or basement. I don't care if she ever reads it again, I just want it to exist. I wrote to her about the dream and, without assumptions, that I would like to talk to her, write to her, hear from her. In whatever words I used in that letter, I was asking her to be in my life.
    When I came back from that summer studies program, K_____ and I met and talked things out. I had a profound patience with the process. During the summer I had written to her with a crayon drawing of us holding hands. It was the sort of childlike cuteness I thought she'd appreciate. When she called after receiving the letter she was utterly surprised and distant. Somehow we had managed to totally miss each other in how we were relating to one another. While I had assumed we would "figure things out" after the summer, but were more or less still seeing each other, she understood that we were separate and it was inappropriate for me to send her letters (we must have been writing to each other weekly) in which two waxy depictions showed us holding hands.
    I would later write to K_____ in a sealed letter that managed to be interpretted in the worst possible way. At the time I had gone from being sadly broken up with someone I'd "invested" in, to mellowly seeing someone I appreciated and continued to speak with, to falling into a very unnerving gray area of neither having been with nor separate from that person. I fell into a funk and could not make sense of what had happened. I had suggested "figuring out later" the relationship because K_____ was having such a difficult time; I thought it would be stabilizing. Afterward, I felt incredibly unbalanced and unable to make sense of it. I had wanted to be supportive, unassuming, caring; I felt that I'd been mislead, betrayed, and confounded.
    When I wrote to L____ it felt like the first certain romantic thing I'd done in months. When I heard back from her, I was thrilled. Later, I learned that she and her boyfriend--the one from that summer--had just broken up. It all seemed remarkable, harmonious even how I had broached something that we recognized as mutual and had even dreamed of her the night that she most needed somone to reach out to her. (At least, that is how the whole thing felt as a late teenager in the first throes of a more adult affection.) So many pieces clicked together that the correspondence that followed assumed a bewildering fortitude.
    We wrote to each other regularly for months. Maybe every other week we would talk on the phone. We sent packages to each other--I had small Japanese gummy candies for years afterward--and became close. I think it was January when I asked if she might want to consider what was happening a relationship. It was a fumbling phone conversation with a hefty, cordless landline phone; I was constantly afraid thay my mother my pick up the phone while we spoke. I fumbled through the words, not exactly mumbling but apologizing with every word for what might have unraveled our friendship.
    "You know, if it's okay with you, I thought we might consider this--I mean, you and me--seeing each other."
    Not exactly those words, but about as drawn out. She answered yes, that that sounded just great to her. All my friends knew that there was this beautiful young woman, half the country away, with whom I was quite taken. (The year before I had been speaking with J____ and had fallen into a similar, if slightly more overblown mode. I wonder if they expected it by now.)  Did she tell her friends? My mother, who has always been fairly conservative in her readings of my romances, had commented on phone bills and my absences. At that moment, though, at the affirmation that my feelings were echoing back to me, I was happy. I was certain that whatever was happening as concrete and present in a way that I hadn't really known before.
    For Valentine's Day that year, I bought a dozen white roses. White seemed best for L____. They were austere and classy, something I picked up from the grocery store as if I could actually hand them off to my sweetheart. The only other time I have ever bought roses was in middle school when I quietly handed one to the cute girl in school; it had added to the dozen or so she already had. Now I had someone who I wanted to give a whole dozen to. Hell, I would have bought six dozen, twelve. But I bought the one dozen from the grocery store where I'd had my first job and took a picture of them in the car the night before. I sent the picture to L____, adding that I would have handed them to her had I the chance. Instead, I took them to school the next day and handed one to each of my female friends who wasn't, to my knowledge, seeing someone.
    And that was how I felt about my love for L____: Whatever I gave to her I had that much more to give to everyone else in my life. With L____ with me, even divided by a thousand miles, I could give more of myself and be certain I would still have enough for me. And enough for her.
    Near the end of the school year I was getting more anxious. I wanted to touch and hold someone. I wanted someone I could think of as mine, someone who wanted to think of me as hers. I was envious of A_____ who had started dating K______, a sharp and befuddling young woman with a strong Germanic jawline and keen eyes. I spoke with M____ who had dated A______ after I started seeing K_____ and had been dismayed because of my choice. A__ may have been in the picture still, who provided some of the same allure of distance by living in Omaha an hour away while being just as striking if less well-focused in her passions. Meanwhile, other friends were off enjoying more explicit delights than have ever been my preference.
    Summer came and we wanted to make a visit, a week and then a weekend that we might see each other, go exploring, find nooks to sneak kisses, to watch old movies with my arm around her. I must have dreamed about that trip that never was every night. I wanted her and I missed her and I could not make sense of why it wasn't clicking like it had with that first letter, with those card games. She had always moved so effortlessly on the quad, but each moment took on new weight.
    We were both prepared to say it was over at the end of the summer. We were off to different colleges, no closer than before, and it just made sense. We didn't want to "hold each other back." So we didn't. We said goodbye, keep in touch, and good luck.
    I must have entered college with a similar lightness to when I'd gone to Duke for the summer studies program. I wanted to know everyone, I could talk to anyone, I was unencumbered in a way I hadn't been for months. As I mentioned, A____ and I fumbled into our relationship. Shortly after that started, L____ sent me a letter. Maybe I had sent the last one and this was a response. We had written to each other so much that it had become ritual. She was seeing someone, too.
    Later, we never talked about that correspondence, but I had gone out to the Arboretum and cried. It was a cool fall day in Minnesota, I think there was a light rain that day. I checked in with a half dozen new friends for comfort, but they all had there own crises. It was freshman year and we were all in our own heads, trying to figure out our own hearts. It makes sense now, but that night I thought that all I needed was one good friend and got nothing; and L____, the stalwart in my life for the entire year before, had slipped through my fingers.
   
    The winter of my summer year I visited my friend S____ in Chicago. We went to high school together and I was thrilled to see my fellow lexophile again. On the "L" I reflected on that summer and my interest in counseling at the camp where I was once a student. By the time the semester started again in February (following a January term), I had applied for the position at Duke University West Campus.

Love and Other Wrong Reasons: A Bench in Fiddler's Green

First: This is a very rough draft of the first two sections. I'm working on variety and quantity before I prune and revise. In some ways, this is the heart of what I'm working on. It also seems to be in the way of me doing anything else. The writing is loose and meandering and I am okay with that. It'll tighten up with revision, but I don't think I mind the overall flow.

As you may notice, I'm not sure how to refer to people respectfully. Though there are individuals I know wouldn't mind my reference to them, it seems in poor taste to include their names and not others. So far, there are several L_ named people. This is just my life, so don't get uppity if it's confusing. If anyone knows some conventions on respectful pseudonyms, let me know.

Lastly, I'm trying to frame a story I'm somewhat tired of telling without telling a tired story. Where I cut is probably 1/3 of the way through the whole piece. There will be two more sections on the primary story so that the structure will be A B B A B A, with A being more commentary/reflection and B being more narrative and focused on the primary arch. If I were to write this all as a story, I would dig out the journals and read them. I don't want to and don't have to. I'm the writer and this seems like the most appropriate way for me to handle this story at this time. I end this on a certain note with the expectation it will be easy to pick up again.

...

    I still take in a healthy dose of romanticism now and then. As a teenager, every woman became more charming the further away she was. I dated lovely women with large personalities and quirks to stand out. I thought I could tell one or another that I loved her and, at the time, I think I was telling the truth. Love, I think, is at first a simple thing. As a child, love is what we give caring parents, what we have for our siblings on the better days, and what comes in cards from grandparents and aunts that keeps the check from falling out until you've properly read the card. And those things are love, or the signifiers of love, until it gets rolled up with other things.
    L_____, L____, and I were walking by the athletic center one night. If memory serves, it would have been early or mid-spring of 2006. I had met the two of them in January and had latched onto them. It was my freshman year of college, a hard year for many, myself included. My college was one of those small liberal arts institutions scattered around the upper Midwest. Later I'd joke that I was no more than two steps removed from everyone and that if I were, I probably didn't want to know them anyway. I mean, who would be so interesting that didn't already know one of the interesting people I'd had in class or as a friend or seen perform?
    We were talking about love. We were being direct and unassuming in a way that has gotten harder. I'm tempted to make something up, but in the end I can't really remember much of the conversation. It was a time in my life when I thought everything I had to say was important and only after the matter would try to write down anyone else's ideas. This, I have no doubt, is an entirely ficitonal monologue loosely "based on real events;" but here it goes:
    "I wonder if love is something that gets heavier and heavier," I said, trying to make sense of the tumbling thoughts. "Early on, love is light, even weightless at times. When you're in love you feel like you're barely touching the ground. As you go along your love picks up things. There was that date and that heartbreak that stick to the outside. They get wrapped up by something else. Before you know it, you're carrying the weight of the world on you. Eventually, you need someone to help you carry it or you just can't imagine adding more weight. That's when you find someone.
    "It isn't that you love that person more than anyone else. It is that you make yourself love that person differently. It comes from a certain perspectve you didn't have before"--and this is where I'm sure I'm making things up in an effort to condense the questions L_____ and L____ asked, the specifics of which I can't recall. "It sounds like you're surrending, that suddenly you can't help settling on this person. I think I know some people like that." And yes, I would have been so brazen to say something like that. "Or maybe you're suddenly ready, because of the weight, for something that you weren't ready for before."
    I think that this is a really awful position. Just truly horrible. It valorizes the noncommital, the wavering, the "afraid of commitment" in an effort to explain away youthful anxiety about love. It was also coming at a transition point. Of course, college is the obvious one, but I would have recently ended with the elegance of a flatulent bison my first college relationship. A___ has since become one of my dearest and most valuable friends and I can validate my floundering, frustrating, and frankly unkind treatment of her as some necessary means to get to where we are now. Why she is not regularly angry at me I cannot say, unless it has to do with her northern Minnesota demeanor. Whatever it is, I am thankful for it.
     A___ had caught me--because I pretty much thrust myself at her one night--in the wake of another relationship ending. Somehow, I have to begin that story. The story has been told so many time so as to be threadbare, its edges are frayed, and I know that memory is such a thing that whatever I tell now is quite different from anything that actually happened. I can even play indifferent about the story, that it was a moment (or two, really) in my life that has passed, almost forgotten. I've been storing it in drawers and closets, tucking it outside of the light, but everywhere I have gone I have packed into a box or chest or suitcase. I'm tired of moving it, hauling it around, tucking it away. I want to toss it out.
   
      K_____ and I had one of those relationships that only makes sense in high school. I remember us splitting up before I left for a summer camp at Duke University in the summer of 2004. I had a cell phone that was supposed to be for calling home when I'd be out late and if I ever got into a car accident. It came with me to North Carolina and I was talking to K_____ more often than my parents. One night I told her, "Maybe we should just hold off on deciding if we're broken up or not." (Like I said, a strictly high school relationship.) I remember her agreeing. To me we were, if strangely, more or less together again. At the same time I knew that K_____ was dating someone else. Someone I'd met and found uninspired and cold. I didn't mind. At the end of the day K_____ would call me and we'd talk about the dozens of uninteresting things that had happened that day.
      Not that my life was uneventful. I was away from home with dozens of other high school students. There was over a hundred of us, all of us quite proud of our wits and grades, interested in esoteric academia, readers of nonfiction for fun. I was introduced in the first critical way to philosophy and it has stolen my heart in ways that another person never can--though every new attempt thrills and entices me. My new friends were sharp and quirky and full of bite. I took a class titled the Anthropology of Violence in which I read so many books on people hurting others that I quit two-thirds of the way through from emotional exhaustion. As one might expect with a dormitory full of high schoolers, romance and intrigue were rampant.
      A_____ and I disagreed on everything I could think up but her freckles and light orange (or was it strawberry blonde) hair were so endearing I thought I'd crumple. S____ was loud and curvacious and bounded with such seductive confidence that I thought her attention must electrify anyone it fell on. S____ and N___ quickly became my dear friends and stalwarts; only later did I find out that they played a game of tallying who of the two of them had received more of my attention that day and, therefore, I was actually "crushing on." Even M____ told me one night that he thought I'd be the nice boy to bring home to show his parents.
      In the end, I felt "spoken for" by K_____. I'd grown up heavy and still feel that weight on me most days. It had slowed me down, encouraged me to read more than talk, taught me the blessings of a creative mind. In the fall or spring prior--the school year of 2003-2004--had I learned to be outgoing, engaging, even entertaining in groups. I maintained more skill in communicating one-on-one and that tendency ignited small sparks of interest. The notion that I might be charming, even alluring to young women embarrassed me. It also ennervated me. By being attentive but slightly disinterested, conversational but noncommittal, caring but not doting I was exploring an unusual, even (and I wouldn't learn the term for some time) queer space.
      Years before I'd been queered by acquaintances and classmates. It happened regularly in college. I never learned to keep my hands by my sides when I spoke. My mother continues to be kind and caring, traits that I appreciate and share. Showing hospitality is both a basic demand of civility and very respectful to guests. Light touches mixed with an avoidance of competitive sport all placed me in the "confused" category. Though I wasn't always happy with my shape, my skills, or my looks, I was happy with who I was, my friends, and my pasttimes.
      Maybe I balanced the outsideness with a skill for invisibility, but growing up where I did, how I did made me safe. I had a community of open-minded peers, educators who liked to challenge norms, and an incredibly caring and patient mother. What I mean is that in various small ways and by various people, I was identified as gay. Women I'm interested in have often commented they considerd I might be gay. I was never threatened and my anxieties arose from other things. The experience has given me some perspective without the burden of actually coming out, of being directly confronted by overt homophobia, or being interrogated by family and friends because of their prejudices.
    So my junior year and again at the summer studies program, I was a pleasantly aloof, engaging, and gently affectionate young person. There are girls, now women, with whom I might have been close and think about from time to time. When K_____ and I started dating, it was to deny others I also cared about. It was much the same when K_____ and I "called off" the break up. That said, there is nothing like a dormitory of teenagers to inflame hearts.
    This is where I met L____. I remember seeing her cross the quad in long, flowing skirts. I woke earlier than S____ and N___ or just about anyone else I knew. I'd read over a quiet breakfast and started returning to the dorms, to wake S____ and N___ with cups of coffee. They would both huddle in little forts under their beds talking with friends or tapping away on their computers. Both were (and I assume still are) small framed women; they'd wear each other's clothes as often as their own. So I'd knock on their unlocked door and let myself in with steaming cups of coffee. N___ once joked that I was Daddy Caleb, which in light of everything else is somewhat perplexing.
    L____ and I crossed paths regularly before sharing words. We did not have class together and lived on different sides of the dormitory. Maybe she was taking an art history or a literature class. Years later she was interning at the art museum, but her interests have always been diverse. I have it all written down somewhere--I was fastidious about journaling then--but now I can only think of a handful of actual meetings.
    We played cards in one of the common rooms. Rummy, I think, or maybe gin rummy. I remember trying not to stare at her. L____ is classically beautiful. It sounds trite now, and I've met other women who idolize or resemble Audrey Hepburn, but L____ had always made more sense as a movie star or foreign royalty than as someone I met in summer camp. I remember being taken aback that her mother was a botanist of a certain stripe; I was interested, but it seemed so... material compared to the airiness with which she walked, the gentleness with which she spoke, her delicately sharp bone structure.
    Despite my friends' encouragement at the last dance of the camp, I could not ask her to join me. The formality of asking someone to dance still fills me with anxiety, I've just gotten better at overcoming it. We had gone on evening walks several times. Duke University has more than a few flaws, but its grounds are stunning. Dormitories and faculty halls are weighty with large red bricks and age. Malls of trimmed grass and the stubborn trails of packed earth stretch beneath generous, overhanging trees. Small gardens and leisurely boulevards provide innumerable landmarks for wanderers. The Sarah P. Duke Gardens are expansive and regal with plaques on plants and donors and a plaza dedicated to Thomas Jefferson (though I believe they were out of bounds for ust at that time). Whoever I found myself with, L____ included, we were never without topics related to class, friends, or our own dreams for ourselves. (I can remember one exception to this rule.) Most of us had been told in one way or another that we were brilliant young people, capable of anything, and we pretty much believed them.
    Now that I say that, I think that L____ and I--with similar notions of romanticism--walked quietly in the evening. We did not hold hands--both of us had someone at home--and were not too nervous to talk. Nevertheless, we seemed in tune with those meditative moments. We took in the sights, each step, the company of the other like two people who had known each other long enough to not have to talk. With L____, I thought a whole day, a whole week might rise and set and we would have enjoyed each change. We were astronomers, fascinated with the gyrations of flowers and the patter of rainfall and the arteries of this place we shared for six weeks.
    I found Laura after the dance. No one slept much the night before we were to depart. I think we sat close on a hard university sofa. I set my arm around her, I think. Whatever gesture it was, she enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. We might have played cards. I'm not sure on all the details. I know that I was happy and that we were together.
    S____, or maybe A____ (though I think it was S____), and I shared a cab to the airport. We were quiet. Tired. Excited and sad and somehow dozens of other feelings crammed together. We were young and everything is dialed to eleven when you're seventeen years old. We had spiral bound term books with scattered black and white photos and spreadsheets of names, addresses, phone numbers. I remember writing to S____ and N___ a little, but mostly the book slid onto a shelf and was forgotten.
   
    In November, I woke from a dream. Funny. Despite the fogginess of those summer days, I can remember that dream quite clearly.

Love and Other Wrong Reasons: Foreword

I've begun a project. Though this is called a "foreword," it is sort of a project scope. Like too many project scopes, it has started out expansive and will be fine-tuned, trimmed, and sculpted as the end result comes into focus. This is also a free range to exercise muscles that have fallen into disuse. I'm likely to get a little lost, but that is one of the benefits of making this kind of space for myself. So here goes the first breadcrumb, I hope I can find it on my way back.

...

    This project is a meditation on bad decisions, mine and others', that may or may not be rooted in love. Like any literary project, I suppose there is a strong possibility I will unearth my own shortcomings. This may even be a means of overcoming them. I am in the midst of a standoff with myself around romance, decision-making, and what I actually want for myself. Some of the writing here will touch on that. Most of it will not. Hopefully all of it is engaging and interesting.
    We'll see about that.
    I have a persistent obsession with Raymond Carver's "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love." This story defined much of my aspirational writing style for years. It is wildly different from my more recent obsessions, but marks a zenith of handling an everpresent topic in a fresh, mature, and challenging way. Each year provides a new lens through which I can read the story, glean lessons, and be taken aback. I do not want to populate this manuscript with mediocre imitations of that piece. Just as "What We Talk About" comes from a deeply insightful, mature, and reflective place, I want to assume a similar posture towards my own experience, my present situattion, and my writing.
    In a similar mode, I want these stories to examine recurring motifs that trouble or challenge me. "Why I Hate White Boys" is my attempt at taking a critical stance on a whole body of media that places entitled white teenagers as if they were sympathetic tragic heroes. I do this in part to identify my own position or even displace it in a system of privilege and oppression. The title comes from my immediate reaction to these characters in media and not from any deep-seated condemnation. Like much of the work here, it is written and hopefully read in a spirit of playful critique.
    This playful critique is a foolish position. The Fool represents impulse, creativity, and idealistic matters--amongst other things. In the traditional depiction of the Fool, he is a clad in bright green and off on an adventure, oblivious that he is about step off the edge. Meanwhile, his faithful canine companion is tugging fervently at the leg of his trousers to keep him safely eathbound. If the Fool is so idealistic, perhaps he is the faithful man in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade who is willing to trust that Providence will guide his step to divine safety in search of the Holy Grail. Or maybe the Fool is willing to explore not the air itself, but the mysteries of what has not been explored. The dog, so faithful and true, wants to remain on the solid, the known, the material. It is impossible for the dog to go where he has not already been. Then again, he is at least safe.
    I want to let myself make mistakes again. Not just the mistakes of indifference or laziness or distraction, which are all common enough, but the mistakes of staying safe. In "A Bench in Fiddler's Green," I take on one of my most defining experiences as a young adult and romantic person. The memories I associate with this story are sometimes comforting and warm but more often foggy, confusing, and profoundly strange. These memories may be read as the companion regularly tugging me back to safety when I should be leaping forward, onto an adventure that may reward with years or even decades of support, affection, and care.
    Selfishly, these pieces may help uproot the barriers that these hound dog memories maintain. I have been blessed by the care and affection and even--Dare I say?--love of wonderful women. Presumption is its own foolishness, but presumption is also necessary for the closeness needed in love. In love we consider we may actually know what another person thinks and feels. We presume to understand some parallel universe of experience, perception, interpretation, and sensation. I think that I have set aside that presumption with the excuse of respect and the private expectation of some sort of emotional stability.
    All of that is far too serious. The airiness of foolishness means taking a different and especially comedic look at things. As Charlie Chaplin put it, "Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot." The foolish position allows us to see the comedy--or the tragicomedy when needed--in the tragedy. Someone I used to know (a phrase borrowed from Elliott Smith) once described me as a tragic figure. It was high school and we had dated and she was a theatrical type of person. When she dropped me off at home, she came around the car and attacked me with kicks and wild punches. The self-awareness and peculiarity of the day--including a beautiful Midwest fall day at the park--provided almost immediate distance from the event and I was able to laugh about it within days. I actually sort of deserved a hard slap or swift punch or two for what had happened, but the mad fumbling aggression queerly mirrored the mad fumbling of our relationship as a whole.
    I hope that I am not a tragic figure. They always die at the end or lose their friends and lovers. I want this effort to divorce me from whatever tragic figure she thought I was. I want it to divorce me from the hard memories that weigh at my feet. I don't know if I would settle for a comedic figure, but at least they get to get hitched at the end.
    This work is about love being one of "all the wrong reasons." I posed this question in conjunction with the 70's catchphrase, "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle." I think of this phrase often when some hetero-female friend of mine is going through one romantic crisis or another, knowing that it also reflects on me and my social position. The other quote buzzing in my head has been Zsa Zsa Gabor's: "Getting divorced just because you don't love a man is almost as silly as getting married just because you do." Unfortunately, I didn't know any catchy images to go along with it.
    I am part of some sort of demographic group that sees romantic love as the gravitational center around which we are supposed to define our lives. Mostly, we see this as a feminine attribute--like little girls wearing pillow cases for veils as they rehearse the Big Day--, but I reassure you that there is a corollary amongst men. I also find myself at that age when more and more familiar faces are adorned with formal wear, rings, and little cherubic faces. If we--this generation, demographic, or some other categorical grouping--are making these decisions because we think love is so definitive, what happens when that gets force gets disrupted by some rogue planet or even a rare eclipse of that loving, weighty luminosity?
    I have seen bad relationships persist because of love. I have seen good relationships dissolve despite love. I can see the breakdown of good relationships, of loving relationships not because love isn't there, but because love simply isn't the satisfactory salve for the wounds two people might inflict on one another. It is one reason, sometimes the right reason and sometimes the wrong reason, for making decisions. This is an attempt to better understand the latter. In the end, I may even understand the former a little bit.