i probably loved her most when she punched the pop machine.
she’d run from me into the dorm’s kitchen and squarely (and impressively) punched straight into the “o” in the giant, glistening “coke”. i watched her from the couch, watched her collapse into a folded, crying bundle of tears and anger and blonde and disappointment.
she lay there even as the girls came down to get their midnight chaser, looked at her mockingly, and inquired only to see if she would move out of the way so they could order from the bruised machine. she rolled to her side, pressing her damp cheek to the red to give them access to their needs, bending herself to their wills.
it’s the fallen ones that tend to catch my eye. something about damage, loss, anger, passion and the acknowledgment of all that, the embodiment of that weight, the rawness that’s undeniably attractive. and none had fallen quite as far as she had at that moment, from holy.. to there, in the basement of my dorm, curled and cuddled next to her ruby red friend.. who she’d just sucker punched in the gut.
ironically, she’d just told me she wasn’t sure she loved me anymore.
i forget the occasion, and there may not have even really been one.. but one of my favorite memories is of playing volleyball at red river outdoors in the red river gorge.
at one point, a grand plan occurred to me.. it was time to capture an indian princess. i sighted the target in the distance with her flowing white dress on, now spotted with grass stains from the evening. making like i was going for a glowstick, i ran across the imaginary line in the sand.. and then made for the mark. i picked her up, threw her over my shoulder, weaved, stumbled, and laughed the whole way back to the vw bus where i threw her in and shut the door. we had her! and since she was bent over double in laughter, she didn’t even fight it. still, a small border war ensued. despite the best efforts of the coalition, her now fiancé and the rest of the glow stick launchers freed her from the bus and the brown terror was loose again. (by the way, i say brown only because she would say the same herself and proudly. she truly is one of the most beautiful people i know, inside and out.)
after her escape. the night moved on filled with streaks of neon gel and we all grew tired eventually. we collapsed in the grass around 2am, exhausted and drunk, watching the stars spin in the inky sky faster than the universe even envisioned. y and i stayed up and talked with don for an hour or so, amusing ourselves by how much alcohol and general abuse that poor man’s body could handle and still function (that’s a relative term). by 3am, dreams of mattresses danced in our heads and y and i made the trek back to lexington. thankfully, she stayed up with me, chatting it up the entire time. needless to say, the next day we didn’t get an alpine start. 😉
the other day, while answering questions for our health plan, i was asked if i’d used tobacco products within the last year. slightly disappointed, i’d answered no, i hadn’t. it got me to thinking about a few of the times have i have had a cigarette.. or, as in one case, half a pack of joe camels.. and then lost my voice for three days.
..awesome. but nothing came of it, thankfully, not even a warning since i think he was confused about what to warn me about. so i went on through to quaint mount vernon.. met m and we hung out for a bit, talked about what to do for the night, then decided to head over to kenyon college. she wanted to show me the “upside-down tree” and the chapel they had there. now, there’s always an attraction to some type of action, something a little risky and dangerous, even if those two aspects are mostly imagined. so what were we, two good christian kids, to do when, at 1am in the morning, we found the doors were open to nearly all the campus buildings.. with no one in sight.. while school was out..
in high school starting in my sophomore year, i took college courses at the local extension campus. now, i have to say, while that sounds like heavy hitting, believe me.. it wasn’t. it didn’t take me long to realize that, for the most and at least at this school, professors loved to hear themselves talk. and some how they seem to talk on exactly what was assigned for that week’s reading. it’s almost as though they read the chapter, did a little extra research, then spoke extemporaneously for as long as the university would allow.. huh..? 😉
now i didn’t let this little factoid go to waste.. nor did it pass me by that, though they talked tough on attendance, they often didn’t follow through on it.
there was a semester when i actually did go to class.. but that had more to do with jena. jena was twenty-four and answered calls at the extension to help pay tuition.. i was sixteen, seventeen. we were just friends, though she’d occasionally chime in with, “if you only a few years older..” we’d hang out and tell ourselves that we still weren’t crazy because we were at least asking each other if we were crazy.. and that must make us sane.. right?
