[guest column] I cannot claim to know you now

THIS IS A WONDERFUL

Guest column by my dear friend in real life (and my partner in crime) who never seems to have a problem finding a reason to go out with me, finding a date or finding fun wherever she is.  Enjoy!

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“I cannot claim to know you now.”

 I think to truly understand my dating life, you’d have to start at the beginning. It was sophomore year of high school (I was a late bloomer), I was 70 pounds lighter, still a virgin and had the biggest crunch on The Cowboy. His parents owned all of the milk-producing cows for Louisiana, Alabama and parts of Florida. And even though he lived in a mansion in the ritzy part of town, he was still The Cowboy to me.

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From the moment I laid my eyes upon him, I knew he was different. Perhaps it was the way he stood, managing to look arrogant while standing on tall, lanky legs. Maybe it was his smile, reflecting of his dark twinkling eyes, one dimple on the left cheek which always took me off guard. It could have even been his hair, whose golden locks formed one extravagant curl in the front, which never seemed to flatten out, no matter how many times he ran his fingers through it, I think more than anything though, it was the first time I heard him read his poetry.

His voice, which ebbed in and out, talked of running from Greek gods and dancing in the rain, screamed conflict and resolution with every stanza. His hands gripped the podium, contracting every muscle, as if the intensity of the reading would cause him to fly off to the Land of Oz. I, whose writings favored the intense symbolism of Dante’s Inferno; a writer who could take on word and write a novel on it, would read my poetry to the crickets, and the blank stares of my fellow peers. They didn’t understand my emotion, because it was huddled underneath a rock.

Sometimes I wanted to scream in exasperation. How was I supposed to be better than the individual whose poems made me want to weep from their exquisiteness? I wasn’t even on the same level. I had the sun rising in my head, but the brilliant corals and umbers came out a despotic gray.

His poetry carried over into life. His quite bow, moving back and forth against the taunt strings of his cello, took on a life of its own. Even when he took a breadth, his fingers twitched in anticipation, conducting the Trans-Siberian Orchestra with every spasm. I would watch him, head lulled to one side, nostrils breathing in the sweet poignant odor of a single rose. Tchaikovsky and Bach would follow him to class, his eyes still playing the complicated rhythms. Every now and then he would even add a hop in his step, the dramatic pause in his greatest composition.

The intense appetite to make sense of the universe followed him everywhere. In class, he would ask “why” until the entire class threatened to gag him, and duck tape him to a chair (which they actually did one time, to the administrator’s horror). I would sit back in my desk, watching the scene unfold; the flutter of eyelids from flustered, exasperated teachers, that rare smile and the deep satisfaction of a question well answered. There were always more questions though; the world is a mysterious place. I, deemed powerless, from the shear comedy of the situation, could do nothing but throw back my head and laugh. Curiosity more than killed the cat. It knocked it into another dimension.

With religious zeal he would attack the personal motivations of our fellow classmates. He was a self-proclaimed psychologist; the Dr. Phil of our high school. With my head rested on my hands, phone resting beside my ear, he would discuss the human condition into the earl hours of the morning. The topics ranged from politics, religion, to the Oedipus theory and the fact that at some point we where going to eventually (despite our best intentions) become our parents. He asked me what my favorite politician was. I didn’t have one, I thought they all needed work. After my grandmother died, he asked me why I didn’t cry. I was too objective. He would ask me why I didn’t believe in God. To that, I answered, “Why should I?” Teenagers, at some point decide to re-evaluate their lives. Up until that point, I had believed exactly what my parents believed, and while I still believe much of what my parents believe, now it is for my own reasons.

The last night I saw him, we lay in the dry, Louisiana grass, watching the heaven spread before our eyes. When I left, I didn’t say goodbye. All I can do now is re-iterate what you said to me that night, “I cannot claim to know you now, but I can say thank you for allowing me to cavort with beaming angels, and for your allowing me to play your usual role in life, just for one performance.” It still holds true.

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I moved away from Louisiana and my Cowboy that summer. Years later I tried to tell the Cowboy what he meant to me. He was my first kiss, my first crush and I really think he was my first step to becoming an adult. He was very cold and looked at me like I was crazy. I decided at that moment that all of the mystery was gone. The Cowboy graduated at the top of his class, he went to a fancy IV college where he, joined a full-of-themselves fraternity and got a girlfriend that looks like she could be a mini-version of the first lady (And not the Michelle Obama kind). He’s no longer my cowboy.