I

I remembered the first time I met him. It was easier than sleeping then, to just reminisce. Sometimes it’s all you can get, thoughts. Sometimes it’s easier to deal with the idea then the person… sometimes it’s better, no fuss no muss. Sometimes… sometimes I worry that I could be content with that. I wondered if maybe I was sub-human. Co-dependent??? Was I really co-dependent? Well he’d been gone three days now and I was still sleeping with his shadow, careful not to roll onto his side of the bed, where he couldn’t be bothered to sleep. Nine days of not sleeping there, and his imprint still remained. He never could spend the night.
The first time I saw Adam he was in the cafeteria, talking with a group of upper middle class sorority girls. He was always surrounded by girls. It never seemed threatening somehow, though, as if I were being silly to even imagine that he would think of trying to nail any of them. Of course that’s how he nailed me… he snuck right into my comfort zone, and he didn’t even want in. He didn’t want me so bad that I couldn’t sleep at night without clawing my pillows and wishing they were him.
We met our second semester at school, at a party at a mutual friend’s house. Mutual friend’s rather vague, but the details are unimportant. It was one of those girls that we both would say “oh yeah, I remember,” but would never really be bothered to call up and see how they were doing. Even now, I can remember distinctly the vibrant colors of the apartment, all of the appropriate pop-culture posters adorning the narrow hallway between the bathroom and the common room. I cannot, however, remember her name. She invited Adam to the party because she wanted to nail him. That was not to be. In fact, I’m almost positive she never slept with him. That night, specifically, I know she did not, because I did. Not screwed, not shagged, not fucked… but for the one of the few times ever, slept with him—next to him at least, on the common room sofa in our freshman dorm after staying up all night talking.
Despite having spilled most of my tequila laced orange juice on him (and the vague-nameless friend’s sofa), I was feeling a pretty heavy buzz. Enough of a buzz to want to take him back up to my double single and have my way with him. I held myself back then, somehow, between spilling my dinner and my thoughts and dreams, and after about a pack and a half of Parliament Lights we knew more about each other than anyone else at that party.
I knew that he was a chain smoker for one, but rarely when not in my company. I had the same affliction with him, and as such, much of our early relationship revolved around wildly flailing cigarette-laden hands in the middle of the night on one empty quad or another. We found a common ground in entertaining each other, and told rich stories of former “loves,” (neither of us really had any idea what that word meant), miserable classes, and unbearable roommates. We shared books, movies, music, and food. Soon, our middle of the night deviations led into daylight excursions to share in each other’s many passions. I introduced him to the wonders of tofu, and together we explored the many small specialty restaurants in our trendy college section of Bean town.
We toured the world in one week. Monday we went to India for Samosas, Tuesday we had Pad Thai in Thailand, Wednesday to Greece for goat cheese and spinach quiche, Thursday to Italy for wine and dessert, and Friday night we had sushi in bed with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. That night we made love for the first time while I introduced him to Sarah Vaughan. We had Summertime in the dead of New England winter and never fell asleep that night, just sat on the steps of our dorm, smoking our Parliament’s and staring silently at the full moon. We’d never run out of things to say to each other, but somehow none of them fit into that moment. It was big enough with just the two of us, inches apart, feet grazing each other lightly, as though making sure of each other’s presence.
When the sun came up he went back to his room and napped for the day. I went back to my room too, and stared at the ceiling for many hours. I made a list of all of the books, and movies, and albums he had recommended to me, and made him a list from me. I read Sexual Perversity in Chicago, watched Fellini’s 8½, and listened to an early bootleg Nirvana recording that I was able to download. When it started getting dark out, I took one of the pills that the girl across the hall had given me and a shower, and figured he’d be calling soon. He was sitting on my bed when I got out of the shower, and we spent the next twelve hours locked in my bedroom.
Two weeks earlier, however, on our first official date, both of us had acquired a nervousness that prevented us from even reaching for the other’s hand in the theatre. We had dinner at a hip café a few blocks from the small liberal arts college that we both attended. It had recently been revamped, painted bright shades of cantaloupe and honeydew, as the formerly dark green cave-like walls were no longer what the “scene” necessitated. We ate and drank quietly, as though we’d run out of things to say after sharing so much the night before. He was the perfect gentleman, holding the subway door so that it didn’t close on me, and then offering an old woman that got on with us a seat that could have easily housed both of us.
We went to a recently renovated fifties era theatre that showed artsy college films and a small selection of classics, and decided on a popular French film that everyone in my film classes had been talking about. It was, in many ways, the perfect first date. I was glad that he didn’t try to kiss me, I was so wrapped up in the movie, which turned out to be every bit as good as the too hip kids in my classes were saying. Two hours and three Kleenex later, we were on an empty late night train back toward campus. He finally got up the nerve to lace his fingers in between mine, somewhat unsure of himself, but I was sure enough for both of us. I rested my head on his shoulder, and could have fallen asleep right there. My mother always told me that was when I would know it was right. I was sure that Adam was “the one.”
We stepped off of the train into the deserted station next to our school, and in my three quarter length skirt and vintage shoes, I felt like Vivien Leigh under the skilled guidance of an older man. I was so lost in my own dream world, that when my heel caught in a subway grate and I lost my balance I almost missed him sweeping me safely into his just strong enough arms. In that perfect moment we shared our first kiss and I surrendered any chance I had of ever getting out unscathed.
We were much too much for each other right from the beginning. It was foolish to think that either of us would be bound to the other anymore than we could be anyone else. Looking back on journals I’d written at the time, I know that I was just that foolish. I believed in love for a brief moment, and that it really could conquer all, even two neurotic minds, manic depression and a fledgling speed habit. Then again, at 20 we all think we can have the world. It truly is that year, that odd year where nothing seems to change, that it all really does, right behind your back while your waiting with bated breath to be a grown up. It’s like when you’re 13 and all of a sudden you have hair where you don’t seem to remember it being. It had to have grown at some point, but it seems to have just sprouted up out of nowhere. My infatuation for Adam seemed to grow overnight and after I, foolishly, tried to trim the unfamiliar growth away, it quickly returned, more feverishly than before.
The first month that we were together was, I assume, much like anyone’s first month together. All we wanted to do was have sex and gaze longingly into each other’s eyes. Despite neither of us being virgins, we seemed to be under the unflappable impression that sex had never existed outside the context of “us.” It was our very own special discovery, our dirty little secret, and for a month I didn’t even tell Carrie that I was seeing anyone.
Our freshman year was my first time away from home, but like every other 20 year old in the world, I was sure that I was more grown up then the rest of them. I had my own dorm room (my roommate had left just late enough to secure me a single for at least one semester), a strong focus on my future, and the perfect boyfriend. All of my pillars were in place, and I felt like a strong, solid structure. This was also around the time that I had started getting into pills. Some people call it crank, speed, meth, which I guess makes me a speed freak, but to me, it was Desoxyn, and to my naïve 20 year old mind, it was just something to help me stay up and study from time to time. Soon time-to-time became a daily ritual, and that’s where it got messy, and the girl across the hall with ADHD was no longer able to satisfy my need with a fraction of her weekly meds.
Two weeks after our first kiss and our first night together, Adam surprised me by taking me to see my favorite band, which I’d tried to get tickets for months earlier, at no avail. I remember, It had been a particularly neurotic, first month kind of week where I questioned everything about us and whether or not we would make it because he had three solid days of exams, so I didn’t see him and barely heard from him for that time. On the afternoon of the third day, at which point I was religiously checking my voicemail every hour on the hour in case I’d somehow not heard the phone ring in my nine by twelve high rise cubicle, he knocked on my door.
When I answered the door, he was wearing the same thing he had been three days earlier, and despite the fact that it was rumpled, messy, didn’t match, and smelled of three-day-old dorm room, it is still my favorite memory of him. That night answered any questions I had about us. As was customary of crowded club shows, we held hands to weave our way through the crowd without losing each other. Once we’d found a place, he rested one hand in the small of my back (it fit just right, like the two pieces were molded to fit together), and the other on my left hip, leaning a bit so that his chin rested just on the top of my head. He said I smelled like candy. He made me feel sexy and interesting and wanted and loved, and that was what my fragile writer ego needed. Similarly, his stage-hesitance (he wouldn’t call it fright, he wasn’t afraid), was eased a bit by a few encouraging words before and after a play reading or a stand up routine. I even set up all of my stuffed animals one night so that he could practice with a real audience. That night, at the club with it’s purple swirling smoky lights and clove cigarette air, we were the only one’s there. Crammed in to regulation like sardines, we felt like we were at our own private show. Speaking strictly for me, it was the most perfect night of our young lives.
In reality it was one of the many stages we shared. We were both performers, both artists, and both required too much attention to pay enough to a lover and ourselves. We liked the attention we were able to give each other for a short period of time. Thriving on the intensity that both of us felt, we were able to drive each other through a very creative time. An affair of such intensity cannot last for long, however, and soon we were plagued with more troubles than our lack of experience had equipped us to handle.