Someone Else

What is the most romantic thing you’ve ever done for someone?

She lobbed the question like a Frisbee, sort of wobbly, knowing that eventually it would hit the ground but for awhile it was going to float along the air and remain there for a proper portion.

He had somewhat of an answer but he delayed a moment…his delay a signal that perhaps he had done so many numerous romantic efforts that the catalog in his mind was searching for the perfect one.  And, candidly, there were quite a few.

I think it had to be a letter I once wrote.

A letter?

Yes…a letter.  Handwritten. 

 

And to whom was this correspondence?

He loved that she said that…correspondence.  It was a mutual communication…it was a give and take.  In today’s SnapChat world of disappearing texts and erasable emails letters were his domain…he loved handing them to her, loved printing them with his own hand. 

 Letters were effort.

Now remember this was a long time ago—

How long?

Like before I met you long.

Okay.

She was processing, he could tell, but it still looked like he could continue without a lot of damage.

And by the way, he added…if I’ve ever done anything that you believe is exceptionally romantic then please feel free to let me know.  Because the only reason I mention this is that she acknowledged it to me.

A few moments of silence.  Then…fair enough.

So he began.

In my sophomore year of college we got a new English teacher…a young lady, probably twice my age.

How old were you?

I was about 19.

Okay, so she was 38?

Uhm, she was in her thirties.

You said twice your age.

I was exaggerating for effect.

Try to stick to facts.  This could be important.

It’s really not.

It could be.

Okay.

So anyways, she shows up and she is stunning.

Stunning?

Stunning…she was petite, she was well-read, learned, and she was like this quiet, almost Adrian-like.

Adrian?

You know…Rocky…and Adrian.

The mousy girl?

Yeah….mousy…but you remember that scene in his apartment when he takes off her glasses and mentions how beautiful she is?  And she doesn’t believe him?

I think so.

Well she was like that…but maybe she knew.

Knew what?

That she was pretty.

Oh?  How so?

Because of her eyes.

Her eyes?

Yes…they were…

What.

They were blue.

Blue?

Yes…but like deep water blue.  Like levi-jeans blue.

I hate her already.

No, no…it’s not like that.  They looked black from afar, and she had this little mousy face and small body, but when she got close you saw the color of her eyes and they were such a different shade that I guess I found them indescribable.

Okay…so what did you do that was so romantic?

He waited, remembering an effort…a correspondence.

I tried to describe them.

Them?

Them…I tried to describe the color of her eyes.

She took it in…nodding slightly…(to his mind annoyed)…

So what happened?  Did she respond?

He went back a ton of years…to a point when he was much younger…to a point when he had not heard anything…to a point when he felt he had poured out something like a piece of him and it had gone unmeasured…it had gone overlooked…or insignificant…and that piece of him remembered a bit of a cut, a bit of a sting.  Lemon in the wound.

And then, later, in the summer, when a letter had arrived and he had been mowing the lawn, probably in high summer and he was in just shorts and pushing the mechanical engine across a unrelenting lawn and his father had come outside.  In his hand he had a letter and for some strange reason he had stopped him from his lawn progress to interrupt him.  His father had asked if he had known somebody by a complicated Irish name and he remembered thinking that a rubber-band snap of a memory had taken place…and that he now had…some correspondence.

It was in her handwriting, and he saw how fragile it was, and the bone-thin envelope with barely something in there…but it was something from her and as he was sweating, stinking of gas and lawn clippings he scurried through the writing.

It was polite.

It was demure.

Her words were comforting while they were crushing him altogether…and he was rubbing parts of grass away from his cheeks and reading her actual hand-written words…but in the end, she talked of ages of difference, ages of knowledge.  Ages that were any easy way to say no, and as much as he appreciated the correspondence, it inevitably ended up being a closure.

Yes.  She wrote me back.

Well what did she say?

He turned to her…knowing that she was aware of her violation of his memory…that she was worried about a blue eye, or wondering about an age…but at the same time he knew that she was such a brown-eyed girl that had captivated him that her interest was more like curiosity than jealousy.

She said no.

No?

Yes.  She said no…that we couldn’t work out…wouldn’t work out.

A pause.

Well I’m sorry.

Don’t be.  It wasn’t the end.

It wasn’t?

No it wasn’t.  I had to go back to school and face her, and keep this tiny, little splinter in me while I was in school and it was a bit of a pain in the ass…but…

He stopped, thinking about the data…thinking about letters and why you write them…why you communicate…why you put down in words so you ink-stamp them on somebody’s mind.

But what?

He thought ahead…Years later…she reached out to me…I don’t remember how she got my information but she reached out to me.

She did?  She sat up in her chair, perhaps thinking a new wrinkle was at work.

She did.  And she was lovely.

Lovely?

Yes…she basically admitted that she had stumbled upon that letter…many years later…many moons ago…and she felt bad about letting me down.

She did?

She did…and I was amazed…I was curious why she kept the letter but then I thought better of asking.

Why?

It was a fair question…a question of holding on, of grasping straws, of letting age spill into a cup and trying to reverse the sands, of remembering why there was an inspiration…why there was a muse.

Because I think I said to her what I honestly felt…and so very few people are willing to risk such an effort.

She stared at him a bit, and seemed okay with the answer.

Have you ever done that for me? She asked.

Without hesitation…

All the time.

Pocket Full of Sunshine

Take me away.

Where, he asked.

Steal me somewhere.  Someplace warm.

In his mind he responded:  That would be easy…for you to climb upon me, fully clothed, fully tousled,  let us kiss with eyes open, smiling…that would be a warmth.  An emanating one, wasp stings on the lips, the gentle pillow-weight of you upon me, spilling on me.  You would be warm as well.

Instead:  Mexico?

Too dangerous…but something like that, where the beach meets the sand…she was motioning with her hand like drawing a line with her palm, a vast expanse of beach of white meeting pale green water. And I would get sunburn…and tanlines.  She squished her eyes into a smile at the last word, an eyebrow raising.  

He did love her tanlines…

In his mind responded:  The tanned areas are the latitude lines that divide up your earth, the pale areas such hot zones, where I knew instantly if I crossed.  I could feel the upheaval in your terrain, the earthquake shudder and aftershocks…even if I just lightly touched…just lightly tasted the salty regions that had once been protected but were now unprotected, leaving only a thin tan line as the last defense.

Instead:  Well, what about the Caribbean then…maybe the US Virgin Islands…you know, like real America? 

She smiled a response….maybe…what about someplace cool?

Cool?  Like Fonzie or like the weather?

Fonzie…

In his mind he responded:  I would love to see you dance, to see you sweat, to hold a drink or maybe a few drinks and watch your inhibitions drain from you, in a loud and clamorous place, with lights and darkness and people and strangers but all I would be able to see would be you, bangs sticking to your forehead with a slight sheen, your mouth is a bit of a smile, but mouthing the words to the song…and putting your head down as you raised your arms and moved your hips.

Instead:  We could go to New York…go to a club, roll out in a limo, go buy a dress a BCBG, heels from Jimmy Choo, perfume from Cartier, undergarments from Amanda Lorenzani—

Undergarments?

Undergarments…you know, but really nice undergarments.

Well, she paused….what if, you know, I didn’t like to dance in undergarments.

You’d like to dance in these.

Okay…I guess.

In his mind he responded:  You don’t realize the unwrapping of you is exquisite, the peeling of layers, the slow revealing…it is like watching the moon rise in an orange of autumn, it is so spectacular in this dark black sky that all eyes are drawn to it.  It mesmerizes, it disarms, perhaps even paralyzes…it’s silly, it’s trite, but even watching you remove a heel, or remove a sock, exposing the calf or sweet painted toes is a visceral experience…imagine only if I got to unveil you like those old art movies, with a sheet covering you attached to a rope and suddenly somebody pulled the rope and there was this art object…that’s what unwrapping you would be like.

Instead:  Maybe we could compromise…maybe no bra.

I guess it depends on the dress.

Well if you’re not wearing underwear we’ll never make it to a club.  Maybe down the elevator.  Definitely not past the taxi.

Again, she looked up at him, regarding.  He loved when her imagination collided with his, particularly when the topic was a bit outside of their daily banter, and her eyes narrowed and her mouth was more of a smirk then a smile.  The thought of them interlocked in the backseat of a taxi, the driver straining in the rearview mirror, narrowly missing pedestrians and oblivious to the sounds of honked horns and profanities thrown to this teetering, lurching sugar-shack making its way down Broadway.  He smiled and hers widened.

Fine, I’ll wear underwear.

Well at least we agree on one thing.

True…well, where else could we go?

In his mind he responded:  I would take you to an art museum, in a hall of Monet’s, where we could while away the entire day just being pensive, just reading about inspiration, colors, moods, feelings and imagination.  I would disagree with an interpretation but would end up seeing your perspective.  I would buy you a glass of wine in the atrium, and we would go to the outside gardens, mimicking colors we had just seen in art now live in the dirt.  We would try to re-imagine the waterlilies and then go back in, sneaking our wine past the guard and listening to our footfalls as they echoed in the large sterile chambers, proudly displaying the artist’s handiwork.  We would agree on a favorite painting and we would google the amount it cost to purchase and then I’d tell you how long it would take me to save up for it.  And you’d go buy a cheaper replica in the art museum store, a 3x5 postcard so you could put on my mirror so I would remember the day…which would be redundant, since I knew I would never forget.

Or maybe we could go to an antique bookstore, where the scent of dust and linens hung in the air, where we would find old books of poems, and I’d read you one stanza and you’d silently read another, not willing to trade orations but rather preferring to absorb it yourself silently.  Finding a first edition, finding an autographed version, finding worlds undiscovered, finding words undiscovered, reading Pablo Neruda in both Spanish and translated and trying to find which version was the more romantic.  Struggling with the words in my limited skills but finding the Spanish versions much more vibrant, much more oozing of emotion.  

Instead:  Maybe we could go to a museum…

A museum?

Yeah, maybe.  An art museum perhaps.

She bounced her head back and forth, like in a debate.

Maybe.

Or perhaps a bookstore?

A bookstore…nah.  I’ve been to those before.

Not with me.

True.  I don’t know.

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.” 

Uhm, well…

That was not me saying something….that was me quoting something.

A quote?

Yes…a quote.  From Pablo Neruda…he was Chilean, but I prefer to just think of him as a Spanish poet.  You know, because…he wrote in Spanish.

I know what Chilean is.

Te amo sin saber como, ni cuando, ni de donde,
te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo:
asi te amo porque no se amar de otra manera,


sino asi de este modo en que no soy ni eres,
tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mia,
tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueno

She was looking at him, not understanding but also understanding enough.

I think the Spanish version is more delicate…primarily because it ends in the word “sueno”, which means dream versus sleep…it is open to interpretation but it’s like saying I’m going to sleep vs. I’m going to dream. I like the “going to dream” version…it implies I might see you there.

She nodded slightly.

So let me ask you now…where would you like to go? He asked.

I don’t know…

Well if you wanted to ask me, I’d tell you.

Okay, where would you like to go.

He moved to her, until his knees were touching hers. She was with her hands on her thighs and he reached out, and took hold of them, her hands on top of his, the bottom of his resting on her legs.

Nowhere. I would just prefer to stay right here.  As long as you simply would allow me.

Simply

She didn’t look like her name.

Rather, she looked like the way an astronomer would describe a night sky, with very specific attributes, very complicated orbital arrangements, involving physics and undiscovered theories.  Perplexing, mystifying, overwhelming…and to render a few letters of the alphabet to describe her in a single name just fell way too short.

She didn’t look like what other people called her…hailed her, shouted out over the crowd noise in a bar filled with people escaping the rain. 

Rather, she arrived with colors that only existed in Monet’s mind…or J. M. W. Turner’s…yes, she was made of the same Crayon box as the rest of us…but at times, when certain light encountered her, when certain backgrounds revealed, she created whole new mixtures.  An artist’s palette.  The sun after a rain storm, the black and blue clouds of a summer thunder, the slightly pale marble color of her skin along the waistline when her shirt raised slightly and I caught a glimpse of her.  She was an American girl, but she possessed colors that I had never really seen…never really knew existed, but hoped that I might see again but never would…sidewalk chalk rained upon slightly.

She didn’t look like what she introduced herself as when meeting new people…more formality, more tradition. 

 

Not like the way she was just beneath that surface, in the same way you can stand on a beach and watch polite waves but know there is a strong under-tow…she never planted red and black flags to alert you to such dramatic unseen forces until it was way too late…as you swam hopelessly against her.  

She didn’t look like her name, but she always responded when I whispered in her ear.  And at other times, when her name was all I could find to say.