OK, Im reasonably settled in Madison and I finally have internets access (no SG at Kinkos). The move unearthed this letter from a forgotten time. Oh, young Peleus
19 November 1997
My Chilean Servant Alex,
Where could I possibly begin? I suppose the last time I saw you would suffice, with a peppering of introspective analysis to cover the slow parts or those you already know and a dab of gloss to keep it from becoming so sharp it bores through your sense of visceral absurdity.
Or I could begin where I am at present typing apologetically on Annes computer for the sake of 20th Century net convenience, conserved paper in my mailing (economy, not ecology), and the avoidance of real work a grotesque and grand two weeks before it is due.
I arrived in Amsterdam (a fact Im afraid you already knew) to find myself far too busy reminiscing and ruminating to transcend the physical plane, with or without a partner. I read a number of books, wrote canal-side, and worried little about those fairer outside of the irrepressible need to at all times seduce them with aloofness. I spotted a few who stirred my fancy, but none vital enough to inspire action.
In Munich for Oktoberfest and after a day of beer I found my bed a precious commodity for Sarah, a besandled, appropriately laid-back and tan, soft-featured 25 year-old studying at the University. The next morning we awoke and parted only to greet each other a few days later with chuckles (the usual absurdity on my part and a sense of embarrassed discovery on hers). I moved on and she remains, I am told, treading in a girlish crush.
Time continued to flow in its ethereal Amsterdam way as I worked through a few more books and began a story I wasnt immediately disappointed with (since allocated to the multiple-notebook limbo containing most of my work). My next adventure, again to Munich and on to Prague, was recounted in my last letter. The whirlwind of unprotected and unhindered sex (none with consequence, thank God) centering on the Asian princess, the fragile teenager, and the German spirit of music again illuminated the relative ease with which sex was available and I returned to Amsterdam prepared to forage.
My ultimate goal was Tracy a North Shore pampered blonde who had suddenly discovered a sense of self-worth and a loathing of discovery. We planned trips to Paris and spent nights talking which convinced me to sleep through our planned departures for Paris. On a weekend in Brussels, however, the opportunity arose for a nights journey into the sheets. We left the bar alone to return home after spending the day together making fun of everyone else and unloading personal bullshit and detoured to a scenic park above the city. Once there we continued to talk as she pressed closer toward me and I looked out at the lights and up at the sky. I dont know why I didnt kiss her likely a combination of timid hesitation for fear of being rebuffed, her growing tediousness, and the strategic beauty of inaction. Regardless, we walked back to our hostel and bid goodnight.
Our return on Saturday was marked by a party thrown by the Swedes on the first floor. The weather had brightened, flirting with 70 degrees, and I had spent the majority of the waking day on the roof with two bottles of wine and Magister Ludi (the roof is accessible by a skylight in the third floor kitchen now locked and offers a view of the entire city center from near to the level of the highest church steeples). Already a bit drunk Already pissed (I had only been awake seven hours, five drinking), I showered and made my way downstairs to the party. I performed my usual procedure of finding a comfortable seat with a third bottle of wine and a glass and soon found an audience of a few people had joined me. One of them was Anne, seated next to me on the couch. I poured her a glass of wine and we proceeded with inane but ironic conversation within the growing circle. Two were now holding court and politically humoring the masses. She got up to go to her room and I continued the amusement, now well plastered, until I felt that beautiful urge to pee.
I excused myself and headed to the lift, planning to go to my room and hit the Clear Eyes while I pissed. On my way down the hall, I noticed Annes door ajar and peeked in, practically figuring I could use her toilet and drunkenly believing I could extend my visit. She walked out of her room as I entered, her lips glossy with newly, and of course subtly, applied lipstick. I commented, she blotted it on my cheek, and I turned, moving us behind the door. I pressed my face within inches of hers, murmuring something about her being nervous, and she replied she wasnt. As I slowly moved my lips closer to hers, I asked, What about now?, she answered no, and I kissed her. Soon we were on the ground and she was giving me head as we listened to the voices outside God it had been a long time since a good blow-job and she was exquisite.
When she finished, we went into her room from the foyer and she lit me a cigarette before lighting one herself Gauloises and I remarked something about the fact that now she had to meet Ainsley. After a laugh, we decided to return to the party and soon split apart. I leaned against the counter and found another glass of wine for a while until the urge to DJ (thus removing Oasis from the stereo) overcame me. I retrieved a few CDs from my room and returned downstairs. Soon, a dance floor arose and I intermittently floated in and back to the music and the corner. While dancing, Anne returned to me, told me she had hooked up with Anders a 6 foot 7 Swede who makes Tanny appear Lee Atwater in cunning intelligence and he thought she was his girlfriend now. I informed her I already knew and she shotgunned me a drag of her cigarette. We kissed briefly afterward and I returned to the CDs.
On a later foray into the dance floor, Jeannie as smart as her roots but with an unbelievably skinny waist and luscious breasts began rubbing my crotch. Grind, baby, grind. Anne came over and told me this non-person Corine had just told her she wanted to sleep with her. I returned to the CDs (likely after another witty comment).
When I tired of DJing and some idiot took over with his mix tape, I wandered out to the hall to find Jeannie, and we found her room and her roommates bed. After a bit I went back to the party and mingled some more with a few German girls. Seeing they required more than a smile a little more than I was willing to put out by that time I found Jeannie and told her I was going to bed. She followed me up, gave me head, and I passed out. Not a bad night.
She left the next afternoon, and I made my way through the two day week. Wednesday I visited a little store I found that carries American Spirits and bought a couple packs. When I came back to the dorm, I went to my kitchen, gave a pack of Spirits to Gabby the elfish soccer-fucker friend of Sarah and Anne and told her to give them to Anne. As I sat and smoked one, Anne came in, grabbed one and asked whose they were. After the obvious response given by Gabby, Anne came over and sat on my lap. We chatted and I told her I had a book she should read Camus The Fall. We walked to my room to get it and after she sat on my bed I pulled it out of my back pocket I had planned to give it to her before I left for Venice. Not a stupid girl, she laughed, I pinned her to the wall and explained I had to catch a train in half an hour and still needed to pack, and she gave me more of that glorious head. I left for Venice.
I should probably take a few moments to describe Anne a bit further. I first met her after hearing her name from a number of guys along with the description hot bitchy chick with the piano. It was a brief instance, so brief I cant truly recall it, but it likely went somewhere along the lines of her coming into the kitchen on her floor, on which a few of my friends live as well, me hearing a slightly distorted upper class British accent with uncharacteristic spirit, and her sweeping through, short brown hair well cut above alternately green, brown, and yellowish hazel eyes. She has perfectly proportionate classical features except for her lips, which burst out in the most sumptuous oval. Just large enough breasts lead the eyes down to a narrow waist, both always fashionably clothed without excess effort. She probably swept out without losing a drop of grace as brief horrible thoughts skated my mind.
The first time we actually interacted was leaving the Atrium, the student cafeteria that serves dollar beers Thursday nights. Myself and Mark a strange mix of Polish and Mexican gives him dark hair and blue eyes, but he died his hair blue in the middle of the semester; hes a bit nave in an acceptable Tom (or younger Peleus) way and my best friend here left with Gabby and Sarah and Anne joined them. She inquired with whom they were walking home, Gabby answered it was us, and Anne shot back with disdainfully high eyebrows, These people? I simply laughed an obstinate laugh and Mark and I left them.
Between that incident and the Swedish kitchen party, Anne and I ran across each other occasionally, trading quips and shots as the rest of the guys flirted with her obviously. Mostly inconsequential moments of personal history were spilled and we even hugged once while having a cigarette, but only for warmth in the biting wind. Come to think of it, she was even supposed to join me on the roof the day of the party, but she wanted to go hours later than I because she was dying her hair red, so it waited until the next day.
After the trip to Venice, an uncertain funk developed within my mind. I grew quickly more tired of the people attending the University with me and began spending more time alone in my room, never sleeping. One night, after a game of spades, I happened to be in Annes room and we began talking. A new depth appeared in our conversation, pushing me further into the bounds of my depression, and by six in the morning we were downstairs her cleaning the mess from painting her bike and I reading aloud from your timeliest of letters. Soon after, we watched the sun rise over tea in the kitchen and I bid her farewell, looking into her eyes for the first time.
In our talks and from simply being around her, I discovered the many facets of the first complex girl I have met. In brief, she grew up in Hong Kong with her investment banker father and beautiful mother until her father was on the cusp of leaving her mom. Her mom fell terminally ill and her older brother posed the question, So are you going to leave her now, Dad? She believes he was truly in love with his mistress, but he remained and they moved to London, where she spent the rest of her childhood probably 6-12 in the finest schools. The family moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, for her high-school years which entailed exploring the realms of drama and music, all the time studying Italian and French, fucking her brains out, and partying. By seventeen she was dating a forty-plus year old coke dealer/movie producer and found herself both arrested after a fifteen-year-olds drunken crash of her car and pregnant, resulting in abortion. She graduated a week later, only to walk into the soothing arms of a previous boyfriend, Franz. Franz stuck by her as she pulled back together the scraps of her bearing and she left in the fall for the structure of Smith college all girls and supposedly as good as ivy. Suddenly she embraced structure, visiting Franz most weekends and studying the rest. She concentrated on the piano, history, and economics. By sophomore year, she had discovered a couple girls, both fulfilling a warm matron-sister need and providing better head than guys can manage. She also had pursued an affair with a fiftyish piano teacher, but made love to no one except Franz.
In DC for a summer internship with the US Trade Representative in which she actually worked, preparing briefs and proposals with the rest of the staff and easily at their degree of skill she found herself tempted to stray from Franz, but never acted on it. One weekend late in July, she visited Connecticut and Franz broke up with her, needing to pursue the life of any twenty-three year old and she was devastated. She finished in DC and made her way to Amsterdam where she hooked up once or twice and soon found herself in a humorous relationship with Andres a Canadian PhD candidate who never fails to mention hes a PhD candidate and has little else to offer except skill as a lover and heavy-handed intelligence. To anchor this tale back into time, I arrived in Amsterdam approximately one month after Anne. The break with Andres was simple and lasted a week only because Anne had delayed the two prior. She had, however, slept with him once, the first person in three years aside from Franz.
Franz continues to call and write occasionally, and she still holds her truest love for him a love in that grey between friendship and passion.
A few more items in the laundry list of interest: her favorite president is LBJ; she possesses grand knowledge of classical music and, to a lesser extent, art; she falls slightly conservative and Republican by birth; she hasnt read enough, but shes making it up; she began studying Dutch when she arrived, and now speaks and reads it and is writing a 20 page paper in the language; she dances and has a standing offer with a professional company if she chooses.
Returning to the timeline, we are now somewhere in my funk and ushering out October. In lesser moments, I began to feel love for Ainsley anew. I wrote her often and verbalized this, her of course returning the favor with somewhat more style than before. After the waking night with Anne, feelings for her began to stir as well. I found myself, a day or two later, unable to bear the company of anyone, unable to read or sleep or eat, staring out my window at the stars. Your letter, unfortunately, had provided only momentary solace.
After a particularly long glance to the heavens, I made my way downstairs for a cup of tea. Mark tried to help me, but his experiences offered little to help, only driving me further into my depths. I knocked on Annes door. She invited me in and I sat on the bench of her piano, taking a moment to gather the feverish thoughts that before the moment had only itched at my mind. I burst in disappointment at my utterly ordinary and simple problems I was a regular person so that my extraordinary aspects could not help and only amplified the empty cliches. I moved to her floor and lit a cigarette. Finished, I told her to come to me and explained I didnt want head. She played a CD of soft piano music and we lay, holding each other until suddenly we kissed and grasped each other passionately. I asked if I could sleep in her bed, and we decided not to make love with Ainsley arriving in two days.
The weekend before Halloween I had explored fungal Jade Fish and reached another moment of blessed and tranquil solitude in the midst of 100 costumed foreign students. That night, Anne had collapsed mentally and fallen into disbelief at her events. She felt empty about her useless sex and I was not there to explain the level to which we had transcended she explained this to me in her bed. I freed a little more and quelled her empty fears at how she felt about me. Thursday night Ainsleys flight arrived Friday afternoon Anne resigned to read all weekend for her Dutch paper and Mark and I drank a few bottles of wine before heading out to the Atrium when word got back Anne had gone there instead of reading in a cafe as she had planned. When we arrived, Anne had already gone, and Mark and I were too drunk to deal with the Foreign crowd. We returned home for Mark to vomit and me to find Anne, who explained she had gone to find me. We smoked a joint her first in years and slept together and set her alarm for two hours before Ainsley arrived.
The weekend with Ainsley was fresh from Tennessee Williams. Friday night we went to a nice Indian dinner Anne had already introduced herself and returned to hang out with Anne, Mark, and Seth a quirky and fun NYC gay guy (he says bi). We smoked a bit, and Ainsleys cold worsened. The rest of the weekend, Ainsley was sick but we made the most of it as I was required to show her a good time. Anne began to destruct, unsure of herself or us, and my desire to still see Anne, even while Ainsley was visiting, made it that much harder because it inevitably included bringing Ainsley. Monday I visited Anne by myself and we worked through the obvious difficulties of the weekend, and she took Ainsley to the Modern Art museum that afternoon. When she returned, Ainsley asked me what I would think if she had been with a girl, and I couldnt help but chuckle at Annes boldness. Ainsley left Tuesday afternoon, something I thought would never occur, and I went to Anne with cigarettes in hand I thought flowers would be tasteless. I hadnt made love to Ainsley the last two nights she was here.
A brief time after I had gone back upstairs to my room, there was a knock at my door. I yelled to come in, and Anne opened the door. She came over and sat on my bed, where we talked and looked at each other for a time. This guy from down the hall, Steve, came in for a bit and cluelessly read my Economist while Anne and I lay in my bed. When he left I changed the music, and Anne and I made love for the first time, after a useless debate, to the Beatles.
We made love a few more nights, deciding not to worry about the consequences of a months time when I return to DC and she stays here for another year. Each time we admitted more how we felt about each other. After a bit, she told me she and Seth also her best friend here had decided she should take three days away from me to work on her ever looming paper. Seths good for her and tries to look out I agreed without much problem and then proceeded to show her what three days away meant by avoiding her completely in jealousy and strategy. By the third day, we were ready to go out and I purchased some rollers from the Dam square. Unfortunately they were bunk, so we went out drinking and soon decided to find the dealers who had cheated us. They made up for it and we had a crazy experience I will fully explain when you arrive, one that pushed us to the edge of our insecurities and bravado.
This was Saturday, and we can no longer make love for another week as Anne works out her biological necessities. This also brings us dangerously close to the current date, with just one more incident to relate. A little background Anne, as Ive written, is bisexual. She doesnt often act upon it, and claims it fulfills more of a sisterhood/motherly role than any other. The number of times shes done it is no more than three or four. One of these was in Amsterdam with Corine, the suggestive non-person at the Swede party.
While no one else gives Corine second thought, Anne somehow has let her get to her. She feels the relationship of exactly one night was a misjudged exercise of unfair power on Corine's part. Surrounded by aggressive men at a club one night, Anne told them Corine was her girlfriend. Well in the bag after a night of drinking, Anne chose to kiss Corine in order to escape the pack. This was also at the time just before she collapsed in misery at meaningless sex and she felt she simply wanted someone close. Corine fit that suit, compounding the self-loathing. She admits it was completely her decision and in the end blames herself for doing something she regrets, but she deals with it. The true problem came when it suddenly collided with the looming paper (Anne is here for a year plus and this is real school for her), her feelings for me and Franz, and her descent into unprotected sex, drugs, and all other good things. Regardless of cause, she began to slide again into turmoil.
Between myself and Seth, most of her problems were pointed out separately as not nearly as weighty as she supposed, but, two nights ago, Fritz called as Anne and I were coming to grips with our situation. Understandably she jumped up from my lap and ran downstairs. We had just finished plotting to go to bed in her room, but I simply washed my face, brushed my teeth, and lay down in my own bed with some reading. I worked on a poem. I read more. She returned a little over two hours later, hardly holding in her tears and sat down in the space I had cleared on my bed.
She then told me she had informed Franz of everything: that we were sleeping together unprotected; that she wasnt sure what was happening, but she felt strongly about me; that we hit our watershed on Saturday night. I lay there, watching her, waiting for her to say she couldnt continue with me. When she finished, she turned and looked into my eyes, and smiled. I grabbed her and hugged her and she sobbed and sobbed. She said she realized she loved Franz more than anyone in the world, and I asked her in what way she didnt answer. We discussed the fact that we dont know what will happen in three weeks when I leave. I asked her what she truly thought and felt about me. She answered much what I have written about her. She told me she loved the attractive-romantic-funny-dark-bastard-caring-intelligent aspects of me and whenever she thought of the alternative and her head agreed it wasnt a good idea her head suddenly thought of one of my facets and wanted me more. I dont know
She left much later, after we just laid together for a while. The minute she closed my door, I whispered, I love you, and burst with tears of joy. Alex, I havent felt this way before. I know its hopeless, that we have no future, and that I cant love her. I have spent the entire relationship under the assumption that there was no future for us, and there likely isnt. I also dont care. I intend to enjoy the rest of my time here with her and then leave. If that is all I get, I am pleased with it. I dont know if Im in love with her, because that word has little meaning for me not because I dont believe in it, but because I cannot define it. I know I am happy and that we both cannot help smiling when we look into each others eyes and that we feel right when we hug. Thats all.
So where does this leave me? Unchanged, optimistic, destroyed? None of these. It is simply a silly semester abroad in Europe after all.
See you in a few days,
Peleus
PS - Heres the one poem Ive written in years
Valediction
Steps outside, bound in scarves and grey
woolly cloth beneath caliginous
shadow he glances up with meticulous
pause. The window. And inside today,
behind the frosty pane, a tender cheek
belies a consequence denied in thaw:
an ephemeral bead obeys irresistable law
and drops to the floor where before, only a week,
he lay, reaching for a cigarette
like the one she lights shivering
again, again collapsed, quivering,
from her solitary pirouette.
Wow. I had forgotten how cocksure and concupiscent I could be back then...
19 November 1997
My Chilean Servant Alex,
Where could I possibly begin? I suppose the last time I saw you would suffice, with a peppering of introspective analysis to cover the slow parts or those you already know and a dab of gloss to keep it from becoming so sharp it bores through your sense of visceral absurdity.
Or I could begin where I am at present typing apologetically on Annes computer for the sake of 20th Century net convenience, conserved paper in my mailing (economy, not ecology), and the avoidance of real work a grotesque and grand two weeks before it is due.
I arrived in Amsterdam (a fact Im afraid you already knew) to find myself far too busy reminiscing and ruminating to transcend the physical plane, with or without a partner. I read a number of books, wrote canal-side, and worried little about those fairer outside of the irrepressible need to at all times seduce them with aloofness. I spotted a few who stirred my fancy, but none vital enough to inspire action.
In Munich for Oktoberfest and after a day of beer I found my bed a precious commodity for Sarah, a besandled, appropriately laid-back and tan, soft-featured 25 year-old studying at the University. The next morning we awoke and parted only to greet each other a few days later with chuckles (the usual absurdity on my part and a sense of embarrassed discovery on hers). I moved on and she remains, I am told, treading in a girlish crush.
Time continued to flow in its ethereal Amsterdam way as I worked through a few more books and began a story I wasnt immediately disappointed with (since allocated to the multiple-notebook limbo containing most of my work). My next adventure, again to Munich and on to Prague, was recounted in my last letter. The whirlwind of unprotected and unhindered sex (none with consequence, thank God) centering on the Asian princess, the fragile teenager, and the German spirit of music again illuminated the relative ease with which sex was available and I returned to Amsterdam prepared to forage.
My ultimate goal was Tracy a North Shore pampered blonde who had suddenly discovered a sense of self-worth and a loathing of discovery. We planned trips to Paris and spent nights talking which convinced me to sleep through our planned departures for Paris. On a weekend in Brussels, however, the opportunity arose for a nights journey into the sheets. We left the bar alone to return home after spending the day together making fun of everyone else and unloading personal bullshit and detoured to a scenic park above the city. Once there we continued to talk as she pressed closer toward me and I looked out at the lights and up at the sky. I dont know why I didnt kiss her likely a combination of timid hesitation for fear of being rebuffed, her growing tediousness, and the strategic beauty of inaction. Regardless, we walked back to our hostel and bid goodnight.
Our return on Saturday was marked by a party thrown by the Swedes on the first floor. The weather had brightened, flirting with 70 degrees, and I had spent the majority of the waking day on the roof with two bottles of wine and Magister Ludi (the roof is accessible by a skylight in the third floor kitchen now locked and offers a view of the entire city center from near to the level of the highest church steeples). Already a bit drunk Already pissed (I had only been awake seven hours, five drinking), I showered and made my way downstairs to the party. I performed my usual procedure of finding a comfortable seat with a third bottle of wine and a glass and soon found an audience of a few people had joined me. One of them was Anne, seated next to me on the couch. I poured her a glass of wine and we proceeded with inane but ironic conversation within the growing circle. Two were now holding court and politically humoring the masses. She got up to go to her room and I continued the amusement, now well plastered, until I felt that beautiful urge to pee.
I excused myself and headed to the lift, planning to go to my room and hit the Clear Eyes while I pissed. On my way down the hall, I noticed Annes door ajar and peeked in, practically figuring I could use her toilet and drunkenly believing I could extend my visit. She walked out of her room as I entered, her lips glossy with newly, and of course subtly, applied lipstick. I commented, she blotted it on my cheek, and I turned, moving us behind the door. I pressed my face within inches of hers, murmuring something about her being nervous, and she replied she wasnt. As I slowly moved my lips closer to hers, I asked, What about now?, she answered no, and I kissed her. Soon we were on the ground and she was giving me head as we listened to the voices outside God it had been a long time since a good blow-job and she was exquisite.
When she finished, we went into her room from the foyer and she lit me a cigarette before lighting one herself Gauloises and I remarked something about the fact that now she had to meet Ainsley. After a laugh, we decided to return to the party and soon split apart. I leaned against the counter and found another glass of wine for a while until the urge to DJ (thus removing Oasis from the stereo) overcame me. I retrieved a few CDs from my room and returned downstairs. Soon, a dance floor arose and I intermittently floated in and back to the music and the corner. While dancing, Anne returned to me, told me she had hooked up with Anders a 6 foot 7 Swede who makes Tanny appear Lee Atwater in cunning intelligence and he thought she was his girlfriend now. I informed her I already knew and she shotgunned me a drag of her cigarette. We kissed briefly afterward and I returned to the CDs.
On a later foray into the dance floor, Jeannie as smart as her roots but with an unbelievably skinny waist and luscious breasts began rubbing my crotch. Grind, baby, grind. Anne came over and told me this non-person Corine had just told her she wanted to sleep with her. I returned to the CDs (likely after another witty comment).
When I tired of DJing and some idiot took over with his mix tape, I wandered out to the hall to find Jeannie, and we found her room and her roommates bed. After a bit I went back to the party and mingled some more with a few German girls. Seeing they required more than a smile a little more than I was willing to put out by that time I found Jeannie and told her I was going to bed. She followed me up, gave me head, and I passed out. Not a bad night.
She left the next afternoon, and I made my way through the two day week. Wednesday I visited a little store I found that carries American Spirits and bought a couple packs. When I came back to the dorm, I went to my kitchen, gave a pack of Spirits to Gabby the elfish soccer-fucker friend of Sarah and Anne and told her to give them to Anne. As I sat and smoked one, Anne came in, grabbed one and asked whose they were. After the obvious response given by Gabby, Anne came over and sat on my lap. We chatted and I told her I had a book she should read Camus The Fall. We walked to my room to get it and after she sat on my bed I pulled it out of my back pocket I had planned to give it to her before I left for Venice. Not a stupid girl, she laughed, I pinned her to the wall and explained I had to catch a train in half an hour and still needed to pack, and she gave me more of that glorious head. I left for Venice.
I should probably take a few moments to describe Anne a bit further. I first met her after hearing her name from a number of guys along with the description hot bitchy chick with the piano. It was a brief instance, so brief I cant truly recall it, but it likely went somewhere along the lines of her coming into the kitchen on her floor, on which a few of my friends live as well, me hearing a slightly distorted upper class British accent with uncharacteristic spirit, and her sweeping through, short brown hair well cut above alternately green, brown, and yellowish hazel eyes. She has perfectly proportionate classical features except for her lips, which burst out in the most sumptuous oval. Just large enough breasts lead the eyes down to a narrow waist, both always fashionably clothed without excess effort. She probably swept out without losing a drop of grace as brief horrible thoughts skated my mind.
The first time we actually interacted was leaving the Atrium, the student cafeteria that serves dollar beers Thursday nights. Myself and Mark a strange mix of Polish and Mexican gives him dark hair and blue eyes, but he died his hair blue in the middle of the semester; hes a bit nave in an acceptable Tom (or younger Peleus) way and my best friend here left with Gabby and Sarah and Anne joined them. She inquired with whom they were walking home, Gabby answered it was us, and Anne shot back with disdainfully high eyebrows, These people? I simply laughed an obstinate laugh and Mark and I left them.
Between that incident and the Swedish kitchen party, Anne and I ran across each other occasionally, trading quips and shots as the rest of the guys flirted with her obviously. Mostly inconsequential moments of personal history were spilled and we even hugged once while having a cigarette, but only for warmth in the biting wind. Come to think of it, she was even supposed to join me on the roof the day of the party, but she wanted to go hours later than I because she was dying her hair red, so it waited until the next day.
After the trip to Venice, an uncertain funk developed within my mind. I grew quickly more tired of the people attending the University with me and began spending more time alone in my room, never sleeping. One night, after a game of spades, I happened to be in Annes room and we began talking. A new depth appeared in our conversation, pushing me further into the bounds of my depression, and by six in the morning we were downstairs her cleaning the mess from painting her bike and I reading aloud from your timeliest of letters. Soon after, we watched the sun rise over tea in the kitchen and I bid her farewell, looking into her eyes for the first time.
In our talks and from simply being around her, I discovered the many facets of the first complex girl I have met. In brief, she grew up in Hong Kong with her investment banker father and beautiful mother until her father was on the cusp of leaving her mom. Her mom fell terminally ill and her older brother posed the question, So are you going to leave her now, Dad? She believes he was truly in love with his mistress, but he remained and they moved to London, where she spent the rest of her childhood probably 6-12 in the finest schools. The family moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, for her high-school years which entailed exploring the realms of drama and music, all the time studying Italian and French, fucking her brains out, and partying. By seventeen she was dating a forty-plus year old coke dealer/movie producer and found herself both arrested after a fifteen-year-olds drunken crash of her car and pregnant, resulting in abortion. She graduated a week later, only to walk into the soothing arms of a previous boyfriend, Franz. Franz stuck by her as she pulled back together the scraps of her bearing and she left in the fall for the structure of Smith college all girls and supposedly as good as ivy. Suddenly she embraced structure, visiting Franz most weekends and studying the rest. She concentrated on the piano, history, and economics. By sophomore year, she had discovered a couple girls, both fulfilling a warm matron-sister need and providing better head than guys can manage. She also had pursued an affair with a fiftyish piano teacher, but made love to no one except Franz.
In DC for a summer internship with the US Trade Representative in which she actually worked, preparing briefs and proposals with the rest of the staff and easily at their degree of skill she found herself tempted to stray from Franz, but never acted on it. One weekend late in July, she visited Connecticut and Franz broke up with her, needing to pursue the life of any twenty-three year old and she was devastated. She finished in DC and made her way to Amsterdam where she hooked up once or twice and soon found herself in a humorous relationship with Andres a Canadian PhD candidate who never fails to mention hes a PhD candidate and has little else to offer except skill as a lover and heavy-handed intelligence. To anchor this tale back into time, I arrived in Amsterdam approximately one month after Anne. The break with Andres was simple and lasted a week only because Anne had delayed the two prior. She had, however, slept with him once, the first person in three years aside from Franz.
Franz continues to call and write occasionally, and she still holds her truest love for him a love in that grey between friendship and passion.
A few more items in the laundry list of interest: her favorite president is LBJ; she possesses grand knowledge of classical music and, to a lesser extent, art; she falls slightly conservative and Republican by birth; she hasnt read enough, but shes making it up; she began studying Dutch when she arrived, and now speaks and reads it and is writing a 20 page paper in the language; she dances and has a standing offer with a professional company if she chooses.
Returning to the timeline, we are now somewhere in my funk and ushering out October. In lesser moments, I began to feel love for Ainsley anew. I wrote her often and verbalized this, her of course returning the favor with somewhat more style than before. After the waking night with Anne, feelings for her began to stir as well. I found myself, a day or two later, unable to bear the company of anyone, unable to read or sleep or eat, staring out my window at the stars. Your letter, unfortunately, had provided only momentary solace.
After a particularly long glance to the heavens, I made my way downstairs for a cup of tea. Mark tried to help me, but his experiences offered little to help, only driving me further into my depths. I knocked on Annes door. She invited me in and I sat on the bench of her piano, taking a moment to gather the feverish thoughts that before the moment had only itched at my mind. I burst in disappointment at my utterly ordinary and simple problems I was a regular person so that my extraordinary aspects could not help and only amplified the empty cliches. I moved to her floor and lit a cigarette. Finished, I told her to come to me and explained I didnt want head. She played a CD of soft piano music and we lay, holding each other until suddenly we kissed and grasped each other passionately. I asked if I could sleep in her bed, and we decided not to make love with Ainsley arriving in two days.
The weekend before Halloween I had explored fungal Jade Fish and reached another moment of blessed and tranquil solitude in the midst of 100 costumed foreign students. That night, Anne had collapsed mentally and fallen into disbelief at her events. She felt empty about her useless sex and I was not there to explain the level to which we had transcended she explained this to me in her bed. I freed a little more and quelled her empty fears at how she felt about me. Thursday night Ainsleys flight arrived Friday afternoon Anne resigned to read all weekend for her Dutch paper and Mark and I drank a few bottles of wine before heading out to the Atrium when word got back Anne had gone there instead of reading in a cafe as she had planned. When we arrived, Anne had already gone, and Mark and I were too drunk to deal with the Foreign crowd. We returned home for Mark to vomit and me to find Anne, who explained she had gone to find me. We smoked a joint her first in years and slept together and set her alarm for two hours before Ainsley arrived.
The weekend with Ainsley was fresh from Tennessee Williams. Friday night we went to a nice Indian dinner Anne had already introduced herself and returned to hang out with Anne, Mark, and Seth a quirky and fun NYC gay guy (he says bi). We smoked a bit, and Ainsleys cold worsened. The rest of the weekend, Ainsley was sick but we made the most of it as I was required to show her a good time. Anne began to destruct, unsure of herself or us, and my desire to still see Anne, even while Ainsley was visiting, made it that much harder because it inevitably included bringing Ainsley. Monday I visited Anne by myself and we worked through the obvious difficulties of the weekend, and she took Ainsley to the Modern Art museum that afternoon. When she returned, Ainsley asked me what I would think if she had been with a girl, and I couldnt help but chuckle at Annes boldness. Ainsley left Tuesday afternoon, something I thought would never occur, and I went to Anne with cigarettes in hand I thought flowers would be tasteless. I hadnt made love to Ainsley the last two nights she was here.
A brief time after I had gone back upstairs to my room, there was a knock at my door. I yelled to come in, and Anne opened the door. She came over and sat on my bed, where we talked and looked at each other for a time. This guy from down the hall, Steve, came in for a bit and cluelessly read my Economist while Anne and I lay in my bed. When he left I changed the music, and Anne and I made love for the first time, after a useless debate, to the Beatles.
We made love a few more nights, deciding not to worry about the consequences of a months time when I return to DC and she stays here for another year. Each time we admitted more how we felt about each other. After a bit, she told me she and Seth also her best friend here had decided she should take three days away from me to work on her ever looming paper. Seths good for her and tries to look out I agreed without much problem and then proceeded to show her what three days away meant by avoiding her completely in jealousy and strategy. By the third day, we were ready to go out and I purchased some rollers from the Dam square. Unfortunately they were bunk, so we went out drinking and soon decided to find the dealers who had cheated us. They made up for it and we had a crazy experience I will fully explain when you arrive, one that pushed us to the edge of our insecurities and bravado.
This was Saturday, and we can no longer make love for another week as Anne works out her biological necessities. This also brings us dangerously close to the current date, with just one more incident to relate. A little background Anne, as Ive written, is bisexual. She doesnt often act upon it, and claims it fulfills more of a sisterhood/motherly role than any other. The number of times shes done it is no more than three or four. One of these was in Amsterdam with Corine, the suggestive non-person at the Swede party.
While no one else gives Corine second thought, Anne somehow has let her get to her. She feels the relationship of exactly one night was a misjudged exercise of unfair power on Corine's part. Surrounded by aggressive men at a club one night, Anne told them Corine was her girlfriend. Well in the bag after a night of drinking, Anne chose to kiss Corine in order to escape the pack. This was also at the time just before she collapsed in misery at meaningless sex and she felt she simply wanted someone close. Corine fit that suit, compounding the self-loathing. She admits it was completely her decision and in the end blames herself for doing something she regrets, but she deals with it. The true problem came when it suddenly collided with the looming paper (Anne is here for a year plus and this is real school for her), her feelings for me and Franz, and her descent into unprotected sex, drugs, and all other good things. Regardless of cause, she began to slide again into turmoil.
Between myself and Seth, most of her problems were pointed out separately as not nearly as weighty as she supposed, but, two nights ago, Fritz called as Anne and I were coming to grips with our situation. Understandably she jumped up from my lap and ran downstairs. We had just finished plotting to go to bed in her room, but I simply washed my face, brushed my teeth, and lay down in my own bed with some reading. I worked on a poem. I read more. She returned a little over two hours later, hardly holding in her tears and sat down in the space I had cleared on my bed.
She then told me she had informed Franz of everything: that we were sleeping together unprotected; that she wasnt sure what was happening, but she felt strongly about me; that we hit our watershed on Saturday night. I lay there, watching her, waiting for her to say she couldnt continue with me. When she finished, she turned and looked into my eyes, and smiled. I grabbed her and hugged her and she sobbed and sobbed. She said she realized she loved Franz more than anyone in the world, and I asked her in what way she didnt answer. We discussed the fact that we dont know what will happen in three weeks when I leave. I asked her what she truly thought and felt about me. She answered much what I have written about her. She told me she loved the attractive-romantic-funny-dark-bastard-caring-intelligent aspects of me and whenever she thought of the alternative and her head agreed it wasnt a good idea her head suddenly thought of one of my facets and wanted me more. I dont know
She left much later, after we just laid together for a while. The minute she closed my door, I whispered, I love you, and burst with tears of joy. Alex, I havent felt this way before. I know its hopeless, that we have no future, and that I cant love her. I have spent the entire relationship under the assumption that there was no future for us, and there likely isnt. I also dont care. I intend to enjoy the rest of my time here with her and then leave. If that is all I get, I am pleased with it. I dont know if Im in love with her, because that word has little meaning for me not because I dont believe in it, but because I cannot define it. I know I am happy and that we both cannot help smiling when we look into each others eyes and that we feel right when we hug. Thats all.
So where does this leave me? Unchanged, optimistic, destroyed? None of these. It is simply a silly semester abroad in Europe after all.
See you in a few days,
Peleus
PS - Heres the one poem Ive written in years
Valediction
Steps outside, bound in scarves and grey
woolly cloth beneath caliginous
shadow he glances up with meticulous
pause. The window. And inside today,
behind the frosty pane, a tender cheek
belies a consequence denied in thaw:
an ephemeral bead obeys irresistable law
and drops to the floor where before, only a week,
he lay, reaching for a cigarette
like the one she lights shivering
again, again collapsed, quivering,
from her solitary pirouette.
Wow. I had forgotten how cocksure and concupiscent I could be back then...
And I loved reading your journal...I really felt like I was there!!!!
Have a great day!