nostalgic I was curious about him in the worst way since the first time I saw him walk onto the sound stage, take his seat, and start working the word jumble in the school paper while waiting for roll call to complete. I admired him from afar the whole three weeks of that summer session, never speaking with him one on one, but always speaking up/offering feedback on the projects he turned in for class.
On the last day of that quick summer session, some of the cinema seniors hosted a house party. I showed up with a case of PBR and ran into Danny in the kitchen. He smiled at me and his eyes were blue like oceans; I got lost and my heart began to sing. He knew my name from class and I his. He complimented me on my final film project that I screened earlier that day. We went out to the porch together and shared the beer and sang along to the Smoking Popes CD that was playing from the living room.
I wanted to explode. He was perfect. My type precisely, exactly, explicitly. He was just finishing up his freshman year, and I was finishing my junior. Two years--the ideal age gap...check. Slender build with muscle tone...check. Impeccable taste in pop/punk music...check. The perfect effort put into not caring what he looks like...check. Road bike...fervent dislike of cats...a taste for cheap beer...a love for German Expressionism...check! check! check! check!!! AND this guy is into ME?! Checkmate.
For whatever reason, that night Danny and I were separated before we had a chance to exchange info. I didn't see him again for many months. When fall semester started, we were not in any of the same classes, and I never saw him around campus. I utilized the "people finder" function on the school website, but his info was not listed. I felt compelled to find this person who had impacted me so greatly.
I finally saw him in October at a show at a local club. He was not enrolled in school that semester but working and going back home a lot to help his dad on the family farm after his mom passed at the end of summer.
He said he was glad to see me again and I returned the sentiment. The show was high energy and I felt elated with friends who were in attendance. Danny and I danced up front and sang along with the songs. We alternated rounds Old Style longnecks with shots of Jameson. I invited him to come home with me, and we held hands on the walk that seemed to take much too long. We stayed up in my kitchen drinking beer, heading out onto the deck to smoke in the cool autumn night and steal quick soft kisses as we leaned over the railing ashing our cigarettes, laughing with the intoxication of each other's company.
We stayed up in my room, sitting naked by the window, exhaling our smoke through the screen, laughing at the other drunk students on the street below stumbling back to the dorms, kissing on the mouth, slender necks, round shoulders, soft stomachs, and shaking legs.
The alarm jolted me awake much sooner than would have been preferred. Danny was passed out next to me in my bed, his legs peeking out under the sheets, his long eyelashes gently brushing the pillowcase. I didn't want to wake him, so I left a quick note and headed to work, smiling and radiant with intense joy.
The day was rather dreary. Misty, foggy, a familiar sinus-clogging thickness to the air. And of course my heart couldn't shake Danny out of my brain and quitting time couldn't come soon enough.
I stopped at the liquor store on the way home to buy a pack of Pall Mall in the blue box and a Silver Bullet. Rain started to fall steady the final few blocks walk. Cold and wet, I entered the foyer and my heart leapt into my throat. Danny was sitting on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, listening to Singles Going Steady, waiting for me to return.
My heart wanted to explode. I kicked off my shoes and ran over to the couch, peeling clinging clothes off wet skin. Smiling, laughing, cheerful Danny opened the blanket and I collapsed into his outstretched arms, breathing in the sweetness of the scented tobacco that had infiltrated his hair, and we lay there embraced on the couch, his body heat warming not only my rain soaked skin, but my lonely soul.
I would go to Danny's house after class and take a nap on his belly while he watched Godard on VHS tapes. He accompanied me to house parties where we dressed up for silly themes and played silly games like charades and kissed each other in the bathroom while the line stretched impatiently down the hall. We would stay up late in my kitchen, baking cookies from scratch at two a.m. on a Tuesday just because and he always made me laugh by attempting to roll out one huge cookie that ended up too burned on the edges and too soggy near the middle.
I was the last one to find out. I was banned from the Cellar; maybe that was why he took her there. Upon learning he would be one credit short of graduating in the spring, a classmate, Ross, asked me to accompany him out for a talk and some distraction. He wanted to go the the Cellar for the Bloody Marys, and I, needing a break to recharge from my thesis, agreed to to take a chance getting in. As Ross and I descended the stairs, a mutual friend rushed over and told me I should leave.
I still wonder if Emily inspired Danny, or if he whispered to her the same words he whispered to me when we were curled up under the sheets on winter mornings, snow falling silently against the sill, icy drafts smiting our warm flesh when we cracked the window to exhale, words that both terrified me but that my heart had been longing to hear for twenty some-odd years.
Did he take picutres of her while she slept peacefully, knowing he was arms-length away? Did they sit outside in the beer garden sharing pitchers on gorgeous spring days with dogwood blooms bursting, her legs propped up on his lap, his hands lazily stroking her ankels? Did her heart swell and paint pictures in her head of the two of them sharing a life together when she breathed in his scent left behind on her pillow?
I still wonder if Danny told Melissa that she impassioned him. Did her smile reach her ears when she returned home alone to find reminders of him stuck in the folds of her clothing, little red fuzzballs of fleece from the blanket on his bed? Did he take her hiking on the nearby trails and brush her hair behind her ear when they stopped for picnic lunch in a meadow exploding with pink cone-flowers, white queen anne's lace, yellow daisies, and purple phlox? Did they make plans to take week long road trips out west and pose with tumbleweeds, navigate dunes of white sand as the sunset exploded orange and pink, stay in dicey motels for $19.95 a night and giggle intertwined under the sheets in a different timezone?
Danny called twice that summer. Conversation was difficult when a rebound now lay beside me in my bed, pawing at what seemed like the only two redeeming qualities of my body. But new lips didn't kindle my soul and different hands never electrified the tiny hairs on my neck. I knew that my time in this town had come to an end.
post script: between my return to st. louis and the upcoming move, i found this among other entries in various journals for screenwriting class or my own personal use. The names have been changed but most is based on some one with whom i was very close and who was very important to me up until the time i left carbondale in 2003. i would like to post more as time allows. school starts next week, and transcribing and editing the handwritten journal entries is tedious but makes good reading material on the train if eyes aren't prying.
p.s.s.: i am smiling right now.
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