Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts

I met Christine on the first day of orientation for lab TA's for Biology 101, in the summer of 2003. While I was a junior in undergrad she, like most of the folks there, was a graduate student. She had a round, open face full of enthusiasm, and she felt more approachable than the other students, who seemed so much older and authoritative to me, so clearly full of direction and intention for their life, so on a path toward something. (In contrast to myself, I mean: I had applied for the position because of a dim suspicion that I might want to go to medical school someday, and had an even dimmer sense that lines with words like "BIO101L TA" were the kind of thing people who got into med school had on their applications. If I had a path, in other words, it wasn't particularly well lit at this moment.)

My point though is that Christine felt more welcoming than some of her peers, who both were and were not my peers. I remember, by way of example, asking another TA during orientation about her sweatshirt, which said "Cannes, France" on it. Except I pronounced it with the "s", and her response made me realize that's how you spell the place with the film festival that I'd heard of, and also that this person had just learned that I was a moron and wasn't super worried about if I could tell she thought so. So I ended up chatting with Christine during orientation. Which is how I learned that in addition to being a presumably brilliant Biology doctoral candidate she was also a Wiccan and also a stripper (her tongue was pierced and in my memory she sort of "wielded" her piercing as she told me this, or made it extra noticeable...but it seems likely as I'm thinking about it now that I just noticed it more in the moment I learned she was a stripper). My goodness was I learning a lot of things, in addition to how to run an undergraduate Biology lab!

She asked me to hang out the first time, I think. I remember we went to her apartment, maybe after some other activity we'd done; now seems a good time to mention I felt no physical or romantic or sexual attraction to her. It's possible that 22 year old me felt that personal biography details like "stripper" and "Wiccan" were entirely incompatible with attraction or future relationships, though I wasn't bothered by those things, either. I can't tell looking back how much of my awareness that there was an expectation of something (something...physical or romantic or sexual) in that visit that I'd never meet is present day me looking back to then and how much I might have actually been aware of in the moment. We passed some time there, and then the night did, too, without incident.

One day--I remember it was kind of a cloudy day--we ended up at Pioneers Park. I had run cross-country there often back in high school, so the place had some pretty awful memories, but I also recognized it was a nice place, and she was from out of town, so I suggested we go there. I remember things like this and feel a wave of cringe, these facts in sequence, how this will look to a reader: "oh this girl you didn't like who obviously liked you, you took her to a park? to go for a walk in a park?" I mean, hold on to your hats, obviously I haven't even gotten to the worst parts yet.

For one thing, as we drove there, I had on this album--Dead Cities, I mean--and mostly it was just background music that I don't remember her noticing or commenting on. But as we were driving, the song "Beauties Can Die" came on, and we were talking about whatever as the song slowly builds to that gorgeous, lush bloom of harmonies. Just as this was about to happen I called her attention to the music, so we listened to those excellent first few seconds of sound, and as we did so, the sun broke through from the clouds for the first time all day. It was a magical moment, but the problem was as I looked over at her (and I must have seen this at the time, or I wouldn't remember it) her face was saying that she thought I was magic, or an intentional conjurer of magic moments where the sun bursts through the clouds just as the song climaxes as we drive on what must have seemed so obviously like a date where I drove her to the park. But that's not the worst part, either, or it makes the next parts worse.

There was this place in the park I'd seen before (probably someone had shown this to me; I don't think I discovered it but I also don't remember how I knew about it) that I thought was pretty cool, and we ended up over there. It was this big bush, it might have been an old juniper, that had a hollowed out space big enough that you could stand in it. I mean, two people could easily be in there, and be concealed. (Oh God, yes, I am seeing it! I see it now, that this must have looked a certain way to her.) And she was, of course, pretty impressed with this discovery. And again, I can see now that she probably wondered why I didn't in the next moment invite her to lie down with me, can see that this must have looked like a seduction that I was FAR too innocent to even conceive of.

But we didn't lie down, obviously, and there was no seduction forthcoming. Obviously. After a moment I probably said "cool, huh?" or something and then walked off to show her another cool thing, like the little lagoon, or equally likely the place where I'd puked after a cross-country race several years ago. ("Cool, huh?") I drove her home after that and obviously didn't invite myself up to her apartment when I dropped her off, driving home with a kind of happiness with an evening that only blissful unawareness of thoughts like "was this a date?" or such concepts as "sexual tension" could possibly countenance.

I didn't really understand what kind of situation I had gotten myself into until a couple weeks later, when she reached out and said she wanted to go back to Pioneer's Park with me. This time she led me, and she took me to that same bush. She was pretty excited to show it to me, and as we got closer I realized why: inside that hollowed out area in the juniper bush she had strung up Christmas lights, which were pouring forth from a little glass box where I'd later see she had a battery pack. Her face, so enthusiastic, so earnest and open, was beaming as she spread her arms with a flourish, the way arms say "ta-da!" even if the arms' owner doesn't. And this was the moment, finally, that I realized the problem I'd been naively, guilelessly, stupidly creating over the last few months. I didn't say "I only like you as a friend" or probably (my muscles are sore from the clenching with cringe as I type this) even have the thought that I was in a situation that would require such a conversation. But something about my face or body language must have said everything she needed to hear. We spent awhile there, just, I guess, taking in the ambience (of the lights, of the moment) and then she put the lights into the little glass box and presented it to me as a gift.

I don't remember what we listened to as we drove home but I don't think there's a mixtape on earth that would have made the drive better. I felt awkward but not as bad as I'd feel later, looking back on it with even the smallest bit more wisdom and experience. And certainly not as bad as she probably did.