Memories of the One That Got Away... Thank God
Okay, I'll admit it. I like the song "Memories." Yeah, you know the song. The one with all the cats.
I think I actually saw Cats, but I'll be damned if I can remember much of anything about it, aside from being majorly creeped out when the cast started sneaking down the aisles of the theater. I have some serious lingering doubts about grown men pretending to be cats, licking themselves. It just ain't right. T.S. Elliot be damned. I didn't really want to go see it, but someone put a gun to my head. (Okay, so it wasn't really a gun, just a lot of begging and whining. The same person who made me go see Billy Idol at Starwood.)
But it's fashionable to slam the song -- and yeah, I know, sooner or later everybody has heard it sung badly by someone who believes with all their hearts that they are the next Sarah Brightman or Lady GaGa. This song is all over American Idol auditions like a bad case of jock itch. It's also cool to bash Andrew Lloyd Webber, if for no other reason than that he's about the only guy manages to succeed in the wasteland that is modern Broadway. (Did you see how I worked in that T. S. Elliot reference? I swear I wasn't planning it, it just popped out. That's because I am FREAKING brilliant. But only late at night, all alone at my keyboard.)
I have added the song "Memories" to my much adored iPod. I just heard it a few minutes ago. After Grizabella's final bittersweet note faded, another song began. "Gypsy" by Stevie Nicks.
My memories of this song are much stronger, another example of how a melody can body-slam you back twenty years or more with only half a chorus. "Gypsy" beams me back to the summer of 1982, between my freshman and sophomore years, when my house finally got MTV. Oh, those were the days, when there was still music on MTV. If video killed the radio star, then I suppose the Real World killed MTV. What the hell ever happened to Martha Quinn, anyway?
Fleetwood Mac got famous years before when I was still in high school. As I had not yet struggled out of my homespun, Southern Baptist, ultra-conservative cocoon, I was not impressed when I first got a look at the group on the Grammys. They looked like hippies to me, with dirty feet and waaaay too much hair. I think Stevie was barefoot and they all looked/sounded stoned as they mumbled in acceptance. I was still listening to the Carpenters and Barry Manilow. These guys were weirdos. Probably communists, too.
It took a few years for me to loosen up enough to become a fan -- well, and to actually LISTEN to their music in spite of dirty bare feet and rumors that Stevie was a witch. (See? I did it again. "Rumors," get it? I just KILL me sometimes.)
I loved "Gypsy" and "Stand Back." "Edge of Seventeen" is one of my top twenty songs of all time.
Now, there's a memory attached to "Edge of Seventeen" -- overhearing a couple of very drunken friends at the Tech Tunnel Pub musing quite seriously over how a poor "one-winged dove" could fly.
"It's a WHITE WINGED dove," I shouted at them. "WHITE WINGED! WHITE WINGED!"
And THOSE memories lead me to Stew Brigham. Ah, my favorite mistake.
Every woman has at least one person in her life journey who has not just broken our heart, but shattered it all to hell. Stew was mine.
It wasn't love. It was obsession born of some indefinable sexual chemistry, set into motion when two morally bankrupt hedonists collided. We had perfectly matched and totally out-of-control libidos.
I still remember the first time I met him. He and one of his roommates were sitting in the lobby of Walter's dormitory.
I had heard about these guys, the occupants of "Double Zero" at the ZBT house. "Double Zero" was the lone ground-floor room at the ZBT house. Somehow Double Zero became a hot-bed, literally, of carnal hi-jinx. I have always suspected this was because, 1) being on the ground floor, it was far easier to lure drunken girls into their room; and 2) they had their own private bathroom.
Stew and his two roommates had already become embroiled in some vague romantic quagmire involving two friends of mine. My roommate couldn't make up her mind which of them she "liked." The other friend, it was rumored, had already bedded all the occupants of Double Zero. (I call her a friend, and I use that word loosely, because she and I had a relationship like Al Capone and Elliot Ness, if Al and Elliot had been polite Southern girls. We pretended to like each other, then made retching sounds behind each other's backs.) If she hadn't done them all, she was working diligently towards that goal. Collecting a matched set, in other words.
So, when I met this slightly-goofy looking Yankee I was not impressed. Other people said he was cute, but I didn't see it. He sounded a little like Jeff Spicoli, if Jeff had been from Vermont. Something in this guy -- whom I'd assumed must be some kind of bargain-basement Don Juan -- raised my competitive hackles. I purposely baited him just to hear him say something stupid, then rolled my eyes at my two friends as if to say, "This guy? Seriously?"
He made some offhand comment about women in general, and I snorted at him.
"And you say that because you know so much about women, right?"
He blinked at me, a face full of unfeigned innocence. "Me? I don't know anything about women. You girls confuse the hell out of me."
I had been out with another ZBT a couple of times, but one Saturday night, I got bored watching him and his friends play quarters. I wandered downstairs to where my two friends were involved in drunken state of "getting bent" over something said or done or implied or hinted at regarding the OTHER two occupants of Double Zero.
I stumbled into Stew. We were both drunk, bored, and feeling ignored.
He kissed me. I pushed him away with a contemptuous laugh.
"This is ridiculous," I said. "We don't even like each other."
"Then why are you looking at me that way?" he asked, with his goofy grin. When he smiled, his eyes completely disappeared into a crescent, a squint that looked stoned even when he was completely sober.
"What way?"
"Like you want me to kiss you again."
The amazing thing was that it didn't sound like line. I came to realize he was like an overgrown child, reaching happily for whatever bright and shiny object caught his fancy. To this day, I believe there was not a calculating bone in his body. He just said shit like that without premeditation.
But with that first kiss, some ember of mutual disdain became a flash fire, consuming everything in its path. I suddenly knew what people meant when they talked about chemistry. It was as if the very molecules of my body were drawn inexorably to his, a yin to a yang, negative to positive. Electrons and neutrons drawn into an inescapable orbit.
I can still remember the smell and taste of him. Beer and cigarettes. Right Guard and Jovan's Musk, an ironic choice like a cosmic bad joke. When I found out what his fragrance was, I laughed myself silly. Jovan's advertising claimed it drove women wild. But twenty-plus years later, I can sniff a bottle of Jovan's Musk in Walgreens, and my knees still get weak.
His simple sweetness surprised me. It wasn't just a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am spin around Suffragette City.That first morning after, he took me to brunch though I knew he couldn't afford it. I spent so many nights tangled in his arms and legs in his tiny upper bunk. He walked me five blocks to the Marta station when he couldn't borrow a car to drive me back to my dorm.
Maybe that was why I kept coming back, when at that time I avoided romantic entanglements like the plaque, not even giving guys my phone number. He came from Vermont to Savannah that summer, twice. He taught me to drive a stick shift when my father and my sister had failed. He got me through my father's wedding.
Later, as things began to unravel and I descended into my mad girl's love song, one of his brothers just looked at me and asked, "What the hell is it about that guy that makes women stupid?"
"I dunno," I sighed. "Maybe it's contagious."
Stew's secret, I think, was just that he genuinely liked women. Sex was not a conquest, just mutual pleasure, natural and guiltless. He was probably not the sharpest knife in the drawer, more like a butter knife, but he had no sharp edges at all. He was about as complicated as a child's jump rope. He never expected a woman to be anything other than what she was.
The end came like Armageddon, in sudden thoughtless cruelty that cut my heart out. I was supposed to meet him at the first rush party of the next quarter. I remember saying, "You'll just be getting back, I should just let you hang with the brothers. Call me when you get there if you want me to come over."
"I don't need to call you," he said. "I'll want to see you."
But when I got there, I saw him standing on in the front yard next to this strange girl. And she was wearing his ZBT jersey.
I knew something awful had happened. He wasn't just talking to another girl, not just hitting on her. She wasn't just his mystery date. Stew never let any girl wear his jersey. Not even me.
I felt myself beginning to crumble and, frantic that no one see me cry, I just walked on past the house and around the corner, back to my car. I sat there sobbing hysterically, unable to breath for the Iron Maiden slowly closing around my chest.
He called me the next morning, apologetic. He had met her on the train from Vermont, and he was in love. He was sorry.
"Can I come over?" I asked desperately. "Can we just talk?"
He said sure. I attempted to seduce him, but he said no, he couldn't do it. His sudden fidelity fell on me like a cartoon anvil. I cried all over him.
I had never experienced anything like this. I craved him. The withdrawal was excruciating. I moaned and wept and wandered around the dorm like a morose ghost. I was dead and soulless. I was goth before goth was cool. Even my best friends lost patience with my misery. I would suddenly have to run from classrooms and the dining hall in tears.
I would see him again, off and on. He would call me when he got drunk and say he missed me. I would call him when I was drunk, far more often. Blithering without a shred of pride. We even ended up in bed one night.
The night before my graduation from college, I went to the house. I wanted to see him one last time. We sat on the curb and talked, while his current girlfriend -- with the whole house behind her -- watched us like a hawk. She had heard about Stew and me. Our conflagration had become legendary.
It would take me four years to get over him.
I had a dream about him the other night. He was there with another girl, and I was there with my current love. But he came over to me, stood close enough for me to feel his body heat. I felt that pull towards him. We just stood there, breath becoming hot and heavy. I felt that desire rise......
I wonder sometimes, where he is and what he's doing. I wonder if he still thinks of me.
I don't know how he couldn't.
I think I actually saw Cats, but I'll be damned if I can remember much of anything about it, aside from being majorly creeped out when the cast started sneaking down the aisles of the theater. I have some serious lingering doubts about grown men pretending to be cats, licking themselves. It just ain't right. T.S. Elliot be damned. I didn't really want to go see it, but someone put a gun to my head. (Okay, so it wasn't really a gun, just a lot of begging and whining. The same person who made me go see Billy Idol at Starwood.)
But it's fashionable to slam the song -- and yeah, I know, sooner or later everybody has heard it sung badly by someone who believes with all their hearts that they are the next Sarah Brightman or Lady GaGa. This song is all over American Idol auditions like a bad case of jock itch. It's also cool to bash Andrew Lloyd Webber, if for no other reason than that he's about the only guy manages to succeed in the wasteland that is modern Broadway. (Did you see how I worked in that T. S. Elliot reference? I swear I wasn't planning it, it just popped out. That's because I am FREAKING brilliant. But only late at night, all alone at my keyboard.)
I have added the song "Memories" to my much adored iPod. I just heard it a few minutes ago. After Grizabella's final bittersweet note faded, another song began. "Gypsy" by Stevie Nicks.
My memories of this song are much stronger, another example of how a melody can body-slam you back twenty years or more with only half a chorus. "Gypsy" beams me back to the summer of 1982, between my freshman and sophomore years, when my house finally got MTV. Oh, those were the days, when there was still music on MTV. If video killed the radio star, then I suppose the Real World killed MTV. What the hell ever happened to Martha Quinn, anyway?
Fleetwood Mac got famous years before when I was still in high school. As I had not yet struggled out of my homespun, Southern Baptist, ultra-conservative cocoon, I was not impressed when I first got a look at the group on the Grammys. They looked like hippies to me, with dirty feet and waaaay too much hair. I think Stevie was barefoot and they all looked/sounded stoned as they mumbled in acceptance. I was still listening to the Carpenters and Barry Manilow. These guys were weirdos. Probably communists, too.
It took a few years for me to loosen up enough to become a fan -- well, and to actually LISTEN to their music in spite of dirty bare feet and rumors that Stevie was a witch. (See? I did it again. "Rumors," get it? I just KILL me sometimes.)
I loved "Gypsy" and "Stand Back." "Edge of Seventeen" is one of my top twenty songs of all time.
Now, there's a memory attached to "Edge of Seventeen" -- overhearing a couple of very drunken friends at the Tech Tunnel Pub musing quite seriously over how a poor "one-winged dove" could fly.
"It's a WHITE WINGED dove," I shouted at them. "WHITE WINGED! WHITE WINGED!"
And THOSE memories lead me to Stew Brigham. Ah, my favorite mistake.
Every woman has at least one person in her life journey who has not just broken our heart, but shattered it all to hell. Stew was mine.
It wasn't love. It was obsession born of some indefinable sexual chemistry, set into motion when two morally bankrupt hedonists collided. We had perfectly matched and totally out-of-control libidos.
I still remember the first time I met him. He and one of his roommates were sitting in the lobby of Walter's dormitory.
I had heard about these guys, the occupants of "Double Zero" at the ZBT house. "Double Zero" was the lone ground-floor room at the ZBT house. Somehow Double Zero became a hot-bed, literally, of carnal hi-jinx. I have always suspected this was because, 1) being on the ground floor, it was far easier to lure drunken girls into their room; and 2) they had their own private bathroom.
Stew and his two roommates had already become embroiled in some vague romantic quagmire involving two friends of mine. My roommate couldn't make up her mind which of them she "liked." The other friend, it was rumored, had already bedded all the occupants of Double Zero. (I call her a friend, and I use that word loosely, because she and I had a relationship like Al Capone and Elliot Ness, if Al and Elliot had been polite Southern girls. We pretended to like each other, then made retching sounds behind each other's backs.) If she hadn't done them all, she was working diligently towards that goal. Collecting a matched set, in other words.
So, when I met this slightly-goofy looking Yankee I was not impressed. Other people said he was cute, but I didn't see it. He sounded a little like Jeff Spicoli, if Jeff had been from Vermont. Something in this guy -- whom I'd assumed must be some kind of bargain-basement Don Juan -- raised my competitive hackles. I purposely baited him just to hear him say something stupid, then rolled my eyes at my two friends as if to say, "This guy? Seriously?"
He made some offhand comment about women in general, and I snorted at him.
"And you say that because you know so much about women, right?"
He blinked at me, a face full of unfeigned innocence. "Me? I don't know anything about women. You girls confuse the hell out of me."
I had been out with another ZBT a couple of times, but one Saturday night, I got bored watching him and his friends play quarters. I wandered downstairs to where my two friends were involved in drunken state of "getting bent" over something said or done or implied or hinted at regarding the OTHER two occupants of Double Zero.
I stumbled into Stew. We were both drunk, bored, and feeling ignored.
He kissed me. I pushed him away with a contemptuous laugh.
"This is ridiculous," I said. "We don't even like each other."
"Then why are you looking at me that way?" he asked, with his goofy grin. When he smiled, his eyes completely disappeared into a crescent, a squint that looked stoned even when he was completely sober.
"What way?"
"Like you want me to kiss you again."
The amazing thing was that it didn't sound like line. I came to realize he was like an overgrown child, reaching happily for whatever bright and shiny object caught his fancy. To this day, I believe there was not a calculating bone in his body. He just said shit like that without premeditation.
But with that first kiss, some ember of mutual disdain became a flash fire, consuming everything in its path. I suddenly knew what people meant when they talked about chemistry. It was as if the very molecules of my body were drawn inexorably to his, a yin to a yang, negative to positive. Electrons and neutrons drawn into an inescapable orbit.
I can still remember the smell and taste of him. Beer and cigarettes. Right Guard and Jovan's Musk, an ironic choice like a cosmic bad joke. When I found out what his fragrance was, I laughed myself silly. Jovan's advertising claimed it drove women wild. But twenty-plus years later, I can sniff a bottle of Jovan's Musk in Walgreens, and my knees still get weak.
His simple sweetness surprised me. It wasn't just a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am spin around Suffragette City.That first morning after, he took me to brunch though I knew he couldn't afford it. I spent so many nights tangled in his arms and legs in his tiny upper bunk. He walked me five blocks to the Marta station when he couldn't borrow a car to drive me back to my dorm.
Maybe that was why I kept coming back, when at that time I avoided romantic entanglements like the plaque, not even giving guys my phone number. He came from Vermont to Savannah that summer, twice. He taught me to drive a stick shift when my father and my sister had failed. He got me through my father's wedding.
Later, as things began to unravel and I descended into my mad girl's love song, one of his brothers just looked at me and asked, "What the hell is it about that guy that makes women stupid?"
"I dunno," I sighed. "Maybe it's contagious."
Stew's secret, I think, was just that he genuinely liked women. Sex was not a conquest, just mutual pleasure, natural and guiltless. He was probably not the sharpest knife in the drawer, more like a butter knife, but he had no sharp edges at all. He was about as complicated as a child's jump rope. He never expected a woman to be anything other than what she was.
The end came like Armageddon, in sudden thoughtless cruelty that cut my heart out. I was supposed to meet him at the first rush party of the next quarter. I remember saying, "You'll just be getting back, I should just let you hang with the brothers. Call me when you get there if you want me to come over."
"I don't need to call you," he said. "I'll want to see you."
But when I got there, I saw him standing on in the front yard next to this strange girl. And she was wearing his ZBT jersey.
I knew something awful had happened. He wasn't just talking to another girl, not just hitting on her. She wasn't just his mystery date. Stew never let any girl wear his jersey. Not even me.
I felt myself beginning to crumble and, frantic that no one see me cry, I just walked on past the house and around the corner, back to my car. I sat there sobbing hysterically, unable to breath for the Iron Maiden slowly closing around my chest.
He called me the next morning, apologetic. He had met her on the train from Vermont, and he was in love. He was sorry.
"Can I come over?" I asked desperately. "Can we just talk?"
He said sure. I attempted to seduce him, but he said no, he couldn't do it. His sudden fidelity fell on me like a cartoon anvil. I cried all over him.
I had never experienced anything like this. I craved him. The withdrawal was excruciating. I moaned and wept and wandered around the dorm like a morose ghost. I was dead and soulless. I was goth before goth was cool. Even my best friends lost patience with my misery. I would suddenly have to run from classrooms and the dining hall in tears.
I would see him again, off and on. He would call me when he got drunk and say he missed me. I would call him when I was drunk, far more often. Blithering without a shred of pride. We even ended up in bed one night.
The night before my graduation from college, I went to the house. I wanted to see him one last time. We sat on the curb and talked, while his current girlfriend -- with the whole house behind her -- watched us like a hawk. She had heard about Stew and me. Our conflagration had become legendary.
It would take me four years to get over him.
I had a dream about him the other night. He was there with another girl, and I was there with my current love. But he came over to me, stood close enough for me to feel his body heat. I felt that pull towards him. We just stood there, breath becoming hot and heavy. I felt that desire rise......
I wonder sometimes, where he is and what he's doing. I wonder if he still thinks of me.
I don't know how he couldn't.
