I power walked on the NordicTrack late last Saturday night and power walked early into Sunday morning. Hot showered and then began to answer up and respond on some personal e-mails. I was the only mouse awake in the house at this hour.Keeping me company these wee hours were the BBC World Service, a liter of club soda and three recent gifts of elixirs: Xtabentun, Fernet-Branca and something deemed to be Absinthe. A jigger of each over the course of the next hour of writing. No copious amounts. Just a shot of each and lots of club soda in between.
Write, write, write then the Xtabentun. Write , write, write and later the Fernet-Branca. The Absinthe was last.
Soon after I tried the Absinthe, that's when things took on a new sheen. I was no longer interested in finishing any correspondence. I was in a mood for music.
It's late. It's about 1:30 a.m. It's too late to crank the stereo and there are two small children sleeping at home. So it's off into the world of headphones. I reached to the wall o'CDs and plucked Time Life's 1982. Two CD's, twenty-two radio hits on each CD for that year. It was a random pick.
What a fountain of memories. It happens to everyone. Like a certain aroma that triggers a memory, music does the same only better. You listen to a number and "boom"! You find yourself thinking of something very private to your life experience and relative to the time that that number was popular or when it was you heard it that one specific instance.
I found myself tripping and experiencing an intense memory theatre, and many of the numbers had me recalling "Her" over and over.
She was 19, with shoulder length blonde hair, blue eyes, petite and with a beautiful smile. I was a freshly hatched 21 year old college graduate. We met at the North Rim of The Grand Canyon that late August of 1982. We were both working for the North Rim Lodge. For "Her" it was a summer job. For me, it was my first job out of college. Food, lodging and about $185 bucks every two weeks. We both met and worked in a paradise.
I don't remember exactly how it happened, but we became friends very quickly. The "good friends" stage sauntered into the "very good" friends stage in no time at all. "Very good" evolved to "intimate" friends and that stage quickly and inevitably grew into one of lovers.
Mormon girls aren't supposed to be this way. It's not easy to reconcile or accept this behavior by Mormon faithful. Hanky panky before the M-R-S degree is almost unheard of. At least it's not spoken about. But she was a little different.
She was the youngest of four, and an only daughter. Parents "separated". She did not live in small town rural Utah. She lived in the slightly more diverse capital of Salt Lake City. A college student matriculating at the University of Utah and not BYU. And, she was away from home for the summer and a little longer than that. She was returning to school in the Spring and not that coming Fall semester. She had finished 38 credit hours her freshman year and was not in the mood to bookgrind it yet again. She was confident and very self assured. She needed a release and consciousness raising , and (lucky me) I was there for those needs.
Every minute we spent together was like being in a time warp. Time always raced faster and was always never long enough. We learned so much that late summer. Something that college and the college experience didn't really do a proper job of teaching me or would have been capable of ever teaching "Her." We learned about ourselves.
We were passionate and tender with each other. Our lovemaking was always consummate and it became skillful very quickly. I don't remember an awkward moment about it. There had to have been a cosmic alignment about us.
That alignment's symmetry, however, slowly became disarranged after we both left the North Rim. And our relationship was not really much of one outside the confines of our unusual employment at The Grand Canyon National Park. We did give it a try, but I needed to establish myself professionally and she needed to continue with college beginning that coming January. The last time I saw "Her" was two years after that summer. The last time I spoke to "Her" was about two years after that. Such is life.
I began to feel that it was getting a little too late to be stimulated with the music. It was 2 a.m. I pulled the headphones off, turned the computer off and stopped thinking about "Her" just like that as soon as the music stopped. It's been soooo long and she's so far in my past that the late summer of '82 is mostly irrelevant today.
I battened things down and ensured that our home was secured for the rest of the night. I checked on the kids and slipped into bed where my "Everything" was sleeping. She cooed and spooned me, I closed my eyes and then I began to dream.
I dreamt about "Her" and the GC. I dreamt that we were hurrying to our cabin at the end of our day at our hotel jobs. I dreamt that we got there and she locked the door behind us and turned the radio on as she always did. I dreamt that I was sitting on my cabin's twin bed with my back against the wall and Elton John's "Blue Eyes" was playing. She had a smile and began to take "Her" clothes off and I could hear "Her" voice but she wasn't speaking.
I recognized the timbre of "Her" voice, and I could hear "Her", but all she was doing was smiling and smiling broadly. I could hear "Her" say, "Computers are a thing of the past". "Her" lips never moved. She said, "I don't use them. I don't need to speak. I know what to do." "I have all the credits I need now."
I asked "Her", "Where do you live?" She kept smiling. "I only need the radio, that's where I live", was "Her" answer.
For whatever reason, I couldn't move. And she sat right next to me, clotheless except for a gold chain around her neck. "Jerr, I know more now, let me show you." she said telepathically. "I can't move", I said. "It's OK", she answered. "I'll keep the beat and rhythm with what's on the radio."
"Her" face and "Her" lips approached mine and my eyes popped open. I was awake. This dream was over. I had been asleep about four hours, it was 6:19 a.m.
I laid in bed awake about 20 minutes and wondered about "Her." Where she was, whether she had children and how many, who she married, whether she was happy and prosperous, whether "Her" good-karma had paid off for "Her." I wondered if Elton John's "Blue Eyes" reminds "Her" of me as it reminds me of "Her." I wondered whether she was alive.
But most of all........I wondered if on this same night, or on a recent one, she may have exercised, bathed, put some 23 year old music on and relaxed with some Xtabentun, Fernet-Branca and Absinthe. All in that order.
*!*
posted by JerryNJ @ 11:04 PM
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