Letter to a missing friend.
Sep. 29th, 2006 02:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
letterbladeDear Mary Jane,
I saw somebody who looked like you on the subway today, on my way home. Or really, more accurately, she looked like Daisy as you played her. Similar facial structure, long straight hair, almost the same pants, listening to a little mp3 player with earbuds. Slightly nervous, slightly solemn, but very strong eyes. Probably Daisy's actual age, too. Slightly darker skin and paler hair, but still...
I never knew what you were doing the summer after my graduation, when I last saw you, because you said you didn't know yourself. You were thinking of taking a long road trip, I think, or spending the summer with your family. I remember you had one of those wide, low, classy old cars; it somehow seemed oddly perfect for you. I imagined you driving down long, long roads, further and further south, with you hands on the big old steering wheel and your chin up a little--I think I remember you looking like that, one time when you gave me a ride into town.
You have the most beautiful hands I have ever seen. So strong and perfectly formed and expressive.
I honestly don't remember when we first met. That happens a lot at Bennington--you kind of meet people by osmosis, just because it's such a small and active campus, before ever actually being in a class in a play or even having a chat with them. (But no, it's not just that--I have a horrific memory. Please don't take it personally. I forget things about everybody, even my lovers and closest friends.) I believe we were in Literature of Artistic Expression together, with Marguerite? But even before that, I remember noticing your voice--unusual, but in the best ways, and ultimately as compelling as your hands.
For that class, I managed to cough up the only decent bit of "mainstream" fiction I've ever produced, about a lesbian couple. In retrospect, I wonder what that made you think.
I was always terribly flattered by how you spoke of my writing. Really a step beyond flattered into flattened. You probably could've fit me under a futon. And I was sortof, for a while, even though I never usually think this sort of thing, nursing the vague suspicion that you had a crush on me. For a while it just boggled me. I'm not used to people thinking I'm attractive.
Most women about the age you were when I knew you, the first few years of college, even sometimes for years afterwards, seem soft about the edges, indistinct. This is mainly a physical thing, odd as it sounds. Facial features and body forms too soft and seamless to be eye-catching. But you were the opposite. You were so physically distinctive, well-formed, well-defined. Elegant, even handsome.
I never knew you particularly well personally, nor much about your past. I remember you saying, when doing the preliminary readings of Seven by Seven in my room--and talking with those excellent hands as you spoke--that you identified so much with Daisy, and I remember it nearly broke my heart, because Daisy is not always the happiest person to be. But I am so terribly shy, and very bad at communicating--particularly then--and I get the impression you were shy as well. I've wished so often that this could be different for me; I wish it now as well.
I almost considered approaching you, in the extracurricular sense, while we were working on Seven by Seven. Anna and I did have an open relationship, at least in theory--it may not have seemed it, I don't think, because we were such an overtly couple-y couple, but we did. And...not the best relationship, in several ways. She finally dumped me, the winter after my graduation, when I was deeply depressed. I've found somebody else since, but still open. But tangent...I still somehow got caught up on my old hangup of never approaching anybody, even when I was almost certain you would have welcomed it.
When I was finishing up the casting and talking to Jim--he was one of the last I cast, because of schedule-clearing worries--I remember telling him who else was on the project and being so, somehow, sad when he didn't recognize your name.
I hope you're safe. God, I hope you're safe. Most of the time I'm entirely caught up in my own life, because it's too big for me to handle in and of itself, as it usually is, but when I'm thinking of Bennington or Seven by Seven or somesuch, I think of you, and I get this little pang of worry that you're not, and then tell myself, by reflex, what are the chances? stop worrying! Because I didn't know what you were doing that summer, whether you were home in New Orleans or not; and Anna, I know, tried to contact you, but all we had was an email address that didn't work. I keep thinking I could call Bennington, ask around Student Life and so forth...but I know why I haven't. Because I'm terrified of getting the worst news. It's cowardly of me.
You made me want to see New Orleans, the way you talked about it. It had always been too far south to really register on my radar--but I remember you said I should go there, and then I wanted to, but then Katrina hit.
I hope you're safe. And I never knew whether you loved me, and that's oddly unsettling, somehow, like there's a hole somewhere in something, and Cyn, my new girlfriend, is planning on hanging the Seven by Seven posters in our living room once we get it painted, and then I'll be seeing you on my wall every day and I don't know what I'll think.
And now I'm just rambling, really rambling. And sounding all selfish too, I think. I'm not used to this kind of writing.
The girl on the subway got off at my stop. When I got home, just before sitting down to write this, I found a package in the mail containing a sample vial of a perfume blend inspired by the bayou--my new girlfriend and I have gone on a bit of a scent kick for whatever reason, and we've been trading samples by mail amongst our friends. Odd coincidences. But I'd been compelled to sit down and write this almost since the girl on the subway had first gotten on and sat down across from me.
Once we were talking on the way down the Jennings path--walking back together from something, I forget what--and you said you had something to tell me, but then caught yourself and changed the subject. I wish you hadn't stopped. I wish I knew where you are, and whether you're okay. That's all, really.
Love,
Tory
I saw somebody who looked like you on the subway today, on my way home. Or really, more accurately, she looked like Daisy as you played her. Similar facial structure, long straight hair, almost the same pants, listening to a little mp3 player with earbuds. Slightly nervous, slightly solemn, but very strong eyes. Probably Daisy's actual age, too. Slightly darker skin and paler hair, but still...
I never knew what you were doing the summer after my graduation, when I last saw you, because you said you didn't know yourself. You were thinking of taking a long road trip, I think, or spending the summer with your family. I remember you had one of those wide, low, classy old cars; it somehow seemed oddly perfect for you. I imagined you driving down long, long roads, further and further south, with you hands on the big old steering wheel and your chin up a little--I think I remember you looking like that, one time when you gave me a ride into town.
You have the most beautiful hands I have ever seen. So strong and perfectly formed and expressive.
I honestly don't remember when we first met. That happens a lot at Bennington--you kind of meet people by osmosis, just because it's such a small and active campus, before ever actually being in a class in a play or even having a chat with them. (But no, it's not just that--I have a horrific memory. Please don't take it personally. I forget things about everybody, even my lovers and closest friends.) I believe we were in Literature of Artistic Expression together, with Marguerite? But even before that, I remember noticing your voice--unusual, but in the best ways, and ultimately as compelling as your hands.
For that class, I managed to cough up the only decent bit of "mainstream" fiction I've ever produced, about a lesbian couple. In retrospect, I wonder what that made you think.
I was always terribly flattered by how you spoke of my writing. Really a step beyond flattered into flattened. You probably could've fit me under a futon. And I was sortof, for a while, even though I never usually think this sort of thing, nursing the vague suspicion that you had a crush on me. For a while it just boggled me. I'm not used to people thinking I'm attractive.
Most women about the age you were when I knew you, the first few years of college, even sometimes for years afterwards, seem soft about the edges, indistinct. This is mainly a physical thing, odd as it sounds. Facial features and body forms too soft and seamless to be eye-catching. But you were the opposite. You were so physically distinctive, well-formed, well-defined. Elegant, even handsome.
I never knew you particularly well personally, nor much about your past. I remember you saying, when doing the preliminary readings of Seven by Seven in my room--and talking with those excellent hands as you spoke--that you identified so much with Daisy, and I remember it nearly broke my heart, because Daisy is not always the happiest person to be. But I am so terribly shy, and very bad at communicating--particularly then--and I get the impression you were shy as well. I've wished so often that this could be different for me; I wish it now as well.
I almost considered approaching you, in the extracurricular sense, while we were working on Seven by Seven. Anna and I did have an open relationship, at least in theory--it may not have seemed it, I don't think, because we were such an overtly couple-y couple, but we did. And...not the best relationship, in several ways. She finally dumped me, the winter after my graduation, when I was deeply depressed. I've found somebody else since, but still open. But tangent...I still somehow got caught up on my old hangup of never approaching anybody, even when I was almost certain you would have welcomed it.
When I was finishing up the casting and talking to Jim--he was one of the last I cast, because of schedule-clearing worries--I remember telling him who else was on the project and being so, somehow, sad when he didn't recognize your name.
I hope you're safe. God, I hope you're safe. Most of the time I'm entirely caught up in my own life, because it's too big for me to handle in and of itself, as it usually is, but when I'm thinking of Bennington or Seven by Seven or somesuch, I think of you, and I get this little pang of worry that you're not, and then tell myself, by reflex, what are the chances? stop worrying! Because I didn't know what you were doing that summer, whether you were home in New Orleans or not; and Anna, I know, tried to contact you, but all we had was an email address that didn't work. I keep thinking I could call Bennington, ask around Student Life and so forth...but I know why I haven't. Because I'm terrified of getting the worst news. It's cowardly of me.
You made me want to see New Orleans, the way you talked about it. It had always been too far south to really register on my radar--but I remember you said I should go there, and then I wanted to, but then Katrina hit.
I hope you're safe. And I never knew whether you loved me, and that's oddly unsettling, somehow, like there's a hole somewhere in something, and Cyn, my new girlfriend, is planning on hanging the Seven by Seven posters in our living room once we get it painted, and then I'll be seeing you on my wall every day and I don't know what I'll think.
And now I'm just rambling, really rambling. And sounding all selfish too, I think. I'm not used to this kind of writing.
The girl on the subway got off at my stop. When I got home, just before sitting down to write this, I found a package in the mail containing a sample vial of a perfume blend inspired by the bayou--my new girlfriend and I have gone on a bit of a scent kick for whatever reason, and we've been trading samples by mail amongst our friends. Odd coincidences. But I'd been compelled to sit down and write this almost since the girl on the subway had first gotten on and sat down across from me.
Once we were talking on the way down the Jennings path--walking back together from something, I forget what--and you said you had something to tell me, but then caught yourself and changed the subject. I wish you hadn't stopped. I wish I knew where you are, and whether you're okay. That's all, really.
Love,
Tory