Grand Silences

 

The thing was, if we knew each other it was probably based on what dorm we lived in. It wasn't exactly a time for depth in relationships, there were other concerns. What were we going to do, who were we going to be, what was that assignment and when was it due? We knew each other by our majors, or by the color of backpack we wore. We knew each other by what classes we shared, where we sat. Sure, we were making connections, but everything there was encouraging connections. Connect the dots between these historical causations, connect these chemicals, connect this author's themes, connect these numerals, once that fall I stopped worrying about where I was stepping and looked up at the exact moment that a girl was looking up and we looked into each other's eyes and she fell in love with me. This, by way of example, okay? It happened. I was bashful and eager and was less the exception than the rule. Were we making connections that were there to be made or connections that were destined to happen? Could you really know anyone if you didn't even know yourself? One guy I knew only as "Batman" and I even met his parents, but that's a different story.

I recall a guy named Tony, a particularly fine physical specimen in his senior year of college. He wasn't a friend, we never confided nor ever really hung out together, outside of work that is.  Part of that was temperamental, part age.  He was three years my senior, and at 18, as I was, one is vigilantly attuned to the minutiae of social hierarchy as affected by experience, which is like a vast playing field where you can't even fathom the end zones, and you've just milliseconds ago been nauseatingly thrust from the bench.  Age-wise Tony had a leg up, and psychologically speaking he was driven— or maybe it was the other way around, maybe he was a driven individual because he had a leg up age-wise, as I said, we weren't close —I recall his work ethic right up there in the short list of attributes to which I could to ascribe him, he was handsome, kind of a jerk, and I seem to recall multiple people alluding to his reputation as a bit of a man about campus, however, the guy was mostly a mystery to me. How he ended up with Heather I'll never know.

Paul, Business, lived in the dorms about a mile separated from the main campus, behind where I lived, in a block of one-room off-campus private apartments.  Freshman year, having spent a morning alone, again, avoiding the painful realization that I was either going to have to get a job or drop out of school (or ignore the bursar indefinitely, by hiding behind a tree? Not likely, in this  bare winter weather) I was surprised and relieved when Paul called and asked if I wanted to go out for lunch.  I said I did.  He asked if I wanted a ride or wanted to meet him there.  Peaking out the lone window I could see scattered midmorning snowflakes falling like ash, a salted garbage truck with a big green shamrock wired to the grill slowing to stop at the light.  "A ride would be nice." He was downstairs in 5 minutes. Paul drove his brother's Camaro with both reverence and panache.  He had failed to repair the strip of molding on the door but had souped up the stereo system and made a big show out of selecting the right CD for this particular journey out of the dashboard binder, selecting a primitively sharpied:  Meatloaf/Van Halen/Bon Jovi MIXXXX.  The hot-dog place he wanted to go to was only like 3 minutes away, so we sat and idled in there for a minute to let the song finish then went inside and wiped the snow from our boots, Paul marching right up to the counter to order while I gawped at the menu, "You ready?" he asked, adding "my treat."
"In that case then yes, I'm ready." 

"Paul," I broached, "I think I need a get a job."
"You should get one. It'll be good for you.  Lot of work though, being a student and holding down employment."
"Do you think, maybe, you could get me a job at the camera shop?" 
He wiped his wiry whiskers thoughtfully.  "No."
"Oh.  Why not?"
They called our order number out so I got up and got it, four large chilli dogs with fries and drinks on a big red plastic tray.
"Well, for one thing, what do you know about cameras?"
Now it was my turn to strike a thinking pose.  "Not much."
"Exactly.  And add to that, we're not really hiring right now.  It's kind of a small shop."
"I see."
"Tell you what though, my buddy Stewart is always looking for guys to work.  I'll give you his number."

So that was how I got a job at the fertilizer plant, which was where I met Tony.  First day on the job, he said, "put these bags over here, and put these bags over there, and when the pallet is full call one of us over to move it until you're trained on the forklift?  Get it?  Got it?  Good bye." He wasn't exactly friendly.  In fact, I'm not sure he ever spoke to me there again after that.  He spoke at me, which is not the same thing.  I might as well have been a piece of gum on the sidewalk to him.  He worked harder than the rest of us though, this much was clear to even me, who showed up to work my 3 mornings a week often late, and if I could afford it, hungover and dragging.  It was clear to the boss too, who put him in charge of the swing shift, which meant a pay raise, and you can bet that went to his head.  We were never really on the same level, Tony and I.

I worked full time all summer and was feeling pretty good about myself all things considered come fall when my buddy Gary, Education, and I had signed up for the same Dramatic Arts elective, along with Gary's girlfriend Kary, Music, and, it turned out, much to my surprise that first day of class, Tony. We were all sophomores, and so it came as no surprise when our production of Romeo and Juliet cast Tony, the senior, as Romeo. Gary, much to his delight was announced as Mercutio, and Kary was cast as Juliet, angering almost everyone.

“What's the big deal?” Kary asked.

“The big deal? The Big Deal?” Gary's voice quavered. I checked to see if he was being ironic but I detected only sincere irritation.

“It's not like this was my choice.” It was a cool early November evening, and the streetlights came on as we walked across the Quad.

Gary was not to be diffused so easily. “Have you seen him? Don't answer that. Doesn't matter. You're going to see him. A lot of him.” I was carrying my girlfriend's bag because earlier that afternoon we had parted ways and she didn't want to carry it all the way over to her Statistics class and her car was too far away so I took a peep inside and found a Didion paperback called White Album while we came into the student lounge and crashed on a pair of couches.

“It's just a part,” Kary said.

“It's not just a part” he was gesticulating with his hands now. Working himself up with his arms and raising his voice, although no one was looking, yet “it's not just a play. It's Romeo and freaking Juliet!”

I decided that Didion held nothing of interest for me and got up to go get a snack. Deciding what you like and what you don't like is not difficult. I decided on pretzels, but also a tiny bag of mixed nuts because I felt a sudden craving for peanuts and justified to myself the purchase with the admonishment that if I didn't eat them all right now I could store the remainder easily in my pants pocket and eat them later and be grateful to myself for the foresight.

When I returned to the couch they were still hot on about the casting announcement. “I think,” I added, skittishly, “that congratulations are in order, Kary. Juliet is a much-coveted part. I hope you break a leg, as they say.”

“Stay out of it.” Gary jabbed, but this time I could tell that his intent was purely sarcastic. He was just scared. But it turned out that there was nothing to be worried about. Our Romeo and his Juliet, Tony and Kary, got on like cats and dogs, or should I say, Capulets and Montagues.

“Learn your damn lines, is all.” Tony said one rehearsal and Kary, I could see, about slapped him in the face. He brushed tired pompadour from his eyes and prompted her again “there lies more peril in thine eye than twenty of their words; look thou!”

“I would for the world you were not here,” she responded, ready to give him a black eye.

The thing about a school production was that it was generally terrible, but hanging out with the rest of the cast was once-in-a-lifetime fun, and Tony and Kary really did give it their all despite their personal animosity. Gary's roommate Mark, Economics, started dating Hazel, Mass Communications, who played Juliet's nurse, and that's how we came to know Heather, Hospitality, maybe?, Hazel's twin sister. But that was all later on. In the green room before each of our three performances Tony had established a warm-up routine and subjected the rest of us to (because he was lead) involving turning the portable stereo on full blast and blaring Mamma Mia by the A*Teens and Tony Christie's (Is This is the Way to) Amarillo. I could hear his urine splashing merrily into the toilet we were all supposed to share, “Tony, I uh, I have my CDs with me, could we listen to something else.”

“No.” I turned and held back Gary, plugging both hands over his ears and about to commit a justifiable homicide, Tony just ignored us and turned to the mirror, he did his own makeup. The rest of us guys had the girls do it for us. I would have been mad at his outright dismissal of us if it had seemed like a fight worth having, but it didn't. We were all nervous, Tony especcially. For different reasons than myself, obviously. Even knowing that I had very little of consequence to do didn't help me, Tony I figured was best left to his own devices, all those lines. Something about friends and strangers wandering into a crowded room and sitting in the dark to obsessively observe what we had spent five weeks working on together. My girlfriend brought flowers but could not stay for the after party, at which Tony made a loud show of shushing everybody by clinking a glass with a fork and proceeding to give a short heartfelt speech about “shaking the yolk of inauspicious stars” by ending his Senior year with this as his high note “so thank you, all of you!” Kary chose that moment to loudly walk out.

There is actually not much more story to tell about Tony. That winter Gary extended the invitation to me to move in with he and Mark for Junior year, with three of us we could afford to all get off campus and get some more space in a house. We were pretty much hanging out all the time by then anyway. Some night's Hazel and Heather would come by. They weren't identical twins, but they were both pleasantly attractive, in both their features and their personalities. Button noses and contagious laughs. It was fun to be around them. Hazel could best anyone at dirty-joke telling, and Heather was everyone's best friend instantly, one of those people who just instantly engender trust. I was drinking lots though, so I'm wanting for actual anecdotes to prove this. What I have is photographic evidence. Here we all are before the after-party, still in our costumes. Here's a blurry one of me and Gary in the dining hall smiling. Here's Paul's brother's druggie friend Jacob smoking out on the curb while holding an almost-empty bottle of Jack. Here's all of us one night outside Paul's place in the snow, Mark's looking away, his mouth open, arm raised as if to make a point, his eyes half closed, talking to someone, and Batman's hand groping Mona's breast. Here's two of Kary and Gary kissing and pretending to fight. Here we are in the kitchen floor, wrestling? Here I am in the big red chair with Heather on my right looking innocently flirtatious and Kary on my left, making a show of lasciviousness, I am red-faced and have my arms around both of them. We look young. None of us had any idea what would happen next. What happened next was winter break.

While I was home the plants in my small room's lone window had all almost died (almost all died?).
“They say that singing to your plants can help them grow,” said Anne D, Psychology, one of Kary's two roommates, whom I'd invited over under the pretext of utilizing her skills as a psych major to discuss the breakup with my girlfriend. She earnestly inspected the brown brittle leaves while humming a sweet little song while I earnestly imagined what color underwear she had on under the jeans, a kind of restlessness. The effect of being newly single was curious, I felt perpetually like hopping one leg at a time instead of walking, for instance. It was both exciting to not know who you were going to talk to on the phone at the end of the day, and also kind of sad and terrifying. What was I doing? I had put my hands on her shoulders.

“What are you doing?” Anne D asked, and I apologized but she was too keen to get out of them to hear anything much I had to say after that. I tried going out with Maureen, from Geology 102, but that all blew up shortly before The Valentine's Dance, for which I had served on the committee, so I still had to attend and serve (non-alcoholic) drinks. Luckily Paul, who was DJing, loaned me his flask so I spiked my single serving cans of off-brand Sprite with sippy tinctures of vodka all night and somehow made it through.

When the news came out that spring that Tony and Heather were dating, at first I could not believe it. It was so improbable. Like learning that your pre-teen niece is dating Conor MacGregor. I couldn't check with Tony because Paul's buddy Stewart had suggested I leave the fertilizer plant with him, so I had done so. It was Hazel who confirmed it, I saw her one day during finals, walking distractedly out of the library. Since she and Mark had broken up I hadn't seen much of her, but I wanted to assure her whose side I was on so I cheerfully waved hello and hustled over to join her, (groaning at the exertion) “Yes,” she said, I studied her face for a sign, of what, I was not certain, “it's true.” Her gaze dwelt for a moment on the middle distance, like a trauma victim, but then she wiped some imaginary sleep from her eyes and smiled reassuringly. “Is this year done yet or what?”

“Or what.” I answered.

“Have you picked your major yet?”

I had not, and it turned out I didn't have to because the gig that Stewart got me hooked up with quickly went full time and I followed it out of state and so I missed Fall Registration, or I forgot about the deadline, or, at least, that was the story back then. Gary and Mark were pissed, since they'd already put a down-payment on the house we were all to share, but I didn't want to to go back, and when they stopped speaking to me it was just that much easier not to. It was Kary who kept in touch and told me that Tony and Heather were engaged.

I thought about it all today because I saw on Kary's friendbook feed that they are having a twenty-year anniversary party next month. Jesus Christ. It was almost twenty years ago, for a few years it was that, and before that, it all had just happened a just few months ago. Time is subjective. I still can't believe they got together, and I can't understand what she saw in him. But apparently they have two kids and, thinking back it, in a way, it's brave, if one must put a positivist slant to the whole affair. (Are we still calling bravery a good thing, post me-too? post Putin?  Post post-history?)  What I mean is, choosing anyone or anything when you're eighteen, nineteen, twenty, to me, now, trapped here, seems preposterous, but the more I sit and stew over it I can't decide if it's the deciding that's preposterous or the being eighteen/nineteen/twenty years old.

There's a very magic time when, if you are lucky, you will be faced with divine uncertainty, and if there's one common trope inherent to the response to this scenario, facing the endless expanse of possibilities and freedom, it is to wither, to shrink to safety. My God, it's daunting out there under the sun, best cling to this rock and it's shade.  Marriage.  Career.  Get thee from this glare.  I spent hours wallowing and winnowed by the grand silences of solitude in my little room, sometimes not even staring out the lone window trying to figure out which way to go, what to do, who I was, how to be, and Tony, that big handsome talented hardworking asshole met a nice girl and swept her up and got married and that's what he's been up to ever since. Twenty years.  I'm sure that a big part of him making it this far is that she has kept him on the straight and narrow, but, maybe I'm too harsh on the guy, maybe I didn't see it, the capacity that is, we weren't ever really, as I've said, friends.