Madonna, the patron saint for repressed Catholic schoolgirls.
Even she had trouble with boys.
Hopefully this is part 3, and the final installment, forever hold my peace. While it has been fun to reflect on a time when I was younger, thinner and a little more breathless, I also know I'm looking back in wonder as opposed to living through the moment in real time. It's easy to smile now, but there was real tears and genuine heartbreak.
Is there a happily ever after? Of course, but if the journey was a straight line, what fun would that be?
Guns 'n' Roses "Patience" and Bobby Brown "My Prerogative" - Two songs? I'll explain below. P was in my photography class, and I was drawn to him immediately. Brown eyes, wavy hair, and just out of the military, totally smokin' hot body. Yes, I crushed on him hard, but it appeared that he was hot on one of our classmates, W. What does any stealth stalker in the making do? Befriend her.
Thankfully, W was an amazing person and I found out that not only were they not an item, P was asking her about ME, and she encouraged me to go to the post-exam celebration at the bar. I played it cool, but flirted my way towards a phone number and a date for lunch after buying back books.
I tried playing it cool, that this was just a couple of co-eds hanging out as I sweated out what to wear. We sold our books, talked about the next semester, then went to Clara's for lunch. This is when the nerves kicked in and while we ordered a pizza, I think I ate maybe half a slice and ran to the bathroom 5 times. So much for playing it cool. I figured that was it.
He nevertheless called me again and we did a crazy little "tour of Jackson" date, from coneys to movies, to a snowball fight at Cascades and an unforgettable first kiss on the hill. Once that ice was broken, we began to have lots of fun together. His folks were even great, and I was invited to dinner at the house several times.
Things were not perfect. Both of us were insecure and struggled to allow our feelings for each other show, for fear of putting too much out on the table. The distance hurt too, since I was in Jackson and he was in Lansing. At times, I was with him more in my thoughts than I was when I was in his presence. P also reported for two week reserves duty in Greenland at a delicate point in our relationship. It was at this point I adopted the song Patience, with Axl Rose's gritty pleading of his lover and his need.
I grew weary of playing games with him when I felt I could expose my heart, he'd crack a joke or do something to disarm me. The breaking point was standing me up for my cousin's wedding, although he did claim to have waited for an hour at the house for me to show up. It was at this wedding that I met D, below. Needless to say, that Monday, it was over.
Well, it wasn't over until he said it was over. In his grand gesture, he saw my sister on campus and demanded that she take him to my class. He crashed the class, interrupting the professor to have a word with me. Too astonished to say no, she allowed my absence.
In the next classroom, a flimsy cubicle next door, he finally bared his heart. He was cocky, he was remorseful, he was romantic, he was desperate, but most embarrassingly, he was LOUD. Five different classrooms overheard us breaking up through the paper thin partitions of the art studios at Lansing Community College. Calling him to the carpet for his arrogant and cold behavior, the tip of the iceberg being standing me up for the wedding, he cracked, "like Bobby Brown says, that was my prerogative." With a live studio audience listening in, there was murmuring along the lines of "oh no he didn't!"
When he asked that all be forgiven and we give it another shot, that is when I sprang D on him, with whom I had already had one date and was looking forward to another. When I said I met him at the wedding, the surrounding cubes murmured with excitement, and P, shocked, asked me how I could have started dating when I hadn't yet broken it off with him, I smirked "my prerogative." This may have been the first known case of "you go girl!"
We parted under the worst of terms, but we reconciled about a year later, upon news that our friend W had died in a car accident. We talked on the phone a couple of times, he found someone new, who got him, his insecurities and his sense of humor. It is nice to know we closed the door, finally, as friends.
Madonna, "Express Yourself" - D was introduced above, the boy at the wedding. He was not at all shy about expressing how he felt about me, and about pursuing a romance. How refreshing! It helped that he was tall, handsome, kind, gentlemanly and honorable.
Looking back at this relationship, it was 95% free of tension or conflict. We got along amazingly well, and turned almost any situation into a date. Washing cars. Running errands. Listening to music. Movies. Swims at the lake. Taking photographs for our portfolios. Getting our report cards. Determining if chewing wintergreen Lifesavers really set off sparks (yes). It was just that great.
Oh, but that niggling 5%... it made all the difference. There are many casual disagreements that can be dismissed in the course of a relationship such as toilet paper over/under, country v. rock, UM v. OSU, rare v. well done. Can't do that with religion.
The religious tensions began in July, when an argument broke out prior to a photo shoot at St. Marys. It continued when a party at the lake turned into an attempt to convert me, then isolate me, by his friends. Then there was school. I was set to start at Ferris in the fall, while he continued his studies at LCC. I was at a loss as to how to look to the future.
This dance track by Madonna was a song me and the girls listened to over and over that summer, most notably at a pool party at Rachel's uncle's house, where she and I were house sitting for two weeks. It was an empowering track that I lip synced in earnest to my boyfriend who was lazily backstroking in the cool water and hot sunshine. I was making a plea for him to have an open mind. He didn't quite get that. Or maybe I didn't.
I broke up with him my first week away, deciding to see if we could make our way back to each other. It also didn't help my birthday present was a CHECK for $15 -- the least romantic gift EVER. I made a point to buy household cleaning supplies with the money in response.
We did find our way back to each other several times, albeit with different intentions. We went out a couple of times during Thanksgiving and Christmas break, a full two years after our breakup. We kissed, we held hands, we talked about what had been going on in our lives and what we might mean to each other, but the passion was missing all together and had cooled to friendship. Another afternoon, he tracked me down and we spent the afternoon talking on the phone again about the serious relationships in our life, with both of us ready to take the plunge with other people. I surprised him at work with a wedding gift; he offered to take my engagement photos, and then we lost touch.
An update, 5/21: I found him! After my dad died, I started randomly missing people who I had hoped were still alive and well. Learning the lesson that it's never too late to reconnect (until it's too late), I sent him a letter to catch up and he called me last week. It was a wonderful 30+ minutes on the phone. He's doing great, he and his family actually live nearby, and his boys teased him for having an ex-girlfriend. I'm glad I had the guts to write to him after all these years, that he is still the kind person I remember, and his wife was understanding of a blast from the past wanting to say hello.
Jimmy Page, Outrider album - C: with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, this album became the soundtrack to not only our relationship but our eventual breakup. How could I not see that it was going to end badly? I could sum up the whole of our relationship in song titles alone: Wasting My Time; Wanna Make Love; Writes of Winter; The Only One; Liquid Mercury; Prison Blues; Blues Anthem (If I Cannot Have Your Love).
C pursued me urgently for about a month, then seemed to resent how easily I succumbed to his courting. It was as if he loved me from Monday to Thursday, and hated me on the weekend or vice versa. His friends and roommates gently suggested I break it off, and called him to the carpet for his Jekyll/Hyde treatment, but I was naively insistent that love was all he needed. But I began to believe I needed love too.
I baked him a lovely little cake for Valentine's Day, and being a Tuesday, figured he was in love with me that day and anticipated his knock on my door, which never came. Dismayed, I did my shift at the radio station, and came home with the hope that there would be a note or valentine from him. Finding nothing I got... pissed. I stormed upstairs to his apartment and demanded to talk. He sat in his chair, listening to this godforsaken album and ignored me. Grabbing the remote control from his hand, I flung it across the room, where it cracked the glass to his cheap stereo system and the remote itself shattered upon impact. To this day, one of my most explosive, proudest moments. I said some things to him that shall not be repeated here because while I'm pretty sure of WHAT I said, I think it came out in a furious, incoherent, tear-soaked ball of "eff you" that cannot be quoted verbatim.
Oddly enough, I ran into him at the IKEA in Canton not too long ago. I was with the skater girls coming home from a competition in Wyandotte. I looked up to see him staring at me from across a series of bins filled with STOOF. I mouthed "C...?" and we circled each other warily around the bins, without saying a word, until he joined his wife/girlfriend/whoever down the aisle to look at KRRAP. The girls, startled to see me go zombie for a minute, asked me what the hell just happened with the guy in the plaid shirt. I replied that I just saw a 20-year-old ghost.
And finally...
Bad Company, "Seagull" and U2, "So Cruel" - When D and I first broke up, I spent an entire evening listening to Bad Company's first album, and somehow Seagull got stuck in rotation, my heart heavy with beers and tears. T, remember T? Our relationship mellowed nicely into a warm buddy friendship and he and my friend Chip, at Western, were bored and wanted to road trip up to Big Rapids to party with me. Hearing me distraught they said "we'll be right there!" and threatened bodily harm on my love who was doing his best to be a rat bastard. Alas, they had too much to drink and never made it out of Kalamazoo.
So Cruel, almost exactly one year later. God, I can't even remember the why of this one, only I was getting really tired of breaking up with D in January.
But a happy ending at last! This D is Dave, and while Januarys still suck, I'm happy to say we haven't broken up since January of 1994, and married in 1997. In the years since, we have compiled a happy little soundtrack of our lives. To my astonishment, we met over 21 years ago, and have been together for 20, those minor hiccups excluded.
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