Mostly though, she was there for the occasional days off. My memory puts an annoyingly soft focus filter over those scenes, but I guess that can't be helped. We can't always eschew the cliche in our personal lives. And anyway, for all that I try to share her life on this blog, some memories are just for the two of us.
But it's not really flight training I'm remembering right now. Twenty five years ago, we kissed for the first time. Do most couples remember that? I suspect so, but in our case it was particularly memorable, because we weren't going out. She was my flute teacher, but I was headed off to the Navy and she to graduate school in music. And there was the little matter of that boyfriend of hers who she was "practically engaged" to, a phrase that didn't include quotes at the time.
Yeah, that's her, age 22 at our wedding with her trademark "squashed Muppet face" of happiness (her term, not mine!). It was nine months after that first kiss. For all the hell her body went through, she didn't really age much, did she?
But yeah. December 12th. The following is from my probably to remain unpublished book with the working title "Janet's Song" (apparently there was some excessively sentimental movie with a similar name, so if I ever do think of putting out there, I'll change it. Janet was never much for being maudlin)
***
December 12, 1987.
It was a
dark and stormy night.
I'd dropped
by her place after work. I've no idea
what the excuse was, perhaps another lesson.
Maybe just because her place was closer to the Foreign Language Building,
which still kept me employed in its basement.
If the last
was the case, there would have been a smidgen of truth in it. It was damned wretched outside. It wasn't warm enough for rain, nor cold
enough for snow. Whatever that stuff
was, there was a lot of it. I've lived
in the South and California for so long now, I forget what winters are
like. One forgets that in some places,
winter can do a serious number on the body human, given a mile or two of
walking home.
Janet
hadn't forgotten, and insisted on me staying.
Her place was a one room efficiency with a solitary bed as the only
significant piece of furniture. I don't
think I spent a lot of time agonizing about heading back through the worsening
storm. But lest you cluck your tongue,
we took a number of blankets and made an improvisatory bed on the floor with
them.
We weren't
about to sleep, though. We went into
full on gab mode. She had graduate
schools to apply to and I was hoping to get into flight school or become a
world famous neuroscience researcher.
One of the two. I've never been
as clear on direction as she was.
But really,
I don't think we talked about that much at all, for all its looming
importance. The two of us could go on
about the nature of reality as it related to
cognitive lens theory and the usual solipsistic philosophies that
college students are prone towards, flip over to extended flute technique and
multiphonics, alight briefly on our favorite books at the moment, then land
with full force on the virtues of properly made tea and coffee. I was an espresso addict before the days of
Starbucks and she had English parents.
Vive la difference, in drink as in all things, all unto midnight and
slightly beyond.
Janet was
sitting on her bed and did her kittenish yawn she did when her fatigue caught
up with her. I was about to tell her
that it was okay, it was nap time for both of us.
Water
exploded around her, like someone had opened up with a firehose.
More like
emptied a full bucket over her head.
Janet had a landlord who was somewhat indifferent to the concept of
maintenance. The storm had started the
mother of all leaks, but instead of dripping directly down, the water had
created a huge plaster blister filled with water.
And with
dramatic timing so perfect that it would be unacceptable in a work of fiction,
it had burst over her head.
She was
drenched. The bed was drenched. And we were both laughing.
A hot
shower for her, a mop for me, and a minute or so to think for both of us.
Quick
mopping on my part had saved the improvised bed. As the Navy always claimed, the service
taught valuable skills.
So.
It was
really the only option, right?
Lights out,
we lay down on the floor a respectful distance away from each other.
I faded in
and out of dreams for a while, until realized I could smell the scent of soap
from her shower.
I opened my
eyes and saw her laying next to me in a puddle of dim light from an outside
streetlamp, as outside the storm shook against the window. She looked like a Victorian porcelain doll,
delicate and pale with small, fine features.
But her the glint of moisture in her eyes attested to her life. And those eyes were open and inches away from
mine, staring directly into mine.
Slowly, I ran my fingers through her long hair.
We kissed
for a long time.
Then she
started crying.
"I
love you," she said. But, she said,
she loved her boyfriend, too.
We turned
on the lights and talked until the sun came up.
Just that, despite what pretty much all our friends and even some family
members assumed.
Janet
believed strongly in fidelity. So did
I. Our half awake brains might ignore
that, but in the light of the morning, we felt we should do what the honorable
thing was. And we were pretty sure that
didn't involve sneaking around behind someone else's back.
So, she was
going to tell her boyfriend. And she and
I would remain friends. No matter
what. We promised each other that.
And we
kissed one last time. We weren't sure if
we'd ever do it again.
It was one
heck of a kiss.
I called my
mom up and talked to her about it.
"That's
wonderful!" she said.
"Mom,
you aren't listening."
"Yes,
I am. It'll work out."
And you
know, the old girl can be right on occasion.
Looking back, we were being silly about the whole thing. Tragic love triangles and doomed couples are
good material for plays, sure. But there
usually isn't any reason to live them.
But perhaps the two of us were showing our fondness for literary
convention. The true love who goes off
to sea, while the pretty girl stays with the man she's already with.
Pfft. This wasn't Casablanca. This was our lives.
Janet's
boyfriend took things about as graciously as could be expected, that is to say,
not at all. Janet would observe later on
that while he claimed all about open relationships, he also realized that if
Janet was interested in anyone else, it was serious. She just wasn't into casual flings. Or perhaps he was just a hypocrite. It has to be admitted that the last is a
distinct possibility.
It was
finals week. Thank God, as we needed
something to distract us.
On December
19th, we had what we would later on call our first date. I bought her a broccoli cheese potato at a
local fast food joint and watched her eat it.
She was getting dizzy from all the stress, and I was trying to poke her
into getting some calories into her. <she lost five pounds that week>
Should have given her chocolate, looking back.
Afterwards, we swung by my place.
Just to chat. No kissing, we
promised each other.
It was the
big "So, what are you doing after college?" talk. Looking at it practically, it was a bad time
for both of us to start on the couple thing.
I was getting my commission in May and heading off to who knows
where. Janet had a few east coast
graduate schools that she was planning on getting into. And afterwards, she'd be trying to grab
whatever orchestra position opened up, which could be almost anywhere.
It would be
really difficult for us to stay together.
But heck, we'd get back together, later, right? Or maybe we could work it out before
then. Anything so we could stay
together.
That was
when we realized what exactly we were talking about. We wanted a situation in which both of us
spent as much time as possible with each other for as long as possible. Smootchies would be a nice bonus, of course.
"Are
we talking about what I think we're talking about?" Janet asked me.
And we
hugged. No kissing. And we laughed. Then I told her I wanted to do it
properly. I dropped to one knee and held
her hands, as corny a gesture as it was the first time a young man did it so
many hundreds of years ago. But being in
love often means not being afraid to be corny.
"Janet
Lynn Whittaker, will you marry me?"
She smiled
her muppet like smile, her cheeks in full dimple.
"Of course."
I got that
kiss, after all.
Then I gave
her a lift over to her boyfriend's apartment so she could break up with
him. He didn't say congratulations.
Believe it
or not, to this day, people have tsk-tsk'd at me for "stealing a buddy's girl".
What rot. My best buddy was
the girl. And now she was my fiance.
Besides,
after twenty three years together, can we get a pass on that?
