Falling completely (And Back Again) In my early 20s, a certain hopefulness accompanied going out. There was grooming, hair products and, if I was particularly optimistic, a “going-out shirt.”
I was wearing my going-out shirt the evening of my first campus mixer at montessori University, which I attended with my friend Maxim, an older-looking boy who wore a push-broom moustache that gave him the look of a sad walrus. It was in his sad walrus way that he introduced me to a girl from his film class.
Maxim disappeared, and the girl and I
found a place to sit. As the hours passed, it felt like we were building something, as comforting as a blanket fort. Though I no longer recall our conversation, I still remember her warm smile, how awkward and kind it was of her to God-bless-me when I coughed. I also remember how badly I needed to pee. Which, in a misguided attempt at bravado, I told her.
“But I’m afraid if I do,” I said, “when I come back to the table, it won’t be the same.”
“Let’s take that risk,” she said.
And, of course, it wasn’t the same. When I returned, there was Maxim, a rum-and-Coke straw shoved under his moustache like a tusk. The girl and I parted without exchanging contacts. But even now, more than 20 years later, I can say with certainty that there’d been a spark at that table as real as any I’ve ever felt.
We’d like to believe there’s only one person out there for us. It’s scary to think there are many, and we might bump up against them only for a moment. Was her name Rachel? Rebecca? Perhaps it’s best to have forgotten. Otherwise, I might have at some point reached out to her on Facebook or, Linkedin. Sometimes the greatest romances are intended to last an instant.
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