as i continue to write about this part of my life i am beginning to realize why. i define myself and my life by the series of relationships i have had with other people. i am not writing about j because i am pining for that time in my life again. i would not trade my life for anything. it is a wonderful life, challenging, but full of satisfaction, and at a point where perspective comes a lot sooner than it did when i was fifteen.
much to the chagrin of j’s parents, we spent every possible moment together. they kept a close eye on us, making sure to never leave us alone for too long. i am sure that left alone they thought we’d be having sex which would lead to teenage pregnancy which would lead to them being tied to me for life. naturally, that was the worst case scenario for them. so on nights we spent watching movies on the couch, they always made frequent trips downstairs to the kitchen for food, drinks, cookbook consultations, dish washing, basically anything they could think of to check on us. each trip down the stairs began with heaving throat clearing and was followed by loud, intentionally heavy steps. ridiculous. what they didn’t know, see, realize, or attempt to understand was that we were in it for the long run. as i said before, we’d spent hours talking about our plans. we would stay virgins until we married. we’d have children. a girl would be named kate. we were very active in the youth group at j’s church and i was comfortable with the idea of holding out for him. actually, i couldn’t imagine things getting any better. there was no rush. plus, we knew that a lot could be done without actually having intercourse. we weren’t prudes and we satisfied our hormonal teenage urges as much as the next person. but we were careful. one afternoon spent making out i let the words, “oh, God” slip out of my mouth.
“let’s leave God out of this” he told me as he gently put his finger over my lips.
the guilt ran deep.
j made me a part of all of his life. once he brought be some sheet music for a Haydn duet for piano and cello and asked me to learn it so that we could play together in church. i agreed and spent weeks trying to fumble my way through music that, despite my piano lessons, was way above my head. i eventually backed out. i was secretly afraid that i’d broken his heart and i was disappointed in myself for not being able to meet him on that level. i wanted so desperately to connect with the musical side of him, to meet him in that place he visited with his eyes closed, playing the cello as if it were an extension of his own body. so instead he took me to see YoYo Ma.
the night we went to see Ma play at the kennedy center in dc was a night in january of 1991 that the US had become involved in the persian gulf war. while turmoil took place elsewhere in the world, even just outside the doors of the concert hall, we were sealed a room of peace, comfort, and cello playing that brought tears to both our eyes. j reached over and squeezed my hand to tell me that this, this was the place he went to, and he was glad to have me there with him. never before had i felt that way about music and never since.
we spent much of our time immersed in the arts. we waited in line for standing room only at classical music performances, musicals, and several shakespeare plays. we read poetry to each other, we wrote even more. and then there was the artist that j was himself. he was a master of photography, an art he learned from his mother. he took pictures of me and i of him. we’d develop them in the darkroom in his basement, holding hands and holding our breaths until the pictures of our faces appeared on the paper. after they dried j would cut the pictures up into strips and arrange our eyes, without faces, as close as they could get. because real life wasn’t close enough for us. everything about our relationship stretched way beyond the physical. other things just seemed trivial. day and night and sun and rain and school and home life were things that just filled the spaces between our time together.
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