I was not there, so maybe parts of the story are wrong, but I know that the part about her forgetting her age is not. There was a time when it seemed like we knew everyone that the other knew, but we live further away now and a friend of hers I have never met was telling her about a boy she had never met, but that this friend thought she should meet. And, using the theory of relativity [well, a theory of relativity], instead of telling her how old he was, said, "He's four years older than you." And she said, "Oh! So, 26?" My friend is 24. Making this boy 28. And she is bad at math but not that bad. She told me this with lots of exclamation points and can-you-believe-thats, how she really thought that she was still 22. Sometimes she feels younger. Sometimes I do, too.
I have been forgetting things lately. Mostly unimportant things: names of old professors, plots of books I didn't really connect with, TV shows from youth. When I was little I prided myself on remembering things and the idea that I would never stop remembering things. Life, then, felt not-so-long and not-so-expansive and there was a time when I truly believed that, if pressed, I could name from memory every person I had ever met. More recently, I believed that I could name every person in my graduating class. I would tell people this, anecdotal evidence of the small place I'm coming from, but it was true. This was years ago, when I was 18 and new to college but had never felt further from high school. Saying those names then would have felt like a memorial service. Now, I would have to read the names from a paper someone would have had to provide for me and I fear it might feel like a seance.
I guess what I'm saying is that some things fade.
There is a girl at work I don't know very well. On my first day, I was warned about her, told to stay away and that she was crazy and that if you gave her anything, conversationally, to latch onto she would cling to it with sharp nails and drag you to her choir concerts and knitting circle and did you really want that? I thought this was unfair. She had smiled and greeted me just as warmly and generically and with claws hidden as everyone else. But I'm not much for knitting. So I avoided her. And, in the meantime, I have come to realize that we would probably not be friends in real life. But that doesn't mean that would be true for everyone.
Regardless, this is a girl who remembers things. Recently, she posted on our virtual staff sign-in board that it was six years to the day that she had first stepped foot into the Mediterranean Sea! Another co-worker and I rolled our eyes at this and I said , my god, I can't even remember when I lost my virginity.
It was just something to say, but it was also true, for a second. And then the memory flared up again, like the middle of a fireworks show and there we were. To be fair, I have an aid in remembrance in that it happened on September 11th. Not in 2001, but you still remember something like that. When I tell the story I throw in a line about two national disasters in a single day. A particularly crass friend made a comment about twin towers.
I didn't know him very well. I only knew his major because he took classes with some of my friends. I didn't have his phone number. "This was not the way it was supposed to happen," is hackneyed, but is also usually true. People who don't say that just haven't been dumped by that person yet or haven't really lost their virginity.
But listen, I didn't know his vitals or his five year plan or anything, but - and this may sound ridiculous, but - I didn't want to. All I knew was that he was drunk and I was drunk and I wanted to and that he wanted to. And when you're 19 years old and it still hasn't happened for you and you are starting to think, honestly, that it never will and that you certainly aren't going to get any more desirable from here on out and you truly believe that you will die and in the autopsy they will be able to tell that you never had sex because you saw a Law and Order once, accidentally, where that happened and that the coroner or whoever does the autopsy will be too busy laughing that they forget to find out the real, actual cause of death [which is not virginity!] and your family will never find out and it will severely impede the grieving process, well, mutual desire is enough.
It was bad and it was short and there was no lube and I think we both got hurt. I did. I walked back across the quad. Because, of course he lived across the quad. They always live across the quad. And it was late. And I called my friends, those who had been at the party with us and those who I had known from high school, and no one was up. Except, finally, Milena. We hadn't spoken in awhile, but she let me talk and then cry and then cry harder when I discovered that my polo shirt [my god, I was nineteen] was inside out. At that point, such a small and unimportant thing had the power to absolutely shatter me.
I didn't know at that time that I would go a little crazy with the hooking up that year and that it would get a little dangerous and that I would finally have to impose a year of celibacy, for my sanity and for my self-respect. I didn't know that someday I would get good at it, the whole sex thing. Better, at least. I didn't know that it would not always hurt so much and that it, actually, is better if you know him very well, if you have his phone number. Well, not better, but certainly not the same. I didn't know that I would forget the things we talked about before and after. I didn't know that I would forget all details of the story that I haven't already included here.
Things have been happening around here lately. They feel very important, most of them, and heavy. They feel like things I will remember for awhile, or at least not forget. But I think it's healthy to keep into perspective that things fade. Some of these things will certainly fall away - those that are not necessary, are not really big-picture important, along with weak plots, unimpressive professors, your age. And some of them won't. They will crop up again, years later, as vivid as that day you walked into the Mediterranean for the first time.
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