Principles of Love (8 page)

“I have to go,” I say.

“Suit yourself,” Chris says Englishly and then adds, “You’ll be back.” Unlike a regular dissed guy, he insists on walking me to my front door (proper? Or just very clever?). He stands waiting for me to get my keys out.

“Thanks for the candy,” I say.

“Sweets,” he corrects.

“Sweets,” I say, and something makes me want to cry. I wish I wanted someone like Chris, who is nice enough and cute enough, but who doesn’t register on a gut level (or below, I might add). Life would be simpler if I could just accept what was put forth in front of me. I touch the heart-shaped knocker and go inside.

I walk into the kitchen and Dad hangs up the phone quickly.

“Who was that?” I ask.

Dad pauses. “Just faculty stuff,” he says. It could be that he’s already been alerted to the blood alcohol incident, or something else entirely. “How was your evening?” Evening always connotes to me a dinner dance with gloves and hair tendrils that intentionally fall from their clasp, but I don’t say this.

“Okay, I guess,” I poke my head into the fridge in case, magically, a pastry has decided to move in.

“I got you coffee syrup,” Dad says. He stands next to me, bumping me out of the way and moving the broccoli and bag of apples (he likes them cold) to the side so he can get at the bottle that’s been lying down at the back.

I smile, “Thanks.” Since I was little, I’ve always loved coffee milk — you can get the syrup only in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, where it’s made. I’ve even been to the factory (is there any wonder I am single when I freely admit this shit?) and, as with my Swedish fish fanaticism, I’m quite the coffee syrup advocate. No caffeine, just a sugary coffee-like flavor, like ice cream in liquid form.

I take my milk and watch Buffy in rerun. Sipping as Sarah Michelle Gellar (note to self: should I have three names? Is that really secret to success?) ass and groin kicks her way to safety, I suddenly know what I’m going to write my English paper on. I’ll write about how when women have power they have been seen as scary, like witches in Salem or Henry Miller’s plays, or Buffy, or even the sisterly power on Charmed. If we are financially or emotionally secure/dominating, breaking out of our molds like in
Pride and Prejudice
, we are somehow dangerous. I climb the spiral staircase up to my tower room and humor myself by thinking I’m somehow mystical myself — that I can snap my fingers or wiggle my nose to get what — or whom — I desire.

After kicking radio butt (a weird image, I admit), I am riding high. I started by meeting Richard Markowitz at WAJS and instead of a summer job type interview (ie Have you worked at The Gap previously?) we went right into the recording room and he put headphones on me. Dad waited in the lobby while I learned not to pop my p’s and bust my b’s, and smooth talk about pizza and the Marshfield Garden Center. I find out on Tuesday if I get to do a real ad. The money’s not bad, but the best part is getting to sing and feel professional in a completely different arena. No school, no dramatics, no crushes or papers — just using my voice.

I blathered my way back to school with my dad, and went for a run, needing to get rid of my nervous energy. With each step, I recreated the pizza jingle (Extra sauce — sure thing! Bet you can’t pick — just one thing!). Now, I’m sitting on the steps outside the student center. Saturdays are empty on campus. Day students are home, boarders are either signed out to some DS’s house, or studying, or at a sports-related event, or pretending to study while getting felt up in the library. I am none of those things, none of those places.

Before I even realize where I’m going, I find myself outside the naked men statue exhibit. I wander in, shyly gazing up at the rather daunting bronzes. I pause by one lean statue, and crack myself up imagining all the nakedness coming to life. A funny and creepy
Dawn of the Dead
gone porn image. As I’m laughing, who should walk in but —

“You could give a guy a complex,” Robinson says.

“Oh,” I say, steadying myself on a statue’s thigh, “I’m less harsh when presented with the real thing.” Oh, like I’d know.

“Glad to hear it,” Robinson says. I’m afraid he’ll walk away so I search through the brain files trying to find a topic. All I can do is focus on him — his mouth, his eyes — and then his shirt — a white one. No stain.

“You’re going to get stained,” I say and point to his oxford.

He looks down. “True,” he says. And then, “Any chance you want to be my hands?”

Huh? Whatever that means, yes. Yes, I do.

“I mean,” he clarifies, “Do you know how to develop film? I’ve got a roll from August I want to do today.”

And so begins my first photography tutorial with Robinson Hall. He leads me into the dark room and shows me the various trays of fluids, the light-exposing machines, the strips of film. My whole body registers every word he says.

“Lay the developing paper in the bath,” he instructs. Oh, why not us in the bath together?

“Hey, cool — it’s turning into a real picture.” He doesn’t make fun of my excitement, he nods and smiles.

“I know, isn’t it amazing. It’s like learning to drive — or how to make an omelet or sex or something…” I’m somewhat baffled but the mere mention of sex and I’m a heart-thumping mushy wreck. But only on the inside. “You know?” he asks.

“Sort-of,” I say. “You mean how when you don’t know what something is, or how it’s made and then you find out and it’s like
oh, that’s what it
means.”

“Exactly,” he says.

He explains how to slick the photo to the wall to let it dry without curling, taking my own hand into his, allowing little drops of water to turn warm between our fingers and run down my arm. I give a little shiver.

“You cold?” he asks. I shake my head and expect him to do the guy thing, offer me his sweatshirt or something, but he doesn’t.

We do tests strips to see how much light each picture needs, and I get to feel the warmth of Robinson’s body behind mine while seeing gradually developing images of him playing in Central Park with his dog (thank God he’s not a cat person — I’d have hives just looking at the feline), on a beach (the Hamptons, it turns out) — and then, the picture to end all of them — a shirtless Robinson working outside as a carpenter (a la Trading Spaces) building bookshelves for the guest cottage at his parent’s summer house.

“What a cool house,” I say, pointing to the photo I just slicked to the wall.

“Dad’s pet project,” Robinson says and flicks through other images to show me another picture. “This is the view from the deck.” Rolling surf, litter-free beaches, and perfect tufts of sea grass. I’m invaded by an army of romantic and domestic images of the two of us playing frisbee with the dog, spending the summer in the guest house.

And then, when five near-perfect images are done, Robinson says, “You’re good.” Heart into mouth. “A good student I mean.”

“Thanks,” I say. “It was fun.” Bland comment on my part, but better than faltering over how he’s a great teacher or such bullshit that only barely covers up my extreme lust. Only when I’m walking back to my house after leaving Robinson at Whitcomb, do I realize I didn’t see any trace of his supposedly serious girlfriend in the photos. There’s hope yet.

I wake up from one of those dreams where your teeth fall out. Not the entire mouthful, but one at the front or a molar. The feeling is similar to the whole Naked in Class Dream phenomenon that everyone has at some point (in my case, I was actually naked on stage prior to performing a song I’d written — doesn’t take Freud to figure that one out — not that I’ve ever been in the buff publicly nor penned my own lyrics…yet!). Shaking off the witch-toothed vision of myself takes nearly all day.

In an attempt to better myself and live up to my full potential (I like to sound like old report cards when I lecture myself), I take my journal outside and sit on the porch alternating between writing down lists of things I like and gazing at the swish of purple skirts as the girls’ field hockey scrimmages on the same spot Chris the MLUT tried to gargle with my tongue.

Faint cheers and words of encouragement (“Yeah, go for it! You can do it!”) make me think of Nike ads and fluorescent Gatorade drinks, but what I write on the unlined pages of my navy blue book ranges from Songs I Will Always Love to Words that I Find Creepy/Annoying (phlegm, itsy-bitsy, nefarious). I also like to jot down words that rhyme or slant-rhyme or somehow flow into each other in case I ever get the guts to write a song in its entirety. And I say entirety because it’s not that I am so scared or insecure that I’ve never tried to pen an original tune, it’s just that I am the Queen of Unfinished Lyrics (if I am demoted from my superhero Friend-Girl position, I can assume the throne). Earlier pages of the journal reveal songs titles and phrases such as:

Wherever Eye Hide

Sleeping softly waking light

Keeping tabs on you tonight

You say you’re

Insert abrupt ending here, only to skip a couple of pages and, right next to a perfectly peeled French beer label from when I first saw the Eiffel Tower this summer:

I’ve heard spring in Paris is the time for love

But here it’s August and nearly the end of

Summertime, without you again, streets emptied of their remembered kisses

And then STOP.

My point is: I try. I just don’t get as far as I’d like, and when I go back to see if I can finish the stuff I’ve started, I feel dopey and whatever feelings I had at the time have dissipated.

Now I write:

In the movie of this hour, in the theatre I’d have the power

To forget myself and find my scene with you

You’d be cast as Leading Male, I’d be more than just a walk-on

And we’d —

And just as I’m making progress, I see cleats in front of me. Connected to said shoes are the long, lean, and tan (will they EVER fade?) legs of the cool field hockey girl I talked to at Slave to the Grind.

“Hey, Love,” she says. And if she hadn’t used my name, I might have been able to figure out a way to ask her her own, but we’ve clearly gone beyond this get-to-know-you point and I’m obviously supposed to know her ID, but I don’t, so I have to make do.

“Hey, you,” I say, making a note to add myself to my list of things that are annoying.

“Mind if I sit?” She rests her stick on the porch-side and smoothes her skirt underneath before sitting next to me. I take a good look at her — yup, she’s very shiny — and pivot, closing my journal. She asks what I’m writing and tells a story about how her grandmother was a writer but didn’t publish her first collection of poems until the age of eight-two.

“I hope it doesn’t take me that long to write a song,” I say.

“Hey,” she points out, “You already rhymed.” I smile then twist my mouth. “I’m sure you’ll do anything you want.” It’s so bizarre to hear this from her, not just because we hardly know each other, but because she is
that girl
. That girl that roams the hall of every high school as the human equivalent of a dog in those Purina ads — silky hair and bright teeth and perfect bones. And no doubt a luscious older, probably foreign boyfriend waiting for her to accept his offer of eternal love in his castle. Plus, she’s probably got two parents and a life vision.

As the afternoon light fades, she unlaces her cleats, rolls off her socks and steps onto the still-green grass. “This feels amazing,” she says and pads around.

I’m leaning up against one of the pillars on the porch. “You look like you belong on a beach in the Bahamas or something.”

“Really?” Her hair swings as she spins like a kid, dizzying herself until she falls and laughs.

“Don’t you wish you were in a tropical paradise?” I say, envisioning.

She thinks a second and shakes her head. With her arms around herself, hugging her own self against the cold wind she says, “Not really.” When I shoot her a look that suggests otherwise she explains, shrugging. “I guess I’m always fine where I am. Like, I don’t try to be somewhere else, because I know I can’t be — so what’s the point?”

Her words resonate with me and we part ways and I head inside for dinner with my dad. He’s on a multi-cultural kick that means Pad Thai and many different bean and grain combos and tofu sautéed, braised, and grilled.

“Tonight,” he says, trying to flip some sort of substance around in a pan like a food network chef. “It’s garlic and chicken kebabs with couscous and spinach.”

“Sounds great, Dad,” I say. “Let me clean up and I’ll be right back down.”

I pull my hair back and wash the grime of the day off my face. I managed only to dot myself with mustard at lunch (as opposed to the more frequent splotch n’ spill) so my shirt is decent enough to wear out tonight to study at the library. Then I remember that I have my first Robinson Hall-taught senior seminar tonight and whip my shirt off to try to find something more appealing. And then I reconsider — if a clean shirt is what would make Robinson like me, then he’s a superficial loser and not worth it. So I put my mustardy shirt back on. Then I think, but if my self-worth is such that I value treating myself well and wearing clean clothes, and THAT’S what catches Robinson’s subliminal attention, then that’s okay. So I get topless again. I’m sure Lila Lawrence, Robinson’s supposed amazing girlfriend would never wear something with lunch hall remnants on it. I walk around my room, poke into my closet, open and shut drawers and then rationalize again. No guy would ever change his merely slightly dirty shirt just to go to a seminar, a class, where the girl he likes
might
notice him. So I put the mustard shirt on again, just in time for my dad to yell up.

“You okay up there?” he bellows. I yell an affirmative, but feel like I’m bonkers just the same.

My footsteps echo in the night-empty corridors. Just being in the building after dark feels illegal and makes me excited and edgy. What if there weren’t any other people in the seminar and Robinson became my private tutor? And what if space aliens landed and abducted my brain — oops, apparently that already happened. I open the ridiculously heavy AV door and go inside to the screening room.