Souls Become Wet

"My head is in your lap," you said. Smiling up at me.

And it was, vixen. It was.

Saturday night. Sitting out on the balcony of the third-floor apartment I shared with Tyler. Magnificent view, I mean you could see the whole parking lot from up there.

Twenty years old. Although maybe you were still nineteen then. We wore long sleeves because it was November, like it is now. Like it is now.

Frank and Stephanie were out there–you remember what they were like, of course. Could hardly keep their hands off each other in that period after things went south between Stephanie and Aaron. Tyler and Angela had gotten back from their little escapade at the hookah bar, but they were busy inside, loading Angela's bong, more than likely.

Tabby was there too, if you remember her. The squat blonde lesbian Tyler and Stephanie picked up from the marching band. She was out there, staggering at random. As we all were.

I don't remember exactly how I ended up sitting on the wooden balcony floor, or how you ended up lying on it with your head on my lap. (This was back when I was drinking.) Your hair was longer now than it had been when we met. Still not long, but longer than it had been at Centre, and you'd let it go back to its natural light brown. Your ears full of earrings and your dark eyes gazing softly up at me. Receptive.

You smiled. "My head is in your lap."

I leaned forward with a feeling of unreality.

Several schools of thought exist concerning what happened next. Ask me and I'll say I leaned in and kissed your lips. You told a different story, though–you told me Tabby walked up behind me and pressed my head down because I was taking too long. I have to admit I was pretty drunk and don't quite recall the moment of transition from My God she wants me to kiss her to My God I'm actually kissing her.

I don't distinctly remember anyone pressing on the back of my head, though. Although if Tabby had anything to do with it, God bless her and I take back two-thirds of the nasty things I ever said about her.

But however it happened, I was kissing you and you were kissing me back. Tenderly. Eagerly. We'd both been waiting a long time for this. It's cold but I'm warm with you. I taste your lips and it's a moment that could last–

Then I'm in my bedroom. Alone. Still very drunk. All the lights are off in the apartment.

Wait a minute, what happened?

Didn't we…? How did I…? How much did we…?

I struggle out of bed. Everybody must've gone to sleep. Did we really…? Or did I just dream it…?

I realize you must be downstairs in Stephanie's apartment. Probably dozing in the living room while Frank and Stephanie got up to whatever they were getting up to. With an effort, I put a couple of shoe-shaped blurs on my foot-shaped blurs and scamper downstairs.

I'm standing at the door to Stephanie's apartment, knocking at four in the morning.

And I ask myself, oh, how did we get here?

It hadn't been planned. At least not on my part. My original plan for the evening had been to play the awkward third wheel with Tyler and Angela when they went to the hookah bar.

"You ready to go to Prince?" Tyler asked. Tall guy with sandy hair and an honest round face.

I wasn't exactly eager to go. Tyler was my best friend and generally a smart guy, even if he had no appreciation for Kierkegaard. Angela, in the other hand… well, Tyler was the one dating her and even he wouldn't say anything positive about her when she wasn't in the room. We took her to Half Price Books one time and she spent the whole trip rifling through a book of Pearls Before Swine comic strips.

Sometimes real life approaches the sublimity of poetry.

Another example, although I don't want to be too hard on poor Angela. She was a nice girl, after all, and always more than willing to share her weed when she had it (which was all the time). Anyway, I was on a kick where I was listening to The White Stripes every day. And I kid you not, every time Seven Nation Army came on the stereo she would beam and say, "Hey, I can play the bass for this song!"

Amazing, the little things that put you off somebody. Although I must have heard her say it a good fifty times, each one with the momentousness of Archimedes shouting, "Eureka!"

I'd wonder what Tyler saw in her, but I'm afraid I have to take credit (or blame). I was fairly girl-obsessed in those days and probably rubbed off on him a little.

We headed out to Tyler's Mustang and just as I'm about to hop in I get a text from Stephanie: "hey Frank and _____ are coming in from Danville if u wanna hang lol"

Really agonizing decision, that. I made up my mind by the time I got to the end of the sentence.

"Have fun with your hog," I told Tyler, and got the hell out of there.

Made for Stephanie's apartment. A freckly redhead with full cheeks who loved to tell me about her family trauma and say what a downer I was. She said, "Let's get the drinks together and head up to your apartment."

I had no objection to that.

It had been, what, two and a half years since I'd seen you last, vixen? Some things had changed. I'd started drinking, but only with friends. It hadn't developed into a problem yet. Later I'd learn that most people with drinking problems don't get depression until after they've been hitting the booze too hard for a few years. Surprised me. I guess you could say I was ahead of the curve.

I won't deny my stomach fluttered at the thought of seeing you again. We'd talked about it now and then, but I never expected anything to come of it. I never really expected anything to come of anything in those days. But no doubt you and Stephanie had some womanly chats I wasn't privy to.

"So how was your trip?" Stephanie asked when you showed up with Frank.

"It was great," you said. "Really handy that Frank's in Danville these days."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, looks like I'm the only one of the bunch who ended up going to Centre," Frank explained.

"And what are you doing here?" I asked you. "I thought you were off in Louisiana these days."

"Medical leave," you said. Something about getting an IUD adjusted. I didn't really reflect on what that meant. Again, young and naive.

Heraclitus says that when a man becomes drunk it's because the vapors of the liquor make his soul wet. If that's true, we proceeded to significantly dampen our souls that evening. Heaven Hill vodka, if I remember correctly, which doubles as industrial strength paint thinner. You know how it is. When you're young and wet behind the ears you don't mind taking shots of aviation fuel.

We talked about religion, mostly. You'd gone pagan after a strict Southern Baptist upbringing. I sympathized. Only after a year away from home was I finally beginning to realize just how profoundly Catholic my own family was. And sure, I might have said things like, "God is dead and how will we ever wash his blood from our hands?" But my instincts were still Catholic and I had (as I still have) an aesthetic love for the Church.

I believe they call it Stockholm Syndrome when we fall in love with the architects of our torment.

These days I would say that any paganism worthy of the name demands the ritual sacrifice of blood. Religion, like art, is the discipline of ritualized cruelty that refines the disgusting facts of nature to produce beauty. Seriousness in religion demands severity–unnatural severity. What good is a god you're not willing to die for? Or at least kill for.

But I'm not here to question anyone's sincerity, least of all yours.

I enjoyed being around you. It was a pleasure. It was an intoxication. Was I still afraid of you? Oh yes. Absolutely. Not that night, but very soon afterward, I would learn just how very much I was still afraid of you.

I don't think I ever told you about that, vixen. But I'll tell you soon.

One or two last remarks while I'm standing at Stephanie's door. We were both learning German at the time, and the best part of that was that it became almost like our secret language. We could comment on how horribly sappy Stephanie and Frank were, or (once Tyler and Angela came back) we could vent our scorn on the Schwein out in the open.

"What are you two talking about over there?" Angela would ask.

"Oh," I shrugged. "Just Auschwitz."

Your eyes sparkled and I could see the sweet little girl you'd been once. And with an enthusiasm that I honestly thought was a little excessive you said, "Ich liebe dich!"

I noted again the faint clumsiness in your voice that sometimes left me embarrassed for your sake. But fortunately Seven Nation Army came on the stereo at that moment and I was spared the need to respond.

"Did you know I can play the bass for this song?"

We drank more. We stepped outside. We finally kissed.

Then as if by the stroke of midnight the glass slippers disappeared and I stood knocking on Stephanie's door, wondering if it had all been a dream.

There was no answer.

I was very tired. I went to bed.

Didn't see you the next morning or afternoon. Which gave me a little bit of anxiety, I'll admit. Mostly just hoping you were safe, is all, nothing more than that.

Anyway, I went to work that evening. A little gig at the call center on the other side of campus. Calling alumni and asking for donations for student scholarships–although using the word "donation" was strictly verboten. You know how fundraising people can be, with their superstitious belief in the magic of words.

I hated it, but no more than any other job I've ever held. One of the upsides was that while the phones were ringing the manager didn't mind if we did homework, read books, etc. On a good night (by which I mean a night where no one was picking up the phone) I could get paid to sit and read for four hours.

Anyway, I got a text from you that evening while I was at work. I looked up from the essay I was reading. Something on the alienation of labor from Marx's Economic-Philosophical Manuscript of 1844.

I read: "I'll be back again with Frank next weekend."

And my soul became wet.