Vixen

You terrified me a little. With your short hair so red and fierce. Do you remember how you wore it that year?

I don't think you terrify me now. But then I haven't seen you for ten years. We were so young–twenty years old. My God. You think you're an adult when you're twenty, and of course you're right. But you also think life has a certain structure and drama to it.

When you're twenty you don't know it doesn't.

But we were even younger when we met. Do you remember? I hope you remember me fondly sometimes, vixen. Because I remember you fondly sometimes.

Seventeen. Danville. Centre College. Governor's Scholars Program. Summer of… 2009, wasn't it?

Dear God time goes by. And Heraclitus was right. I have a friend who thinks I'm something of a ladies' man–mostly because he buys the version of myself I sell online. And the last time I saw him I told him, "Heraclitus said that a man never steps in the same river twice. For it is not the same river, and he is not the same man."

He rolled his eyes and asked, "You use that line on your girls?"

"Well," I shrugged and took a pull on my beer, "Naturally."

This was back when I was drinking.

He'll give me a hard time about being pretentious with my quotes from philosophers. But he's an intelligent man with an aesthetic eye and the energy it takes to make something in this world. He's more than capable of making fun of Heraclitus even as he appreciates the truths the philosopher expresses. And the two of us have memories together we'll never get back. He knows what I mean when I quote Heraclitus.

I'm avoiding talking about you, vixen.

I try to remember the moment I first became aware of you. It was Tyler and Aaron who introduced us. Or maybe Stephanie. You were always so close to Stephanie, and you know how crazy Aaron was about her. And Frank was crazy about her too, and you liked her too, I know.

Come to think of it, I think me and Tyler were the only ones in our little group who weren't into Stephanie. Tyler thought she was annoying and only put up with her because I liked her, and I liked her well enough to watch Phantom of the Opera with her but ultimately she was too girly to make my little heart go pitter-patter. Except for like a week when she did, but that was years later and only lasted a few days and ended with me and her going back to being friends while Stephanie talked about me to Frank to make him jealous.

The point is, vixen, we met because you and Aaron both wanted to fuck Stephanie.

We were all outsiders, even in a program for outsiders. The Governor's Scholars Program takes maybe 500 high-performing high school juniors from across the state and puts them in a five week residential program at some of the more prestigious colleges in the Commonwealth. In 2009 it was Centre, Murray, and… Bellarmine, I believe? So we were already in a group of nerds.

But that wasn't enough for our little clique, was it? We stayed apart from the group. I remember at the cafeteria all the others would more or less cluster around the center of the room. But we sat at a secluded, dimly lit table at the farthest corner, way in the back. It wasn't a self-conscious decision to stand apart from the group, at least not for me. Probably Aaron wanted to sit at the table with Stephanie and I naturally tagged along, bringing Tyler along with me.

It was a self-conscious decision on somebody's part, though. I always suspected it was you, vixen.

You made an impression on me from the first. With your short hair dyed fiery red. With your trick pants. With the way you usually only wore red and black. You dressed the way I might have dressed if I wasn't neurotically stuck on the idea of playing the good Catholic boy for Mom and Dad back home. Everything about you spoke of rebellion and danger–it drew me to you, in my awkward, repressed, seventeen year old way. When you're seventeen you're old enough to know what you like, or at least recognize it when you encounter it. Even if you are (as I was) too naïve and inexperienced to know the game.

The first time we spoke it was with the group. All of us gathered in front of the cafeteria one evening, sitting on rocks and leaning against trees as the afternoon blued into evening. We talked about cannibalism–trying to decide which member of the group we'd eat first if it came to it.

Joking, naturally. We weren't serious. Nobody's ever serious about cannibalism.

You pointed out that the best meat would come from someone with a high muscle density, but also a decent amount of body fat–"So the meat would be marbled," you explained.

Frank was the best choice there. Aaron had too much fat, Tyler and I were too lean, and the girls… well, there's not enough meat on them to be worth it. But Frank had the right balance of both.

And who knows, maybe you were already trying to force Frank to back off from Stephanie. You never seemed to like him very much, vixen.

Anyway. I made some remark or other that you thought was witty. You smiled, looked at me, really looked at me probably for the first time, and said, "You're one of those people who's more awesome than you seem at first."

And maybe I nodded and played it off with an ironic joke. But on the inside I was glowing.

Let's see, what else was there?

There was the time we went to the café at The Hub and I flatly insisted on paying for your drink. You said I didn't have to, but I insisted. And sure, you could call that some atavistic patriarchal strategy to take ownership over you and deny you your agency, but it wasn't like that. I just sensed something in you and I wanted to give my energy to it.

Anyway, you didn't refuse. And I didn't try anything. I'd love to have some romantic story to tell about sneaking into your dorm some Saturday at 3 AM and how we got caught and kicked out of the program but it was worth it for just one night with you. But that didn't happen. Like I said, I was young and naïve. Plus you still terrified me in those days.

You were a native of Danville, so you knew the town like a sophisticate. That meant you led the way when our little group went exploring on weekends and afternoons. It also meant that sometimes you would have friends from outside the Program around. Male friends sometimes. I kept my distance.

Sure, I knew all along there was a certain frisson between you and Stephanie. And again, you might call it a thoroughly sexist patriarchal atavism, but I wasn't (excessively) worried about Stephanie. She didn't get my hackles up the way seeing you sit and laugh with other men did. If one made you laugh my stomach turned. If you touched his knee my spine tingled. If he touched your knee I would feel a pain in my hand and look down to find my fist clenched, the fingernails digging into the skin and drawing blood.

I consider myself a thoroughly modern man in every respect. That being said, the Sexual Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. But I wasn't looking to claim or own you–I wasn't sure what I wanted at that time. Which probably accounts for some of the gracelessness and awkwardness of our interactions. The faltering moves of youth as it sets out to learn by rote the dance we've grown too sophisticated to perform by instinct.

But for all that, we were drawn to each other. Maybe the roughness and cluelessness of some of my gestures even endeared me to you in some way. The way I told you I'd pay for your coffee as gravely as if I were telling you your grandmother had died. There's a genuineness in rough gestures. You probably knew the hold you had on me before I'd dare admit it to myself.

I didn't mistake you for my ideal woman, though. You had your own awkwardness, didn't you?

And I know when I say it that way it sounds like I'm putting you down, but I mean it in the best possible way. What I mean is that when a very young man falls in love with a woman he's apt to confuse her with the Perfect Woman. A woman who doesn't exist, can't ever exist, and who he unconsciously seeks as long as he believes he can find her. A man is apt to fall in love with a woman, project the ideal of the Perfect Woman onto her, and secretly begin to hate her as soon as he realizes she isn't her.

But you were individual, vixen. It was there in the moments when the Fierce Woman act you put on slipped, and I saw you were a young girl, as full of doubts and as insecure as the rest of us, if not more so. It was there in your voice–hard to pin down precisely, because no matter how I try to discover your voice in my memory it's never quite there. If I had a madeleine and a cup of tea I might manage to remember the unique timbre of your speech. But voluntary memory won't drive it to the surface.

I hesitate to mention the talent show, because some part of me worries you'll read this someday. But maybe it's the only way to express the double impression your voice had on me. My impression of you was always double, really. I might say I cherished the vulnerable little girl in you. I might say that's the real vixen, and all the ferocity, rebellious posturing, and talk of cannibalism was a mere façade. But that's too simple. Souls like ours are doomed to complexity.

Because if you were only a vulnerable little girl you'd never have had more than a glance from me. What drew me was your ambiguity. The violence in you, which terrified and excited me all at once, like the way you can't look away from a mutilated deer by the side of the road. But also the wounded girl in you who felt like she had to respond to the world with that fire.

You resonated with me in that.

"My mother threatened me with a pistol," you said once, matter of factly.

If I weren't writing in my analytical mode, the memory of you might move me to tears. It probably will before I finish writing this.

Years later, we would share our poetry with one another. I've avoided getting to know many writers in my life. So things might be different for you, but it felt unique to share poetry with someone else who feels the ridiculous need to produce verse, of all things. It's rare in this life to ever feel together with another person. But there, then, I was with you.

Anyway, I'm avoiding talking about the talent show.

Tiffany played the cello, and you wanted to sing a song in the talent show. All week long you would sit together in the basement of the Nevin dorm whenever you found a free hour. Tiffany would glide her bow gracefully over the strings–she really was a gifted musician–and you would sing. Well and good. Until the day came when I happened to wander by while you two were practicing.

I knew what was coming and tried to avoid it. Tried to come up with some excuse to get out–"If you'll excuse me, I think the building is burning down right now, bad luck…"

But no excuse was forthcoming. You asked me, "Well, what do you think?"

And I dithered. And I equivocated. I said, "Well, it's hard to say, because I've never heard the song before, you know. Not the original, so I mean I don't really have any standard for comparison…"

(If I had any skill at lying I could have just said, "It sounds great, and what a lovely singing voice you have, vixen…" But I struggle to force myself to say things I don't believe. Forgive me this my virtue. Not that I have any great love for the Truth, it's just that I've never picked up the knack of the direct lie. I always have to do it lawyer-style, by wheedling with definitions…)

Anyway, I extricated myself from the situation and it never came up again. You sang in the talent show and the applause at the end of the song was polite enough. Tiffany played marvelously on her cello, by the way.

And there you have the doubleness of the impression your voice made on me. On the one hand… well. But on the other hand, it evoked something protective and nurturing in me. Not the voice of the Perfect Woman, no, not in the slightest. A faintly clumsy voice that sometimes left me feeling embarrassed for you. But for all that it was yours, and you were precious to me. So that voice, too, was precious to me.

And the days passed and before long the five weeks were over. I don't think I ever expected to see you again. Which made me sad. I don't remember exactly how I said goodbye to you. Probably it wasn't particularly demonstrative and only gave subtle hints at how I felt. But then you remember how it was–for those five weeks we had a community, a feeling of belonging somewhere. We all felt a little sentimental when it came to an end, as it had to do.

I'm coming to the end of this writing, vixen, and I realize I've barely told the first part of our story. And granted, it seems a little much to call it our story. The truth is that we spent very little time together. We didn't (and don't) know one another very well. But there was a something between us, which I've called a resonance. And that survived the end of the Governor's Scholars Program.

I missed a lot of people I met at the Program. But I missed you more than the rest. And I hoped I'd meet you again someday.