I ended up on academic probation in college once because I was enamored with this girl from the Delta, and all we did for six months was smoke weed, drink, and mess around (if you take my meaning.)
She was stunningly beautiful and exceedingly rich, well-read and quick of wit, but despite all of this in her favor, she had this wounded bird quality about her that is very likely what drew me to her and what drove her passion for not being sober--that and being from the delta where most people are never sober. Nearly everyone I knew from there had a history of finding different ways to experience the universe, hers included a lot of Budweiser.
Her laugh attracted me first, then she spilled almost an entire red cup of beer over me on the back patio of CS's one summer. That's how we became friends. I'll be friends with anyone who spills beer on me, then spills the rest over it over their own head and laughing to prove they didn't mean any harm.
She began her career at Millsaps kind of backward by attending the Summer session first and then coming back in the fall. In the Fall, she failed out of rush. I don't really know how that happened, except maybe her party-all-the-time attitude in summer school annoyed some of the other girls. Maybe she spilled beer on them too. She was something like a quadruple Tri Delta legacy, but we didn't have a chapter yet, and the four we did have, didn't want her.
I can't really say that I was in love. There certainly would be deeper wells to explore in that aspect of my life in the future. I was, however, without a doubt, entangled in a very powerful spell. I would have done anything for her and sometimes did. When we both were three-tenths of a point away from a goose egg one semester, I pleaded on her behalf and my own with Dean Whitt to let us come back the next semester on academic probation rather than having to sit out a semester.
It was very important to her that her father not know she had failed a semester. Much like when she failed out of rush, my shirt was wet with her tears. That, and the incredible softness of her fingers were probably the heart of our relationship. While I could arrange that, there was, however, no way to hide the fact from my own father as he was intimately involved in bringing Dr. Harmon and Dean Whitt to Jackson in the first place.
"What happened, Buddy?"
I didn't lie. There was a girl, and there was an awful lot of alcohol. It was a moral failure on my part. With my learning disability, he'd become accustomed to my academic failures, but this was something different. We thought my days of academic struggles were passed. A new obstacle arose.
I approached my friend with the news that she could come back on probation without having to sit out a semester. I told her things had to be different, that I couldn't spend all night every night drinking and laughing at the way cold cuts exploded when you threw them into a box fan. I said we had futures to consider, and our parents expected more from us, and this was the right thing to do. Her response was that we should see other people, and she had already begun.
For a long time, I had this tradition that whenever I broke things off with a girl, I'd buy them a necklace. Nothing gaudy or even really noticeable, just a small drop, usually with an opal. I went to Albrittons and picked out a piece that had two small opals in a sculpted gold setting that made it look like they were tiny pears hanging from a tree. I showed it to my friend Lisa, over in Sanders Hall, explaining that even though she technically had broken things off with me, I still wanted her to have it as kind of a punctuation mark on our time together.
I wrapped it in creamy white paper and took it over to her apartment at the Groovy Grove. In the interim, she had told me that, instead of coming back to Millsaps on academic probation, she was leaving Jackson and going to Mississippi State, and she was also spending all the time she previously spent with me with a boy I was in kindergarten with. I gave her the box and said goodbye. She asked if I wanted to come in, and I said I had to get to work. My tie was already wilting in the July heat.
There were maybe five or six of these ritualistic necklaces given during my career. All, very remarkable women. I'm honestly curious if any of them still exist--the necklaces, not the women.
They were hardly heirloom pieces. Neither was I. The future would bring worse experiences. This girl really only wanted my time. All of it--and my attention. All of it. I gave it willingly; you would have too if you'd seen her eyes. This girl never asked me for a dime. In fact, she usually paid for our trips to the liquor store. In the future, there would be girls who really only wanted money from me. Some, quite a lot. They found themselves in very unstable situations and made a convincing argument that only I could help them, and I did.
In the Summer of 1985, there was none of that. All this girl wanted was somebody who could keep up with her parties, which I admit was quite a challenge sometimes. The first time I ever kissed her, her cheeks were still wet with tears. I never knew what caused them, but there was some demon inside her that was driving all this passion for not being sober. There was something inside her that caused a wound most people couldn't see, but was all I could see.
In the end, whatever was eating her, I failed to defeat. That failure hurt a lot more than knowing I'd never hold her again and some other fella would. I sent her out into the world with two tiny opals shaped like pears and my sincere wish was that whatever was hurting her would stop on its own because I could not stop it, even though I tried.
My psychologist told me that I shouldn't seek relationships with girls who needed me. I should focus on girls who enjoyed their time with me, not the ones who sent me on missions. I told him that I understood what he was saying but that he hadn't seen her tears. There was no way I could have refused her.
I would see those tears gliding down many other tender cheeks over the years. I never got very good at refusing them. Eventually, I ended the tradition of giving away a tiny gold drop to end a romance. It was meant to be a really noble gesture but ended up being sort of pointless, especially since none of them would ever be "the last time." At least two recipients of my pointless gesture read my stuff. If you're reading this: Hi. I still remember you. I remember it all.
I guess, in the end, that was the point. Whatever hurt them, I registered it. I noticed them. I remembered them. Nobody should ever go through life without somebody noticing their wounds. Maybe that's my superpower. Sometimes, I take inventory of my past loves. Most of these girls ended up becoming happy. Some never did. One didn't make it at all. Maybe I wasn't supposed to fix them all. Maybe I was just supposed to remember.
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