I know where Michael is...a lawyer, and still in the same place we were briefly together. When I think of him, I think of magical young love...swimming in a cold river in the mountains...sleeping together in his dorm room bed which was too small for even him, and the rain falling steadily outside.
Dan...I haven't a clue. Dan is the one who might possibly no longer be alive...I, being the private eye I am, have looked for him on the Internet, and all that I have found is a post on an alumni website asking for any information about his whereabouts. Dan was in love with me...really, that sounds dramatic, but its true. And I wasn't attracted to him at all...EXCEPT, he had the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen...a perfect mixture of light green and sky blue. Also, he was one of the best kissers I have ever met. When I kiss now, I try to kiss the way Dan did...
Tony...Spanish Tony...what a jerk-off, although I don't think he meant to be. He had a small, very nicely muscled body and a face like a young Jeff Goldblum's. He dragged me around shopping one day...I didn't have any money, but he had a new job and tons of money...I remember I held all his shopping bags. We were at the J. Crew outlet store...Bach, overlaid by some kind of techno was playing on the store sound system...I was feeling so tired and drained...I wanted to lay around with Tony...not carry his bags. Later, he told me, over a huge bowl of split pea soup, that I was too clingy, and that he had to leave. We went back to my dorm room and I carried his bags, one last time, down to his new SUV...Georgia was beating LSU in football that night...kids were leaning out their dorm room windows screaming. Tony drove off. I walked back up to my room, and, crying, called Dan, who came over, and held me, and scolded me. Poor Dan...Poor Me.
Jennifer...somewhere in the Deep South studying marsh birds...we were so close, and so far away...there is so much I could say...so many stories...not all pleasant, and not a pleasant end, ultimately, to the us I knew, though I recently said to Chelsea that in all relationships the stuff that matters is the good stuff, and Jennifer and I had some fun times that only two crazy college students can have...
Bianca...the only one of these people I'm in contact with...the most grounded of these people...singing karaoke in her feather boas...coca-cola and cigarettes on the smoker's bench at all hours of the night...wine smuggled into her dorm room...a boa constrictor smuggled into her dorm room that we named Fluffy, and that she carried, sometimes, in her sleeve...brown babies...and now she's married, and she looks happy...
Belinda...dark, angry Belinda. She accompanied me, faithfully, to the gay bar, and down various, crazy rabbit holes that took us to beautiful rooms and ugly rooms, and just when we couldn't be any crazier, she ran away to the military, and that was just before September 11th, so God knows where she is now...
Finally, Ryan...up in the wilds of Canada. Tom called him Madame Butterfly later, which was mean of him, though Ryan did have geisha brows, I have to admit. He introduced me to sushi, and mussels. I smoked cigarettes and drank scotch and soda on his front steps in the long, green Summer. He was with me the day my Mom tried to hurt herself...he took me to the hospital. He was kind. He was always kind, though when I found him later he denied that we had 'dated'. But back then he wanted me to stay over, to sleep over, and I wouldn't, and now I haven't a clue why I wouldn't, when I was always very happy with him. Not to be...not to be...
September nights, when it becomes cooler, and quiet, I think of all of them. They come to me in the dark, as I lie there, trying to sleep. I wonder about them. I wonder about me, the person I was then. I wonder, wonder, wonder...
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