From tparkin@fix.net Thu Apr 29 00:37:28 1999 Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 14:51:14 -0800 From: Albatross Newsgroups: alt.gothic Subject: Autobiographia Some of this might be of general interest. It is a few years old I almost refrained from editing myself. Be patient, it pays off here and there. Indulge me. :) My parents were not gypsies; that word carries connotations of race and romance that would not suit them. They were, however, nomads. We moved around repeatedly while I was growing up, so I came to know that transient nature of things. The schools and houses, yards and fields that made up my world became dreams before I ever thought of them as mine. If ever there was a sapling in our yard, I knew I would never see it mature, rest under its shade, my head on a gnarled root. I have had dozens of friends in my life, several best freinds. They passed through my experience like holidays and I have tried to hold them in my heart, and not lose them forever. It is difficult to be faithful to the truth as I remember them now. It is like remembering the climate in places where you long ago vacationed. It is like describing dreams or scents; the memories do not easily surrender themselves to words. Eric Spenser's mother seemed as old as anyone elses grandmother. She was not small and she dressed in austere, checkered dresses, like a German housekeeper. She took Eric and I to a Chinese resteraunt, all hanging with golds and blues, on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Her interruptions of our play were not like those of other mothers. She did not want a chore preformed, she came offering cocoa, or danishes. Most of the time she was simply not seen. The house was left to us. Eric had no father. The first thing I recall about Eric is his mother; it was in her house that I believed a thousand medievil secrets could be discovered. Eric himself was short; he was thin and wiry as a dead plum tree. His face was long, his lips were large, he had dry, unevenly cut brown hair, he was not a hopeful looking boy. But he had read Moby Dick in the fourth grade, and was learning the Russian alphabet in the fifth. Eric had a taste for all things military. He would wear a cub scout uniform to school, and march about the playground like Napolean, while others played kick-ball. Altogether too aloof for kick-ball, he was an ungainly, but preciously strange mixture of encyclopedia and imagination. Eric and I were young gods and we created worlds and wars. He had an enormous and varied collection of miniature soldiers to populate our worlds and battle on Saturday afternoons. He the unbending defender of civilization; me, the barbarian at the gate. Not always inside, we mapped out the location of all the anthills in the neighborhood, giving them names like Alexandria or Chichen Itza. Then we conducted, against the ants, a war of boots and gasoline. I wish I had now the guts to use my brain in the way we used ours then. The world was pure possibility, anything could be transformed to suit our purposes. Unless he's dead, Eric is somewhere even as I write. Perhaps, the Air Force. More likely he's a high school teacher, history and geography. He hasnt married, no children. His dramatic mind conjuring himself as the last lonely son of a once bold, ancient family. There is another thing I fear may have happened to Eric: there was something in him that was at variance with any sort of conformity, and, as society will relentlessly punish this trait, I fear he might have become nothing. I knew Quinten Tueller that same year. If friendship with Eric was a gourmet dinner, then friendship with Quinten was sharing a dozen glazed doughnuts. The gourmet dinner is made precious by its rarity, but there is a lot to be said for a dozen doughnuts. Quinten is probably teaching high school also, but more along the lines of drivers ed, auto shop, and offensive coordinator. I see him married- probably had to get married- to a still youthful blond, who is no longer eager sexually. They have a small tribe of half-naked, sun-browned, popsicle-stained children who vanish like fairies at the first sign of discipline. Quinten is happy man of jolly barbeques and long long summer evenings. It is with Quinten that I remember first having thoughts that were clearly erotic, though perhaps not sexual. We would lie in my back yard, under a slowly rotating sky full of stars, and imagine we were lost at Sea with Charlies Angels. (Heterosexual men can be typed according to which of Charlies Angels they'd most like to be with. Quinten chose Farrah Fawcett, I always chose Jacklyn Smith. I have known Kate Jackson men, and admit that I dont understand them.) I was usually thinking of a girl in the fifth grade, however. I had already begun to have little love interests- the first awkward bands in what would become a long and merciless parade of unrequited love. We were not really sexual beings; as yet, we were free. I had other friends in the fifth grade: a mathematical boy named Gordon, who was silent as the Ming Dynasty; a fat boy named Charlie who had a mongoloid brother and a barking black dog; a gril named Elizabeth who taught me how to summon Bloody Mary in the girls bathroon mirror; an oily-haired Darin, a Louise, a Kenneth. They are all thirty years old. The friendships you form as an adult are not exactly the same. You talk more and share less, there is more fear in it. Still, I have made great freindships in the last few years. I love these people in a way that I cannot even love my family. While I will never knowingly see Eric or Quinten again, I have a prayer I will know some of these people all my life. Though they have begun to scatter, we remain connected by a thin but steady cord of letters, phone calls, and common hopes. And inside I find all my friends, past and present, near the same place: where each singular friendship, each singular passion, takes a dance with grace, to the sound of my own remembering. A ++++++++++++++++++++ Rose et pale soudain, la jeune fille frele Qui tombe du haut mal, ame forte et corps grele Cette beaute souffrante, oh! voila mon envie!