SharpNose's Journal: The College Girlfriend (Part 1)

"Don't get all wrapped around the axle over any one girl" is the lesson I was finally able to take away from the Elvira experience. Of course, I wasn't actually able to put words to this lesson until well after I was married and I went through most of college and some time thereafter with my axle quite wrapped around by Elvira. Yet, as I have already explained, my pursuit of Elvira was not continuous and single-minded; it was something I kept returning to after being put off time and time again. Each time, it seemed that there was hope; each time, that hope was smashed flat. Dolt though I was, I was not able to simply pine for her every day and I did look elsewhere, at least to the extent that my socially inept self could.

As 1984 began, I was into my senior year at college and I was on an Elvira hiatus. I was playing bass with the Pep Band at basketball games a few times a week, and it was great fun. I like to think I looked like a badass but I probably only looked like a geek trying to look like a badass. We had these longsleeve white T-shirts and we were supposed to wear black pants, so I picked up a pair of these nylon parachute pants (please remember, this was 1984) and some black high-top shoes.

There was a girl in the band named Sara (NOT her real name) who played flute. I had been teasing her since the Fall because in the course of packing up the drumkit into several cases for the cross-campus trip before a football game, Sara came up and asked if she could put her flute case in one of my drum cases. My reaction was, of course, to tease her - to accuse her of being too lazy to get a little tiny case to the stadium whereas I had several fiberboard containers to keep track of. This running gag went on for a while.

Remember what I wrote about "any little shred?" Here's why it's bad to be a lonely and desperate young man: you'd welcome attention from women even if they are trying to take advantage of you. By contrast, if you're healthy, this would be a non-event and even if you accepted the mooch, she who was doing the mooching wouldn't really register on your radar. But, as should already be clear, I wasn't healthy. Many days at school would pass without my actually interacting with anyone and I was conscious of traveling in what felt like Harry Potter's "invisibility cloak." Starting from when I first got there, and without deliberately setting out to do this, I developed an encyclopedic memory for girls - their names, their faces, what dorm they lived in, what sorority they were in, what their major was, who they hung out with, what organizations they belonged to, what they wore. I retain a suprising amount of that information even 20 years later, displacing abilities like being able to remember to do the laundry. The thing was, even with this extraordinarily thorough mental database, I generally wasn't able to meaningfully engage these girls in day-to-day acquaintanceship, much less friendship, casual dating, or anything else and take advantage of the "social computer" I was packing.

The girls whose lives I knew in such detail would have been surprised and probably a little bit creeped out to learn that that was the case, although they might be a little less creeped out to know that they had not actually been singled out. I might be wrong, but most wouldn't have recognized me as familiar and the vast majority would not have been able to place a name with my face. I had so little interaction with girls that there wasn't going to be much shift in that situation.

Okay, so, I did a cute, sweet, nothing thing that got the whole ball rolling with Sara, although at the time, I didn't know it. I can still remember doing this quite plainly. It was during a basketball game and as per usual I was standing up with my bass on, and at that moment the rest of the band was also standing. Perhaps we had just gotten through playing something; I don't recall. I was in the very back of our section in the stands and Sara was maybe one or two rows from the front with the rest of the flutes. A clear path had opened up between us and when I looked down that path I saw Sara standing there, turned backward and looking up at me.

I'll admit it, okay? I blew the girl a kiss.

All she did was smile and spin back around. But, I would learn later, that was a big moment to her.

After games, it was typical for band types to hang out afterwards. I wasn't a standard "band type," as I was a Jazz Ensemble transplant, but I did have one good friend and numerous other acquaintances in the band. It always took me a few minutes to pack up my gear and a few people were standing near my location, including Sara. I'm not sure how the lead-in went, but I asked Sara if she'd like to go out for pizza. Just when I was getting ready to say "Well - uh - how about tomorrow night," she said yes. And so went our first date.

Somewhere in the early going here, Valentine's Day came. Holy mother of shit, how I had come to hate Valentine's Day. VD had been a sore spot for me even as far back as junior high, when the collective affection your class' opposite sex felt for you was ruthlessly quantified by the number of little 3"-long Valentine cards that would get stuffed into a line of envelopes tacked upon a wall. I had become quite accustomed to getting 3 or four cards from the girls whose parents made them do one for every last person in class, whereas there would be other guys whose envelopes had rips in them from the sheer volume of cards that had been stuffed inside. Senior year of high school was the worst, but that story is best told elsewhere. Suffice it to say that I was not to be fucked with on Valentine's Day in college. I'd walk into the post office in the Student Center and my retinas would register blobs of pink and bright red in every direction as I walked to and from my usually empty (save for the music and science magazines) box. I'd see girls and guys both, smiles on their faces, with several cards in each's hands as they learn who all thought so highly of them to send them a card on this day of symbolic gestures of love. Many was the time I stuffed down the urge to whack people in the back of the head with a three-ring binder.

Anyway, that February 14, Sara called me early one morning and wanted me to come over to her dorm, which was in the same part of campus as my old one. Damned if she didn't have some balloons and a card for me! I was floored. Now, I don't remember if I had already gotten her a card or not and I don't even remember to what extent I sent anyone cards, but I think that even if I hadn't sent anyone else a card in the whole four years, I'd have at least send Sara one.

It occurs to me that, VD being only one day, you can't really hedge your bets, i.e., see what all you get before you send. The way my mindset was at the time, if you sent someone a card, you ran a significant risk of humiliation given that the recipient of the card might just go, "Huh? Who's he?" So, you're pretty much limited to safe bets, and I didn't have many.

I don't remember the second date, but I certainly remember that that night, Sara spent the night with me. That aspect of it was fantastic, but when I think about it, my desperation got the better of me and I didn't really pick up on what I came to realize was a whole lot of selfishness.

Like I said, I'm not terribly proud of this relationship. It was like it chose me instead of the other way around. I can't tell you that I didn't love this woman, but, looking back on it now, it is clear that I was operating from a position of believing that no one else was available.

Robe couldn't believe it when he came back to the apartment early from Chattanooga the next morning, came into my bedroom, and realized that the back of the head that he saw in my bed wasn't attached to the front of *my* head. I think he went, "Oh. Shit!" and excused himself to go clean out his car. Sara and I threw our clothes on and went out for breakfast in my car; I couldn't even look Robe in the eye!