For two years we moved around each other in the same social circle, just outside of reach. It's true, I was intrigued by this man who rejected all my overtures of friendship, my invitations to join my inner circle. I was thirty-one, married ten years, with two kids. I had no idea that I had never fallen in love. If I thought about it at all, I suppose I consigned the notion of falling in love to B-movies and romance magazines, teenagers, and women who pahe walked into my house one day, sat on my red sofa, and told me he would love me forever, die for me, jump over the moon for me, fetch me whale bones from the bottom of the sea. This man is a lunatic, I thought, and that was probably my last rational thought on this planet. He repeated to me fragments of conversations we had had, and he told me what I was wearing, or how I was standing by the dining room window or sitting in the lobby of the museum that time we said nothing. The qualint their toenails pink.The quality of light in the room began to make a subtle shift. Pink, I swear it was turning pink, and I was falling. I had been memorized by another being. Some kind of Gatsby had walked into my house.
Yes, it was one of my favorite novels. I was a romantic, all right, just one locked in a heavy state of denial. Had he moved to kiss me, the spell might have broken on the spot. Instead there was a waterfall of words and I am a poet and words were enough. Still, I hadn't said a thing. I just stared like some hypnotized deer, stunned by the headlamps of some oncoming Mack truck roaring down the highway toward me. I became frightened when I heard him say he would be the one standing beside me when all my friends deserted me. I think I made a nervous laugh and found enough of my voice to say he had to leave. I told him I wasn't going to be his tragedy.
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Love Stories
By Our Readers•August 1989
For two years we moved around each other in the same social circle, just outside of reach. It's true, I was intrigued by this man who rejected all my overtures of friendship, my invitations to join my inner circle. I was thirty-one, married ten years, with two kids. I had no idea that I had never fallen in love. If I thought about it at all, I suppose I consigned the notion of falling in love to B-movies and romance magazines, teenagers, and women who paint their toenails pink.
Then, he walked into my house one day, sat on my red sofa, and told me he would love me forever, die for me, jump over the moon for me, fetch me whale bones from the bottom of the sea. This man is a lunatic, I thought, and that was probably my last rational thought on this planet. He repeated to me fragments of conversations we had had, and he told me what I was wearing, or how I was standing by the dining room window or sitting in the lobby of the museum that time we said nothing. The quality of light in the room began to make a subtle shift. Pink, I swear it was turning pink, and I was falling. I had been memorized by another being. Some kind of Gatsby had walked into my house.
Yes, it was one of my favorite novels. I was a romantic, all right, just one locked in a heavy state of denial. Had he moved to kiss me, the spell might have broken on the spot. Instead there was a waterfall of words and I am a poet and words were enough. Still, I hadn't said a thing. I just stared like some hypnotized deer, stunned by the headlamps of some oncoming Mack truck roaring down the highway toward me. I became frightened when I heard him say he would be the one standing beside me when all my friends deserted me. I think I made a nervous laugh and found enough of my voice to say he had to leave. I told him I wasn't going to be his tragedy.
I was holding on to the mantelpiece when he walked out the door. I couldn't move and I couldn't speak, but I was listening to the romantic that had been loosed in me. She was saying, Daisy was a fool, only a fool would say no to the kind of love that walked into the room today. But what if it's a lie? I asked. She said, I've never heard anyone lie so beautifully. I felt a Yes welling up inside me and all the agitation fell away. In that sudden calm I knew I did not have to run after him and call him back or even phone him the next day. It had happened. It was unstoppable. When I saw him next, there was that Look; words were no longer necessary. The friends deserted. A few came back, but he was the one standing beside me, and still is, ten years later, and I am still amazed.
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Readers Write
Love Stories
By Our Readers•August 1989
For two years we moved around each other in the same social circle, just outside of reach. It's true, I was intrigued by this man who rejected all my overtures of friendship, my invitations to join my inner circle. I was thirty-one, married ten years, with two kids. I had no idea that I had never fallen in love. If I thought about it at all, I suppose I consigned the notion of falling in love to B-movies and romance magazines, teenagers, and women who paint their toenails pink.
Then, he walked into my house one day, sat on my red sofa, and told me he would love me forever, die for me, jump over the moon for me, fetch me whale bones from the bottom of the sea. This man is a lunatic, I thought, and that was probably my last rational thought on this planet. He repeated to me fragments of conversations we had had, and he told me what I was wearing, or how I was standing by the dining room window or sitting in the lobby of the museum that time we said nothing. The quality of light in the room began to make a subtle shift. Pink, I swear it was turning pink, and I was falling. I had been memorized by another being. Some kind of Gatsby had walked into my house.
Yes, it was one of my favorite novels. I was a romantic, all right, just one locked in a heavy state of denial. Had he moved to kiss me, the spell might have broken on the spot. Instead there was a waterfall of words and I am a poet and words were enough. Still, I hadn't said a thing. I just stared like some hypnotized deer, stunned by the headlamps of some oncoming Mack truck roaring down the highway toward me. I became frightened when I heard him say he would be the one standing beside me when all my friends deserted me. I think I made a nervous laugh and found enough of my voice to say he had to leave. I told him I wasn't going to be his tragedy.
I was holding on to the mantelpiece when he walked out the door. I couldn't move and I couldn't speak, but I was listening to the romantic that had been loosed in me. She was saying, Daisy was a fool, only a fool would say no to the kind of love that walked into the room today. But what if it's a lie? I asked. She said, I've never heard anyone lie so beautifully. I felt a Yes welling up inside me and all the agitation fell away. In that sudden calm I knew I did not have to run after him and call him back or even phone him the next day. It had happened. It was unstoppable. When I saw him next, there was that Look; words were no longer necessary. The friends deserted. A few came back, but he was the one standing beside me, and still is, ten years later, and I am still amazed.
Isabella Russell-Ides
Austin, Texas
Glenn and I met working on the undergraduate literary magazine. I was terribly reserved at that point in my life. We spent an entire semester meeting for lunch in the student union, looking around at anything but each other. We were so aloof. Once, he called to invite me to go parachuting, and he asked in such a roundabout way that I hung up feeling I had invited myself. One night, he touched me lightly as I got out of a car. I told my sister, "I think he touched me but I'm not sure. Do you think he might have?"
I became wildly interested in him and told everyone that I was madly in love. I had no plan for expressing this to Glenn. We kept up our strange ritual of restrained but persistent acquaintance. I began to wake fully in the middle of the night. I sat and wrote in my tiny efficiency until morning. I never fully admitted to myself the source of my intense and unusual energy.
Glenn made the first expression of desire. I often fantasized later that I had been bolder. Still, the reality of what happened was exquisite. I cannot find the words to describe delicately enough the strangeness and intensity of our coming together. I don't know why it took us so long. Neither of us was the other's first lover, so I cannot wholly attribute it to shyness. In retrospect, it is as though we were deeply and fully savoring a stage in the development of a relationship that remains, eight years later, one of the great joys and mysteries of both our lives.My lover of seven years — those tender years from ages sixteen to twenty-three — was missing. She had left her home without a word and nobody had heard from her in more than twenty-four hours. She was not doing well emotionally at the time, and although "the worst" had clearly crossed all our minds, there were still other explanations as to where she might be.
About halfway home from work that night, I started hyperventilating. I had to pull over to the side of the road. She was dead. I knew it. She was dead. I wept uncontrollably, then headed to her family's house.
After I got there, it took me a long time to leave my car because I knew of the impending news. When I went inside, even the air was dead. The unnecessary confirmation came in a few choking words: "She is gone."
I ran to the closest empty room — a room where we had spent many, many hours together, lifetimes together for adolescents. Like a dog, I lay on the floor under a desk, pushing myself into the corner of the room. I have never felt such pain. It felt as if two sharp sets of claws were ripping my insides out. The tears weren't easing any of the pain. It was the most difficult moment of my life.
I ran outside and lay in the field and I asked God why she took her own life. Was it because of something I did or didn't do? I asked her the same question. There was no reply. I was completely shattered. I needed love, timeThe night before, when she was missing, I had dragged my phone into my bedroom in case she called me. The following night, after I knew she had taken her life, I didn't have the heart to move the phone out of my bedroom, as if she still might call. I left the phone there for a few days, because I loved her. I still love her.
Name Withheld