Straight No Chaser

Euphony, or, Pride

both of mine are marcus-related.

first one that sprang to mind was how, in october of sophomore year, i asked marcus to the coronation ball.

this is possibly the tritest and most juvenile answer i could have come up with, how proud i am of myself for getting my hair done and going to a party, but, in context, it was really much bigger than that.

in high school, i opted out of my senior prom for a number of reasons, central to all of which was my tremendously low self-esteem. (which, at the time, i thought was unique and original and went beyond the average teen's angst, because a lot of it was rooted in culture and upbringing and things i couldn't control at all--eh, i was mostly wrong. mostly.) i got asked, twice, by two different boys. to the first boy i simply said no, no, i don't want to, i'm not going. no detailed excuse because we weren't friends and it was none of his business. to the second, i delivered what was not quite a lie but damn close to it; basically i bent the truth about a cousin who was in truth coming to town that evening, but who wouldn't be a prohibitive factor unless i just wanted him to.

i don't regret not going, yet. my mother despaired of me, and cried, and stuff. i make her miserable when i'm sad, and she makes me sad when she's miserable. we talked about nothing else for weeks after, how i'd blown my one chance to ever get dressed up and be pretty and dance with my friends.

i started to sort of believe her, about that. that prom was the axis on which turned not just the adolescent world, but the world at large, and that i'd screwed myself out of something so potentially thunderous and life-affirming that i would never be as good as the person i would have been, had i gone.

beginning of my sophomore year in college, marcus and i were suspended in this long, awkward, painful pre-physical phase in which we behaved like those plastic magnets they give you in elementary school to teach you magnets, little candy-colored balls always bouncing and clicking off of each other. we were always hugging, then, and the hugs lasted SUCH a long time, and there was always this long, dramatic pause at the end of every evening, like something else was supposed to happen before the goodbyes. (nothing did till january of that school year.)

i generally hate dresses and makeup and shoes and pageantry and public dancing, and i get anxious in situations involving them. i didn't want to go to the coronation ball, even though everyone else was going. and i especially didn't want to go dateless, which other people were doing in droves.

so, i asked him. or i sort of asked him. "if i asked you to homecoming," i said, walking back from publix one night, "what would you say?"

"i'd say 'of course,'" he said, and that was it.

it started raining then. nineteen years of suck washed right off.

the dance didn't change my life, or undo the damage done through high school, but it did teach me about a thousand important lessons about myself, about marcus, about us, about friendship, about trust, about the relative importance of work and play, about the fact that even things i consider incredibly unimportant (i.e. evening gowns, nail polish, hair) have their place in life and in memory. and it launched what i'll say has been one of the hugest and most dynamic relationships i've ever been a part of.

i've got a picture of us, afterward, that i'll come back and post here when i get a chance to scan it.

the second one was driving to dallas, texas, right after the last bits of katrina, to see dave matthews band. an incredibly stupid and childish decision, considering we could have gotten flooded or stranded (and lynched) in some racist town in the deep south, or something, in the name of live jazz/rock fusion. and very out of character for me--road-tripping when i knew it was incredibly dangerous right after such a terrible hurricane, totally keeping it from my parents (as i intend to until they forget how bad katrina was), sleeping in parking lots, peeing behind liquor stores (which was gross gross gross and something i will hopefully never have to do again).

but we did it, and the surprisingly satisfactory and pleasing result was that we had a weekend we will never forget, ever.

i've written about that before.

anyway, it's all a testament to the fact that certain people are brought into our lives to make a big, big difference, in ways that we can't, by ourselves.