For JWB

I was determined not to fall in love with you, back in 1976, and I thought I was doing a good job. After all, my heart completely belonged to someone else, someone whom I thought of night and day, someone whose every word to me I memorized, someone whom I savored the slightest connection with. (I was nineteen.) I had no room for you.

I met you at a party that I attended with somebody else, another young man who mysteriously had to go home right afterwards, who dropped me off at my door and sped away in his early-70's Ford Maverick. That happened to me a lot; in fact, every time I went out with a guy, which wasn't often. I was not only lonely, like I had been all through high school; I was now also confused. I didn't pay particular attention to you at the time, but I must have noticed you, because I remember running into another person I hadn't met before that party, who I had thought was your friend, and asking after you, but he said he hadn't known you.

I saw you again at the Baskin-Robbins ice cream store where you worked, and you gave me the key to your Maverick, and had me go out to the parking lot and bring in some pictures that were in your car. They were photos of me and my sister at the party, that you had taken and printed in your darkroom, and you gave me a print. After that, you slipped me free ice cream when I came in the store, and you brought ice cream to my family when you came and took me away in the Maverick. We rode around in the country, to places I had not been before, often to creeks, lakes or the riverside. I did not drive, and you had spent many hours alone, exploring in your car, and you seemed to know what lay down every dirt road. We would go somewhere and just sit, hardly talking at all, just watching the water for hours. I began to value silence.

I knew many people at the University who were supposed to be interesting, and some of them were. Some of them were fun and interesting, but so guarded, drugged, opaque or just strange that I couldn't get a sense of who they were. Some were intelligent and intellectual but had no depth or hidden places to their personalities. The first sort, I figured I could never know anything about, and the second sort, I figured I knew all about shortly after I met them. Of course, the vast majority of people I met were not even interesting or worthwhile at all. I could tell you were very different. I didn't know how yet, but the quality of your silence held an intriguing mystery. We spent more and more time together. You fed me crab soup and told me you loved me. You quit taking me home, and I moved in with you. You wanted me, after all.

It didn't matter that we weren't even speaking to each other two years later when we got married. By the time I realized I loved you, there was nothing that would change it. Our day-to-day life was on the surface, and had little to do with the underlying fact of our togetherness. There was no one but you for me. I intuitively understood your thinking, all those things you were unable to express. We enjoyed and wanted the same things, liked living the same way, thought about things the same way. There were things that we didn't agree on, but they didn't cause conflicts or prevent either of us from doing what we wanted. We were poor, but we were happy. As long as we were poor, we were happy.

I was so happy when you got a good job that took advantage of your unique talents. You could do anything. You could open something up, take a look at it, see how it was supposed to work, why it wasn't working, and fix it. You could build things, and create what wasn't there before. You could look at something really beat-up and ugly, unfinished, or trashed, and see what it would look like when it was restored or refinished. When you got an idea into your head, for whatever reason, I had to live with it, because you would do what you wanted. But the things you started out with and made beautiful and useful through your skill, when you decided to keep on until the finish, were amazing. Unfortunately, less and less of your projects got finished. Money and time would be invested in something that would keep your mind occupied for a short time, then would be dropped. You made more money and bought yourself toys you never had before. Things like sitting down and paying bills were not pleasant, something you would get around to later. And I was starting to get on your nerves: bitching about the electricity getting cut off again, bitching about not having enough money for the house payment when it wasn't even the end of the month yet, bitching about how I hated my job. All you really wanted was to sit down and watch a few hours of documentaries about World War II on TV, maybe have me curl up and watch it with you. I complained about everything, but I wouldn't do anything you liked, like go see your favorite band play in a bar on a Tuesday night about ten o'clock.

Soon, you started to disappear. At first, you would be gone one, maybe two nights a week. I would watch the door, listening for the sound of your car. I couldn't do anything but wait for you. The most important thing in my life was still looking into those very dark blue eyes and seeing a change come over them, a softening when you looked at me, that told me that you loved me. You asked me for everything I had, and I gave it to you. All I wanted was to give you more of myself, but you were fading away more and more. Sometimes you would come home and seem to be completely inhabiting your body, and we would do something we had always done together; look at antiques or eat at one of our favorite places. But mostly I went my way and you either were not around, or, when you were at home, you walked like a zombie or a ghost. I could no longer intuit what you were thinking. The magical connection was gone, and you were a stranger with the most familiar body and face in my life.

I waited for you again. I waited for three years. I did everything I could think of to bring your soul and your personality back to your body and back to me. I had never experienced such pain as I did when you were physically present and nothing I did could reach you. I called you a zombie. I called you a chindi, because it seemed that all the good in you had died and only a malevolent ghost remained. I was good to you, hoping you would respond and love me. I was vicious to you, hoping you would get angry enough to break out of your fog. I went to the strip club you frequented, where you introduced me to the woman you were obsessed with talking to, not having sex with. I left you once, and you said you would kill yourself. I left you again, and you said you would kill me. Both times, I wanted to call and beg you. I waited for you to call me. You were admitted to the no-shoelaces ward at the hospital, and I visited you every day and cried. I cried every day for three years. All I wanted was for you to love me even a little bit, and you could not do that. You broke my heart over and over again. I still loved you, but you were gone. I waited for you to come back. I had seen glimpses of you that told me you might not be dead.

The you that was was not like anyone else I have ever known, and I will never know anyone like him again. He still fascinates me. I have known of many men with his bad qualities, and some with some or another of his good qualities, but no one with the combination of unusual and mysterious personality quirks he had. He is dead, and I continue to mourn him. He visits my dreams. I think of him often, and I cry again. I am now a widow, and I long for the day I will be relieved of my grief.