2011.04.28 Text 14 notes

1. My Rebecca

   This essay pays tribute to Willa Cather’s exceptional novel My Ántonia, the work serving as my inspiration. Many thanks to Rebecca herself for letting me write this without a hitch, and for being really important in my life.
   

   I

   I had first laid eyes on Rebecca Lawrence during the waning months of my freshman year of high school. It was her freshman year as well. I was fourteen years old then; I was not so sure of myself underneath my top hat and moppy head of greasy hair. I first approached Rebecca in the care of my partner in anti-authoritarian button-wearing friend Sabato, who was the Robin to my Batman in a comedy piece for the speech team. His experiences with others were much more plenty than my own. He was always ready to meet new people, while I was at the time much too shy—nonetheless, we both moved from our table to the bench beside the trash can to find out who the “new girl” was.

   I had seen her only a few hours before, sitting upon a pile of gymnastics cushions, reading a novel. I do not remember much about P.E. class, or anything about the inner-workings of my body in regards to my pectorals or anything of the sort. By that time I had been through so many classes that I was particularly dull to them, especially with her at the end of the room. She was wearing a homemade skirt, clearly cut out of an old pair of jeans, and those were on top of fishnet stockings. She was pale and skinny. She looked rebellious and enthralling, I thought, as if she had a lot to say. I tried to keep focused on running back and forth across the dirty floor of the basketball court, but I ached all over to know who she was. Later, cautiously, Sabato and I slipped away from the rest of the group on the lunch table and towards her, alone on the bench in the developing spring sun.

   “Hi, I’m Sam! Nice to meet you,” my companion spouted over-excitedly. “What’s your name?”

   She replied only, “Rebecca.”

   I told her that I apologized in advance for anything that my friend may do, my voice thick with fabricated ennui in order to seem stylishly indifferent in comparison. Sabato was quite a strange fellow, known for shocking many a person’s sensibilities. But Rebecca seemed to think I was revealing him to be a lunatic, her expression not unlike that of one actually faced with a lunatic. In that moment it was almost as if there was a language barrier between us and her. “Okay,” she said quietly in response, in an upward inflection as if asking a question. Thankfully, one finds that the adage about the importance of first impressions does n’t quite hold up as well as the cliché itself does.

   In the days immediately following, Rebecca refrained from doing anything in the P.E. class. She did not have the required white shirt and sweat pants for the class, and as I was later informed, she had no intention of getting them until it was absolutely necessary. So she continued to sit on the edges of the room, and I could not stop myself from keeping her at the edges of my own view, waiting for lunch so I could speak to her more. I did everything I could to assure a place at our table. If nothing else, I wanted her involved with our little group—we welcomed those that the general populous of Sierra High would label ‘peculiar,’ or something significantly more vulgar. But it became clear that she was not quick to speak up, so I was sure to try and engage her in conversation whenever an opportunity seemed to arise. One day in particular brought all of my friends away from our table—something interesting surely happened nearby—and Rebecca and I were alone. The silence was distressing, but she managed to take notice of a library book I was toting around with me, Straightedge Youth: Complexity and Contradictions of a Subculture. I had recently been introduced to the straight edge subculture and had an interest in it, and the library only a few blocks from my house became a starting point. To me, straight edge was an exciting idea, completely new to me. To Rebecca, it was a label that defined a particular breed of thug she had dealt with at her previous high school. This too is knowledge I acquired at a later date. I quickly proved I was of no such breed, however.

   I did not know too much about the girl named Rebecca from Tennessee. But I sat with her during lunch every day until I could make her comfortable enough to speak up—I was by no means intimidating then, but she was simply scared of everyone. In comparison to her distressing just-outside-of-Nashville high school education thus far, Colorado Springs seemed to be a completely different country. She was born and spent her early childhood in Colorado Springs, but it changed drastically since then, and she had new eyes to see the city through. I had then been in the city for nearly six years, but I still hardly knew what to make of it. But she became a friend to all of my friends, and I like to think that this helped her find a foothold. Soon enough, we found ourselves in a rhythm with conversation, and we spent little time speaking to anyone else when we were together. We were not ignoring everyone else, we simply seemed to have more to talk about between us. Every chance I could I would compliment her, and she had taken each one without issue. One day, on a walk to the 7-11, she insisted on buying me a soda. Outside of school we would send each other emails. She liked that I was in a band, and the song I had already written for her was just saccharine enough for her to say it made her teeth ache. She would watch Sabato and I perform our comedic duo piece and give us an honest critique. We were comfortable around each other quickly.

   A week after Rebecca’s first day at Sierra, I asked her if she wanted to “go out with me” as I tried to keep my voice as still as I could through the smallest amount of worry that still stung. Through her blush, she said yes, suddenly as quiet as the first time she spoke to me. We still hardly knew anything about each other, but between her and the brick walls of our oppressively dull school, I felt myself scratched out, like one of the scribbles in her notebook. With her, I was outside of the small circle I had drawn myself into years ago. There was a shift in direction that made the colors a little brighter, or at least I was more likely to notice them. Suddenly, I was her boyfriend, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy.

   II

   When the summer finally came, after surviving the cruel new invention of finals, I could not get enough of the air that seemed to be as light as the sun coming through my window at noon, finally waking me. I never counted how many steps it took me to go across the streets and through the field next to the YMCA and past the school and to Rebecca’s house, but surely the number would far trump the number of days contained in vacation. Every day that I was able to be with her, I was. I grew tan underneath the sun, walking out midday and coming back in the cool evening, running through strangers’ yard sprinklers with newfound abandon. I was no longer stuck on my couch waiting for a rain storm to come and cool the city down, I was out searching for life—and water from neighbors’ sprinklers to cool me down.

   My being at Rebecca’s house was often dependent on the wills of her grandmother. Some days I simply was not allowed to come, Rebecca’s “Gram” already frustrated with the many people already within her home. With only a few rooms, the house contained Rebecca, her grandparents, two uncles, an aunt, her little brother, her mother, and a kind-hearted pit bull named Quincy. Needless to say, space was rather scant already, without me hanging around. When I was around, though, I learned about her family, a cast of characters I often find myself reminded of when looking at others. Her two uncles were completely opposing forces—one hardly ever to be seen, always indistinct. The other was loud, boisterous, and quick to accuse long-haired me of extreme femininity. Her aunt was sweet in a motherly way, and her grandparents grew rather fond of me, as I was always sure to have the best possible manners around them in particular. The pair decided I was a good influence on Rebecca. Her mother, while generally good-natured, had some issues that put a lot of tension on the relationship between them. Plus, she had spoiled Rebecca’s little brother in a way that had left him something of a brat, much to Rebecca’s annoyance and dismay. But both Rebecca’s mother and brother were always very kind to me, despite any troubles that may have arisen between the three of them.

   The really hectic days at their house were ones where Rebecca and I would go to my house and watch television and eat sandwiches, (we had our first kiss on the floor of my living room), or walk about the park, and usually end up on the swing set. We would push, and push, and kick our legs out towards God, kicking prayers out from the bottom of our Chuck Taylors. She was never sure if they were getting to him, though. On days like these Rebecca would open up to me, and thus I learned why Rebecca had moved from Tennessee.

   She had driven away from the state that she called “hellish” with her mother and brother only a week before her first day at Sierra when I met her. However, Colorado Springs was the place of her birth, where she spent her childhood. She spent it with all of the aforementioned family and also her father, photos telling of happy Christmas mornings and birthday parties. But then her mother married someone that could only loosely be described as a man. This moved them to a place Rebecca always called “midway”—between Colorado Springs and Pueblo. Rebecca changed schools and tried to make new friends, but this proved difficult. Eventually this “man” moved himself, Rebecca, and her mother and brother to Tennessee, in pursuit of his own ludicrous goals. This is when Rebecca’s childhood ended. In the Southern state Rebecca was restricted from interacting with her father still in Colorado Springs, and she was often left alone to care for her little brother. Years passed and the tensions and difficulties grew heavy on Rebecca’s shoulders. She had one very close friendship that often saved her from falling over from all of the pressure. Eventually, even Rebecca’s mother could see the problems that her husband brought along, and the three, without him, packed up and drove back to Colorado Springs. Thus, they all lived along with the rest in the grandparents’ home.

   The distance had a healing quality, but as Rebecca and I grew closer, I grew more aware of the issues that were still taking a toll on her. I held her in my arms when it was too much, because there was really nothing else I could do. Surely this was much more than an average fourteen-year-old could endure. Rebecca would never believe me when I told her I admired her strength. When we were together, it seemed like the pressure was lessened on her. I tried.

   When the sun set, the voice of her mother would come from the back porch, calling, “Rebecca, dinner!” We dawdled with each of our goodbyes. Eventually she would walk backwards towards the door of her house with a mix CD I made for her in hand, looking back at me, grinning. As soon as she was out of sight, I would put my hat back on and race the moon back home.

   III

   Suddenly I was fifteen, no longer a freshman or a band geek, an AP student, and a writer and photographer on the school paper. I grew to think less of myself as a musician and more a writer, and journalism became my greatest love—alongside Rebecca.

   Rebecca and I had German 2 together, along with my best friend Andrew. Suddenly, I looked forward to this class more than any other. We never intended to get on Frau Mechling’s nerves, we were simply teenagers who had no grasp of the concept of subtlety. Andrew gave us enough exasperated glances to let us know how absolutely ridiculous he found us to be.

   Andrew, or as I often called him, Bagel (due to a strange middle school trend of food-related nicknames), was and is the most intelligent person I know. While Rebecca and I listened to music and discussed Kurt Cobain, Bagel worked on a novel, or put the extra-terrestrial creatures in his mind onto paper with a mechanical pencil he never lost sight of throughout all of high school—until senior year when he misplaced it. He mourned it like a dear friend. Whilst I always operated primarily on hormonal pathos, Bagel always balanced me out with a brick of logic that kept my literally and metaphorically large head down. He was certainly a friend to Rebecca as well, and they always had fun picking on me in-between lectures when we would always divide up into groups comprised only of ourselves.

   School life kept me busy—and Rebecca and I would fill in the blanks in-between lazing around my house. We were both hopelessly underfunded, so there was little we could do in a town like Colorado Springs. Watching television and listening to music only a couple of teenage punks could enjoy was among our favorite pastimes. We were not so concerned, though. We were usually satisfied with simply sitting around and waiting, huddling together for warmth through the always bitter winter. We dealt with the frustrations of Rebecca’s home life together. I treated her problems like my own, and she always was around for me when I needed it.

   A few days before Halloween that year, the band I was in, known as Tired But Wired, played our first and only live performance in my garage. Somehow we managed to fit fifty people onto my driveway without an ounce of difficulty. As I fumbled around on my bass guitar, and sometimes shouted “whoah-oh”s or sang some similarly awful lyric, lighted only by a feeble fluorescent light, Rebecca stood at the edge of the garage’s opening. She sang along, and when I sang, her smile would let me not worry about how badly out-of-tune I was. These repetitive and derivative songs my friends and I tried to give life to soundtracked a moment where I felt completely in balance. The late October night was cold, but I took off my jacket in the middle of a song and put it down. All of the swaying and shouting made it feel milder. Rebecca picked my jacket up, and put it on—then I felt warm.

   The school year trickled away like every drop of rain that fell from the top of my roof where we often sat if the weather permitted. Soon, we had been together for a whole year. We spent the evening of the anniversary together, but eventually her ride came, honking outside. We lingered a long while in my doorway, the wet and starry night outside providing a frame for us through the glass as we whispered and the cold slowly creeped in. I watched her glide off in her mother’s van and contemplated the summer.

   IV

   When the summer finally came, we looked forward to late July unlike anything else before. We had been to a scant few concerts before, but this was not going to be in one of the unacceptably familiar hole-in-the-wall bars that hosted local bands. For once, there was something interesting to look forward to. I bought both of our tickets and Sabato bought his own. I persuaded my mother to humor our excitement and drive us to Denver. After so many spins of their albums, we were finally able to go and see The Aquabats in Denver—where everything seemed so exciting in comparison to the mundane domain of Colorado Springs.

   The masked and costumed band of superheroes that were also a band in the musical sense meant more to us three than we knew before then. Before, we sang their songs, but after this night we breathed them. Flailing and sweating teenage bodies kicking on the upbeat of songs about pool parties and martian girls composed a sea of energy we never were able to find anywhere else. This wild sea was calling me, as the band might have sang.

   Rebecca’s hands were tightly interlocked with my own, and it felt as if every song was about us, even the ones about zombies. We somehow had never danced with each other before, since she was always afraid of looking strange. But our bouncing and shouting felt like a new adventure. If we were strange in any sense, I had no desire to be normal—eventually, it seemed to us that we were the only ones there. I focused on her smile and each word that she recited, the image outside of her blurred. I did n’t mind missing whatever was happening on stage, either.

   After bringing both Sabato and Rebecca to their homes, I hated to enter my uncomfortably still house, and it was long before I could get to sleep. My vision blurred in my exhaustion, but my mind looped with melodies that I found myself defined by, in a way that one can only understand in a state of both fatigue and untamed joy.

   V

   Rebecca’s mother finally raised enough to move out. Rebecca’s brother and mother were excited to be free of the restraints that living amongst so many others. But much of this excitement was lost on Rebecca, who started to live at her father’s more often than at her mother’s. Rebecca did also stay at her mother’s, but the years in Tennessee came back in a sense. Rebecca was again left to keep watch over her brother—who had humbled and left much of his less admirable qualities behind. But even so, Rebecca had no desire to go back to those days in any way. She felt as if she had raised her little brother enough, and that it was her mother’s turn. Even though every other issue between Rebecca and her mother was resolved, Rebecca stayed with her father as much as her mother would allow—without issue. When there was issue, tensions arose again, only making Rebecca even more sure of herself. Rebecca’s father felt as if he deserved more time with her after those years where he had no way to even speak to her.

   Rebecca’s father was an interesting character—he displayed many of the nerdy qualities that I did. He and I would have enough to talk about when Rebecca busied herself, so it was never an issue for me to come along when he came to pick Rebecca up from school, assuming he was willing to bring me back so I could finally do the homework I was procrastinating doing. We would make food and feast, listen to the music we held just as dearly as each other, and tell each other stories of our future—we were still together in our fantasies of years ahead.

   VI

   Our junior year brought Rebecca and I together again for German class, and another—AP United States History. For me, this was one of three AP classes I decided upon for the year, but this was Rebecca’s first and only such class.

   Rebecca and I were hardly ever ones to quarrel, and issues between the two of us were few and instances where these problems were significant were separated by notable amounts of time. However, Rebecca’s doubt of her academic and intellectual capacities was something that plagued our relationship throughout its duration. Whenever I was not with Rebecca or distracting myself with whatever entertainment I could find, I was focused intensely on my studies. I read and wrote until I could n’t think of anything else I had to read or write. Rebecca often called me a nerd, usually playfully—but sometimes there would be something of a darker tone in her voice.

   Rebecca did not take the same courses as I did, and she was never as concerned with getting high grades as I was. As long as she made it out of class on time with a good-enough grade, she seemed satisfied. But oftentimes Rebecca would express her feelings of inferiority to me in regards to mental capacity—a feeling of hers that I met with dismay. I always found that she simply suffered from something of a laziness, a natural child of her general disinterest in what high school studies could offer—she simply had no interest in the rather slight range of studies offered at our school. She assumed I thought her stupid, and I was guilty of shouting at my bedroom walls in fits of frustration. I always valued Rebecca’s thoughts, but she never believed me when I told her so.

   According to both Andrew and Rebecca herself, however, I was never the best at relieving this self-doubt of hers. Much after the fact, both told me of a somewhat arrogant air that had replaced my usually humble demeanor. During this particular year I was the editor of the Arts & Entertainment section of our school paper, and I busied myself by trying to create faithful coverage of the school’s musicians, thespians, and artists. Along with my developing interest in journalism came an opportunity that I fully intended to take advantage of—an expense-free trip to Princeton University for something of a journalism boot camp. The advisor of our paper gave applications to each editor with the appropriate grand-point-average and encouraged us to try and get a space in the twenty-person program. We each made our way through a gauntlet of essays and questions. When all was said and done, I was the only member of our paper’s staff who made it to the very end, and I was to take the trip to the Ivy League at the coming summer’s end. I was absolutely floored by the honor and was quick to express my excitement. But to others, this excitement appeared more like conceit, unbeknownst to me at the time.

   VII

   We clung together any chance we could throughout the entire summer until the final week of the vacation. I flew to Princeton, New Jersey and embarked on a journey that only further confirmed my whole-hearted desire to achieve greatness in higher education and the craft of the journalist. Every night I would call Rebecca and tell her of the day I spent visiting The New York Times, or reviewing an independent film, or interviewing a climate scientist who was doing global climate change research. I would spout excitedly, but I would often get no more response than “That’s cool…” When I asked her about details of her own day, I would only hear “Nothing much…” When I asked her what was wrong, she would tell me, “Nothing at all.” I worried, but I assumed all would be well when I returned home.

   At week’s end I came back to Colorado Springs more confident in my ability to be the Chief Designer of the newspaper, and the next morning became the the first day of senior year.

   Before I walked into the publishing lab, I hugged and kissed Rebecca. I missed her. I was overjoyed to be back to her. She seemed happy at the time, but in following weeks, Rebecca never seemed especially happy around me. We again had German class together, and she would n’t turn around in her seat to look at me much anymore. I knew something was soon going to happen, but I chose not to believe it, in the way that a baby believes that what cannot be seen does not exist. A few months into our senior year, on a Friday afternoon, she called me. I answered happily and hung up in tears. Our relationship was to devolve into a friendship. That was what she wanted. The reasons were vague and she told me to accept them when I said I could n’t. Later, Rebecca revealed to me that she was afraid of me going outside of the state for college, and she decided that the distance between us would be too much to bear. In explanation, she said, “I may as well have done it then so that it won’t hurt as much later, you know?” I knew and understood, but I could n’t bring myself to feel the same way. I thought any distance would be conquerable, but nonetheless she made her decision.

   My eyes were wet until Monday in school—I hoped that no one would bring up what spread around my friends and then quickly through the school. In class, Rebecca only turned around from her seat to look at me once, to hand me a worksheet. I spent the hour slumped into my seat in sorrow and frustration. At class’s end, she placed my book about Kurt Cobain that she had borrowed, a bookmark placed halfway through its pages, onto my desk and walked out of the room without a word.

   After an hour of mental preparation, I called her that night and told her that she could finish the book if she wanted to. She hesitated. I insisted, in hopes to preserve whatever I could with her. I gave it back to her the next day, and from there, a shaky friendship took form. Gradually, we almost spoke as we normally did during class. I made it glaringly clear to everyone that I was fine, trying to prove it to myself. I grew out my beard and joined as many school clubs as I could just to keep myself busy, to fill in the spaces that now existed.

   Loneliness overtook me two months later and I distracted myself from my wounds with a hasty partnership with another—she was a slam poet who wrote about me, an actress who I played as an extra with in the theatre production that year. I never told Rebecca about it directly, knowing it would cause a stir between us. Rebecca could hardly stand to be around me and hated her. From her perspective, as she later told me, it looked as if I had moved along and forgotten about her, as if she meant little. But it was indeed the opposite; this, by no means, justified my swiftness, however. From there, Rebecca met a skateboarder and eventual dropout who dabbled in the sorts of recreational activity she and I were known to hate. The image was clearly muddy, but we were n’t ready to recognize it.

   Another two months passed as Rebecca and I pretended to be friends without any difficulties, trying to coexist whilst both keeping blatantly unhealthy new relationships afloat. Eventually, the lie she and I were telling to each other became too heavy for me to carry. I broke off my partnership in hopes to retain some of Rebecca’s respect and my own.

   Suddenly, Rebecca and I spoke to each other like we had before again. The tension we always had underneath the surface of our voices was gone. Rebecca visited me at home one day, and in the middle of my kitchen, we decided we were n’t quite finished with each other. She had yet to break off from her new relationship, but she ended it not long thereafter. We were breathless after a kiss that set both of us back in motion—forward, but shaking from the wheels.

   VIII

   Everyone presumed we were back together, and I was not unlike them in that presumption. To me, her kisses meant she was willing to bridge the physical gap between us when I went off to college. I had recently been accepted into CU, only a two-hour drive from where she would still be, in Colorado Springs, taking courses at Pikes Peak Community College.

   But as our senior prom approached, I again started to see less of Rebecca, and for some reason, she would not show any affection for me. I felt almost as if I had to beg for even a kiss goodbye, and while the school year’s end brought its own problems this one worried me the most. She started to hang around a former bandmate of mine often, and she would bring him up in conversation. I asked her, and things again fell to difficulty. “I never should have done this,” She said. “I knew that this would happen…”

   A two-hour drive was too much for her, and she was interested in someone else. We still went to prom together, but only in the sense that we had travelled there and took some photos together. In stark contrast to the concert we attended together, we did n’t dance together at all. She spent the whole time with someone else, and I spent it with all of my friends, trying to enjoy my last large event with everyone before graduation.

   Later, she told me she wished we had a slow dance together. I thought she had no interest in being around me that night. She thought the same of me.

   She started dating the guy she was spending all that time with. I spent the following summer trying to enjoy myself with all of my other friends—it was the first one since that I could say I had not spent with Rebecca. My friend Christopher was also dealing with the difficulties of a break-up, and we were together throughout the healing process. I also grew closer to many of my friends in a way I had never done quite so dramatically before—our conversations sometimes bled into the mornings, the sun reminding us where the talk started. Never before was I so aware of the ground beneath me, my friendships that held me together when my planet shook.

   The game night group, or as we called ourselves, Triple Righteous Fury, had a weekly meeting to play pen-and-paper role playing games and eat unhealthy food for many months, halfway through the school year and throughout the summer. On other nights we would watch comic book movies that we compared and contrasted with the source material, or practice our combos in fighting video games, or watch the meteor shower in the field behind our old middle school. We were all friends, but before Triple Righteous Fury, we were never together in the way that we became together afterwards. The very last game night that I could still spend in town ended with me trying to choke back sobs—I could n’t help but tell them how burdensome it would be to not have that one night a week to relax and enjoy the fraternity I never had before our group’s inception.

   As the day I was to move to Boulder neared, Rebecca started to see that my time around was shortening quickly. She visited me one day and we took a long walk—the summer clouds grew heavy with rain, but it waited to fall. She was afraid for me to forget about her completely after I left, and I was afraid of not saying everything that I felt had to be. I assured her that I had no intentions of omitting her from my thoughts, and she apologized for orchestrating our separation in the way she had. The clouds seemed to burst just as we ended the walk in tears. We were over romantically, but we both could n’t be without each other in some sense.

   In the remaining few weeks, we spoke often, admitting all of our mistakes and apologizing to each other, and restoring what we consider to be a best friendship. Patching ourselves up relieved another creeping worry as college approached.

   She helped me pack. We tore posters off of my bedroom wall, brought books and clothes I had outgrown to the thrift store, sold long-completed video games to the media store. It was all very strange, but it all felt similar to everything else I was leaving behind—except I knew I need not worry about losing anyone in the same way I lost a t-shirt or “young adult novel” with time.

   She came the morning I left to move into my dorm to see me off. She kissed me through both of our tears. There was no romance in it, but there was certainly love.

   IX

   She just recently broke up with the former bandmate of mine—he treated her with not an ounce of respect, he lied to her, and took advantage of her caring and giving nature. I told her long ago she could do much better, and now she seems to know that for herself. After searching for months, she has a fast food job where she gets good tips. She’s doing well in her classes. She’s very busy, just as I am, so it gets difficult to stay in touch sometimes.

   But as she said long ago, she will always be my Beckers, a nickname I alone use for her. In my thoughts, I overlook our struggles and remember the way we danced, the lamentations of Kurt Cobain’s suicide, the blathering in German class, and all the growing up we did together. Our roads separated, but they stand parallel. Some do not understand how we get along so well. We tell them exactly what we would say when explaining an inside joke—“You had to be there.”

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