Twenty

Twenty years gone.  I can still remember how the cold Connecticut air smelled and how its sharpness made my cheeks sting.  I remember the end.  Horrible words, tears, rage, hurt.  An intentional indiscretion as an easy means of cutting ties.  This outcome had brewed, not exploded.  Little things are huge to confused and young 20-somethings.  Small changes and big emotions can easily erode a foundation and down comes the house when enough footing has washed away.

Oddly, Nirvana played a small part.  She knew the weird CDs and tapes I had, fetish stuff for a guy to have on his headphones.  Disturbing names, static, and white noise.  All distortion and heavy and dread.

The autumn before it was healthy, boyish baseball love, juxtaposed with visceral metallic noise.  Quirky but tolerable.  I got occasional side-glance looks, those big brown eyes with whites as clean as snow, that I could read.  The eyes questioned my mental fitness.  How can I listen to that?  I don't get it.  She bit the side of her lip a lot and made rows on her forehead.  What she had once dismissed as a quirk now loomed large in her eyes.  She needed to plan her exit for this reason among the least, too many big reasons at the most.  A good enough excuse.

Had Nevermind been released at another time or never been released, it wouldn't have altered that outcome.  It was the sound of fury and confusion blaring through the speakers at the same time I had swallowed a big pill that wouldn't go down my throat without sticking.

On occasion even great automobile racers can park their pretty little red, two-seat, Italian sports car under the wheels of a filthy big rig while traveling at great speed.  Tragedy is inevitable when you drive twice the posted speed limit on a two lane road with the top down, just to hear her squeal with fear and joy.  Moonlight drives are often fatal and lovers can be thrown clear from the wreckage.  A random shoe left in the middle of the road to alert passing cars.  Neither of us were professionals, we were just amateurs, just kids acting like naughty grown-ups.

I crawled from the wreckage with all the damage I could take and had violent sonic landscapes to contemplate while my bones mended.  Within 2 years this blond soul mate, the strange angel who didn't know what the hell he was trying to say, would be gone.  The other noisemakers were corralled, the sharp edges were sanded smooth.   I have no idea what she was doing while I sat and considered what comes next after the noise became quiet.

Nostalgia and sentimentality mean little if you don't have damage to show for the memory.  Something to remind you that life is serious and there are penalties to pay for recklessness, even the youthful variety.

For several years after I left Connecticut, I often thought of her as I plodded through the daily routines of work, rest, and growth.  Memories slowly faded.  Then the thoughts of her entirely stopped.  A new song, a new car, a new love.  Now the broken bones from this latest wreck are mending and I sometimes think back in large, round numbers, the long-range memory center.

It's odd.  Some vacuum has her, a void.  No trace.  All for the better I suppose.  Let the memory stay youthful forever.  Strange...I've always loved women with brown eyes.  Now I'm not sure if I really understood what I read when I looked into them.  Perhaps they were reading me better than I ever suspected? 

Ah, but I still have Nirvana.