I met Jill on the very first day of freshman orientation at college. I was a typical eighteen year old male, with the predictable subject dominating his mind every seventeen seconds or so, hormones flowing at full force. My head jerked around to watch her pass as our separate orientation groups passed in the halls of the Fine Arts Center.
Jill was, of course, a flautist, her lips pursed moist above the aperture of her instrument. She was very blond, her eyelashes and eyebrows like fine, bright gold, her eyes an icy blue. She was a goddess. I sometimes glanced at her through the window of a practice room, or watched her as she played in concert band or orchestra, or imagined her as I lay tortured in my sleepless bed.
But our circles simply did not intersect. I played jazz, she played orchestral music. We were never in the same ensemble together. Coincidentally we never took the same section of the same class together. She was always in some other section of Music Theory 1, Music Theory 2, Form in Music, Music History, Functional Piano - on and on, no Jill.
So there I was, like an appliance waiting to be plugged in, and it made me imagine how the blender must feel in its dark cabinet, waiting for someone to want a smoothie or a margarita. How it must long for that electrical outlet! But an appliance easily survives this deprivation, whereas for a young man it may not be so easy.
I found what I had to find. There was some satisfaction, some sweetness. I felt the warmth of physical acceptance and the coldness of personal rejection. I met the parents once but apparently did not measure up to expectations. I pursued without success and pursued with success. I used and I was used. There were poignant memories and there was drunken forgetfulness. And in everything, emptiness.
Jill was a golden thread that wound through the semesters. A flash of gold in the hallway, golden eyelashes half-closed over those blue, blue eyes as she retrieved her flute from her locker. A smile of peace shining into the seething turmoil of my painful emergence from adolescence into adulthood, how happy she seemed!
In my third year of college I decided to emigrate to Boston. I wound down my classes and spent much of my time exploring the area by bicycle, skinny and shirtless throughout the spring, during my last quarter there. My time at music school had not been entirely successful. I hoped in Boston I would be recognized for the great trombonist that I knew I was.
I discovered that Jill lived in the same complex of badly built, student slum apartments that I did. I saw her in the parking lot. She was bringing her laundry in. I marveled that a goddess did laundry like everyone else!
"Hi, Jill," I said. I think I had a shirt on at the time.
"Oh, hi, Tom," she replied. She knew my name!
"Listen, do you want to get together and have some dinner?" I asked.
She thought for a fraction of a second. "Tonight? Sure!"
"Great! Around six?"
"Sure!"
"See you then," I said.
I could scarcely believe that this was actually taking place, and could not bear to look ahead to what the evening might bring, to the possibility that I might be living out one of my most cherished fantasies. The minutes until six o'clock crawled away like lizards through a great tub of Vaseline, but at last the hour came.
Surprisingly I felt calm. I knocked at her door and she emerged, smiling. We went to dinner, and I was amazed to learn she loved bratwurst and beer just as I did, just like normal people. We talked about music school. She told me about the orchestral director's alcoholism. I told her about my ineffectual (but valiant) defense of a classmate who didn't want to study with our nice, but not too bright trombone teacher. We didn't drink too much, and after dinner I suggested we go out and enjoy the warm spring evening with which we had been blessed.
As we walked we continued to talk about people we both knew. We talked of our plans. She would graduate in another year and perhaps seek a position teaching music in a Wisconsin elementary school. I told of my plans to move to Boston. I was leaving in two days. We arrived at her door.
"Would you like to come in?" she said.
With an effort I kept my heart inside my chest. "Yes," I said.
Inside we talked for a while. Then I asked, "Would you like a back rub?"
She thought for a second. "Yes," she said.
She laid face down on her bed. The goddess, prone. Gingerly I moved the fine hair that was like silk and began to massage her shoulders. She was small, with small bones, small hands and feet, not particularly tense. I was fairly well practiced at the informal back-rub, and I was concentrating on doing the best I had ever done. Jill lay passive and relaxed as I worked on the muscles around her shoulder blades. I moved down, using my thumbs to release the tension in her lower back. I raised her shirt a little, so that I could continue the massage with my fingers in direct contact with her.
She sighed a pleasurable sigh.
There was something not quite right. I could not define it, but it was as if a soundless voice told me this could not go where I would have really, really liked it to have gone. It was with a kind of disbelief that I thanked her for the evening and wished her good night. In a state of mild shock at her door, I squeezed her arm with something like affection and turned for home.
Following came the five stages of grieving. First I denied that I had wanted to make love with Jill. No, of course not! Why would I want that? Then I was so angry I actually banged my head against a wall a few times. Later I prayed to God to please give me another chance, please, please, please, I 'll do anything. Then I sat down and simply hung my head for a while thinking about what a fool I was. Then, at last, I accepted that I had sensed something that made me turn away from a moment I had dreamed of for three years, and now that moment was forever gone. But somehow I knew there was a reason. I was not crazy. Just because I did not know what the reason was did not logically mean the reason did not exist.
I resolved to have closure with Jill. I had no idea what to say. It popped into my head that she was probably a virgin and I had somehow sensed that this was not her time. I knocked on her door. She answered, looking rather annoyed.
"Hi," I said. "About last night."
"Yes?"
I looked away, unsure how to proceed, then back at her. Head on, that was it.
"Are you a virgin?" I asked, for the only time in my life.
"No," she said, incredulously.
My mind went completely blank. But then, words came out of my mouth.
"Well," I said. "You learn things, right?"
My words, whatever meaning they may have held for her (for they certainly held no meaning for me) knocked her back. Her eyes welled up and she actually lunged forward with her little body and embraced me. Shocked, I enfolded her gently. Then I kissed her cheek and said goodbye. The next day I flew to Boston.
A few weeks later I had settled into my house in Brighton, just outside of Boston, with two other guys and four girls. A letter arrived from Jill which I will use to close this hub. It went something like this:
"Dear Tom,
I am writing to thank you for your sensitivity toward me. For the past two years I was in a relationship with a foreign exchange student from Iran. His name is Mahmoud and we said goodbye a few months ago when he returned to Iran. After he left I didn't know what I would do. I loved Mahmoud very much. I miss his love and the closeness we had. We slept together every night. I miss him very much. I thought I might feel better if I slept with someone else, and then you came along. And you didn't sleep with me, although you could have. And when you said, "You learn things," it just clicked inside me, there are things you do only for love. So I thank you.
©2009 Tom Rubenoff all rights reserved