2/14/2011

It is our fourth Valentine's Days together and, on the first night of our weekend, I think it is to be our last. Melanie again feels the pull of youthful indiscretions, all of the one night stands and isn't being because she is occupied loving me. This night, she tells me, is the closest she has ever been to leaving me. It is nothing I have done wrong. I have been unconscionably lovely with her and she seems aware what a prize I am, but how is she to really get to know herself as a cosmopolite with her clothes on? It is something she will outgrow, but it feels condescending to remind her of this solitary flaw in our relationship, one I work to keep from being fatal. I am not certain when I gain my reprieve this time. Was it sealed in our initial sex act? In telling me we would make love the following day? In actually conjoining? Or was it something markedly subtler, some mix of words and gestures I underrate in my mounting panic? I know by the time I leave Bard and she won't let go that my neck is out of the noose for the indeterminate future. I know I have spent the weekend loving her the best I can and accepting her attention without agenda. Daniel wrote to her that she is likely my One and I fear he is right. I can't name a love greater than I feel toward her. She disarms me utterly and tells me that she wishes she didn't. In the end, when I leave her wanting more of me. I do not think she begrudges how utterly I am hers, but I don't ask for fear she will express reservation or hesitation. I know I am greater than any unknown she could encounter but her hormones, chemical imbalances, and Ericksonian crises do not always let her see this as well. Can I continue to fight this war of attrition against neurochemicals? If I keep her from leaving me until graduation, I feel we can survive. I don't need her to propose again, only to agree to persist.

Love makes you desperate. I need to know that our love can endure.

I hate how it feels to love her so much because I have no defenses against her. I just want to cling to her. I want to cry on her and get her to promise again and again that she isn't going to leave. I don't want to feel this way, but I see the looming deadline.

She has given me confidence to be myself to the greatest degree, but she also makes me insecure because I want to be with her. She has power over me and could shatter me with a word. In my previous relationships, I have always held something back, but I was never less than total with her from the moment I admitted I love her.

We spend Saturday cuddled together in Melanie's dorm room. I lean against her exhausted, half physically from the freshmen across the hall blasting music at 3AM that would be a war crime in daylight and half emotionally from the conversation that preceded bed (the sort of discussion where I tell her that I see the pocket dimension splitting off where things did not go well. I watch it vanish over the horizon to make sure it isn't going to double back). The only saving grace from our insomnia is that Melanie would open her eyes and reach for me, would insist upon holding my hand (prodding me in the head until I relent and give it to her) or urge me into her tiny dorm bed so she could nuzzle against me and find her comfort. Every time she touched me, every time she woke and saw me there, she gave the most peaceful smile, as though she had fallen in love with me all over again in that second. There are few things I wouldn't trade for that smile. No matter what clouds her consciousness, her restful mind knows that it wants me.

Over breakfast, we watch a bad movie called The Linguini Incident, purely because it stars David Bowie. We mock the attempts at comedy and the brutal unsexiness of his love interest, and are rarely out of physical contact. Despite this being Valentine's weekend and her warmth, I feel the insecurity that a combination of Bard and an improper diet can induce in her seemingly every month. But I am not tentative or hesitating in reciprocating affection. Pulling away can only work to subvert my cause and I love Melanie more than I can cope with.

Somehow, in our conjoined web searching, we stumble upon the topic of Hawaii. I mention that teachers always seem to be in high demand there (apparently, it has a terrible school system and most cannot handle it) and Melanie asks why we are still in the Hudson Valley if we could be sunning on an island. On a dusting of volcanic oceans in the Pacific, there is no end of science to be done by her. We are halfway toward idly plotting, fantasizing about aquamarine oceans and friendly parrots, when the reality intrudes that she does not wish to attend graduate school there and the plan is put on a back shelf. But I am gladdened by the idea of moving somewhere exotic with her at my side.

Clio joins us after noon, complaining of the jackasses across the hall and their audio atrocity. Melanie gets out her guitar when Clio sheepishly asks if she can play. The mood gels around us that this is one of those scenes included in bonding montages. Clio strums and sings, intercut with planning how to murder everyone in the dorm who is not currently in the room. She complains that the guitar sounds a bit out of tune, but Melanie does not mind hearing Clio play a slightly out of tune guitar. A second without Clio fairly glowing as she caresses the strings is a second too long.

We mention our Hawaii plan and Clio dismisses it. She has relatives there and, while she appreciates her ability to sing "Mele Kalikimaka" during Christmas, it is nowhere she would like to live. It is unspoken between Melanie and me that any place Clio wouldn't want to live is an inhospitable tundra, however keenly beautiful emerald sea and florid mountains might be.

For a while, as Clio video chats with her family in the other room, Melanie looks up tablature on the internet and strums her guitar. I sit on the floor and read an ebook, gazing up at her and feeling gratitude that I am in this moment with her. It is easier to occupy oneself in a relationship of constant busyness - I know this from experience - but the quiet moments allow one to hear the beating heart of one's love. Being able to be together but separate (but together) in this tiny room tells me we are healthy.

We pull Daniel away from conditioning his new cat (called Sausage in my head until he properly names her, which he refuses to do until she formally introduces herself to him) so we can see him. For want of any legitimate plan-making, I suggest we go to the Curry House in Red Hook.

As we drive to the Indian restaurant, Clio asks, "So, what do you think about the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis?"

Thomm Quackenbush is an author and teacher in the Hudson Valley. He has published four novels in his Night's Dream series (We Shadows, Danse Macabre, Artificial Gods, and Flies to Wanton Boys). He has sold jewelry in Victorian England, confused children as a mad scientist, filed away more books than anyone has ever read, and tried to inspire the learning disabled and gifted. He is capable of crossing one eye, raising one eyebrow, and once accidentally groped a ghost. When not writing, he can be found biking, hiking the Adirondacks, grazing on snacks at art openings, and keeping a straight face when listening to people tell him they are in touch with 164 species of interstellar beings. He likes when you comment.