How Soon Hath Time the Subtle Thief of Youth....Oct 20th 1996 (b)

 

We arrive home from Church before her parents. It feels good not to be in Church clothes and to have gone to church wearing the same jeans I've been sporting all weekend. Megan is removing her shoes by slipping them off the back of her heal one at a time before holding them in a pinch as if they need to be exterminated in the back of her closet until Sunday next.

We have maybe less than two hours left to be with each other for all of eternity.

Megan tells me she has a question just for me. She walks ahead of me to the room where her big senior portrait is stationed above the mantle in almost frescoesque fashion. I refrain from making the comment I thought was witty about the being able to see her nipples through the winsome lavender drape of a dress she was wearing in the photograph. Instead she reaches behind the frame and pulls out several wallet-sized photos taken in the senior photo shoot.

She then asks me which one I want.

I point to the one that is on the wall. Megan tells me that that's the one I made fun of the day before.

“I know. But that's my favorite.” I then tell her that they are all my favorite. I tell her that if she took a sonogram of my heart she would find each of the four photos stowed respectively in each aortic chamber. Megan responds back with something that resembles a blush.

She then hands me the thumb sized picture. I kiss it in front of her. She tells me that she is going to go upstairs to change. I ask if I could go upstairs and wait outside her bedroom door when she changes. Megan tells me that its probably best if I wait down here while she changes just in case her parents come home they might think its like weird or something.

As she clambers up the carpeted steps upstairs and I kiss the photo again. I sit on the bottom step. For some reason I feel compelled to carol up the steps and tell her not to worry I rewound Before Sunrise. Megan echoes back a terse display of single-syllable gratitude. I try not to think about Megan reeling up the brown autumnal outfit she just wore to church. I try not to think about her being clad only in her bra and panties and frisking the interior contents of her dresser drawers looking for something to wear.

For reasons I can't comprehend I call her angel as I reach her floor, holding her picture out in front of me again like some sort of communion wafer that is waiting to be consecrated.

“What I love about this picture is that this is really the first picture I have of you.” I tell her, before explaining that I have the picture she sent me when she was three days old in her first letter and I have the extra passport picture she sent me where she wasn't smiling because she just got her wisdom teeth extracted. Megan responds by chirping out unintelligible vowels. Without looking back and as if on tip toes I scuttle up to her door and knock. Megan opens it like a three-inch slit wound. Her eye is visible.

“Hey,” I ask, “Could you put on that outfit you were wearing the last time I saw you in Chicago?"

Megan blinks as if she isn't sure just what I am talking about.

“You know, the denim bibs. The overalls. You looked cute in those.”

From behind the crevice in the door Megan says the word yes. Before this weekend the last time I saw Megan was seven months ago almost to the date. Since then I have traveled to Europe for my third time in as many years, I have held close Kitty Pekowski at the Scottish Rite Cathedral, I have become unfaithful, smoked cigarettes, worked menial spewing jobs, found a true brother in Patrick A. Mullowney. I have sat through multiple friend-induced Tarrentino films and have cocked my head back in laughter, reminiscing over London in TRAINSPOTTING. I have written poems and have ingested copious amounts of coffee into my veins; I have swiped my academic, ardent soles on the welcome matt at the local community college. I have fallen in love with everything about life. I have noticed how, the older I get, the more life and autumn spreads its legs and shoves me between her leafy pudendum, raking promises and bonfires on top of my scalp-offering me the promise of one more year here, one more year on this planet to write about everything that I will ever know; everything that I will ever feel thinking about telling all of this to Megan over the phone as we talked for hours last summer, telling her about how the world feels at the full-sated crepuscular feeling at dusk as the leaking slit of lavender light breaks through the bottom cracks of the sky. I will be smoking a cigar years later, there will be money in the bank. There will be a wife, and my own child who hovers around the caps of my knees, inquiring things. There will be stories I will tell my child about my own father, like my father would often tell me stories about his own father. I will tell her all of this, and still, in autumn, when the wind begins to vortex and rattle, I’ll stop and inhale and think, my mind composing a purana, a thank you to the sun, the unflinching orb, who always looks at me with her mouth full, her top down, and the light pouring through every pore I have to offer.

My ears register the door pressing close into a snap as I head down the stairs. Her parents arrive maybe thirty seconds later asking where there daughter is. I tell them she is upstairs, changing.

 There are footsteps. As I turn around I see her, behind me, wearing the bibs. Wearing the outfit I first said goodbye to her in. I see her smiling, looking apprehensive. Smiling none the less. An acorn smile buttons out  from between her lips. Her face has been the color of the afternoon all day, a golden tinged hue emanating forth, autumn dusk, her body, smiling, looking at my body.

                                                                     ***
I am leaving in forty-five minutes. For the first time all weekend I begin to take pictures.


“Let me have another photograph of the Master of the House,” David jest, once again, making sure the flash to my camera is on as I shoot, The same living room where David bartered Pico back to Megan, earlier in the day, while we were rather late for church.


I ask if I can snap a picture of Megan and her mom outside near the albino-looking birch tree.

 

“Now can you take one of us?” The mom nods her head like a buoy.

 

Scrutinizing the picture years later light seems to break around into spangles of autumnal light, light dripping around us in an almost wreath auerole-like fashion and, upon looking at the picture the only word I can think of that comes to mind is the word spate. I shake Megan's mom's hand by cupping both of my hands around her outstretched palm thanking her. Telling her what a pleasure it was indeed to meet her. I shake Mr. Snow's hand goodbye, again thanking him for his accommodations and his hospitality. Mr. Snow gives me a smile and tells me that I am welcome to come back and visit any time. I sling my red duffel bag over my shoulder as Megan proceeds to her vehicle, for some reason I open the drivers side door for her and she smiles back at me. The awkwardness that accompanied our every breath the day before seems to be almost completely effaced. Megan revs up the engine in a mechanical huff and I wave again at the creatures she has perennially identified as her progenitors, waving them goodbye from behind the bluish windshield in a swat like motion, Mr. and Misses Snow standing in front of their comfy suburban abode waving back at us as if in mirrored reflection his arm situated around his wife's shoulder blades like a domestic wing.

                                                                       ***

We each smoke one more cigarette en route to the airport, waiting until we are at least three blocks away to fire one up. The windows are respectively cracked midway as a courtesy to our incessant ashing. I tilt back, place one of my doc martens on the seat, as if we are still in Peggy's from last night. I smoke-slash-ash with my right hand. My left hand is lassoed around Megan's upper back/lower neck.

She doesn't seem to mind.

We talk about how fast the weekend transpired. Megan seems pensive and heavy. Part of me want to hold her close, wants to tell her that it doesn't matter if my feelings for her warrant some sort of nonreciprocal emotions inside her skull. Wants to tell her that even though this is not how I wanted things to be somehow they were perfect nonetheless.

Part of me just wants to reel her close to me in my arms and tell her to hush her eyes and to come close so I can simply hold her.

Megan seems apologetic. She keeps on stuttering and saying that she is sorry.

From the periphery of the windshield it shows a reflection of the two of us wearing sunglasses, my head is slightly tilted into the direction of Megan's body, Megan is again looking straight ahead a look of extreme concentration stretched into her face, the silhouette of the rearview mirror casting an almost plus-sign-like shadow, the shape of the crucifix we knelt down in front of and worshiped earlier that day.

On the radio that damn bubble gum Meredith Brainbridge song is still playing.

As I once again check out the denim contours of Megan's sung ass as she reaches over to snap the half-protruding emerald ticket that will allow us access into the airport parking lot part of me again feels like erupting. Part of me wonders if I will ever see Megan again.

As we get out of the car our doors thump to a close at exactly the same time, as if choreographed. We walk up to the airport check in I feel like holding her hand only I refrain.

 

 

I still open the door for her as we approach the building so that she will enter in first.

 

                                                                           ***

....And in Chicago three days before the first day of Spring almost exactly seven months prior a sixteen year old girl calls me on the phone and asks if she could speak to me. She simply says hi. She is three doors down and to the left. There is a curfew. We are not allowed to leave the sanctity of our hotel rooms after a certain time even though I will ask her if she wants to meet me in the hallway just so I can give her a hug goodnight.

She obliges meeting ne in the center of the hallway, wearing pajamas and her retainer. I kiss the top of her forehead.

We hug for a long time.

We don't let go.

                                                                              ***

She tells me that her family come to this airport a lot especially when her family goes on ski trips or goes to visit her grandma out in Idaho. Megan asks me again if I need to check my luggage. I tell her I am fine. That I only have one bag. She tells me still, I should have it registered and tagged just in case-you-never-know. I listen to her and obey.

 The plane is idling outside as if it is chuffing. As if it is purring in an almost post-coital fashion. As if the plane had just had sex with another plane and they are taking a respite on the cement mattress of the runway.                                         

Megan notes that the plane I am leaving on looks quite a bit smaller than the plane I rode up on.

 

           For some reason I feel like imploding. It wasn’t suppose to be like this. We were suppose to be making out with each other right now. We were suppose to be holding each other close. We were suppose to be making vows. Megan was suppose to be tugging me into her body imploring me not to leave.

 

Instead we just stand, waiting for the boarding call. For reasons inexplicable I thank her again for hospitality. I tell that that I had the proverbial time of my life. I tell her that seeing her is the highlight of my autumn.

 

She remains silent. I’ve spent less than half of the three hundred dollars I have brought with me. Part of me feels oblige to offer her three dollars so that she can pay for her parking voucher.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this at all. She was supposed to be telling me to find a payphone and to call her as soon as I get to O’hare to tell her that I arrived safely. We were supposed to be making plans to meet over the pending holidays. Or perhaps find a weekend where we could meet in Chicago at the Museum.

Megan looks at me as if she wants me to say something to tell her how she feels. There is the static muffle warbling overhead informing us that the flight will be boarding in five minutes.

 

Megan is completely reticent.

Part of me thinks maybe I should tell Megan that I love her. Part of me thinks maybe I should apologize.

“It’ll only be 45 minute flight. Less than the average suburban commute, It feels like the length of a commercial. The fasten seatbelt sign blares on. It fizzles out. We fly over the emerald quilt of Wisconsin. The fasten seatbelt sign illuminates again. The skyline of Chicago which to me always looks like a dioramic of vertically arrayed ice cube trays sails into view. “

I stop. I think how the plane always circles overhead and then skids as it lands.

I wonder if I will ever see Megan again.

My black notebook is still in my red duffel bag. She seems to inch into me at almost vertical angles, as if intentionally bumping into me. I turn to her again. There is first call for the plane to board. Megan again moves subtly in my direction as playing a game of Marco Polo in the community swimming pool.

Megan seems to be biting her lips in a contemplative fashion. She looks at my direction. I hug her again. She seems not to be hugging back. She just seems to be standing there with her limbs

I set my bag down. Megan is giving me an insinuating look like I should get on the plane to verify that my window seat is not taken. I turn and face towards her as if we are plastic figurines stationed in a holiday nativity scene. Using my thumbs and fingers on both hands I manacle her wrist as if she is being convicted.

 

“Listen, I just want to say…”

Megan is looking up at me. All I can focus on is the chestnut-flavored hue of her forehead. Seven months ago we departed on a Sunday. It was snowing outside the Holiday Inn next to the same airport I will be arriving in to take me to the rest of my life in less than an hour’s time.She is wearing the same outfit she wore seven months ago the first time we kissed.

There is an overhead warble informing that the flight non-stop from Appleton to Chicago is boarding. My sunglasses are dangling on the front of my shirt. I reel her into my body.

I tell her I love her.

I call her baby.

 

I kiss her forehead.

 

I tell her goodbye.

 Megan responds by telling me to hurry up. She doesn’t want me to miss my flight.

I turn and walk towards the outdoor entrance to the plane. As I walk Megan is walking next to me. It is again almost like we are choreographed. It is almost like we are walking down the aisle at her church in Appleton in autumn come five years time after confirming vows of eternal love and commitment in front of the pumpkin visage pastor who left us hanging holding the chairs earlier in the morning. Although we are not holding hands her fingers keep clinking into mine as if they were pinecone-castanets.

 I look at her forehead while she is still moving. After a weekend of pure social awkwardness and blown tires and bad movies and coffee shops and poetry, after a weekend where I felt like I was looking for everything that I had ever wanted inside the pulse and splash of my anatomy over the sweet tea sunsets of last August, pummeling out poem after poem in my bedroom, scraping the tip of my pen into the exposed skeletal white of a fresh sheet.

This wasn’t the way it was supposed to turn out.

She is still walking next to me. It's like she doesn't want me to go.

I get to the door and hand my boarding pass outstretched like a relay baton. Out bodies are still next to each other almost the moment I step outside en route for the plane.

“Okay goodbye.” Megan says, very quickly. I look back as I walk towards the plane. Her back is already turned.

                                                            ***

          .