Back-story on Marie, year 1

A few months ago, I wrote to Marie, my college girlfriend. And heard nothing back. Then I e-mailed her. And heard nothing back. Perhaps there's a message here, but I'm going to try one more time.

Why? In a recent e-mail, Schmidt said he had talked to Marie on the phone and she mentioned getting a letter from me. Apparently she said nothing about the e-mail. So perhaps the e-mail went astray or I had the address wrong. And perhaps she just hasn't gotten around to writing a reply.

In any event, if she didn't get the e-mail then she didn't get my promise to let it drop if I never heard back from her. I still want to give her the opportunity to ask me to go away just by failing to reply, but it's no fair my assuming that's what she means if I don't know that she heard me offer it. So this weekend I am going to write another letter, sent to the same address as the first one. That, at least, should get through.

Meanwhile I think it is time to give you a little of the back-story on her. Why am I prepared for the possibility that she might not want to talk to me again? Then if we do re-start our friendship -- given that I'll write about it -- you'll know more about our background. And even if we don't, the background will illuminate where my head was when I met Wife ... which might help explain why I married her.

Early in my sophomore year in college, four of us who had met (one way or another) the year before started to have lunch together regularly. I was one of this party; I probably won't have to give the other three names in the long term, so for now I'll call them A and R and Mac. (Schmidt joined us later in the year.) We were all sophomores, and all guys. Now, A began a relationship with a flamboyant freshman woman named Scarlett: I don't know quite how they met or how it started, but it didn't take long. And one evening Scarlett had a bunch of friends over to her room. Her two roommates were there, and one or two other freshman women from the same dorm. We all sat around and talked. I forget if there was food or wine or music; all I remember is talking. And as the evening got later, I did more and more of the talking, telling long stories about ... God knows what. (It will come as no surprise to you that I was telling long stories.) Over time people drifted away. A was still there because he was going to spend the night with Scarlett and it was her room. R was still there, I think Mac was still there. And there was one other freshman woman, directly across from me. Earlier in the evening she had been sitting, but by now she was lying on one side and listening with rapt attention. And smiling. She wasn't pretty -- her face was angular, her nose and chin jutted out sharply -- but her smile softened the effect, and every storyteller adores the look of an avid listener. At the time I didn't catch her name.

The next morning at breakfast, she was there in the cafeteria getting her food about the same time I was. We greeted each other with polite chit-chat (probably asking "Did you ever get any sleep last night?") and I apologized for having to ask her name again. She said it was Marie.

Soon, our lunch group of four had expanded to six with the addition of Scarlett and Marie. There was always a lot to talk about. In a little while more, Marie and I realized that we were taking the same Physics 100 class. We were in different sections, but by the second semester our schedules had shifted to allow us to share a lab. And we continued to talk a lot. Marie would show up at my dorm room to discuss physics problem sets, and we would talk for hours ... sometimes even about physics. I remember her standing in my doorway in a powder-blue jacket, primed, focused, fully alert, and with a slight smile as I opened the door. In retrospect, if I had put out my arms she would have jumped into them.

Why didn't I? Several reasons. In the first place, all of us thought she had developed a relationship with Mac. Maybe she had, I really don't know. I never asked. But when we were all together she and Mac usually had their hands all over each other. On the other hand she spent a lot of time with me too, and she beamed when we were together. Whatever there was with Mac, it didn't occupy her whole attention.

More fundamentally, I was cripplingly shy and socially naïve. I was frightened of doing anything wrong, with the result that often my interactions with girls were embarrassingly awkward. If I had been less afraid of doing something wrong, I would have done fewer things wrong -- but of course that's what I see now, decades older, looking back. Back then I was desperately young for my age. And yet maybe it wasn't obvious to others just how shy I really was ... because I had a loud voice and I covered my terror of intimacy with voluble expertise about any number of arcane topics. To the rest of the world I was a born scholar, someone who never had to worry about living in the real world because he was never going to leave Academia ... someone who never had to worry about love or sex because all he needed was his books.

God how I hated those books, sometimes. I could see the walls that I had built for myself, even if other people didn't always see that they were just walls and not my real nature. I could see that somewhere out beyond those walls there was a Real World, and that it was richer than anything I had inside: a Real World where people fell in and out of love, fought, broke up, made up, had sex, held each other, yelled, stormed, cried, and laughed. I yearned with all my heart to be free of those walls, and yet at the same time I was terrified to stick even a little finger out of them and I was sure I didn't speak the language. So I was stuck there, walled in by my books, without even a cask of amontillado to cheer my isolation.

At the same time I also loved my studies. I couldn't have done so well at them if I hadn't. And this digression is partly beside the point.

Don't get the idea that the infatuation was all on her part. Quite apart from my yearning to breathe free, I was deeply fond of her. I never used the word "love" to myself, largely because I didn't really know what it meant. How could I tell for sure if this thing I was feeling was love? But I was always glad to see her; my heart always beat a little faster when she was there; she brightened my days, and if I went a few days without seeing her those days were just dreary. I came to her room as often as she came to mine ... oftener, really, because her room was larger than mine and there were more places to sit down. Besides, she had a whole steamer trunk full of different kinds of tea, and she would put on water to boil whenever I came over. She had a large collection of poetry that she was always trying to discuss with me (and which I felt hopelessly incompetent to discuss), books on feminist theory, books in French (we both spoke French), ... it was just a delightful place to be. Much better than studying.

Was I in love? In retrospect, yes of course I was in love. Today it is obvious to me. But back then I didn't know the words to describe how I felt. That's how desperately clueless I was.

At the end of the school year in May, just before final exams, my college throws a big party that lasts all weekend. There is a huge barbecue, beer and drugs flow freely, there is music and dancing everywhere. Marie and I were about to go to the barbecue, but stopped by her room for something first -- that room where I had spent so many hours drinking tea, playing with her cat (which she had against dorm regulations), and talking. We got whatever we were there to get, and then Marie told me she had something to say. She sat down on her bed, stared at the floor far away from where I was standing, then rubbed her eyes with her hand and said haltingly, "It's just that ... I find you very attractive, and ...."

I don't remember what she said after that. I fainted.

Yes, it was a hot day and I was wearing something heavy that didn't breathe well. Yes, I'd probably had a beer already, so my head was a little light. Still, I fainted ... for the third and (so far) last time in my life. I must have said something about feeling hot. I don't remember saying it, but the next thing I knew Marie had helped me down the stairs into the basement where it was cooler, she had stripped off my heavy un-breathing shirt, and she had a wet washcloth on my forehead. After a while I felt better and we went to the barbecue. And we never picked up that conversation.

I wanted to. But I couldn't. Every day after that I told myself I had to go talk to her. And every day I failed to do it. I berated myself for my cowardice, I felt dismal for my failure, and I felt even worse that she had exposed her heart to me and I was just letting it hang out there in the wind. I knew I must be causing her terrible suffering, and I felt grief for it. But I could not make myself go and talk to her about it. When we saw each other we talked about other things, as if it had never happened.

And then the school year was over and we went to our homes. We wrote each other many letters over the summer, all about bright and cheery things. And we never talked about it.