xiv
Friday, the traditional end of a ski week, found us taking the Big Burn lift all the way to the top of the mountain. It was my graduation day, when I would finally stretch my wings away from the easier green slopes, and try a blue run, Upper Powderhorn. The Burn lift took 15 minutes, featuring foot rests with an arm bar for the air-starved and weary. The late March Colorado sun beat harshly on the snow, quickly melting the surface, frozen from last night’s cold. We hoped to hit that magic moment, mid-morning to noon, before the softness turns to slush. Or, as Mike asserted, “Before the corn snow melts to mashed potatoes.”
During the week, I had quashed my fears, and found a hidden confidence following Mike’s directions. Advancing from snowplow to a stem turn, I tried to keep my skis locked together, the way he did. Lingering anxiety, however, held me in a three-point stance.
“It doesn’t matter how you look, as long as you’re having fun,” Mike insisted whenever I complained.
“But I want to do this with you, share your skiing!”
“I’ve been here, what, forty, fifty days now? And I can barely go down a black diamond without feeling like a klutz. It’s not easy, it takes time. Let’s have fun where we can.”
The higher we went, the brighter the sun, the sharper the shadows and shorter the trees. Alpine peaks came into view as we crested the final ridge. Sliding off the chair, we headed right, easing to a stop near tree-line. Three thousand feet below, a V-shaped valley separated us from a higher mountain. Seen from his house, this peak caught the morning light, the shadow descending across its face signifying the new day’s start. Up here, almost close enough to touch, it dominated our vision, challenging my perception of proportion.
Upper Powderhorn proved easier than I’d feared. Cut towards the left while the slope fell off to the right, I could ski mostly on my stronger right leg. At the bottom, the trail forked left, to Lower Powderhorn, gentle yet uncrowded as far as I could see. Max Park meandered down to the right, filled with nervous skiers, many slower and more awkward than I imagined myself to be. I pointed left, “Can we go there?”
He tapped the black diamond sign twice with his ski pole, saying, “Too hard for me – it ends up in a gully, then something called ‘Belly-Grabber Pitch.’ Let’s go this way, Max Park. It’s a green.”
Mike seemed so confident, composed, in control, as he skied with me that I couldn’t imagine him hesitant with shaky legs, the way I felt on skis. We tried a few more “blues” on the lower slopes. At noon, Mike suggested, “Should we quit? I’ve got to be at Guido’s by 2:30 today.”
I didn’t want to leave, not when I was beginning to get my ski legs. I knew I’d miss these easy days, without professors droning on or papers to write, no friends challenging my every move. I needed to capture this sanctuary, this hidden time we both had shared, keep it in a snow globe, ready to shake any time I felt bereft. Mike left, off to peel potatoes and zucchini, fill the Hobart with tray after tray of half-empty plates, scour pots and pans, and (his favorite) make desserts. I scrounged through the desk drawers, finally finding a few blank pages in a notebook, some magazines, glue, and scissors.
Sitting at the writing table, glancing up to watch the alpenglow fade across the Divide, showering Mt. Elbert with bright pink, than faded purple, and finally greying shadow, I methodically began a collage. First, from Ski Magazine, I extracted a face shot of America’s current ski hero, Billy Kidd. Next, feeling like a kidnapper creating a ransom note, I cut and then pasted individual letters and numbers spelling out “21 – I Love yoU – MiKe”, and pasted them across Billy’s face. An ad for skis produced “being happy…” which went above his lanky blond hair. I stuffed this into the inner pocket of my suitcase, intending to finish Mike’s 21st birthday card at home. Then I took a post card of Aspen Mountain and wrote to my parents, sharing my wonder at the mountain beauty, the massive piles of snow on Loveland Pass, and assuring them the searing sun had not burned me.
On the flight back to Cincinnati, I took a window seat, marveling at how Kansas was even flatter seen from the air as driving through it. Once home, I took out the collage, and set to work adding a final remembrance. I meticulously covered the entire surface of a 5 inch by 8 inch piece of construction paper with any and everything that popped into my mind about Mike and I at the present moment.
[Should this section be distilled and re-ordered to provide a flavor, not a complete map of the card…?]
In the upper left corner, I started with a palm tree, then mouse ears and balloons. Below that, “Disneyland” with a little mine train chugging up a miniature hill. To the east, “Los Angeles”, the sun surrounded by swirls of smog, and, for emphasis, the word itself repeated three times. Across one side, the geography of his future – and our recent life: “Colorado – Aspen – Snowmass – Los Angeles – Cincinnati?
Given my tiny handwriting, I had lots of space left. Next, a rendition of his “JC” letter sweater, surrounded by other icons of the sport: Molly, names from his little kids’ team, teammates and coach from college, and, incongruously, “Katy Winters”. A maze, leading from “Psychiatrist” to “Doctor” to “Medical School” to “Why”, until, finally, at the center, “Shrink”. Across the bottom, “Loving – Beauty – To – Love – Lovely – Love. I dredged up Jason Robards’ line from 1,000 Clowns, “Why weren’t you born a chair?”. Above that, hints from three songs: “Let it be”, “Like a bird on the wire, I have tried to be free ~ “ and “Sooner or Later, one of us must know that I really did try to get close to you”.
At the top, an homage to our ski week: “Schuss-boomer”, “Chair lifts”, “Snowplow”. His now dead car, Judy Be Good, and a reminder to “Fasten Seat Belts”. In the middle, Mt. Albert, 14,431’
I grabbed some crayons, putting in a topsy turvy rendition of the Birthday Song, ending “Happy Birthday Dearest Mike, Happy Birthday To You.” I placed random green (his favorite color) squiggles, added some orange ones near Los Angeles, and discovered there was still room for a few more tokens. Random words and phrases came to mind: “The only way to grow is to grow together”, Learning, Sharing, Honesty, Outside, Inside, Love, “together apart”, “apart together”, Trying, Love, the first lines to our high school Alma Mater, and in the few remaining spaces, “Mountains and Oceans”, “Oceans and Mountains” repeated several times.
I pasted it on the brown paper with Billy Kidd, and found one remaining blank spot. I grabbed the postcard I’d mailed to my parents, the one with Aspen Mountain on the front, cut off the sides with pinking shears, and glued it down.
Finally, at the top, middle and bottom, I wrote, “Happy Birthday Mike – I Love You Very Much – Sarah Jane”, “Happy Birthday to Mike”, and, finally, “May It Be a Good 21”, his age underlined six times. Pleased with my handiwork, I leaned back, grabbed my father’s 35 mm camera and took a snapshot, before sealing it in a manilla envelope, addressed to West Village, Colorado.
xv
Visiting Mike in Colorado, then creating his 21st birthday card shifted my internal compass. In January and February, as I tentatively explored what being with another man might feel like, my own futurehad become my True North. Dreams of independence crystallized, as I sought active engagement with the problems of the world, and a life devoted to helping young children and their families. Then ten days with Mike, together in that safe and happy isolation we so easily fell into, spun the needle wildly. I felt his pull, the pull of us once more, and poured that through my pen into an accompanying letter.
“…We are just so good together, Mike, you raise me up. We can’t keep it up, not across the country, not forever. But for now, I want to be us again. Are you coming back, to get your diploma? Let me know…”
He called the night after the lifts closed for the season – Patriots’ Day in Boston.
“Janie?” he rasped. “I don’t feel so good. Last night, I had to sit in front of the window, shivering and sweating. I put on my sister’s cheerleader cape, that didn’t do any good. It’s back again. I wish you were here, you could make me better.”
“They said a flu’s been going around. You must have caught it. When are you coming back?”
“I’ll be home the end of this week…” He stopped, coughed, caught his breath, then went on, “…end of the week, get the car fixed up, then drive out to Connecticut the first week in May.”
We both stayed quiet for a while. I was feeling, He should be here, I could have him here with me. I was thinking, That’s not a good idea, he’ll have nothing to do, I’ll have to study, I might get sucked into his world again, the one I need to escape.
His breathing sounded heavy, labored, as if even a whisper would be too much. I said, “They’re talking about another strike here, on the 15th. The Moratorium against the war wants to shut down every campus in the country, do it every month until Nixon finally gets us out.” Still I hesitated, until, finally, my heart won its struggle with my mind. I persisted, “Are you coming back to get your diploma? You said something about trying to get a job in LA.”
Weakly, Mike replied, “They didn’t have anything, not for someone in college. Later, they said, when I’m actually in school there.”
“So are you going to come back here, or not?”
“Yeah,” was all he could manage before a coughing fit overcame him, followed by the sound of shivering, a susurration through his lips and teeth.
Deep in my head, I heard a voice urging, Don’t do it! But instead, I said, “You could stay up here with me, in May, then go down to Calvin for Commencement.” I wondered why that came out. I went on, “. It’s getting scary, and I have to…” I stopped, feeling my own body start to shiver.
“OK…OK, I’ll do that. Thanks. See you then. Have fun.”
A week later, Howard and Bev were sitting by her little black and white TV when I came in the apartment.
“God-damn him!” Howard cursed. Seeing my startled look, he announced, “Cambodia! The evil bastard’s now bombing Cambodia!”
“I thought he said he was going to end it,” I asked rhetorically.
“No way he gets away with this. We have to shut the country down!” he almost hollered.
All weekend, students gathered spontaneously in the yard. On Sunday, we marched to the Square, then across the river, joining throngs from MIT, Boston University, everywhere, it seemed. Thousands of us, drawing in shoppers along the way, overflowed the sidewalks onto Commonwealth, finally spilling through the Garden into the Commons. People talked of another march down in Washington.
The next day, classes still disrupted, it seemed the entire Harvard community – workers, students, faculty, even the administration – broiled in anger. Early in the afternoon, word began to filter out, that National Guardsmen had killed some kids at Kent State. Since I was from Ohio, everyone assumed I knew all about the place. I’d never heard of it before.
The deaths had a chilling effect. I sat with Jeanne, Marcia, and Bev that evening, numb in front of the TV. We talked about the march to Washington.
“Are you going this time, Janie?” Jeanne asked. “You went before, last fall.”
I shook my head. “That did a lot of good, now, didn’t it?” I said sarcastically. “Besides, Mike’s coming this Thursday.”
“What!” Bev erupted. “I thought that was over! What are you thinking, letting him come back here?”
“I’m not thinking,” I admitted. “For one thing, he’s got nowhere to go.”
“And…?”
“And, yeah, I don’t see why I can’t enjoy him, while I still can.”
“You think that’s fair to him?” Jeanne questioned.
“He doesn’t seem to mind,” I responded quietly.
Three days later, there he was, driving a little blue Dodge Dart now, still with bucket seats. “Not quite as sexy as the Lancer,” he noted. That Friday was the last day of classes, with the two-week reading period to follow. If I kept my grades where they were, I had a good chance of graduating the next year Magna cum Laude, which, as my mother might say, would look good on my resumé. My frenzied studies, and Mike’s apparent dislocation after six months of nomadic life, had us both walking on eggshells around each other in the cramped apartment. After about ten days of this, with Mike out on his usual one hour afternoon walk to “get some air”, I sneaked a look at his journal, finding the latest entry, Monday, May 18, 1970:
…Before coming back here to Janie, my letters to her, which of necessity are much more sketchy and less organized than this trash, skipped around from politics to weather, to Janie, and me, and so on. What occupies me now? This is not intended to be a repository of day dreams, or might have beens, or punctured romantic illusions. What it can be, and should do for me, is become the permanent remains of past and immediate concerns and events surrounding us.
Although the present moment doesn’t really qualify as a vantage point, or lend itself to stopping the action and replaying it, some scenes in slow motion, others skipped entirely. Rather, Now is like the middle of the sudden drop on a roller coaster – I know that ahead lies a manageable, spine-tingling, fun and frantic ride, and I’ll love it all when it’s over. But at the moment, my heart is two feet above my head, my stomach’s inside out, and total blackout is much preferred to continuation of the ride.
Janie lies asleep now, resting on her bed. She sleeps a lot lately; whether from lethargy or actual exhaustion, I don’t know. A bit of both I’m sure. But I don’t wake her up anymore. In her mind, I have disorganized her enough up to now, and I should just leave her alone when she wants it. She is so ambiguous in her feelings about me. I brought her to Aspen from Denver, and we were very glad to be together, glad to sleep and rest, and nest next to her body. And we walked and skied, and cooked, and sulked, and loved. And led our quiet, almost silent life together. I didn’t try then, but now I do, try to talk to, with, at, about her, and to have fun, to make at least some moments enjoyable. We still like it when each other smiles.
I want her with me, but all of our past has at last taught me how to accept the tyranny of our individual wishes for and paths of independence. She must finish here, I must become a doctor in Los Angeles. What would the summer have done for us anyway? Our plans would have prolonged the period of waiting. I can still imagine us spending our lives together, once everything about us is settled. She loves me, and I love her, and that’s the type of affection, respect and secret longing that will never really have an end.
I, as usual, am far more willing to accept our present cramped living quarters, not to be oppressed by our continual time together. Or is this only a long, protracted weekend?…
On the next page, a short poem:
Smiling
Was never quite what I had in mind,
But
after a while,
it all seemed so easy –
A fluid, drifting, friendly dinner,
two beds arranged as one,
and the fun
of seeing life
from down below the Roller Coaster.
Stretched out and smiling
Was all I had left in me
To be.
No questions.
Finally, my last birthday poem…
Sarah
and your hair;
Your footprints trace a glowing moment in my memory.
Lightly stepping, traipsing through a sweetened patch of
city,
your ears close out the hurried sounds,
as you smell and dream the river.
At last you’re living twenty-one,
at last we mark
the region of the clock that goes around
at first
then sweeps back again.
You stop, track back, and try to live each year as different
from the rest.
One year
is all you’ve known me, one year
is all you ever will.
Each year, in time, becomes the last,
is drowned in past,
always only one before.
They all emerge as one, these years,
and you know two;
the one you live
and the one you’ve left, as
All your years have gone before.
But Sarah –
Janie –
Don’t forget to live within the years you’ve lived before,
the years I’ve given, taken love,
and
Grown
with you,
to grow again.
I hear you say (I say to me)
“My life is lived from me – I’m the one who celebrates
Today.”
But celebrate with me,
as I celebrate my life
with you,
no matter how you hurt me.
5-11-70
xvi
Schools fell like dominos that spring, after the Kent State and Jackson State killings. All the colleges in the country, it seemed, closed their doors. At the time, I thought it was in response to the angry demonstrations clogging every campus large and small, but now I see it might have been fear that more deaths would ensue.
“So, I’m not going to walk on June 7th, won’t get to dress up and get my diploma,” Mike observed, waving the John Calvin University commencement program. He opened it up, “See, Robert Penn Warren, Andrew Young – they won’t be getting their honorary degrees.” He flipped a few pages. “And here, right here” – he jabbed his finger angrily – “they won’t announce me as cum laude. Or my roommates as magna…”
He looked ready to rant for quite some time. I tried, “Wouldn’t you really rather go home early? Didn’t you say the pool opens May 31? Now you’ll get to see all your friends there, instead of showing up ten days into the season.”
His fists balled up, then gradually opened as he calmed down. “OK. I just thought, that week after you’re done, we could go somewhere, like we always did.”
We’d been so day-to-day, first cooped up together, then flung wildly to the streets, we hadn’t looked that far ahead. Now that I was free, my only thought was going home. My mother would know what to do.
The first night back, she and I were alone in the kitchen, drying the pots and pans, putting them away with a clatter that Lisa would have set to music.
I asked, “Mom, where did I come from? How did I get here?”
She shook her head and laughed, saying, “Sweetie, isn’t it a little late for this conversation? I mean, haven’t you and Mike…”
Quickly I inserted, “No, no. I mean, where did our family, your’s and dad’s, come from. I know where you two were born and all, and your parents. But at some point, somebody left Europe, right? Why, and from where?”
“What do you want to know, Janie?”
“I’ve been going to Hillel at Harvard now and then, and I’m thinking more, about being Jewish, what that means, the history and all.”
She put down the dish towel, folding it neatly then draping it across the oven handle. Her apron went back on the hook inside the closet door. She sat down in the kitchen nook and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, Kools.
“Mom, please don’t,” I asked quietly.
With a soft sigh of regret, she put the pack back in her sweater pocket. “Talking about my family makes me sad. It’s been ten years since your Grandpa Reuben died, and it still hurts every day. And Grammy Sylvia, out there in California with your Uncle Carl, only five years ago…”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bring it up, I didn’t know…”
“No, Janie, it’s OK. It’s good to talk about it. It helps…” She paused, frowning while she thought. “I’m sure I’ve told you this before? Let’s see, my dad’s folks, Grandpa Issac and his wife Sarah – remember, we named you after her? – they were both from Lithuania, I forget what little village it was. They spoke Russian, I’ll never forget when he would tell me, ‘Nyet!’, every time I did something wrong. Then on mother’s side, her grandparents were from…uh, Poland?” She fell silent, lost in thought and memory. I waited for her to continue.
“Then on Dad’s side, his grandparents, Henry and Amelia, they both came from Germany, from Bavaria…no, wait, it was Baden, like bath, a spa town, and he made beer. At least, that’s what he started doing when he got to Cincinnati. They had ten kids, you know. Ten! Your Grandpa George ended up in Boston, the rest spread all over the midwest, Cleveland, Buffalo…Anyway, I never heard about any shetls or pogroms in our past, and they got out long before things went bad, there in Germany and Poland and all over.”
She’d grown quiet, slumped over a bit. With her forehead wrinkled, her dark hair half gone to grey, I felt she’d aged ten years in the months since I’d last been home.
The talk of family reminded me, “Mom? Aunt Helen and Uncle Carl? Toby and Sylvia? They still live out in San Francisco, the Bay Area, right?”
At the mention of her brother and my cousins, and especially feisty Helen, she straightened up, a smile returning as she said, “Of course, they’re still out there. Did you know, your cousin Syl decided to go to law school, and she talked Helen into joining her? They’re both in the first year now, at somewhere called Golden Gate. Why?”
“I’d like to go visit them, later this summer. I haven’t seen them in years, not since they spent the summer with us on the Vineyard. I ought to get to know them again, Syl especially.”
“Oh, sure, sweetie, that’s a good idea. How would you get there? When?”
“I don’t know, right before I go back to school? Don’t worry, I’ll figure something out, fly probably.”
Mom’s eyes brightened as she returned to the present. “How about Mike? Would you see him when you’re out there?”
“He’s not going until the fall. He didn’t find a job in LA, so he’s back at the swim club this summer,” I said brightly, as if reporting some neighborhood gossip.
She appeared skeptical. “So you two are still…?”
“No, mom, I’m pretty sure I’ve moved on. We’ve moved on.”
“Are you going to see him anymore, with him still in town?”
“I suppose so, I mean we’re still friends, we still like to do things together, like go to movies and stuff.”
“Janie, honey, are you sure that’s such a good idea?” It was rare indeed, now that I’d turned twenty-one, that my mother chose to interject herself into my life, my dreams and feelings. “You know I’ve been worried about you and Mike, how things might not work between you. Just because you can, you know, doesn’t mean you should.”
Despite her warning, Mike and I did return to each other on occasion. I had seen M*A*S*H a few months earlier, when it first showed up in Boston. The disjointed cadences of that episodic film, the cavalier cynicism of Elliot Gould and Donald Sutherland, the sneaky anti-war messaging, tinged with cannabis-inflected in-jokes stayed with me through the spring. When the film returned to the Esquire, I called up Mike, and asked him out.
“What, like on a date?” was his response. “I thought…”
“I still like you, buddy. Besides, you’ve got to see this movie.”
“OK, how about Friday? That’s my next night free. And afterwards…?”
Afterwards, with my parents gone for the weekend, playing once more in my little bed came easily, naturally to us. Two weeks later, we repeated the experiment in de-escalation, this time at Mike’s insistence.
“I read this book, I don’t know, at least a dozen times, back in 8th, 9th grade. I’ve been waiting for this movie for years.”
“Who’s in it again?”
“Art Garfunkel and Alan Arkin. It had better be funny. Even better than M*A*S*H, I bet.”
So we went to see Catch-22, at the brand-new suburban triplex theater near Mike’s swim club. He had built up such impossible expectations for the film version that it could never match his own internal images, honed through those endless adolescent day-dreams engendered by all his time with Heller’s book.
Sitting next to him as we drove back to his house, I felt his mood as if it were my own. I reflected on our current summer fling, a nostalgic re-creation of earlier, more innocent times together. While he was willing to come when I called, I sensed he no longer needed or wanted me like before. I wondered how much of that was due to my own repeated spurnings of him, my own confusion. I still felt love for him, I knew that would always be a part of me. I enjoyed the physical closeness of him as much as ever, yet I knew that couldn’t hold us fast together across the miles, across the years. I wondered if friendship were possible, if in the future, we might be like those parents of my friends, who still exchanged Christmas letters with old roommates, decades after college. “Is it him? Could I share my life with him?” I asked myself. Yes, I answered. “Can I do that now?” No, I thought. “Can I wait for our lives to re-intersect, in space, in time?”
Before I could decide, Mike had stopped, waiting to turn left. Cars rolled by, just often enough to keep us stuck at the intersection.
“There’s no one here from yesterday,” I whispered.
xvii
We continued, that sultry muggy summer, to engage and disengage, sharing desultory days and nights, both of us afraid, I guess, to be the first to say good-bye for good. One evening, Mike brought out the slides he’d finally developed from the Moratorium march on Washington. That October weekend now seemed so long ago. The crowd, the optimism, those two eternal flames for the Kennedy brothers – scenes from another life, I thought. Until he showed me the one I took, that profile, looking wistful and serene in his father’s tattered leather jacket. Then I almost cried, my heart literally skipping a beat inside my chest. Why couldn’t he just go away, why did it have to end this way?
One night, driving to another movie, he talked about his dorm, there at USC. “We each get to have our own room, bathrooms in between. Right on the campus, hardly have to walk at all to class. Once I get my bearings, second semester, I’ll find a place to live, in the city. Los Angeles!” He started humming, then singing in his scratchy off-key way, “Surfin’ Safari”. “Huntington and Malibu, they’re shooting the pier, at Rincon they’re walking the nose…they’re angling in Laguna, and in Doheny too…I’ll get to see all those places, get to swim off the pier at Santa Monica,” he enthused.
“Don’t forget San Onofre,” I grumbled. It turned out I had fallen in love with someone whose highest ambition apparently was to be a beach boy. I tried another way to bring that up, through something – someone – he’d been avoiding telling me about all summer. “What’s her name, that swimmer? Molly? What’s she doing now?”
His smile vanished for a second, then he brightened. “She’s off at college, Michigan.”
Surprised at my lack of trepidation, I wondered, “Are you seeing her this summer?”
He pulled his lips into a thin line. “Only at meets. I love to watch her swim”
“How’s she doing?”
“I bet she makes the Olympics in a couple of years.”
Inside, I felt a little guilty, hoping she might become one more dead end for him.
I forget the movie we saw that night. All I remember is thinking, once again, that love, and friendship, spiritual and physical, had felt all-fulfilling so long ago, in the spring of our sixteenth years. But now, I needed more, and he was going, almost gone, taking my heart, but thankfully, not my soul.
Mid-August, I realised I had not yet made plans for that trip to Marin, to see Uncle Carl and Helen, Toby and cousin Syl.
“The prices go up, you know, the longer you wait to make a reservation,” my father said when I told him the fare to fly out there.
“But I’ve only got enough for one-way now. How am I going to get back?”
“Maybe that’s a sign you don’t really want to go?” Mom ventured. I went back upstairs, and leafed once more through the fare book. With a cheap shuttle between LA and San Francisco, then a direct flight home, I could cover it with my savings from the summer. I called up Mike.
“Um, say, I’ve been thinking. I’d like to go out with you, when you drive to California next week, say good-bye to you there?” It was a long shot, and I was asking over the phone, not in person where I could use what little charm I had left with him.
Surprisingly, he said, though in a pretty neutral tone, “Sure, OK. That’d be fun, I guess. If that’s what you want.”
One more chance to let it go. No, I decided, I didn’t want to leave him hating me. I wanted us to be friends, I wanted him to know he had, indeed, meant – still meant – so very much to me. My words, after all the times I’d turned away from us, could never say that. Only sharing his new adventure, at least its start, could let him know…what? What was I trying to say with this, that I cared for him, or maybe that I just wanted to lie in bed with him, if only for a few more nights? He’d make a proper story out of it, but all I felt was muddled.
“Yes, let’s do that, Mike. One more road trip, our Greatest Hits Tour, OK?”
“Okay-aay,” he answered, sounding more than a little skeptical.
In the end, that’s all it was, a farewell tour for Sarah Jane Stein and Michael Harrison. We rolled across the plains of Kansas, fell asleep in Snowmass, the cosmic uncaring stars still playing up above, then drove through the piñon forests of New Mexico, new terrain for us.
Mike swept his hand across the horizon when we stopped for gas in Gallup. “Easy Rider, remember when Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper stopped here? And he makes sure to keep the last drop from spilling with his black leather glove? Whenever I drive these roads out west, that’s what I see – two guys setting off, with all that money hidden in the gas tank, their future fortune still ahead. That’s what I really want, you know, to enjoy the beauty all around me, tell some stories along the way.”
I wished I had his camera once again, to capture that look in his eyes, the romantic lure of his future in this land.
As we dropped down into the LA basin, heading west from San Bernardino into the afternoon heat, I felt over-dressed, even in a short-sleeved pink cotton shirt. “This must be the deodorant capital of the world!” I observed. Mike snorted, “Sorry, no air-conditioning.”
We spent our last night together in another narrow dorm bed, making love not in a frenzy, but with a friendly slow caress. As we started, I murmured to him, “This is just for you.” In the morning, I called a cab and left before he woke, leaving behind a note, written on the back of a memo titled “To: Freshman Students/Re: Introduction to Clinical Medicine (ICM)”. I wrote, in his favorite green ink, using the largest cursive I had ever attempted:
Good-by –
have a good life —— be happy ——
Love
Sarah Jane
don’t be scared – you’re
going to be a good doctor –
– you’re a good person —
please write sometimes —