Just when you think you are alone...
I was so close to renouncing internet communication of any kind... so close... but then, out of nowhere, there she is again, just like the first time we met, and Rocío's light brings me back to when I was 16, and the world was precariously tipping in favor of the darkness and she would steal me away and we would lay belly down on the scarce grass just above the beach, listening to the waves, signing songs from Piñeydo's "Tango feroz" about growth and captivity, and finding yourself alone...
Rocío smiled at me the first day I arrived in tightly-packed classroom. Every desk was double and the only free spot was next to Gonzalo, poor Gonzalo, the eternal odd-man-out, not attractive, not brilliant, not funny, just lonely or alone, I was never quite sure. We shared our "banca" for the rest of the year and I was a "bicho raro" too, with my overalls three sizes too large, shuffling against the sandy recreo tiles. Tie-dye shirts had not made it into vogue in this tiny beach town, but there was Rocío with her blue eyes flashing open, her white teeth inviting a sly return smile. I didn't understand much of what was going on, but she was like my mysterious double, wearing a Peruvian alpaca sweater just like the one I had on, and still wear to this day. It took me a while, that is, to find my way to her, several weeks, and the one time invitations from the "pretty girls" who wanted to know what the "Yanqui" was about and the boys who wanted to hear the racy stories and gauge what their possibilities were. That was the first time I learned, in flesh, the perils of telling a story to the wrong person, trusting when there was no trust on which to base one's faith... stories can be powerful and they can lead to damning outcomes, as I would later learn in the alley between clubs with Sergio or in the Vivero Dunicola or later in an abandoned summer home... Stories make people think they know things about you, but taken out of context or with too many liberties... needless to say I was glad to be a fast-thinker and a powerful orator... stories can only be combatted with more stories and words are a shield in the most desperate of cases.
So, all these years later, Rocío is still mine, at least in a small way, and I can hear her voice, "che", telling me about the fasicnating things she is seeing on her journey of discovery through Bolivia. There are perils, indeed, but in tune with what I was pondering last night, you never do know when people will resurface. I remember the long hours of "truco" in her back yard, picking figs, learning to surf, riding her moto... There is always the call to go back, but strangely we never can. That is why I am unable to renounce this form of communication, there is always that subtext, the life behind the words, the decipherable voice of the people that we love and have lost by virtue of geography.
Rocío smiled at me the first day I arrived in tightly-packed classroom. Every desk was double and the only free spot was next to Gonzalo, poor Gonzalo, the eternal odd-man-out, not attractive, not brilliant, not funny, just lonely or alone, I was never quite sure. We shared our "banca" for the rest of the year and I was a "bicho raro" too, with my overalls three sizes too large, shuffling against the sandy recreo tiles. Tie-dye shirts had not made it into vogue in this tiny beach town, but there was Rocío with her blue eyes flashing open, her white teeth inviting a sly return smile. I didn't understand much of what was going on, but she was like my mysterious double, wearing a Peruvian alpaca sweater just like the one I had on, and still wear to this day. It took me a while, that is, to find my way to her, several weeks, and the one time invitations from the "pretty girls" who wanted to know what the "Yanqui" was about and the boys who wanted to hear the racy stories and gauge what their possibilities were. That was the first time I learned, in flesh, the perils of telling a story to the wrong person, trusting when there was no trust on which to base one's faith... stories can be powerful and they can lead to damning outcomes, as I would later learn in the alley between clubs with Sergio or in the Vivero Dunicola or later in an abandoned summer home... Stories make people think they know things about you, but taken out of context or with too many liberties... needless to say I was glad to be a fast-thinker and a powerful orator... stories can only be combatted with more stories and words are a shield in the most desperate of cases.
So, all these years later, Rocío is still mine, at least in a small way, and I can hear her voice, "che", telling me about the fasicnating things she is seeing on her journey of discovery through Bolivia. There are perils, indeed, but in tune with what I was pondering last night, you never do know when people will resurface. I remember the long hours of "truco" in her back yard, picking figs, learning to surf, riding her moto... There is always the call to go back, but strangely we never can. That is why I am unable to renounce this form of communication, there is always that subtext, the life behind the words, the decipherable voice of the people that we love and have lost by virtue of geography.
posted by ilana at 10:33 a.m.
2 Comments:
on the theme of communication with past selves, and past versions of friends... i wrote this in the summer of 1998, us at 18 and 19, when you came to visit me in arlington.
"ilana and her mexican beau aaron have been here for the past few days. we had fun playing tourists on the mall, walking all the way around the reflecting pond and tidal basin. ilana and i talked while aaron took pictures with their expensive new video camera. it's a whole different cultural approach to traveling: he takes pictures so ilana can take them to mexico in august and show them to his family, who haven't seen him in three years. he's never been to DC before and his enthusiasm for large white marble objects is novel. we broke into the pool last night and swam around in our underwear, then sat in the sauna until we developed a fine mist of sweat. strange how all my conversations with my girlfriends are taking on a new life of their own of late, a neverending ballet of good and bad relationships or terrific and horrific sex. i can't keep track of it all. can imagine us all, years from now, still hashing out issues of trust and poor self-image over a glass of wine..."
so you see, my love, we were precient teenagers. mayhap that was the future seeping into the present? and now a toast to the past haunting the present: to our old selves (such tender lovers of life), all the things we have learned and forgotten, and will relearn. here's to patience for all versions of ourselves (pasadas, presentes y futuras), continued mischievious roadtrips and other exploratory adventures, and the countless glasses of wine we will doubtless drink as we continue to muse.
dear me...
darling you'll have a good laugh over this... but once again... that personal ad that isn't a personal ad has been answered... and funny the propensity that you have for buddhist animal loving fellas... good fellas, for sure... I seem to have for...
I have thought long on this concept: what if there are only a handful of people on the earth and the same ones keep coming into our lives as different incarnations of themselves... don't you find that you select from a given pool not only the same kinds of people but the same group dynamic interactional relationships as well? It is as if there were a predetermined set of persoanlities that will hang off of us... like the low-cut 80's neck-lines, before we new the power of a sexy young thing, when wetting one's lips was a natural relation to dryness of mouth and nothing more, or only the hint of something more...
hmmm. indeed.
and you were so kind to not comment on my ridiculous infatuation with a man who was far too old to be sleeping with me at that tender age (ha ha) ... (or was that later in the text?)
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