I raced past the library and across the quad to the only historic building on the Potsdam State campus, the old Clock Tower, formally known as Satterlee Hall. My school supplies bounced inside my backpack against my lower back. My arms shook from the weight of my new textbooks that I hadn’t had time to store away with everything else in my bag. Darian ran next to me while Mark trailed behind, walking at a snail’s pace as he took in the stereotypical college scene; girls sprawled out in the quad in cut off shorts and bikini tops, trying to catch the attention of the frat boys walking by who whispered to one another as they scanned out their options for the year.
“Mark, we’re gonna be late!” I yelled frustrated, as I grabbed his arm to pull him along. “C’mon!”
“I’m not the one going to college!” he yelled back as he shrugged me off. “I should be basking in the sun in L.A. right now. These chicks are lame compared to the ones in California. What a fucking waste of time,” he continued apathetically.
“Well do whatever you want, I gotta run,” I said, spinning around.
“Fine, I’ll just meet you there! Where is your stupid class anyway?” he asked.
“Room 328. It’s that building straight ahead,” I said, pointing to the Clock Tower.
Darian and I ran across the rest of the quad and climbed the two flights of stairs to my classroom. We peered into the window of the closed classroom door with our heads pushed together and our faces pressed up against the glass so that we could get a closer look. I was relieved to see the front row of seats almost completely empty. The majority of students scattered throughout the back of the classroom talking to each other and goofing off. I opened the door and Darian and I walked to the center seats in the first row. If this class was going to “blow my mind” the way Patrick had promised it would, I wanted the best seat in the house. After sitting down, I turned around and took in my new surroundings as well as my new peers. Everyone was clearly younger than me, straight out of high school. Looking around, I immediately felt grateful for my youthful appearance. It was unlikely that the other students would be able to tell that I was a full three years older than all of them. I actually still looked younger than most of them.
A few minutes later, Dr. Stein walked in and, for a moment, I felt a brief pang of disappointment pull my shoulders down to a slouch. Dr. Stein carried no leather satchel, no notes. There was no corduroy jacket with suede elbow patches on it or round, tortoise eyeglasses framing his face. He hadn’t dressed the part of a professor who looked as if he was about to rock my world. Rather, he looked more like a dressed-down angel. Bare, pale arms hung off his upper torso, punctuated by an unimpressive, old, white t-shirt. He wore beat up jeans and comfortable, white sneakers. It was his thick, white hair, which also took over the bottom half of his face, that lent him his wise appearance, giving him license to own the space around him in a quiet, knowing way.
“Welcome,” Dr. Stein said with a slow, genuine smile. It made me feel a little giddy. I pulled my notebook and pencil out of my backpack in preparation for his big lecture, the one that would change me, make me see the world in a new light.
“So, how many of you are registered for Poli Sci 100 with Len Stein?” he asked. Everyone either said yes or simply nodded their heads.
“Wonderful,” he said. “I’m Len Stein so I guess everybody’s in the right place,” he added in a congratulatory fashion.
We had passed our first test. I let out a barely audible nervous laugh through my nose as I tapped the tip of my freshly sharpened pencil onto my notebook to relieve some of the excited tension I was feeling.
“Okay, political science 100. What does that even mean?” Dr. Stein asked coyly as he looked out at the class. “Politics. What are politics?” he continued as he began to pace across the front of the room a few feet away from Darian and me. “Anybody want to give it a stab?” he asked.
Darian and I looked at each other and then back down at our desks. Neither of us felt brave enough to speak. I straightened by back and prepared to write down his answer.
“Anybody? Hello?” Dr. Stein asked. “Anybody out there?” he hollered out through his cupped hands as if he were calling across an entire valley. A few laughs popped throughout the class and then there was silence again. Dr. Stein let out a long, dramatic exhale. “Everybody’s so scared,” he said. “It’s the first day of class, what if I get the answer wrong?” he asked, pretending to be a student himself. “There are no wrong answers here folks,” Dr. Stein continued. “What comes to mind when you hear the word politics? Just shout out some words. You don’t even have to give me complete sentences right now.”
“Power,” someone said from the back of the class.
“Exactly!” Dr. Stein replied.
I jotted down the equation “politics = power” into my notebook.
“If there was no such thing as power, politics wouldn’t even exist,” Dr. Stein said raising his voice. “What group of people in our country would you say have the most power?”
Just then, the door to the classroom opened and Mark walked in. He stood there for a moment considering the seat next to me, but upon seeing Dr. Stein, decided to walk to the back of the classroom and take an empty chair in the last row. Darian and I looked up at him for a split second and then back at Dr. Stein.
“Who has the most power in this country?” Dr. Stein asked again.
“White men,” I called out with confidence.
“Bingo!” Dr. Stein replied with gusto as he pointed at me. I put my pencil down slowly as I sat there in complete awe. “Was a white, male professor really going to have this conversation with us?” I wondered. Right here in a classroom with 30 kids? I turned around to see what Mark was doing. He looked incredibly out of place. Strung out with his green paisley robe on, Mark looked around the room and seemed to recognize that he didn’t belong there.
“Where do politics take place?” Dr. Stein asked the class, pulling my attention back to the present moment in front of the classroom.
“The White House,” a guy from the back offered.
“Washington, DC,” another voice added.
“Yes, we certainly see politics taking place in Washington, DC. Is that the only place politics happen?” Dr. Stein asked. We shook our heads no.
“Okay, where else then? How about McDonald’s?” Dr. Stein asked. “Do you think politics take place in McDonald’s?” The room went silent. “What, you think everybody working in McDonald’s has an equal amount of power?” Dr. Stein said, as he froze mid-pace across the room. He turned out to the class. “Politics are everywhere,” he said as he moved his bare, white arms across the space in front of him, practically touching the top of my head. He turned away from us and continued his pace back and forth across the front of the room. “If there are two people in a room together, there are politics! Who has the most power in this room right now?”
“I do!” I heard Mark holler from the back of the class. I turned around and saw him standing and pointing at his chest as if to challenge Dr. Stein.
“You do,” I quickly said to Dr. Stein.
“Yup. I sure do,” he replied. “I’m the one grading all of you, so I’m the one with the most power in this room.”
Mark had been shown up. I could tell he was embarrassed and pissed off. He began to pace across the entire width of the room behind the last row of seats, creating a mirror image of Dr. Stein in front of the room. The two of them paced back and forth together in unison as Dr. Stein continued to talk about power.
“But let’s put that aside for right now,” Dr. Stein continued in a softer voice. “We’re ready for your first assignment. I’m not grading this, so nobody has to get nervous. What I want you to do is to think back on your entire life,” Dr. Stein said, followed by a long pause. It seemed after 30 years of teaching the subject that Dr. Stein realized that students needed time throughout his discussions to sit with the material and absorb what he was saying. I could tell he knew exactly what he was going to say next but was simply waiting for the class to catch up to him before continuing to speak. I noticed that his pauses also had a way of adding dramatic effect to his lectures, keeping the entire class engaged and hanging on to his every word. It occurred to me that even a good teacher has to have a grasp of basic acting and performance techniques in order to keep an audience actively listening.
“So, we’re all going to think about a time when we first realized that someone other than ourselves had more power than we did in a certain situation, some event that really sticks out in our minds. It can be a parent, a teacher, an authority figure. It can be an aggressor, a bully,” he said looking directly back at Mark. “Anybody you feel comfortable enough to write about,” Dr. Stein said, as he looked down at my notebook. “We’re going to spend the next 25 minutes of class writing down our stories about a time when we lost our power. Let me repeat, nobody has to hand these in. I’m not going to read them unless you want me to. If anybody does happen to want to share his or her story with the class, we can do that if there’s time at the end. Sound good?”
We nodded back at him.
“Now, I’m going to step outside for a moment. But just a word of advice, don’t go anywhere ‘cause I’m coming back. Sometimes when I do this on the first day of class, some of you think I won’t notice if you walk out. But I always notice. I’ve actually already memorized all of your faces,” Dr. Stein added with a sly smile.
The room broke into a nervous laughter and Dr. Stein walked out of the room. I looked down at my notebook and began to write about the night Mark assaulted me. Darian put her head down on the desk next to mine and looked up at me as I wrote.
“I lost my power over three years ago,” I began. “I took a cab, one evening, over to the West Village on a rainy night shortly after moving to NYC.”
“This class is complete bullshit!” Mark interrupted as he moved closer to me, hovering over my desk. “Seriously? You’re gonna do this? You’re kidding right? After everything we’ve been through together?”
Darian pulled her head up off the desk and watched as Mark sat down in the empty seat on my other side, continuing to plead for my cooperation.
“Shit, I’m the only relationship you’ve ever been in and you’re just gonna turn me in like I’m some kind of fucking criminal? You’re not the only one with a story, you know! You’re not the only fucking victim in the world! I have a story too! That’s right, I have a fucking story! So, what, I’m a white male. Big fucking deal. I haven’t always had all the power in the world. My dad beat the shit out of me every day my whole life and you know what my mom did? Nothing! She didn’t do a fucking goddamn thing to stop him!” Mark continued, beginning to cry. “Not once! You know, I could have fucking raped you that night! I could have fucking killed you and I chose not to. I fucking saved you instead! You had me sobbing in your arms like a goddamn baby and what are you gonna do? You’re just gonna turn me in? Write about our night together? It wasn’t all bad Dottie!” Mark added, crying harder now. If you had come back you would have seen that I wasn’t all bad, that I’m not all bad. I was gonna try to be better for you. I’m not some fucking monster! I have a story too!”
I put my hands over my ears, hoping Mark would stop. Then I picked up my pencil again and began to write.
“Out of nowhere, I felt the back of his hand smack my cheekbone so hard that it nearly knocked me down. It left me in a complete state of shock. I was a deer in headlights and before I could react I felt myself rise up into the air as he lifted me and proceeded to hurl my body across the room at the wall, which I crashed into, leaving me like a puddle on the ground.”
“What about your parents?” Mark interjected again, beginning to sound even more desperate. I was immediately pulled away from my writing, no longer able to ignore him.
“If you write this, it’s gonna get out there,” Mark continued. “Your parents are gonna find out. This is a small town, Dottie. You really think they can handle this right now with everything they’re dealing with? Huh? But I guess you’ve always had shitty judgment so go ahead. Turn me in ‘cause nobody is gonna believe you anyway. Nobody is gonna fucking believe you!” Mark screamed as he grabbed my pencil from my hand and threw it onto the floor. He began to back up to the door just as Dr. Stein walked through it and back into the classroom. Mark continued backing out the door while holding his gaze on me steady until the door finally shut on him.
Breathless, I looked back down at my paper feeling like my own story had become my worst enemy. I placed my hands over the white sheet, covering up my words, barely believing I had come so close to sharing them with the world. My fingers moved across the paper slowly until they eventually stiffened, crumpling my words towards my chest. I looked over at Darian who stared back at me with tears rolling down her cheeks. We were trapped. Three years later and we were still trapped. It seemed even after all of this time that nothing could be done to change that simple fact. I was still being held hostage. I stood up, grabbed my pencil off the floor, and threw my crumpled paper into the trash. As I walked back to my desk, I looked up at Dr. Stein, who had sat down at his desk in the front of the room directly facing mine. He gave me a wink and reminded the class that we weren’t expected to hand in this assignment.
I sat back down, feeling defeated. But despite this feeling, I recognized that something in my situation had changed in that moment. I just didn’t know what that something was exactly. It’s a difficult sensation to describe. It was as if I was sitting in the cockpit of a jet without remembering how to fly, and Dr. Stein was waiting on the ground not realizing that I could no longer recall how to take off. So, there I sat in that jet across from him, an abyss between us, wondering when the instructions would come to me, when the missing element would reveal itself. I pulled out another sheet of paper and stared at it for a moment until I began to write again.
“Rooted” If you only knew everything that I have been through Trying to get this thing to fly Get it up into the sky When I dropped down to my knees and looked up at the blue I noticed it was trees all the while keeping me from you Rock solid in the earth No way to get around I suppose it's how they're planted Arranged that way in the ground I knew I'd have to bear down hard Pray to a God I couldn't see Sink deeper than that darkest place Sink deeper than those rooted trees How could I fly through all of this green Through all the tangled and obscene Leave this jet is what you said It may feel safe, but it's your cage But the trees, they look like me The way they sometimes sway and sing And in this jet I watch over them still In case they topple or have a bad spill As rooted as they are, I tend to be as well
I folded up my poem and placed it into my backpack. I looked up at Dr. Stein, sitting there reading a newspaper at his desk in the front of the room. I imagined he was well aware of the fact that he was in the process of releasing not only me, but also all of the students in his class from an invisible type of bondage that nobody had ever given us permission to discuss before.
I thought about Patrick in that moment and how I’d like to thank him someday for being the impetus that pushed me towards this class. If it were not for him, I would have already been living in L.A., moving farther and farther away from myself. I looked over at Darian and she smiled at me. She still believed in me and someday I knew I would eventually win her back. We both knew we were exactly where we needed to be in order for that to happen. We were home and we would be integrated again soon enough, somehow. It was just a matter of time. I could feel it, it was so palpable, so within reach. Just beyond that cage door.
Darian and I walked to our next class arm in arm. Having her so close I could almost feel my limbs again, feel the faint beating of my own heart. The key was to overcome Mark and although I still didn’t know how to do that, I did know that turning him in at that time would not have helped me become whole again. I needed to stay focused on myself rather than him. Anything that helped me with that only seemed to make me stronger.
Darian and I chose to sit front and center again in our Philosophy 100 class, which was being taught by my father’s best friend, Dr. Bob Mardelli. I liked Bob and had always felt comfortable calling him by his first name much to my parents’ chagrin. He had all of these cool hobbies that I always attributed to the light work schedule of a college professor. He and my dad spent a considerable amount of time together each week while I was growing up. They would get together on a regular basis for a cup of tea and a good philosophical argument. My father always let me tag along, as I tended to find their discussions quite entertaining. But as well as I knew Bob, I had decided I would make the extra effort and call him, “Dr. Mardelli” whenever I was in his class, now that I was going to be one of his students.
Unlike Dr. Sein, Bob called roll once the students were all seated at the beginning of each class. But just as his first lecture was about to begin, a guy around my age, rushed in through the classroom door looking like he had just rolled out of bed, even though it was already 3:00 in the afternoon.
“Name please?” Bob asked, interrupting his own lecture.
“David Blesser,” the guy answered.
My eyes followed David to the back of the class where he took his seat. His wavy, messy hair was the color of honey. He wore jeans and a fitted, plaid, button-down shirt with short sleeves. The buttons on his shirt were misaligned. He carried no books, backpack, or writing utensils. I caught myself staring at him just as he was about to make eye contact with me and quickly spun back around at my desk.
“Has everyone already purchased their books for this class?” Bob asked. “For those of you who haven’t, you’ll want to get those right away. Reading assignments begin tonight. I’m handing out a syllabus right now. As you’ll see, we’ll be reviewing the history of philosophy during our first month, then jumping directly into existentialism. That happens to be one of my favorite areas of philosophy, so we’ll be reading quite a bit of it.”
I flipped through the syllabus and took a deep breath as the paperwork made its way around the rest of the class. As excited as I was, my first semester in college was clearly going to involve a lot of reading, much more than I was used to. Still, between this class and Dr. Stein’s, I made the decision right then and there that I was in love with college and that I wanted to add two more courses to my schedule, making me a full-time student. I felt confident that I’d be able to handle it.
“Are we going to be reading any of Kierkegaard’s entire works? Those are some of my favorite as well,” David Blesser seemed to say out loud to himself, as he began to flip through his copy of the syllabus in the back of the room. I turned around in my seat and glanced at him again quickly. There was something intriguing about him. How the hell did he know who Kierkegaard even was? And being that he clearly already knew, why was he choosing to take Philosophy 100? He seemed more suited for an upper level Philosophy course.
“Yes,” Bob answered pleasantly surprised. “We’re going to be reading a couple of his books actually. Bottom of page three on your syllabus. So, you already know Kierkegaard, hey? Impressive. Anyone else in here know who Kierkegaard is?”
Nobody answered.
“Well, that’s to be expected. That’s what 100 level coursework is for,” Bob said so as not to scare the rest of us off.
At 4pm, Darian and I raced back to the Student Union where my mom and I had agreed would be my pick-up spot after classes. I was so excited to tell her all about my day. When we got there, Mark was already sitting in the back seat of her car, staring out at us through his window with a sulky look on his face. Darian got in the back seat next to him and I sat next to my mother in the front.
“Hi Mom!”
“Well, if it isn’t my little college student! How was your first day?” she asked.
“Oh my God, I love college!” I exclaimed.
“Are you serious? Honey, I’m so happy for you! You never liked school growing up. That’s so wonderful!”
“Yeah, it’s so different from high school. It’s actually interesting. It’s about real life, real subjects. I’m completely in love with it!”
“Did Bob say anything when you walked into his class today?”
“No, he just smiled. I think he’s happy to have me in there. His lecture was actually really good. It was cool to see him up there doing his thing.”
“You didn’t call him Bob in front of the other students, did you?”
“No, of course not!”
“And it’s Dr. Mardelli, not Mister. You know that, right?”
“Mom, I’m not stupid.”
Just then a butterfly hit my mom’s windshield as we were driving.
“Damn it,” my mom said. That’s the third butterfly I’ve killed this week.
“What’s up with all these butterflies? They’re everywhere,” I said. “I don’t remember ever seeing so many of them growing up.”
“I know. It’s crazy! I was just listening to something on NPR about it, something about how they’re migrating this year. Apparently, there’s going to be even more of them next spring. So anyway, what about your other class? The political science class you were so excited about.”
“Oh, that class was amazing! I want to take everything he teaches. But I have to wait until I’m done with this one cause it’s a pre-req for his other courses. Actually, I want to add two more classes to my schedule this semester and just go full-time. I think I can handle it.”
“Honey, are you sure?”
“Yeah, definitely,” I said as I turned around and smiled at Darian. Mark rolled his eyes.
“Well, that’s fantastic! I knew it was time for you to come back home. I knew it, I just knew it.”
“You were right,” I said knowing how much my mom would appreciate the credit.
“Mothers always are,” she replied.
I ended up getting an A in all four classes that fall. I had never been a strong student growing up, so it came as a shock to my entire family. But I was driven to do well. It seemed the more I learned, the more empowered I felt. It was incredibly motivating. I had enjoyed my political science and philosophy classes so much that I decided to take additional courses in those disciplines the following spring. I took Women and Politics, a feminist theory course offered by the political science department, and Contemporary Moral Issues, another course in the philosophy department. I also began to make friends with my new peer group. Two women in my feminist theory class, Kori and Jen, asked me to join a feminist student organization they were interested in creating on campus called, “The Women’s Group.” In addition, David Blesser from my Philosophy 100 class ended up being in my Moral Issues class that spring. Although he and I had never spoken directly to each other the previous semester, I found myself becoming more and more drawn to him. He seemed light years ahead of anyone in my class intelligence wise, and then there were his eyes. By April, it was the image of those soft blue eyes that had begun to gently soothe me to sleep each night. So, by the end of the month, I finally found the courage to ask David out one day after class. I decided that having taken a class together before might be a nice excuse to talk to him now.
“Hey, it’s pretty warm out for April in Potsdam. Feel like taking a walk?” I asked David, as he began to gather his things at the end of class. Darian stood next to me smiling from ear to ear, but it was easier for me to keep my cool as I studied his response.
“Sure,” he said looking somewhat surprised. Hadn’t anyone ever asked him out before, I wondered?
David had been covered up all winter long in sweaters and a jacket. It was nice to see his exposed arms again in a plaid, button down shirt with his buttons askew. I quickly recalled that his buttons had always been misaligned the previous semester as well, before sweater season had fallen upon us, and wondered why that was. He was so brilliant, why were buttons such a problem for him? But the thought dissipated when he walked past me, and his arm rubbed up against mine for a moment while he stepped out of the way for another student to move beside us.
“Where would you like to go?” David asked.
“I don’t know. We could walk around campus. Get some fresh air,” I replied with a smile.
The fluorescent lights typical in institutions have always made me feel groggy and lifeless. By the time David and I got outside, however, I felt overcome with joy. Warm weather in Potsdam was hard to come by and I was finally having a conversation with David Blesser after being in classes with him for several months.
“So, you were in my Philosophy class last semester too,” I awkwardly reminded him, just in case he didn’t remember me.
“I know,” he replied, laughing. “There were less than twenty students in that class.”
“Well you never said hi or anything this semester, so I thought maybe you didn’t recognize me.”
“I’m just really shy,” David replied not looking at me.
“Oh. Yeah, I’m really shy too sometimes,” I replied. So, are you a philosophy major?”
“No. I’m just taking a few classes here and there.”
“Well, you seem really smart. You knew more about Kierkegaard than Dr. Mardelli did last semester.”
“I love existentialism. If I was going to major in something it would definitely be philosophy,” David said in his usual, muted tone. Although David’s cadence was often flat whenever he spoke, he still somehow always managed to convey a passion for the subject of existentialism. Whenever he talked about it, it was like he was aware of some universal secret that no one else knew about and was simply waiting for the rest of the world to catch up to him.
“Well I’m glad you’re in my class again this semester. You really seem at home with the subject and you certainly add a lot to the discussions.”
“Thank you,” David said as his face blushed.
“You’re also kind of different from everyone else in a nice way,” I said with some hesitation.
“What do you mean different?”
“You just seem…more mature. Like you’ve had a life before this place.”
“Well, I’m 21.”
“So am I!” I exclaimed.
“Really?”
“Yeah. I took a few years off and went to theater school in NYC after high school. I grew up here though.”
“What made you come back?”
“I really wanted to take a class with this professor, Len Stein over in Political Science. Have you heard of him?”
“No.”
“Well, he’s amazing. Try to take a class with him at some point if you can.”
Darian, David and I continued to walk through the campus until we got to a path behind the residence halls. It was fairly isolated back there, so I was beginning to feel slightly uncomfortable. It was when I tried to steer the three of us back towards civilization that I realized David and Darian were no longer by my side. I turned around and saw them crouched down studying something on the dirt path. That’s when I noticed Mark approaching us from the parking lot. My heart sank. He was going to ruin everything for me like he always did. I had been seeing less of him since starting school so I had hoped he wouldn’t find out about David so quickly.
“Who’s that fagot?” Mark asked when he got to me, stretching his arms over his head. “What’s he doing with Darian?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. Then I moved away from Mark and walked towards David and Darian to see what they were looking at. They were both hovering over an injured butterfly and studying it as it suffered. I had almost stepped on it just prior to realizing that David and Darian were no longer walking with me. At the time, I had simply stepped over the butterfly and had continued to walk.
“What’s wrong?” I asked David, trying to get his attention.
“This butterfly is injured,” he replied.
“Yeah, I saw it earlier. Do you want to keep on walking?” I asked, feeling impatient now that Mark had found us.
“No,” David replied. “We can’t just leave the butterfly here in this condition.”
I looked over at Mark as he rolled his eyes at David’s statement.
“Well, do you want me to just step on it and kill it? It won’t bother me,” I said, without emotion, as Mark walked up and stood next to me to get a closer look.
David looked up at me and then at Mark. My jaw dropped. How could he possibly see Mark? I couldn’t even see Mark.
“Why would you ever kill a living thing?” David asked, looking directly into my eyes. Something about how he was looking at me seemed to awaken something inside of me, lifting the haze I had been living under for the past three years.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Mark asked turning to me. “Where did you find this pussy?” he added, laughing.
“I just wanted to kill it to put it out of its misery,” I said sheepishly, hoping to redeem myself with David.
David looked at Mark again and then back at me.
“Dottie, can you find a large leaf?” David asked me. Large enough to fit this butterfly on.”
I began to look on the ground around me but couldn’t find any leaves, so I had to walk back towards the woods. Mark followed me.
“Dottie, can you find me a tree so I can piss on it?” Mark asked as he put his arm around me.
“Go fuck yourself,” I replied as I pushed his arm back off.
“Actually, that is a fantastic idea! I was gonna go jerk off now. Wanna join me?”
I ignored him.
“C’mon, jerk me off,” persisted Mark, now whispering into my ears. I pushed both of my hands onto Mark’s upper torso and slammed him into the nearest tree.
“Get the fuck away from me!” I screamed.
“Fine. I’ll meet you at your mom’s car at five,” Mark said. Then he spat on the ground and walked away looking disgusted.
As Mark faded into the distance, Darian tapped me on the shoulder and handed me a large leaf. Then she and I walked back over to David and knelt next to him on the ground. David had found two small twigs and placed them under each of the butterfly’s wings as he lifted it, placing it gently onto the leaf. I studied his hands as he worked. They were so beautiful, so full of patience and love. I suddenly knew in that moment, without a doubt, that those hands would eventually heal me as well. David looked up at the sky, located the sun and followed its rays down to a bright spot on the ground. Then he carefully carried the leaf to that spot and placed it in the direct sunlight.
“What are you doing?” I asked David.
“Sunlight rays aren’t what we think they are,” he answered. “They’re actually more like a spotlight. God can choose to perform miracles in them. That’s why they feel so healing when you’re in them. Haven’t you ever noticed that?” David asked as he looked over at me.
“No,” I replied, in shock.
“You’ve never witnessed a miracle in the light of God?” he asked, looking surprised.
I shook my head no.
“When you bring a broken life into the light, God shall heal it.”
“Did you just use the word shall?” I asked, letting out a small laugh. “I’ve never heard anyone actually ever use that word before. Shall. You see it in elevators though. Elevators shall not be used in the event of a fire,” I said in my news caster voice impersonation. David didn’t laugh though. My humor seemed lost on him.
My lower jaw gave way to gravity as I stood there in complete awe. David was religious. I was hanging out with someone who believed in God and miracles. He was the antithesis of my father I had always wondered about but had rarely met. Listening to David, it struck me how sure of himself he was, which was exactly how my dad always sounded when he talked about how God didn’t exist. I always assumed that religious people had their doubts, that when they spoke in absolutes that they were as much trying to convince themselves as they were others. How could they really believe what they were saying after all? They had no evidence. They had no science to back up their gospel. But my father had always said that he had absolute proof that God did not exist. Scientific proof. So, when my father spoke with confidence about atheism, I had always assumed it was a direct result of this proof. Yet David sincerely believed in miracles and claimed that he had absolute proof as well. That I was standing one foot away from someone who believed so steadfastly in God seemed to be a miracle in itself.
Darian and I ran to meet my mom in front of the Student Union for our daily ride home an hour later. The butterfly incident had made us lose track of time, so we were nearly fifteen minutes late. Mark was already in the back seat waiting. I could hear Vivaldi blasting from my parents’ car, which meant that my father had picked me up instead of my mom. My mom always listened to pop music when driving.
“Hey Dad. Where’s mom?” I asked.
“She is not feeling well,” my dad replied. “Potsdam is a small town. She ran into Patient C at the grocery store this morning so that has put her in one of her moods. She is sleeping now.”
“I’m sorry I’m late. I was taking a walk with a new friend from class.”
“That is fine. It is good to have some time with friends. Did you have a nice walk?”
“Yeah, it was different. We stumbled across an injured butterfly, so this guy put the butterfly into a path of sunlight for God to heal it,” I said very matter-of-factly just to fuck with my dad.
“What? What are you talking about?”
I began laughing and turned around to see Darian’s face. She wasn’t laughing with me. Mark was just staring up at the sky.
“Why are you becoming friends with an idiot?” my dad continued. “Aren’t there smarter people to spend time with now that you are in college?”
I looked up at the sky as well and noticed that the weather had changed. Dark, ominous clouds seemed to chase my father’s car from behind and droplets began to hit his windshield.
“My friend is super smart! He knew more about Kierkegaard than Bob did in Bob’s class last semester!”
“Oh, that guy. You told me about him last semester. He believes in God? Well, he sounds like a fool then. Actually, I am taping a vedy good program right now on PBS about Christianity. I’m going to use it in my book. Parisa and I are watching it together. But I had to leave to come pick you up.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“It is all right. Maybe we should look into getting you a used car now that you are so busy with school.”
Once we got home, Mark, Darian and I walked into the family room and saw my sister engrossed in the TV program that my dad had mentioned. My father immediately sat back down with her on the couch and Mark sat on the other side of him. Darian grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the room towards the stairs and took me to my mother who was sound asleep in her bed. Darian climbed into the bed and held my mother as I sat and watched the two of them for a moment. I thought about my experience with David earlier in the day. I noticed how the mood in my house felt so different than the mood had felt with him. With David near me, there was so much light and hope. Here in my house, however, there was only doom. Then I lied down next to Darian and fell asleep until my mom woke me up an hour later when she began to stir.
“What time is it?” my mom asked as she drifted back into consciousness.
“Almost six o’clock,” I replied, looking over at the clock on her nightstand.
“I saw that stupid bitch in the grocery story this morning and it ruined my entire day.”
“I’m sorry. Try not to give her that kind of power, Mom.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You’re not the wife. You’re the daughter. And it’s not just her. It’s everybody. Everybody looks at me now like I’m married to some kind of rapist,” she explained with disdain. “They just stare at me and start whispering, these small minds in this small town. It’s driving me crazy. I can’t take it anymore.”
“Why don’t we just all move then? Just pack up and start over somewhere else. We can go someplace where nobody knows us, where nobody knows about Dad.”
“Where? You think your father is gonna leave this house?” my mom snapped back.
“Well, I’ll go grocery shopping with you from now on, so that you’re not alone, okay?”
“I don’t want to go grocery shopping anymore. I don’t want to go anywhere anymore. I’m not leaving this house again. If people want to eat, they’re going to have to figure something out for themselves. I’m finished,” my mom said as she pulled herself up into a seated position.
“Okay, Mom. Well, I’ll go make pasta for everyone. I’ll call you when it’s ready.”
“I don’t want to eat anything,” my mom answered, turning on her bed lamp and pulling a book off her nightstand.
I got up from the bed, but from the look on Darian’s face I could tell that she fully intended on staying with my mom. So, I walked out to the foyer and headed back downstairs. Once I reached the first floor, I felt something cold and wet drip onto the top of my head. I looked up and another drop landed directly in my eye. I wiped my face and moved out of the path of whatever liquid was falling on me. When I looked up, I saw that my father’s cathedral had fallen prey to the rain once again. A brown spot that had leaked years earlier had slowly grown again and given way to the elements. I let out a sigh and then went back into the family room where the rest of my family had already dispersed. The television program must have finished. My father had moved back to his makeshift desk in the laundry room, his head directly below the laundry chute that connected to an opening in my second-floor bathroom. He sat there with noise cancellation headphones on amidst the quiet first floor, typing away furiously on his computer keyboard.
“Dad, the ceiling is leaking again in the foyer,” I said.
“What?” my father asked as he removed his headphones.
“Your cathedral is leaking,” I said.
“No, really? Let me see.”
My dad stood up, quickly followed me out, and inspected the damage.
“Yes,” he responded listlessly. “I will have to patch it once it stops raining. Maybe you can help me with that.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll get a bucket for now to catch this water. I can try to do a quick repair tomorrow, but I will need you to help me do the full repair once the rainy season is over in a month or so, all right?”
“Okay.”
“Is your mother planning to make dinner tonight?” my father asked as he headed back into the family room.
“No, I’m going to make some pasta right now for all of us.”
“Vedy good. That sounds nice. Thank you.”
Later that evening was when the nightmares began. My house had begun to absorb the darkness in our lives, its decomposition more rapid as it kept us trapped in our shared nightmare. In my dreams, Mark and my house had merged into one evil entity forever holding me hostage. And each night as I slept, I fought for my life as large, red arms smacked me up against the walls of Mark’s inescapable pinball machine. But my house, it turned out, wasn’t the only thing casting a dark shadow over my life that semester. Although I managed to continue to do well in all of my classes that spring, my Women in Politics class was beginning to bother me. The professor teaching the course, Dr. Lilly, a white woman in her late thirties, seemed to only be telling her class half-truths and it was beginning to get under my skin. Dr. Lilly stood in front of the class, her long, blonde hair reaching the very bottom of her back. She dressed like a cross between an aging hippie and a businesswoman, wearing a men’s blazer on top of a floral loose-fitting blouse with slacks and ballet flats. She spoke in absolutes with a slightly condescending tone. The topic that day was sexual assault. I had not been looking forward to the lecture and wondered what she thought of my father, whom I imagined she was familiar with from watching the local news.
“Women do not lie about sexual assault,” Dr. Lilly said with a straight face as she looked out at the class.
I sat in horror as her words escaped her lips and punched me directly in the face. All I wanted to do was punch her right back, but I could barely speak.
“That’s not true,” I tried to say, my voice barely audible. So, I raised my hand to say it again louder, but Dr. Lilly refused to call on me. “That’s not true!” I finally called out.
Dr. Lilly continued to ignore me, barely pausing as she continued with her lecture. I raised my hand again, hoping we could have an honest discussion, but to no avail. Dr. Lilly would not address my statement. I turned around and looked at the class of eighteen-year-olds seated behind me. One student, an African-American male, had heard me. I could tell from the look on his face that he was feeling uncomfortable. I nodded to him as Dr. Lilly continued her babbling falsehoods to the class so that he’d know he wasn’t alone in his thinking, then turned back around at my desk and sat there feeling frustrated until the painful lecture finally ended.
After class I approached Dr. Lilly, my emotions beginning to rise through me like fire. Had she simply heard me out when I had tried to speak, given credit to my experience in this world, it would not have come to this. But she almost seemed afraid to address me. A woman in her thirties with a fucking Ph.D. was too afraid to be questioned. Perhaps she had become a professor so that she could profess without ever being questioned.
“I’d like to talk to you about today’s class,” I asserted as calmly as possible.
“I heard what you said today, and I didn’t appreciate you trying to talk over my lecture,” Dr. Lilly responded.
“Talking over your lecture wasn’t my intention, but you kept ignoring me even when I raised my hand. What you told the class today was ludicrous. White people have lied about rape on women for years as a way to legitimize the lynching of black men. And even if that weren’t the case, women never lie about sexual assault? That isn’t even statistically possible? Why would you ever say that to a classroom of young, impressionable students? I was embarrassed to be a woman in your class today.”
“For your information, there has been quite a bit of research done on sexual assault and although there may be a woman who lies about it from time to time, that number is statistically insignificant. Sometimes innocent men have to suffer in order for women’s rights to advance, but the sacrifice is small when you look at the amount of women who have been raped, abused, and killed at the hands of men over the centuries.”
It didn’t take long for me to break.
“Statistically insignificant?” I asked as tears began to roll down my cheeks. “Do you even know who I am, who my father is?” I asked crying.
“I am aware of your father’s case.”
“Well, guess what?” I said, my voice beginning to rise. “He’s innocent! And just because he has dark skin doesn’t make him statistically insignificant! You don’t know anything! You’re just feeding people a bunch of bullshit so that you can brainwash everyone to believe your stupid-ass white feminist lies!”
“I do not appreciate the tone of voice you are using with me right now! May I remind you that you are a student in my class, that this semester is not over, and that I will be grading you at the end of it. But what is over is this conversation. If you need to talk to me again, it will be in my office during my office hours.
Dr. Lilly grabbed her satchel and stormed out of her class as I stood there shaking. Then Kori and Jen, my two friends whom I had started the Women’s Group with from class, who had been standing in the hallway during the duration of our argument, walked back in.
“Holy shit! What the hell was that?” Kori asked me. “What was your deal in class today? You were fucking losing your shit.”
“Her lecture was a big fucking lie!” I replied.
“Well, you’re gonna get kicked out of school if you keep that shit up. C’mon, we’re gonna be late for our Women’s Group meeting.”
“I’m not going,” I said.
“You have to, Dottie. You’re the treasurer! C’mon, we’ll get pizza afterwards. You have to go,” Jen said as she pulled my arm.
“I don’t want to.”
“We can’t hold the meeting without you. We’re depending on you to be there.”
It was true. I had taken an oath when I took on the treasurer position of The Women’s Group earlier that semester, but the longer I studied feminism in my Women in Politics class, the less the movement seemed to appeal to me. Still, Kori and Jen had become my closest friends at school, and we had built the Women’s Group together, so I reluctantly joined them for the meeting. The three of us walked over to the Student Union and got set up for our meeting. I zoned out for most of it as I began to question everything about what being a feminist meant. How could I be a feminist if feminism was only forwarding the lives of white women? Maybe being a feminist wasn’t really for me. Maybe I wasn’t white enough to give a shit about the feminist movement after all. But I wasn’t prepared to fail out of college. An F in my Women in Politics class would bring down my 4.0 GPA and I wanted a college education more than anything now. In addition, I loved my other classes. Maybe making a statement and arguing with Dr. Lilly wasn’t worth it. I could always use my acting abilities to get through the rest of the semester with her and get an A in the class like I was expecting to get in all my other classes. I could treat my relationship with Dr. Lilly like a game. Then I remembered the conversation I had had with the swimsuit catalog casting agent back in NYC the year prior. When he had asked me what I wanted to do since I didn’t want to be a model, I had told him that I was considering going to college. I remembered his words of advice as they echoed in my head. “College is a game like any other. Learn the rules and play it to win it.”
I decided to pay heed to the casting agent’s advice from that point on. I played the game to win it. I was determined to succeed in college and get my degree so that I could go on to graduate school. I went to Dr. Lilly’s office hours the following week and apologized to her for my behavior and began to dutifully regurgitate everything she said in class on my papers and exams in hopes of getting back on her good side. The game mentality proved to be a strategic remedy. I walked away that semester with a 4.0 GPA once again and it seemed, for the time being, that I was winning at something, even if winning was making me sick in the process.
I had been thinking about David a lot since the butterfly incident. The afternoon I had spent with him a couple of weeks earlier had burned itself into my brain, keeping me afloat, amidst the suffocating existence I struggled with at home. David had continued to say “hi” to me in his shy manner before and after classes each week, almost appearing to wait for me to suggest that we spend time together again. He always had this hopeful look in his eyes whenever he’d walk by me. Yet, he never expanded on the “hi,” so it was hard for me to not wonder if it was his shyness, or if he really just wasn’t all that interested in hanging out again. I worried that my comment about being willing to kill the injured butterfly had turned him off. After seeing that he was not going to make the next move, Darian put her hand on my shoulder one afternoon after class and nudged me to talk to him. So, I decided to use an upcoming exam as an excuse to ask him if he’d like to hang out again.
“Hey there,” I said to David as he made his way past my desk, heading to the door after one of our philosophy lectures.
“Hi,” David replied with a soft smile.
“So, I was thinking we should study for this test together sometime this week if you’re free,” I began, as I continued to walk next to him and out into the hallway. “What do you say?” I asked him.
“Oh, I don’t actually take the tests,” David replied. “I’m not taking this class for a grade,” he added.
“Oh,” I said, my mood quickly deflating.
“But we can still study together if you want. I always enjoy talking about philosophy. Actually, I don’t have any plans right now if you want to come over.”
“To your apartment?” I asked. David nodded his head yes.
“Do you have roommates?” I inquired, feeling a mix of excitement at the offer, yet not feeling entirely comfortable with the idea of being alone with a guy in his apartment.
“No, I live by myself,” he responded. Then, sensing my discomfort, he added, “Or we could just walk around again if you want like last time. I don’t really care where we go.”
David’s smile was so sincere and innocent. It occurred to me that, despite my trepidation around men, I had nothing to be afraid of with him. He and Mark had almost nothing in common other than both being males. I reminded myself that not all men were rapists.
“Well, let’s walk towards your apartment and see what we feel like doing once we’re in town. Where do you live?” I asked.
“I’m across from the Clarkson bookstore on Market Street.”
“Oh, yeah? My friends Kori and Jen live over there. They’re roommates. Do you know them?”
“No.”
“The three of us started the Women’s Group together on campus.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a feminist student organization. I’m actually thinking about quitting though.”
David didn’t ask any further questions about the Women’s Group, so I decided not to expand on it.
“So, I’m surprised to hear that you’re not taking our class for a grade,” I said, changing the subject. “I’m sure you’d have an A in there if you were getting graded.”
David looked down at the floor and scratched his head. He pulled the heavy steel door to the Philosophy building open and held it for Darian and me to walk through.
“I have some health problems,” David offered. “Sometimes I have to miss a lot of classes. So rather than subject myself to the pressure of grades, I just audit the classes that interest me. I’m not really here to get a degree.”
“Mmmm. Are there classes in other departments that you’ve been drawn to?” I asked.
“Not really.”
“Well, I never thought I’d go to college at all,” I admitted. “I was never really that interested in school growing up to be honest with you. Yet here I am now a freshman at 21 and loving it. I guess life is full of unexpected twists and turns. I think there’s something to be said for doing things your own way though. Why feel pressured to live your life according to what other people say is the normal or correct way to do something?”
“I agree.”
“Yeah, there’s never really one correct way to do anything anyway. You just have to do what suits you in the moment and do it in a way that fits your life.”
“Exactly,” David said smiling.
David lived on the second floor of a building above a jewelry store that had gone out of business a few years earlier. I was eager to see what David’s apartment looked like. I imagined it was lined with philosophy books from floor to ceiling. Once we climbed the stairs to the second floor, Darian and I walked behind David so that he could lead the way. I was so happy to be spending time with him again, but as we reached the second floor, there was Mark, standing in the hallway corner across from David’s apartment with a smug look on his face. He always seemed to have a way of finding me and making sure I never forgot him or forgot that, even after three years, I still belonged to him. My heart sank as Darian reached for my hand to reassure me. David opened his apartment door, which had been unlocked, walked through it and then turned around and faced Mark, staring into that corner for a moment. Then he turned around towards Darian and me. I could feel my anxiety beginning to rise up within me. Being in that narrow hallway with Mark made me think about the last time I had seen him standing in a similar spot outside his own apartment back in NYC. I almost couldn’t bring myself to walk through David’s door, so Mark, taking advantage of my hesitancy, took the initiative to walk towards the door first. My breathing became more rapid and I started to slightly tremble beneath my clothes. And then the most unexpected and wonderful thing happened. Mark tried to walk into David’s apartment but was unable to get through. David just stood there looking at him, almost as if intentionally, blocking the doorway for a moment, outstretching his hand to welcome Darian and me as we walked through, but at the same time seemingly conveying to Mark that he could not enter, until he gently closed the door, leaving Mark behind in the hallway. Once we walked through that door, I looked over at Darian in awe and relief. For whatever reason, Mark had been unable to join us inside of David’s apartment. And from that point on, whenever Darian and I were at David’s, Mark would always walk to that same corner in the hallway across from David’s apartment door and wait there until we came back out. Darian and I had finally found the single place where Mark could not be near us, touch us, or be a part of our thoughts or interactions with others. David’s apartment would be our private respite, an island of hope that allowed Darian and me to be with each other without Mark’s ominous presence. With David, we were safe.
I suddenly felt light and carefree as I swung my backpack off my shoulder and onto the floor, opening my bag to pull out my Philosophy books. They were buried under a sweater and my Sony Walkman, so I ended up flipping the entire thing upside down and dropping its contents onto the floor.
“Is it all right if I smoke a little?” David asked me.
“Sure,” I replied.
“What are you listening to?” David asked as he eyed my Walkman while lighting a half smoked joint that had rested on top of his stereo.
“Miles Davis. Ever heard of him?” I replied as I pulled out my copy of “The Trial,” by Franz Kafka.
“He’s a jazz musician, right?” David asked, handing me the joint. “Do you smoke?”
I nodded my head yes. “Yeah, do ya wanna listen to him while we study?” I asked as I took a hit.
“Sure.”
David reached out his hand to grab the tape from me and stuck the tape in his stereo. The music immediately shifted the mood to a more intimate one. David sat down close to me on the floor and began to talk to me about his thoughts on “The Trial.” I confided to him that my father, like the main character in the book, was also being accused of a crime that he did not commit. I admitted that as much as I loved the book, that it had been difficult for me to read because of that. Suddenly feeling like I had revealed too much about myself, I changed the subject and asked David what he thought about the music.
“I like it,” David responded in his typical low-key style. “I don’t really ever listen to jazz though.”
“What kind of music do you like listening to?” I asked, taking another hit off the joint.
“Have you ever heard of a band called ‘Yes’?”
“No,” I replied, smiling at the irony of my answer as I felt myself beginning to relax.
David reached around and pulled a cassette off the shelf next to his stereo. But instead of changing out the cassettes in his stereo, he simply turned Miles Davis off and slipped his cassette into my Walkman. Then he lifted my headphones off the floor and placed them onto my head and pressed play. His face was right in front of mine as he waited to see my reaction to his music. The sound of it took me by surprise. It was unlike anything I had ever heard before.
“What’s this song called?” I asked loudly over the music blaring in my ears.
“Going For The One,” David replied, smiling. “How do you like it?”
I started to laugh as I watched Darian dancing around on the floor next to us, pretending to play the electric guitar. I looked back at David and swung my arms back and forth like I was in a marching band. David began to laugh as well.
“It’s different,” I said, continuing to laugh. “It’s kind of marchy and trippy at the same time. Is this from the 70’s or something?”
“It’s kinda old,” David said, nodding his head up and down. My eyes softened as they scanned David’s face and lips. Then I looked up at his eyes and wondered what it would be like to kiss him.
“Oh, I forgot to take my meds,” David said abruptly, as he lifted himself off the floor and shuffled quickly towards his kitchen.
I’ve always had kind of a cocky attitude when it comes to medication and the field of medicine in general. Growing up surrounded by meds, in all their various shapes and colors, they had become part of a game I used to play with my father in my youth. “I am taking a small, round, orange pill. What is it for?” my father would ask to keep me entertained as a small girl. It was a game that neither my mother nor sister cared to play, making it all the more special. The game belonged to my father and me and it was our game alone.
“So I bet if you tell me the shape and color of your medication, that I can guess what your pill is called and what you take it for,” I said to David in the same, playful manner that my father and I would have used. “My dad’s a doctor and I pretty much have all the meds memorized,” I naively gloated. “My laundry room at home actually looks like a small pharmacy.”
David placed a glass under his faucet and took a gulp of water to wash down his pill.
“Um, it’s round and peach colored,” David said looking over at me.
“Is it for your stomach?” I asked feeling fairly confident.
“Um, no, the medicine is actually for a mental illness I have.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling utterly surprised and quite idiotic.
“Yeah, I…um…was actually diagnosed with schizophrenia last year so I’m on this medication now to help manage my symptoms.”
I sat there stunned and slightly stoned. I had never met anyone with a serious mental illness before. I didn’t even know exactly what schizophrenia was at the time but had heard somewhere that it was difficult to treat. I had actually wanted to learn more about it and had even wondered over the past few years if that might be what I had. Darian and I looked at each other and both stood up simultaneously and walked over towards David.
“What exactly is schizophrenia?” I asked. “Like, what are your symptoms?” I clarified.
“Well, it’s complicated, but I’d say my biggest symptom is that I hear voices that nobody else can hear, and sometimes I see things that other people can’t see,” David responded.
“Oh,” I said disappointed as I looked back down at the floor. Then realizing that David might think I was disappointed that he had a mental illness, I began to apologize for my reaction.
“I’m sorry, I don’t want you to think that I’m disappointed that you have schizophrenia. I was just hoping that your symptoms were the same as mine so that I would know what was wrong with me.”
“Why do you think there is something wrong with you?” David asked.
“It’s kind of complicated.”
David waited patiently for me to answer his question.
“Well, I was assaulted a few years ago and something happened to me in the middle of it and I haven’t been able to fix it ever since. I went to a psychoanalyst, but she didn’t help me.”
“What happened?”
“It’s kind of hard to explain.” David just sat there, calmly but expectantly listening. I felt a gentle pull to continue sharing. “I’m just really different now. I used to be pretty normal, I think. It’s hard to remember for sure. But now, I can’t really feel anything anymore. Sometimes I can feel hatred or anger, but that’s really about it. I’m mostly numb all the time. I know there’s something wrong with me, but I don’t know what it’s called or how to make it stop. It’s like I’m walking around half dead and the real me is outside my body, usually with the guy that assaulted me. But I guess it can’t be schizophrenia, because I can’t actually see or hear them…although it feels like they’re there. I just feel them there all the time. They’re physically separate from me but they’re always there. I really want to be myself again…just me… but I don’t know how. I don’t know how to get myself back or how to feel things again. I want her to come back to me more than anything.”
There was a pause, not awkward, but thoughtful.
“Well, you must be able to feel some things still, because you’re crying right now,” David said gently.
I looked over at Darian and realized that she was crying. I put my hand up to my face and was surprised to feel tears streaming down my cheeks. I had never mourned the loss of my severed self once in the three years since the assault. I wiped the tears away and walked over to the table and chairs that David had against the wall in his kitchen and sat down. David sat down with me.
“When did you realize that nobody could hear the voices you were hearing?” I asked David, wanting to hear more of his story.
“It’s been almost two years now. I was living in Albany with my mom at the time. A voice told me to burn this bar down that was in our neighborhood.”
“Did you listen to the voice?” I asked.
David nodded his head yes.
“When I got arrested, I told the police officers that a voice had told me to do it, so my mom had me evaluated. That’s when it became clear that I was the only one hearing the voices. When I went back to the building a few months later and saw it burned down, I realized that there was nobody who would have wanted the building to burn down. So, it made sense that something was wrong with me.”
“That must have been terrifying.”
“Oh no, I made sure there was nobody in the building before I set it on fire,” David said, elaborating further. “I would never want to hurt anybody,” he continued.
“No, that’s not what I meant. I meant for you. That must have been terrifying for you.”
David looked into my eyes with subtle surprise.
“You’re such a gentle person,” I continued. “I already know you would never hurt anybody. That’s why I feel safe enough to be here in your apartment alone with you. This is actually one of the first times I’ve been alone with a guy in his apartment since I was assaulted. I haven’t been able to be alone and comfortable with a guy since that night. Guys kind of freak me out now to be honest with you. I’m really uncomfortable around most of them. But there’s just something about you. I don’t know what it is. I just feel really safe when I’m with you. When I saw you trying to help that butterfly the last time we hung out…I don’t know, I could just tell that you were different, that you had a lot of love inside of you and that you were gentle with all living things.”
“God is always inside me,” David replied with a slow-drawn, gentle smile. “Even when there are voices, I can rely on him to light my heart and show me the way.”
“How do you know God is real?” I asked.
“God is what grounds me even when my mind betrays me. When I made the choice to allow him into my heart and serve him and only him, that is when I began to see that love is all there is.”
And love was all I ever saw whenever I looked at David. He was the embodiment of the purest and most innocent kind of love that I had ever witnessed in an adult. I scanned him sitting across from me, taking in all his beauty and saw his shirt buttons, misaligned as usual.
“Can I ask you something?” I asked, looking over at David’s shirt.
“Sure.”
“Why are the buttons on your shirts always misaligned like that?”
“Oh, that’s from the meds I’m on. They numb my fine motor skills. I used to be able to button my shirts just fine before. But I guess it’s the lesser of two evils. I’d rather not hear the voices, you know?”
I nodded my head in agreement.
“It takes me over twenty minutes every morning to get my shirt to even look like this,” David admitted, laughing at himself.
“Would you like me to fix it for you?” I asked, slightly shocked at myself for asking that out loud.
David looked at me surprised. “Sure,” he said. Then we both stood up in unison. I walked over to David, averting my eyes to remove some of the intimacy from the situation. I placed my fingers around the top button of his shirt directly under his neck and began to unbutton it. Button by button, I worked slowly and was gentle with my movements as I worked my way down. He wore a white tank top underneath his shirt, but I could tell that his body was as beautiful as he was. His physique was compact and thin, yet muscular at the same time. I pulled the right side of his shirt down and evened it out with the left side. Then I brought my hand back to the top of his shirt, aligned the buttons with their appropriate holes and buttoned his shirt working from top to bottom. Once I was finished, I made sure to take a step back before allowing my eyes to make contact with his again. The look on his face took me by surprise. His eyes were inquisitive and his mouth ajar, as if he were just beginning to recognize me from somewhere or he was trying to place where we had met before.
“When’s your birthday?” David asked me completely out of the blue, as we stood there across from each other trying to regain our footing in the present moment.
“Huh?”
“Your birthday. When is it?” he asked again.
“August 15th.”
David’s mouth opened wider as his eyes began to water up. The reaction didn’t make sense to me at the time. Wow, hasn’t anyone ever done this guy a favor before, I thought to myself? All I had done was help him out with his shirt and he was already planning a surprise birthday party for me.
I couldn’t make sense of it, but a moment later David was running out his front door calling back to me with urgency.
“I want to take you to my favorite place in Potsdam!” he yelled, his voice growing farther away from me with every word.
“Right now?” I asked, not moving and looking over at Darian. She shrugged her shoulders at me as we stood there together trying to figure out what to do.
“C’mon. It’s gonna close soon!” David yelled.
Darian grabbed me by the hand, and we ran out the front door.
“Should I lock it?” I called down to David, who by now was already down the entire flight of stairs to the front door of his apartment building.
“It doesn’t matter!” he yelled back.
I turned around to shut the door and noticed Mark beginning to stand up from his spot on the floor across the hall from David’s apartment. He looked bored as hell.
“Where the fuck are we going now?” Mark asked. Darian and I ignored the question, running past him and down the stairs. The “Going For The One” song began looping through my head as Darian and I raced breathlessly down Market Street towards Maxfields Restaurant at the edge of town. Mark walked half-heartedly after us and continued to follow us around the corner. The run felt exhilarating given the excitement that David was emitting. Darian and I continued to run side by side, laughing at the absurdity that we were, in fact, running anywhere in our sleepy little town.
“Where are we going?” I yelled out between breaths as David ran out ahead of us.
“You’ll see. We have to hurry though!”
David stopped and waited for a moment so that I could catch up to him. Then he grabbed my hand pulling me along the rest of the way across the bridge on Maple Street towards True Value Hardware. Once we got there, we ran across the street to the Trinity Episcopal Church. Then we ran straight up the stairs and were met by two large, locked, wooden doors. The church itself is a beautiful gothic sandstone building that dates back to the early 1800s. David continued to shake and knock on the doors simultaneously, as Darian and I bent over trying to catch our breath. I noticed that Mark was just beginning to walk across the bridge in our direction when I heard David beginning to speak.
“I have to show you,” David said as I saw him pulling something out of his front pocket, which he then inserted into the keyhole of the old church door.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I have to take you inside,” he replied as he continued to fidget with the lock.
“You’re gonna break into a church?” I asked, stunned. “No, no, no, no! Stop, I’ve been inside. Yeah, it’s pretty. We don’t have to…”
But it was too late. David had broken in through the front door of the locked building and had taken a seat on a pew in the back of the gorgeous Victorian room surrounded by high, Tiffany stained glass windows.
“David!” I yelled in a loud whisper, still standing outside the door. “What are you doing? Get back out here! You can’t just break into buildings when they’re closed. It’s illegal! This is a really bad idea!”
It occurred to me that I was beginning to draw attention to the break-in by remaining outside, so Darian and I decided to walk in and shut the door behind us. I stood there frozen with fear and continued to try to cajole David out, but he was now bent over in prayer and ignoring me. Darian finally grabbed my hand and pulled me over to the pew David was praying in. She put her hand on the small of my back, and gently pushed me into the center row of pews so that I could sit next to David. Then she sat to my left, leaving me sandwiched between the two of them.
The room was still as I sat there watching David pray. He looked deep in thought, his face relaxed and full of gratitude. He seemed far away from me, oblivious to anything I tried to say, so I finally gave up and simply sat there with him in silence as I began to think back on the only other two people I had ever watched pray before, my Italian grandmother, Grandma Titi, and her sister, Aunt Margaret.
My mother had sent me to Italy with Grandma Titi and Aunt Margaret when I was twelve years old for a summer. Grandma Titi and Aunt Margaret were both elderly, devoted Catholics and the summer trip proved to consist of several occasions where the two of them would spontaneously pull out their rosaries and begin feverishly praying for one reason or another. It had all started innocently enough when a distant cousin picked us up from the airport upon our arrival. I was sitting behind the driver’s seat with my grandmother and aunt sitting on my right side when my cousin decided to impress me and began skiing on his left set of wheels, causing the old ladies to come sliding down the back seat, pushing the left side of my face up against the window. “Oh my god, this is awesome!” I screamed as my cousin continued flipping the car from one side to the other. The old ladies simply pulled out their rosaries and calmly began praying as their bodies slid back and forth in the back seat of the vehicle. But a week later, while driving through Rome, a man was shot dead just outside our cab during our ride back to the hotel. Grandma Titi had instinctively pulled me down on her lap to protect me, but once the shooter was caught and I had fought my way back up to a seated position, out came the rosaries. When I fell into a rose bush a short time after that and multiple family members and neighbors sat around me with tweezers pulling out the thorns, rather than helping to pull the thorns out themselves, out came the rosaries. Then there was the time when the three of us were in a car explosion later that summer on my thirteenth birthday and I managed to become lost amidst the following chaos. Rather than searching for me like any normal, sane person would, out came the rosaries again. When a townsman found me an hour later and kindly brought me back to the safe haven where my grandmother and aunt had been waiting and praying for me, I asked them why they hadn’t come looking for me. My grandmother responded by saying, “Look for what? I pray to St. Anthony to bring you back and now you are here!”
“I’m pretty sure St. Anthony had nothing to do with me finding you!” I replied, completely freaked out by her reasoning. “How about next time, you just actually look for me, deal?” I asked, wanting to ensure my future safety as there were still several weeks left on the trip to go. “But you are fine, little Pupeta!” she said with a self-assured smile, as she pulled on both my cheeks.
But I have to say, the most annoying time I had enduring my grandmother and her sister praying for me on that trip was the time that I managed to electrocute myself. I had mistakenly pulled too hard on a plug, thinking it was an extension cord, when trying to detach a radio from the wall in order to move it downstairs. The initial electrical shock sent me flying across the room. Terrified, I went to look for my grandmother and aunt for help. I vividly remember the aftershocks sending tremors through my body every couple of steps, as I made my way down the staircase to the kitchen where they always seemed to be. I had to re-enact the entire scene for my grandmother and aunt as their English was broken and they didn’t know what the word “electrocute” meant. When the light went on (no pun intended) for them in their heads, they began screaming out to St. Anthony. A final tremor whipped through my body, only adding drama to their reaction. As I turned around to get a glass of water, thinking that might help calm my nerves, Grandma Titi hit my arm before I could turn on the faucet, causing me to drop the glass to the floor where it shattered. “No aqua for you!!! No toucha water for three days!” she screamed out in her broken English, and she pulled out her rosary and began praying in unison with her sister. I wasn’t allowed to touch water for the next three days, although I cheated behind their backs to wash my hands every time I went to the bathroom. By day three when I went to get a glass of water and my grandmother started to freak out, I owned up to the fact that I had been washing my hands all along ever since the accident had happened. “She toucha the water! She toucha the water!” she yelled to her sister and out came the rosaries again. “It’s fine! I’ve been touching the water for three days! I’m fine! Put your stupid beads away!” I yelled back, frustrated by their religious insanity.
How was it that those two old ladies relied so heavily on a spiritual figure that could not even be seen or touched? How could they be completely certain that this so-called entity was looking over them and answering their prayers? And who the hell was St. Anthony, anyway? Why weren’t they praying to Jesus? Isn’t that who all Catholics prayed to? David was praying to Jesus, after all. So, if there were other options within a single religion, how did a person decide whom to pray to? Should I be praying being that I was sitting in a church that I had broken into? I decided that it might be a good idea just in case there was a God. The last thing I needed was to get caught breaking into a church while stoned. How would I ever explain my way out of that one to my father, the devout atheist? So, I pulled my weight forward and kneeled, like David, on the bench thingy directly in front of our pew. I placed my hands together, closed my eyes, bowed my head and said my first prayer ever.
“Dear God. Or…hello God,” I started.
“Dear God” sounded better for whatever reason so I decided to go with that.
“Dear God, I am here in your house, well, one of your houses. I broke in, actually. I’m really sorry about that part! But you already know that because you can apparently see me right now. I guess I don’t have to explain why I broke in because you should already know that part too. Please don’t get upset about it. I really didn’t have a choice. And please don’t let my dad find out about it either. He’s got enough shit going on, as you already know. And he would never forgive me for breaking into a church of all places. He’s an atheist, as you know. Well, we might as well just cut to the chase here. Um, so yeah, I’m sorry I jerk off when I think about women sometimes. I know that’s like a really big no-no for people who want to talk to you and shit. But, like, seriously what do you expect me to do? No offense, but a lot of men are assholes. I’m totally terrified of them, by the way, thanks to what happened with Mark, whom I’m assuming you’re already familiar with. I’m pretty fucked up over it actually as you can already see. I don’t know how to get better. I could really use a little help here so if you could help me, that would be really great.”
“Hello there? May I help you with something,” a male voice called out from across the room, causing me to open my eyes and mouth in stunned subordination as I lifted my hands into the air as if being arrested or saved by God, or both.
“Reverend Davis?” I asked loudly, shocked to see one of my father’s friends staring back at me. Although he and my father had been friends for years and I had known he was a Reverend, I had never actually seen him in his place of work before and hadn’t realized this was the church he worked at. I could never understand how the two men could be so close given their polar views on God.
“Darian and David. It’s so nice to see you both. I didn’t know you two were familiar with one another.”
“Hi Reverend,” David responded.
I decided to play it cool. Perhaps Reverend Davis didn’t even know that the doors to the church had been locked. He didn’t seem upset in the least, so I decided I would act as if we had just walked in to say a little prayer and hadn’t even realized that we weren’t supposed to be there.
“Darian, have you been to our church before?” the Reverend asked me.
“Oh, I may have peeked in once or twice, but this is my first time praying in it,” I clarified, hoping my use of the word “praying” would earn me some brownie points with him just in case he was considering calling the police.
“I see. Well, I’d love to tell you about the building’s history if you have a little time. I could even give you a tour if you’re interested.”
I looked over at David and Darian. We all seemed to be in agreement that it would be a good idea to go on the tour.
“I’d love to get a tour of the church! Thank you so much,” I replied, with a tad too much enthusiasm.
Reverend Davis spent the next 45 minutes giving us a tour of the entire facility. He walked us through the building and explained the significance behind each of the stained-glass windows. It proved to be quite a pleasant experience. David seemed to enjoy hearing the history of the facility while I enjoyed feeling like a VIP guest on a palace tour that was off limits to the general public. The Reverend had succeeded in making me feel very special and welcomed.
“Well, thank you so much, Reverend. This has been truly wonderful,” I said. “What a special place,” I continued as the Reverend walked us back to the front door.
“I’m so glad you thought to stop by,” replied the Reverend, as I walked through the front door with Darian. David followed me close behind. Then just as David was about to shut the door behind him, the Reverend peeked through and added, “And next time, I’d like to ask that you not break in, David. Each time this lock is picked, the door loses some of its integrity you see. It’s an old lock and it would be difficult to replace. Feel free to simply use the side door in the back I just showed you. I typically leave it unlocked if you really need to get in after hours.” My jaw dropped in horror as I looked over at David to see his reaction. “Will do,” David responded with a smile. Then David, Darian and I began to walk back down Maple Street, absorbing Mark again on our way back to David’s apartment.
“Oh my God! Weren’t you afraid we were going to get arrested back there?” I asked David, unable to calm my nerves as we crossed back over the bridge.
“No,” David replied. “I would actually like to go back to jail someday and stay there permanently,” David replied.
“What? What do you mean? Why would you ever want to be a prisoner for life?” I asked, completely baffled.
“My mind is already a prisoner for life. I’ll never be free of schizophrenia. It’s strange and really scary sometimes to have a free body but an imprisoned mind. It’s like my mind and body can never feel congruent with each other. When I was in jail, it felt more normal to me. While I was there, all of me was being held hostage rather than just my head.”
I stopped walking and stood there for a few moments watching David and Darian walking out ahead of me. I tried to wrap my mind around what it would feel like to be him, to feel safer in prison than outside of it. Then Mark caught up to me and bumped his body into my side to nudge me ahead.
“How do you like that?” Mark asked me. “He’s even crazier than I am. You should just come back to me.”
“I was never with you, Mark,” I replied as we continued to make our way across the bridge.
“You aren’t seriously gonna fuck this guy, are you? He’s fucking nuts!”
“It’s none of your business and you can’t get into his apartment anyway, so you’ll never know what happens between us, will you?”
“Fuck him and I keep Darian forever,” Mark said expressionless.
I stopped in my tracks trying to hide my panic. He had never made that type of threat before.
“It looks like you’ve already lost her,” I said confidently looking out ahead of Mark to where Darian was walking next to David like a little puppy, always trying to stay close to him. I picked up my speed to catch up with them.
“As long as you keep pushing me away, you won’t get her back. You’ll see,” Mark called out from behind me with more desperation.
When we reached David’s apartment, Mark took his spot in the hallway as Darian and I followed David inside. I looked at Mark as I closed the door on him. His eyes were full of hatred and rage. It occurred to me that with Mark trapped on the other side of that door, that I might even get a good night’s sleep, free from my regular nightmares, if David would allow me to stay in his apartment with him.
“Hey David?” I asked.
“Yeah?”
“Would it be okay if I crash on your sofa tonight?”
“Sure. Would you mind buttoning my shirt for me in the mornings?”
I registered the fact that had chosen to make “morning” plural, indicating that I was welcome to move in if that was what I wanted.
“Not at all. I could take notes for you in class too if you’d like.” I had noticed that David’s handwriting was fairly shaky, another fine motor skill likely impacted by his meds.
“That’d be great,” he responded.
And with that, David and I forged an arrangement that would at last begin my long healing process back towards trusting men. Each morning David would walk over to me, after getting dressed in the bathroom, wearing jeans and a white tank top with a plaid, short-sleeved shirt over that that I would button for him. As the weather continued to warm up and our comfort level with one another grew, David stopped wearing the white tank top underneath his plaid shirt and would sometimes even walk out of the bathroom shirtless, throwing it on as he walked over to me.
Within a couple of weeks, we were eating all of our meals together and walking to and from classes together. Darian and I stayed with David most weeknights, spending the weekends at home with my parents. Sometimes, we smoked pot at night and David would read excerpts from Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling” while Miles Davis or Yes played softly in the background. He’d read aloud to me until I told him I was tired. Then he’d walk to his bed, kneel down on the floor in front of it, and pray for 10 minutes while I watched him from the sofa where I always slept. We had developed a comfortable routine and I was happy at the thought of it lasting forever. With each passing week, I found myself feeling more and more relaxed around him.
David never made any sexual advances towards me. He just passively went along with anything I would suggest and seemed perfectly content with our platonic relationship. One day, I decided that I would like to take him to my house, not to meet my parents, but to see the woods behind their house, which happened to be one of my favorite places on earth. I figured David had taken me to his favorite place, actually broken into his favorite place, why not take him to the place that I loved the most?
“David, what do you say we go to my favorite place in Potsdam this Saturday?” I asked.
“Where’s your favorite place?” David asked, smiling.
“The woods behind my parents’ house.”
“What about it makes it your favorite place?”
“Oh, lots of things. The St. Regis River runs along the edge of our property through those woods. I don’t know there’s just something magical about it, I guess. It’s hard to describe. I’ve always found it to be a special place.”
“I’d love to see it,” David replied.
“Great. I’ll go home Friday night then and come back to pick you up on Saturday morning. Sound good?”
“Okay.”
“Does 11am work?”
“Yeah.”
“Perfect,” I said, smiling.
That Saturday, I picked up David as planned and drove him back to my parents’ house. I parked my car outside the garage, took David by the hand and walked with him through the 15-acre meadow that led to the woods I was so eager to show him. It was a gorgeous day outside, warm but not humid. The woods were resonant with music. Birds, crickets, and trees rustled in the gentle breeze creating a mesmerizing symphony. David instinctively sat down on a fallen tree at the edge of the forest in my favorite spot facing the water. I sat with him and, together, we listened to the music nature was creating all around us. Everything slowed down as I studied each of David’s movements. After a while, he stood up and began to walk, my eyes following him the whole way, until he stopped at a tree that was in a pathway of light shining down from above. Two butterflies playfully danced around his head as he rested it against the tree and took in the sun’s rays with his eyes closed. I closed my eyes as well, as I continued to sit on the fallen tree about twenty feet away from him. When I opened my eyes moments later, I was looking at the ground and noticed dark, hovering shadows all around me. My eyes traced one of the shadows across the dirt and upwards until I saw that Darian was creating it, her lower legs and feet bound to the roots of a tree deep below the earth. My eyes scanned out in panic to take in a larger view, and I saw that Mark was running through the woods, his presence causing Darian to splinter off further, her lower legs and feet morphing into the roots of every tree he passed. Mark continued to do this until Darian was bound to nearly every tree. I stood up, terrified, wanting to free her but unsure of what to do. She was everywhere, being held hostage all around me. Finally, I heard my own voice coming from the entire forest. “Set me free,” the trees seemed to whisper in unison. I spun around desperately trying to figure out which tree to go to first, until the closest one finally looked back at me and in a hushed voice said, “Go to him,” her eyes looking towards David and then back to me. She looked calm and unafraid. I looked at David who was still standing with his back up against the single tree in our vicinity that was not holding me captive. As I walked towards him, I found my panic and fear dissipating until he was all that I could see.
David’s shirt buttons were misaligned, as they tended to be on the days where we hadn’t spent the night together so, out of mere habit, I began to unbutton his shirt. Button by button I worked my way down like I did most mornings. The skin on his chest looked beautiful as it glistened in the sunlight. When I unbuttoned the bottom button, I decided to leave it that way. Then I ran the tips of my middle fingers up the sides of David’s arms until they reached the top of his shoulders. David opened his eyes and looked at me. His blue eyes were somehow warmer than most. Maybe it was the touch of green, illuminating his face as he watched June surrounding him. I placed my fingers on his face and began to caress it, moving my face closer to his. Then I placed my lips gently onto David’s mouth and began to kiss him. At that moment, Darian flew forward with great force, breaking free from her tree and running towards David and me. Mark stopped in his tracks, immediately sensing the shift that was taking place without him. He tried to reach us, before the integration was complete, but he was too late. David placed his hands on my back, pulling me closer to him. As Mark reached out to grab Darian from behind, I felt her jump back into my body, like a soul into an empty vessel. Mark immediately disintegrated into nothingness. Just like that, he was gone. Darian and I were reunited again at last. As David and I continued to kiss, I could feel my heart begin to beat again as the bloody wound under my right eye appeared for a moment and then vanished completely, just like Mark had moments before. My eyelids dropped shut as I lost all sense of time and space.
"Integration Day" A wondrous sensation for me to share that all will someday know A rupture through our brittle bones where butterfly wings shall grow Black and blue miracles on each side will raise us from this earth Have faith, my friends, we return to love when we leave this shattered world Yet love is here And love is now This is all we need to know Dying trees beneath descend where nothing new shall grow I soar with you beyond this river for here we cannot stay While trees do gasp with envy on their lips on integration day Oh, raise us up into this sky! Oh, raise us up so that we may fly! Beyond this death, beyond this life, beyond the woes, our bodies, this strife Our skin and limbs are needed no more Our souls now one upon your shore Our love is here Our love is now This is all we need to feel For in the end when all things mend, 'tis the only thing that is real
And although I suppose, in reality, we never actually left that spot under David’s tree, it is truly amazing the places a single kiss can take you if it is with the right person. And even more incredible are the things a single kiss can release you from. We stood up against that tree for what could have been an eternity, enwrapped in each other as spring continued to unfold all around us. After three and half years, I was seemingly myself once more, feeling more integrated and present than ever before.
“Darian,” my father said later that day, catching my attention as I stared out the picture window of our family room onto that beautiful forest behind our house, daydreaming about my time there with David.
“Do you have plans right now?” my father asked. “I could use your help with the roof above the cathedral.”
“Oh yeah,” I replied. “We still need to fix that, don’t we?”
“Yes. It is a nice day out. Why don’t we go take care of that right now? What do you say?”
“All right.”
“Let me go get the materials out of the garage. Why don’t you grab the tape player so we can listen to some music while we work?”
“Where is it?”
“In the laundry room under my desk. Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ should be in there now. We can listen to that.”
“Okay. But I want you to listen to something too. It’s a tape my friend gave to me.”
“What kind of music is it? Is it classical?” my dad asked expectantly.
“No, it’s something else,” I responded while I pulled a cassette out of my Walkman and slipped it into the back pocket of my jean shorts. It was a copy of “Yes” that David had made for me as a gift.
After my father returned from the garage, I helped him hold the ladder steady as he positioned it outside the picture window leading to the roof on the lower side of our house. Once my dad and I were on the lower roof, we climbed up one more level to the cathedral. The cathedral itself is shaped like a teacup ride you might see at an amusement park. It rises and dips in a circular pattern at the highest point of the house. I couldn’t help but dance on it, leaping around as Vivaldi played on the tape player we had brought up with us for the job. The forest made a fantastic audience, after all, and my heart was so full of love and joy. I could barely sit still and focus on the boring job of fixing a leaky roof. I figured my company alone, along with the entertainment I was providing, was a fine way for me to be helpful in this situation, especially since my father hadn’t given me any indication to the contrary.
“What the fuck is going on up there?” my mother eventually screamed up to us after about fifteen minutes had gone by. Although it’s hard to say exactly how much time had passed, as I tend to lose track of time when I’m dancing. I was surprised I could even hear my mother’s voice with the music turned up as loud as it was.
“What’s wrong, mom?” I replied. “We’re fixing the roof,” I yelled down to her, looking over the back end of the cathedral.
“Get down here this very instance! Get your father! Rooz, where the hell are you?”
“Pat, what is the problem?” my dad called down to her without climbing down from the cathedral.
“Both of you get down here right now! I’m not going to keep screaming like this!”
“That is difficult to believe,” my father softly shared, causing us both to giggle.
“The whole fucking damn house is shaking! What the hell is going on up there?” she continued to yell, as my father and I climbed back down to the lower roof.
“Darian is just dancing a little bit. She is not hurting anybody, Pat.”
“Oh, really? Well the entire house is shaking! It feels like it’s about to fall down!”
“Pat, stop being so dramatic. The house is not going to fall down.”
My mother threw her hands up in the air in frustration and let out another random scream as she shook her head.
“You always have to stand up for her!” she continued. “Your precious daughter never does anything wrong! Well, if the house falls down you can just add that to your list of problems! All these problems you create that the rest of us just have to live with!”
“Pat, nobody is making you stay!”
“Oh, go fuck yourself! Dinner will be ready in twenty minutes,” my mom snapped at us as she retreated back into the house.
My father and I looked at each other, both raising our eyebrows in pretend concern, and then climbed back up to the cathedral. When I began to dance again my father put down his tools and looked at me.
“Darian. No dancing, you heard your mother.”
“Haaaah,” I gasped. “You little stinker, Dad! You do agree with mom! Why didn’t you just tell her that you thought she was right? That would have smoothed things over a bit better with her, don’t you think?”
“Are you crazy? Telling your mother she is right about something would be a vedy, big mistake. That would be the end of me,” my dad joked.
We both laughed and I pulled my cassette out of my back pocket, switching the tapes out in the player.
“Okay, my turn. I want you to listen to my music now,” I said, pressing play on the stereo.
“What is this garbage you are making me listen to?” my dad asked almost immediately, as he began to hammer nails into the cluster of new shingles he had laid down.
“It’s not garbage, Dad. The song is called, ‘Going for the One.’ It just makes me so happy. Can’t you feel that?” I asked him.
“I don’t know. I suppose it is different,” he replied. “Here, you are going to take this knife and cover these nails with the cement like this,” my dad instructed. Then he stood back up and walked a few feet away to reinforce another vulnerable area on the roof nearby.
After I finished doing what he had asked me to do, I stood up and looked back out onto the forest again.
“Here, let’s listen to that song again,” I suggested. “Sometimes, you have to listen to a song more than once to fully appreciate its message.”
“All right,” my father agreed. “We will listen to it again.”
I turned the volume all the way up this time. Then I began to march around the roof again, making sure to step lightly enough to not shake the house. I began to spin around and play air guitar as I sang out the lyrics to the trees below me. An intense sense of joy began to rise up from within me until it was finally too overwhelming to contain.
“I’m back!” I screamed out across our property. “I’m back!!!” I screamed out to the sky above me. “I’m back!!!!!” I screamed one final time feeling overwhelmingly grateful towards the miracle that had integrated my entire being earlier that day in the woods with David. Love could truly conquer all. I was living proof. “Thank you!!!” I yelled at the top of my lungs towards the sky above me.
I heard a wolf howl back at me. It was comforting to know that some living thing out there had decided my joy was worth celebrating. I looked over at my dad who slowly stood up in confusion.
“Let me see, could there still be a wolf in Potsdam?” he asked, squinting out at the forest.
“Why wouldn’t there be?” I asked.
“Well, I know we still have the coyotes, but I thought the State was supposed to have killed off all the wolves. But that howl was definitely a wolf’s howl.”
“I guess they missed one!” I exclaimed. “Try it, Dad. Talk to the wolf. Go ahead, howl at her!”
“Darian, I have never screamed in my entire life,” my dad said laughing. “I don’t even think I know how to yell.”
“C’mon just try it!”
My dad shook his head no.
“C’mon, please. Just do it for me.” My dad closed his eyes and continued to laugh. I watched in anticipation as he geared up for his first scream ever.
“Ouuuuuuuuuu!” my dad finally yelled out after some gentle coercing. Then he laughed heartily at himself and the absurdity of life with me on his rooftop.
But there was no answer from the wolf this time.
“You see, not even the wolves in Potsdam like my accent,” he joked as he finished cleaning up.
“That’s not true, Dad. You just didn’t yell loud enough. You didn’t put any emotion into it,” I said smiling. Then I walked over to him and hugged him.
“You know what?” I asked, pulling out from the hug to look him in the eyes.
“What is it?”
“I think this is my most amazing day ever. Isn’t it incredible? You and me alone up here yelling at the trees together?”
“It is nice up here. I am glad you were able to join me today. We always have a good time when we are together. And we finished the roof and we did a good job! Thank you for helping me. All right,” he added, closing his eyes with sincerity as he tapped his hands on both my shoulders. “I am going to head back down now.”
“Can I stay up here a little while longer by myself?” I asked, as my dad walked away to gather the rest of his tools.
“Yes, just be careful up here. Your mother said that dinner was going to be ready soon so don’t stay too long.”
My father climbed back down the ladder and I watched him disappear out of sight. I walked over to the stereo and pressed the rewind button to listen to my new favorite song once again. I stood up and turned out towards the forest, that beautiful, magical forest, and yelled out in gratitude one last time.
“I love this town! I love Potsdam, New York! I love SUNY Potsdam! I love college! I love David Blesser!!!! I love my life!!!!!!!!!!!! Ouuuuuuuuuuu!!!!” I howled in joy, spinning around in circles with my arms extended and my eyes closed, facing the sun.
Epilogue
I sometimes wonder had I not experienced disintegration to the extent to which I did following my assault, if I would have fully recognized integration at its highest intensity decades later, five months following my mother’s death, a story that has yet to be told. My relationship with David had certainly provided me with an important clue. As a direct result of my experience with him I learned that integration was, indeed, tangible, achievable, a real and powerful state of being and interacting, and a type of love to strive for and return to. In many ways David had been the antithesis of hatred and the antidote for all Mark had inflicted upon me. He possessed a unique quality, a loving kindness, that ultimately healed the trauma and related dissociation I was still experiencing when we had met. It was clear to me, even then, that his love was largely responsible for “curing” me. Still, I don’t think I was completely aware of the power or relevance of the emotional integration I experienced that day with him in the woods. Even with the profound clue he had provided, it would still take me several years to fully comprehend and appreciate not only how necessary integration is in order to live a life led by love, but more surprisingly, the parallel that exists between that state and death.