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My Real Memoir

“…and into the fire” is a pretty accurate description of my last year of college. Only it wasn’t a sudden “Damm-this-is-hot!” leap, it was more of an in-the-air rhumba full of improvised gyrations. Some of which seemed like remedies at the time, but seen through the proverbial lens of hindsight, were just further gyrations en route to the fire.

I had a growing passion for writing and directing, so I’d taken every writing class I could, and signed up for Fundamentals of Directing. Early on, Dr. Wright led a spirited discussion about bottled-up emotions, asserting that anyone could crack under the right circumstances, even kill someone. And everyone in the class agreed that, yes, they could. Except me. Idealistic pacifist that I was, I swore nothing could make me want to hurt, much less kill, someone. Wright said I was deluded.

It turns out he was right (pun darkly intended). After I learned my girlfriend Dar had, as a naïve eighteen-year-old-virgin, been seduced, impregnated and introduced to drugs to all in the same night–by Dr. Wright–I thought about killing him every time I saw him. Dar, who’d had a secret abortion and embraced a free-thinking “no big deal” attitude about it, made me swear never to confront him.

But it was a big deal. I believed Dar was suppressing exactly the kind of “bottled-up” anguish Dr. Wright so eloquently spoke about and narcissistically caused. It had started showing up in our physical relationship. Dar acknowledged this, but insisted it was just residual “Catholic guilt” that she could shrug-off. It wasn’t. She was bleeding inside.

My remedy? Be patient and buy a dog. I’d always loved dogs, and lots of students brought them as companions to school. Plus, my new dog Ginnie was a first-class girl-magnet (just in case, you know?). But then a no-dogs-on-campus rule was passed! I could hardly leave her alone in my apartment all day. Add to that the fact that roomie Doug and I could no longer afford our exorbitant $110-a-month rent!

My remedy? I found us a charming little redwood-paneled bungalow with a fenced-in yard that was only $90-a-month! Perfect, right? Not quite. Our gang-infested neighborhood was anything but charming, and even with the lowered rent we were living like Cambodian peasants on nothing but rice. Our landlady, the poster girl for “paranoid,” ransacked our house in search of drugs every time we left, terrifying poor, sweet Ginnie (our neighbors, whose building she also owned, were, in fact, drug dealers). And finally, Dar was intensely uncomfortable there, so our sense of intimacy was almost nonexistent.

My remedy? Move home with my dog to the house currently occupied by my parents and three cats. Dad said, “No!” Mom said, “Sure, honey.” Then I sat Dar down and told her I might not be in love with her anymore, and left it hanging there. And the sophisticated, proud young woman I’d fallen in love with wept and begged me not to leave her. It was the same pattern that had happened with my first love, that I’d written a play about, and yet I still hadn’t learned that infatuation was temporary, that real love was something far deeper. The frying pan was behind me…

And the fire was getting closer.

My Real Memoir is a series. To read the next one, click here.