To Carnie from my Sorority, 1986

You drove a Delorean, an honest-to-god, doors open up, Back to the Future Delorean. You were 20.

By Kevin Abato www.grenexmedia.com (original from wikipedia) [
GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), via Wikimedia Commons

They asked you to park it in front of the sorority house during pledge week. You did and you didn’t even feel like you were being used.

 

You lived down the hall in the dorm from me, with Jordan. You had yellow spikey hair and wore more make-up than anyone I had ever seen in my life. In the mornings, you’d walk to the bathroom in just a t-shirt, not a long t-shirt. The idea of modesty must have seemed old-fashioned, probably useless. Clearly stupid.

I was stunned you were my friend. I had nothing to offer you. I was not cool and I did not have cool things like Deloreans or big earrings. I didn’t have a designer purse and I certainly didn’t have the phone numbers for people who were having parties. I was good at calculus and I read your English papers for you.

You’d let me read my poems to you. You let me wear your clothes, though they didn’t fit. You let me ride in your car and let me pick the music, which was always either the Beatles or Springsteen.

I spent the first year of college waiting. Waiting to make friends. Waiting for a roommate who wasn’t weird. Waiting to stay up all night debating the value of modern vs. contemporary art. Duchamps? Are you kidding me?

You waited with me. I had no idea what you were waiting for. Probably, like me, you were waiting to find out where this all leads. What else is there? Will we know it when we see it? Will we be ready? Does the future look familiar?

“God, I hope not,” you say, falling back on your bed. “Please God.”