The Fire Within

More than any other time of year, I find myself most nostalgic in Summer.

Part of me wants to understand why that is. The other part doesn't want to wonder for fear of ruining it.

The most fond memories are of boys. Well, they're all men now, but when I was a young girl, they were boys. I blogged on this many months ago, but there is something ripe about Summer that makes people fall for one another.


Two years ago, the Summer of 2006, I was in a production of Chess The Musical. During this time I met my pal Thurm. It was during Chess that my world cracked open and the secrets to my own happiness were revealed to me. It was a brilliant time of my life. Thurm sent me this quote, that I always keep near and dear to me...

"Now: I believe that you've had most of your important memories by the time you're thirty. After that, memory becomes water overflowing into an already full cup. New experiences just don't register in the same way or with the same impact. I could be shooting heroin with the Princess of Wales, naked in a crashing jet, and the experience still couldn't compare to the time the cops chased us after we threw the Taylors' patio furniture into their pool in the eleventh grade. You know what I mean."
Douglas Coupland - Life After God


The Summer of 2000, I had just been through the worst heartbreak of my 22 year old life. I did the only thing a heartbroken young woman would do. I dated. TONS of men. I wasn't promiscuous, but I wanted to know I had... options. It was the Summer before I met Rob, and during the months of June, July and August, I dated 6 men. I was in the prime of my life (or so I thought). Due to the break-up from the first important relationship of my adult life, I had lost 20 pounds, became a vegan (and an anemic in the process), a raging drunk, dressed like a hoochie and became an utter mess. In the midst, I dated Jason, Mark (he was a dish, but too young for me), Troy #1, Troy #2 (or, The Passing of the Troy's as my girlfriends called it), John and Greg. None of them ever stayed too long. A few of them stayed a night or two, but none of them ever felt... right. When I look back at that Summer, I only see depression. And angst. And many shots of Rumplemintz. And many nights throwing up in the bathroom of random bars in the District. Not one of my finer Summers, for sure.

In June of 1993, I was a young 16, and spent my first summer at Genesius Guild with two friends. It was there a young man caught my eye. He was the first in a line of dark-haired, blue-eyed boys I would have an affinity for. He was a bit too old for my young 16 (he was 19 at the time, which wouldn't matter a wink now). His friend was dating my best friend (who she later married... and divorced), and the four of us went to Vanderveer Park. Les and Andy ran off, and the two of us stayed together on a park bench. It was late. The dew on the grass was so wet under my bare feet. He held my hand. He made me feel divine. What awkward, 16-year-old girl wouldn't? He was beautiful. His hand touched my face. I thought there was no one else in the world but the two of us, right there, on that park bench at 10 o'clock at on a Wednesday night. It was the most intense, astonishing moment I had ever felt, the fire between us. When the summer season ended at Genesius Guild, he went his own way, I started my junior year at Moline, and I never saw him again. This past Tuesday, he popped up as a person I may know on Facebook. I had always wondered what happened to him. Funny, the way people come in and out of our lives.


The Summer of 1998, I met up with an old high school friend. He was an artist. Conflicted, angsty, beautiful. He was not the same boy who sat behind me in French class. No. Here was a grown young man, confident in his craft, smart and sexy in a way I could never touch him. We went to a movie. Then to Denny's for coffee. It was past midnight. He asked me to come to his house to see his work. He rolled a joint. He showed me his work. Colors so beautiful. I wanted to know him, feel him, be in his skin. To be a part of him, to feel the fire between us. I waited for him to move, to take me. Sweaty palms. My heart beating against my flesh. He told me I was the only woman he ever loved, because I was the only one that understood him. His tortured, art-soaked, perfectly flawed young life. This was the Summer I understood what it was to feel emotions I could not comprehend. To want something and never have it. It was the Summer I realized I was no longer a girl, but a woman.


My fondest memory is meeting Dave. Early July, 1996. I had just been through a heartbreaking moment of my young adulthood when I met him. Any time I hear a song by Journey, or the B-52's, I think of Dave and that summer. This crazy, wildly funny, stocky, energetic young man with warmth to him that not many saw but me. Our first date, it was so hot and humid, I swear you could swim through the air. We went to see the movie The Rock with Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage, then to Whitey's and back to his parents for talking until dawn. I had a chest cold, one that lasted all summer long, and his dear mother told stories of how her mother would feed her Vicks Vapo-rub as a child. We thought that was the most hysterical thing at age 19 and 20. After a summer of wild sexual tension, we parted ways without so much as a kiss, and have stayed friends ever since. It was, and still is, the greatest Summer of my life.