It must be my advancing age, because now and then I get to thinking about people I have known and loved, liked or disliked during the years, many of them whom I would consider remarkable and unique in the world.
I happened to recall a girl named Gayle, whom I met in my 20s and who was one of these people who rationalized or over theorized nearly everything, but she was beautiful and young and caring and we spent some time together. She was the type who if you got angry at her for denting your car fender when she borrowed it, she would muse out loud that your anger must be actually from some deep hidden psychological desire to consider the car as a person, and that taking it out on her was displaced aggression because if one really cared for her, one would understand and be more compassionate, taking into consideration her own angst over damaging the vehicle in the first place and the subsequent emotional trauma she had suffered knowing that she would have to face one concerning the incident to the precious machine. (Yeah, kinda gets one doesn’t it?)
She could read a book as simple as Tom Sawyer and then present a massive dissertation about how it ACTUALLY spoke of the past repression of the poor, the social climate of the times and the economic pressures influencing the creativity of mankind, toss in the undue influence of slavery upon the masses, suggest that the writer had a repressed desire to return to the simpler times of childhood and theorize that it encompassed somehow a smattering of communism and the desire of the rich to lord it over the poor. Me? I just thought it was a real swell book depicting a bygone era.
Still, I recall how she showed up one day with her hair dyed bright green, wearing green eye liner, green nails and green clothing. (Yeah. She was green DOWN THERE also, I found out in person later.) Sometimes I might drop in and find her with multicolored spiked hair, dressed like a punk rocker with wild eye make-up claiming that she just wanted to shake up the people where we were going dancing. (She did.) Another time she might be dressed in those Earth blouses of the 60s – white, square collar, mid sleeved, decorated with a row of embroidered flowers and falling loosely to just below the navel (I miss those.) accompanied by flower embroidered flared jeans, bare foot with bright red painted toenails, bright red lipstick and long, flowing shiny hair. (She was getting in touch with the Earth and I got stuck working cowshit into her garden but she made it worth my time.) She was always happy, always able to strike up a conversation with anyone, anywhere at any time and I loved it. One time, feeling particularly risque, she popped in at my place wearing a raincoat and panties and nothing else – an idea she got from a movie – and the raincoat was clear. I was impressed. Sometimes she made green tea and we sipped it listening to Neal Diamond on her stereo while she burned incense and lit the place with a few scented candles. Other times we sipped coffee, listened to rock and roll while she hung around in jeans, sneakers and T-shirt trying to convince me that I needed to go to college and get a degree. (I never did.)
Today, with everyone so formal, so into themselves and their stocks, their SUVs, Skeedo’s, their home computing and various opinions on child care, law, freedom of speech, and having good lawyers, I find that I miss her. I don’t know where she is because we parted company decades ago. I decided to see the world and she was going to try to save it. She was never boring, always gentle, somewhat confusing, probably too intelligent for the times, somewhat naive, and always smelled good.
I find that I think about her at times in the quiet of the night, as I sit in my home, surrounded by artifacts of my wanderings, wondering where she is, what she is doing, hoping that she has not changed much and hoping that she is well and happy.
Who do you remember when the day is quiet, the lights are low and you’re sitting alone, relaxing, with a cool drink and thinking about years and people past?