Stand

We watched the Olympics together, a red and yellow afghan on our lap.  The beige institutional couch was stiff.  You propped your feet on the walnut veneer coffee table carelessly strewn with history textbooks and legal pads.  I sat with me feet tucked under me, a habit I still slip into when I’m trying to curl into myself.

We watched the skiers; it was winter of 1992.  You didn’t love me; I knew this intuitively even if I wouldn’t allow my mind to process this fact.  The truth was written on the grim faces of your roommates who gave us too much space.  I wanted to join them and debate politics—the faint strain of REM’s “Stand” echoed from the cracks of their closed bedroom doors:

If wishes were trees, the trees would be falling
Listen to reason
Reason is calling

Your roommates didn’t like you too much. They found your inveterate lies and exaggerations annoying, but you were young Republicans together—a fraternity emblazoned not by Greek letters but rather a brotherhood cloaked by a dead white European male belief system.  This was the tie that bound you and transcended personal likes and dislikes.  I was a woman’s studies minor and a liberal, but I still flaunted my femininity with V-neck tops and snug knits from the Gap even if I did have short hair.  I amused them, I guess, this bizarre mix of Marilyn Monroe and NOW activist.  You, on the other hand, started to find my politics annoyingly contrary.

We had gone to the Valentine’s luncheon earlier that day, and you held my hand limply while they served the heart shaped cakes.  You gave me an opal necklace but handed it to me; you didn’t bother putting it on me.  Funny the insignificant details the mind captures, isn’t it? We had broken up weeks before, and quite honestly I can’t remember why we even bothered trying again.  Time of year perhaps, or was it just sheer erosion from the abrasive fallout of campus opinion?  Life in a small college can be dramatic, and looking back, I realized that I was indeed liked.  Campus opinion was on my side--you treated me like shit. I felt empty; I knew the end was near, but I was in denial.

The ending was ugly, and it came a few days later.  You would cancel our trip to DC for President’s Day weekend.  Lots of tears, lots of accusations, and one prophecy:  “You will always be alone,” you said.  Those were the last words you ever spoke to me.

Perhaps you were right.

Fourteen years later, "Stand" plays on an I-Tunes cd, another Valentine’s Day has passed, President’s Day is around the corner, the Winter Olympics has started, and I’m alone.

I stand corrected—no perhaps about it.  I will be always alone.