Is it for Me?

Have you ever looked through Facebook’s “People You May Know” listings?  There are multiple levels of connections that come up: everything from people you may not know at all, but who have a singular “friend” connection to someone you have a hundred social media friends in common with to someone that you actually know in person.  Ed found these suggestions fascinating as he would peruse through them, surprised to occasionally see musicians from bands that he was a huge fan of as a kid being suggested, because of mutual friends.  Who would’ve thought?  He might get a suggestion for someone that he went to high school with, who is already connected to all the same former classmates that he is.  Makes him wonder why he didn’t get the friend request nod from that old acquaintance.  Did he do something wrong all those years ago?  Are they still holding onto a grudge?  He wonders why he doesn’t send the friend request himself.  Probably out of stubbornness. 

Every so often, he’ll see someone on the list that he had forgotten about and memories crash his thoughts. 

Seeing Susan hit him like a ton of bricks.  Her profile picture was mostly unrecognizable from how he remembered her.  Her style had changed significantly.  For a short period of time, she had been the center of his social world.  Now, she was a cartoonist/satirist, who also made short lo-fi indie solo recordings, AND worked as a software engineer in the Bay Area.  What he found most interesting is that she hit his “you may know” list – not because of mutual friends from their brief shared past, but because of more current shared music circles.

Ed remembered her as tall, broad shouldered, and always in control of the chaos around her.  Susan was a force of nature!  An art major who grew up on a small farm not too far from the university they both attended.  She was more forward and outgoing than anyone he had ever met, a truly magnetic individual.  Everything seemed fun for her, and she was fun to be around.  She was one of those rare people that could effortlessly connect with just about anyone.  Ed felt comfortable around her and immediately opened up to her.  He was rarely that at ease with most of his longtime friends and family.  He recalled sharing an early morning Illustration class with her one semester, and even though, he generally slept in and often missed the class, she always seemed to like him, and thankfully adopted him into her circle of friends.

Susan had lived on campus in a four-person room.  Her and her roommates: Stacy, Tina and Marcy were the best of friends. They were freshmen, and new to the school, except for Tina, but it felt like those four had all known each other for years.  Stacy, a business major, was a stunning blond girl who took an immediate dislike to Ed and completely ignored his presence, other than naming him “chump.”  He kept his distance, despite Susan’s invitations.  Tina was an art major, very reclusive, and a massive fan of both Bauhaus and The Cure.  Ed shared her music tastes, but Tina did not appreciate his penchant for singing along with her beloved songs, especially when he changed the words.  The music was all very serious to her.  She taught him that ‘Tina’ was short for ‘Christina,’ and that it could be short for a variety of names.  He had never thought about this before, always assuming ‘Tina’ was a stand-alone name.  It reminded him that he never liked being called ‘Ed,’ because no one took it seriously.  It was always treated like a joke name.  He half-heartedly tried to get people at his new school to call him ‘Edward,’ but no one did, except for Marcy.  Susan told him that she went from being a ‘Sue’ in high school, to ‘Susan’ now.  She pulled it off.  No one ever called her ‘Sue.’  Ed especially hated the nickname of ‘Eddy,’ but when Susan started calling him ‘Eddy,’ his heart would skip a beat and imaginary butterflies would spin around his head.  Marcy reminded him of Marcie from Peanuts.  It was a lazy comparison, but they kind of looked the same.  She was a care-taker.  If someone in the group was sick, she took care of them.  She took care of the group all the time.  In retrospect, Ed could see how she was incredibly underappreciated and he felt bad about that.  Most of his regrets in life stemmed from not fully appreciating people from his past.  Taking them for granted.  He wanted to be more like Susan, and always leave a positive impression on people.  Maybe more of them would him a friend request.

 

Being friends with Susan always meant you were going to be part of a group.  She grew up the youngest of many siblings.  Ed could not identify.  He had one much older brother, and craved isolation.  There were always guys hanging around this group of four young women. Because they both were incredibly attractive, Susan and Stacy drew young men like bees to honey, or moths to light.  He wondered what that would be like - constantly being sought out and getting attention.  It would seem annoying to Ed, but Susan always welcomed the attention.  Stacy did not like it at all.  She often complained about it, but she didn’t try very hard to stop it, as her audience were the guys who always hung around her.  Tina drew her own admirers, who wore black and wrote poetry, but she had a boyfriend named Jarrod.  Marcy was always busy taking care of the group.  I was not the only person who took her for granted.

Besides Ed, the usual visitors to what became known as “the Room,” were the two Dave’s, James, Dan and John, and, of course, Jarrod who took no time before essentially moving into “the room.”  Both Dave’s were tall and handsome and seemed older.  Dave B. was an outgoing black man, who had a quick wit and a gregarious personality.  Dave D. had a similar personality, was white, had long dreadlocks, and wore tie-dye shirts and ragged ropes as bracelets around his thick wrists.  Ed did not know what brought the Dave’s to college, other than to be campus legends.  James had a goatee, always wore a sweater, had an impressive deep bass of a voice, a talent for writing, and knew Susan from their theatre class.  Jarrod was a loud, opinionated, quick witted, pop culture wizard, who was a creative writing major.  Ed liked these guys, but never liked Dan and John.  He found them both off-putting.  He didn’t trust them. Ed had met them in a few of his classes that first semester.  They had all been business majors.  In fact, by the urging one of their professors, they all shared a subscription to the Wall Street Journal.  He quickly learned that he had no business being a business major, so he adjusted his academic schedule beyond that first semester.  He wasn’t sure what he disliked more – the classes or his classmates. 

Ed had always been a conscientious student growing up.  He always did his homework and tried his best, eschewing any kind of social life in favor of studying and being alone.  He didn’t like the unpredictability of other people.  He felt safe at home.  His older brother was the opposite, always out with his friends and his endless amount of girlfriends.  If he wasn’t out, girls were climbing into his second story bedroom window on a nightly basis.  Ed couldn’t figure it out, because he couldn’t get himself to talk to the girls at school.  There was one girl, named Tracy, who lived nearby, and clearly had a crush on Ed’s brother.  She somehow had the nerve to come to his home and talk to him.  He was never home, so Ed’s mom would invite her in, and she would sit uncomfortably in silence with Ed, while he did his homework, and his mom, while she did whatever the hell she did – balance the checkbook, or whatever.  His mom would ask Tracy questions about her life, and then eventually, Ed would finish his homework and he and Tracy would hang out and listen to music or watch TV. 

The thing is, he found he could talk with her.  It was easy.  She was only a few years older than him, but Ed thought of Tracy as an adult.  She was still a kid to his brother, who had no time for her.  Tracy became a constant companion for Ed.  He really liked hanging out with her.  He and his small group of neighborhood friends would stop by and visit Tracy in her apartment on summer afternoons.  They would watch those teenage slasher movies from the early 80s – the ones their parents wouldn’t let them watch.  They would all be as obnoxious as they could, because they could get away with it, and Tracy would pretend to be outraged.  Ed never really thought much about those short-lived interactions with Tracy.  Never realized that she was always alone – that a parent was never around.  That there was only a trashed couch and a TV on the floor as furnishings.  He never really noticed that his mom would always cook her food when Tracy would come to see his brother.  He really didn’t notice when she stopped coming over once the next school year began.  He just remembered how fun she was to be around and how easy she was to get along with.

After sophomore year of college, almost everyone in Ed’s social circle - everyone who lived in or constantly hung around “the room” - were either gone, planning to move out of the dorms, or away.  The living on campus thing was no longer a requirement, so moving out felt like an obligation to most students.  Ed applied to become a Resident Assistant as a work study job and for free room.  He wasn’t ready to share a big home or dingy apartment with a bunch of other people.  As an RA, he would get a private dorm room.  He was used to dorm life.  Both of the Dave’s had already disappeared from school – truly becoming legends.  Tina graduated.  Stacy was from the area, so she would begin to commute to school from home.  Marcy decided to attend school closer to her home in the Midwest.  James had disappeared after freshman year.  Jarrod had set up life with some friends of his in a tiny apartment near campus and Dan and John joined a fraternity and moved into that house.  Susan, was planning on moving in to an old farmhouse on her parents’ property that summer and talked about commuting the 45 minutes to school.

That summer, Ed went back home to the small coastal town he grew up.  Went back to work his old high school job and to forget about his crumbling school life that hovered less than two hours away.  In August, he received a letter with no return address.  The purple envelope was full of funny little pictures and squiggly drawings.  Curious, he tore into the envelope.  It was a short note from Susan.  She was moving into the farmhouse on her parents’ property outside of McMinnville.  Would he be interested in helping her move?  She went on to write about her adventures (lots of rivers and lakes and campsites) and how excited she was to finally have a place of her own.  She offered that there would be beer and BBQ as encouragement to help her move.  There was a silly looking map and drawing of her new home.  She closed by letting him know that he was missed and loved.  Ed read that note over and over again. 

A week later, he was driving his parent’s car toward the valley.  It was still early, but the heat was already quite intense.  He thought about Susan.  He didn’t know when he had developed such a massive crush on her.  His previous crushes had developed quickly and he would agonize over them for long periods – beating himself up for his inability to communicate.  Susan simply started talking to him one day in class, and he surprisingly kept his end of the conversation.  Ever since then, he found himself following her around as often as he could.  She seemed to like him, which confused and confounded him.  He was not adept at reading signals.  During his high school years, he was friends with a girl from his Spanish Class.  They rode the same bus home from school most days.  They bonded over music and began to hang out a lot.  He considered her one of his best friends, but then after they went to see a movie one evening, she seemed upset with him, and from then on they stopped hanging out.  He began to wonder, if they had been dating, without his knowledge.  Had it been a real life version of Some Kind of Wonderful?  Whatever the case, his realization was too late, not that he would have known how to address it anyway.

 

Susan was different.  Not only did he feel more relaxed and at ease with her than anyone prior, but he thought she was the prettiest person he’d ever met, and he was drawn to her.  Her casual nature was contagious.  It inspired her uncluttered style.  Ed began to feel sad and disappointed when he wasn’t around her.  Now, he was on his way to visit her.  Would they be alone, or would the usual entourage be there?  Butterflies flapped intensely in his gut.  He leaned back and tried to lose himself in the music on the mix tape he had made her, and ended up flying by the turn he needed to make to get to her place.

Ed slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop.  Then he simply started up again along the empty two-lane highway.  He was embarrassed, even though no one was around on the country highway.  He continued forward until he found a place to turn around and go back. 

The side road to Susan’s house was gravel.  There was an incline up the road for about a half mile with brown cut fields on both sides.  For the next half mile, the road descended into a valley of giant oak trees, and the road curved around these before going back uphill.  Finally, the road crested a final slope into another open field.  A dilapidated one story house sat ahead under a pair of huge oaks.  An unmown brown field lay directly behind the house, followed by more trees and a forested hillside.  There were four cars parked in front of the house.  He saw someone who looked like James carrying a box from a pick-up truck to the house.

Ed pulled into the circle shaped space, trying not to block anyone in.  He climbed out and felt the hot sun on his skin and recoiled for a second.  It was so bright that even his tightly squinted eyes couldn’t keep his pupils protected.  He stretched and turned toward the house.  Standing on the porch to the old dilapidated and peeling house was Susan.  She stood tall in front of the open entrance.  She was wearing pale blue overalls, with a tight bright yellow t-shirt underneath.  Her long, straight, light brown hair was blowing smalls strands across her freckled nose and big toothy grin.  She waved and called out to him.  He stumbled his way up the two steps onto the porch and she put her arms out to accept a hug.  He obliged and held her uncomfortably tight and perhaps a beat too long.  He had recently developed a habit of leaning his head onto the shoulder of whomever he was embracing.  He did this and he did not want it to end.  She smelled like vanilla.  

She broke his embrace and directed him to the open front door.  “Come inside!  The gang’s all here!”

Inside, James was standing near the entryway over the box he had been carrying.  He waved at Ed; with a smirk on his face.  To the right was a living space that had two old couches pushed together to form on ‘L,’ framing a very large stone fireplace.  On each couch sat one of the two Dave’s.  Both were strumming and picking away at acoustic guitars.  Ed could not tell what they were playing, if anything, nor could he decide if they had each brought their instruments, which he thought was a little over the top. 

“Sup?” both Dave’s groaned in unison.  Dave B. gave him a smile and a creepy wink, before re-engaging with the fretboard.  Ed, nodded, and turned back to Susan standing in the doorway.  “What can I do?”

Susan asked James to put the box at his feet in the kitchen, which was situated behind the big fireplace.

“All that’s left is a few more boxes in the pick-up, and another truckload at my parents’ place,” she replied, before adding, “Thank you for coming!” 

Ed turned to grab a box from the pick-up outside.  He felt eager and energetic.  He and James took turns carrying the boxes into the house, and exchanging friendly quips.  Susan directed them to various locations in the two-bedroom house to put the boxes, and the two Dave’s squealed a terrible rendition of Janes Addiction’s signature song: “Jane Says” from the couches.

 

After the boxes had all been unloaded, Susan offered everyone a beer.  She had two large ice chests full of bottles of Henry Weinhard’s beer.  Before he accepted one, he trotted outside into the sunshine to grab the mix-tape he had put together for her.  She yelped with joy when he held it out for her, and then, immediately put it into a cassette player she had already set up in the kitchen.  He had designed the tape to start out fairly quiet and then slowly build in intensity and volume.  The intensity was meant to reflect his loneliness and his internal war against his own crushing shyness, as well as his growing feelings for her.  As soon as the first song hit, the two Dave’s both started to protest and complain about the dourness of Ed’s musical tastes.  They both grabbed another beer and Dave B. began mimicking and mocking the vocals of the first song.  Ed kept his mouth shut, feeling a tinge of embarrassment, and took a long pull on the cold bottle in his hand.  Most of its contents were taken in that first drink.  He was done with being there.  He wished that she would save the tape for another time. 

Susan giggled a soft protest to the Dave’s, and then began putting together a plan for everyone to go up to her parents’ place and retrieve the remainder of her things and bring them back to unload.  She figured one more pick-up load would be enough.  After that she would BBQ up some beef patties and chicken. 

James and Ed slid into the cab of Susan’s pick-up and she drove further up the gravel drive past a big field with what looked like grape vines and toward a huge house behind them.  She pointed out that her parents were going into the wine business.  They all went inside.  There were about twelve boxes stacked up and ready just inside the door, and two big lamps with their shades lying next to them.  No one else seemed to be around.  The house was dark and very cool.  Ed liked the chill of the air.  None of the boxes were heavy and they quickly hauled everything out to the back of the pick-up.  Ed and James tried their best to tightly wedge the lamps in so they would stay upright along the bumpy gravel drive.  Susan seemed to be comfortable with their effort. 

Back at Susan’s much smaller home, Ed was relieved that the lamps survived the journey unscathed.  He grabbed the necks of each, and carefully walked them into the front room.  He noticed the Dave’s had shut off the mixtape, opened more beer, and were murdering some song that he couldn’t quite place from their off-tone acoustics.  The remainder of the boxes were brought in by Ed, James and Susan upon her direction for which room.  The Dave’s each had slowly stumbled outside, each fully adorned in work attire – Dave D. even had put on gloves – and brought in the remaining two lamp shades. 

“Thanks a lot, you turds!  I mean, my heroes,” Susan shouted at the Dave’s.  “Appreciate the help!” she exclaimed, shaking her head with a big smile on her face.  “I’ll start the coals.”  She walked out onto a back patio from a door off of the kitchen.  There was a round table out there, a few white plastic chairs, and a small charcoal cooker outside.  Ed followed her out there and asked what else she needed done.  She asked him to pour some charcoal from the giant red, white, and blue bag into the black grill.  Several of the briquettes bounced around on the ground beneath the grill.  

“I think I’m gonna head home,” Ed summoned up the nerve to tell her.  He wasn’t feeling good about being there.

“Aw, man, you don’t want to stay and hang out?” she pleaded with him, as she motioned to the grill and towards the music emanating from inside the house.  She smiled, and angled her lips to blow a strand of hair out of her face.  She looked a little exasperated and mumbled “take me with you,” as she ducked back into the house – her home. 

Ed would’ve gladly taken her with him.  Absolutely, anywhere she wanted to go.  Instead, she returned with a plate with beef patties and a couple of boneless chicken breast fillets on a plate.  She set the plate down and turned to stand in front of him.  She put both of her hands on his slumped shoulders and looked him in the eyes and said, “thank you for helping, and for the tape.”  Then she put both of her hands on his cheeks and closed in for a big sloppy kiss on his lips.  He was surprised and a little alarmed.  It was over before he knew what was going on.  Her kiss tasted like candy blueberries – not like the salty kisses he had previously experienced.  He stood there dumbfounded for a moment and then reached in to hug her tightly, before turning to head through the house.  “Take care of yourself Eddy.”

Ed felt weak at the knees, and a little blind, as he navigated his way from the bright sun of the patio to the darkness inside.  

“Catch you guys later,” he shouted as he hit the front doorway.  He heard a few voices respond with a resounding group “Yo!” 

He numbly drove back home.  It was a quiet 45 minutes or so, as he decided not to turn on any music.  He felt overwhelmingly sad and wasn’t sure why. 

 When he returned to the small beach community he grew up, he drove to a beach access, got out of the car, and huddled into a pile of driftwood bunched up as far from the ocean as possible while still being on the beach.  He hid there, protected from the vicious and chilly north wind.  He liked the beach for his meditative moments; because the beach was its own environment.  The roaring of the waves and the constant wind overwhelmed his senses.  Sometimes Ed would feel a little beaten up after hitting the beach.  It was its own world.  The fact, that he could only hear and feel the sea and its contained ecosystem, helped him focus. 

He brought a pad of paper and a pen.  He considered writing a letter to Susan, but no words came to mind.  He thought the world of her, and ached for her attention.  She was almost always in his thoughts.  Everything reminded him of her.  Ed felt inspired to be a better person in her honor.  He thought a lot about this.  He admired the way she treated people, seemingly without prejudgment, and so welcomingly.  He strove for this.  He always felt very good around her – very comfortable, but he was never sure, if this was just how she treated everyone.  Was there a chance that she liked him in a way that he liked her?  Ed was pretty sure that he was unlikeable.  He could not fathom how someone so vibrant, smart, funny and pretty could ever be interested him beyond being a portion of her constant entourage.

After the beach stop, Ed began mentally beating himself up for not writing, or even starting the letter.  He drove up and down Highway 101 cranking music as loudly as he could.  He cruised by the old high school hot hang out spots and wasted as much time as he could in an effort to squeeze out every bit of angst he was feeling, or until he was tired, whichever came first. 

That night, when he got back to his childhood home.  No one was there.  His parents were out.  He didn’t turn on any lights, and instead turned on the old television before flopping face first onto the old orange couch – the one he’d grown up watching TV from.  He turned the channel to WTBS for their weekend video show Night Tracks.

 

Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians "So You Think You're in Love"

The first video he saw was a very generic music video for Robyn Hitchcock’s “So You Think You’re in Love.”  The song was okay, he thought, but didn’t hold a candle to the previous year’s acoustic marvel Eye, or even his pseudo commercial breakthrough Queen Elvis prior to that.  The second video was from Toad the Wet Sprocket.  It was a video for a song named “Is it for Me?”  The video featured super saturated sun-drenched images – bright for the eyes.  For some reason, he always liked that technique.  The video also seemed to depict the band as a rag tag bunch doing stuff around an old farmhouse.  The singer, Glen Phillips, is dressed very much the same way as Susan had been earlier.  He was fully enthralled in the music video for a song that he had zero interest.  It all felt very familiar and now he was pretty sure that he had developed a crush on the singer for Toad the Wet Sprocket as well.

 

Toad the Wet Sprocket "Is it for Me?"

Recovering from his trip down memory lane, which had been brought on from looking at Susan’s Facebook profile picture, Ed tried to interpret how she was doing now after all these years.  Not easy from a small picture.  She looked so different, but not so much due to the passage of time.  Her hair was now styled carefully with bangs, and she wore a lot of eyeliner.  He remembered her not wearing make-up when they were at school together, or the last time he saw her at the farmhouse.  

Ed opened up Susan’s Bandcamp page to listen to her musical offerings.  He wanted so much to like her acoustic indie pop sketches, but he decidedly did not.  He listened to most of them, which were all under two minutes each.  He wanted to become a fan and supporter of her music in the worst way, but it was not going to happen.  He went back to her Facebook profile to look at some of her cartoons.  These were interesting, thought-provoking and occasionally scathing towards her intended target.  

Nervously he clicked on the “Add Friend” button. 

Thank you to Ken Grandlund for help unscrambling my writing.