girlfriends i have known (#1 in a series)


trish

bakersfield was starting to really suck, and not just in the normal way that bakersfield usually sucked, no... the spring of '94 brought SUCK to a whole new level.

for starters, the downtown area that had been neglected for years by the city was now being recognized as a vital city center, which sounds like a good idea, but it killed the beating heart of my life in bakersfield. when it was ignored, the downtown shops could be rented for a song, which is just about all young, idealistic business owners could afford, so by the early '90s, there were funky coffeehouses and dive bars and tattoo shops and record stores and independent bookshops and the world's best thrift store all within spitting distance of the main drag and walking distance from the only club in town to openly call itself both a gay club and a punk club.

if you've never been to bakersfield, you have idea how phenomenal all this was, because bakersfield truly sucks, but for a while there... it was pretty fun. i started organizing concerts showcasing local bands and publishing a local zine featuring local bands. i was the arts and entertainment editor for the university newspaper and wrote a weekly column on local entertainment in the city paper. i read at the local poetry readings. i dated... everyone! it was a giddy time.

but then the city government began noticing the hordes of young people flocking downtown, so it started its so-called "downtown revitalization" program, which basically offered incentives for building owners to raise their rents and start attracting more high-brow clientele. within months, the cool bookstore closed, the cool record store closed, the cool gay/punk bar closed, the vintage clothing store closed, the cool old building we used to sneak into on the weekends got turned into a fucking shopping mall with high-rent office space, and then even the coolest coffeehouse in the world -- chaos coffee! -- had a farewell concert and closed. they were all replaced by stupid chainstores and stupid sports bars and stupid stupid stupid shit.

and then a few bands got signed (korn, cradle of thorns, spike 1000) and left town, and every other band in town seemed to either break up or move out since they had nowhere to play or because so many of their members got hooked on heroin.

and then kurt cobain went and shot himself in the head.

so, i decided to move six hours north to a little college town called chico and concentrate on three things: getting through school; dumping rock shows and starting poetry shows; stop being so casual about relationships and actually commit myself to dating responsibly.

well, two outta three ain't bad.

i accomplished two of those three goals, and one of these days i will return to school and finally my studies and get my degree.

i did indeed start doing poetry shows almost as soon as i got there at a place called caffe siena. i called them "wordcore," and made them high-energy open mike events that were sometimes augmented with live music. i had never heard of slam before, but the energy levels, audience interaction, and types of material presented were all on par with slam. it would be two years before i experienced slam at the taos poetry circus.

there was also a poetry event going on at the phoenix room and some random ones elsewhere from time to time. when i met trish in the spring of '95, probably around march or maybe even february, i had already pretty much made a name for myself in that tiny college town.

i can't really remember how i met trish. i know that i had not seriously dated anyone in the first semester and a half while i was in chico, but i had kinda sorta hooked up a couple or three times. trish was the first person i had met who really sparked my interest in a big way.

i think a guy i knew also knew her, and he and i were both into poetry, and so was trish, so we were bound to meet eventually even though she never came to the readings. she considered herself a poet with a capital P, i think, and the wordcore readings were maybe not her bag of tea.

however it went down, i do know that as soon as i met her, i was instantly smitten, and what does a smitten poet do when he is smitten with a fellow poet? he organizes a writers group! yes, i got a few friends together to meet every sunday for writing exercises, and, of course, got my friend to invite trish. we instantly hit it off on the very first meeting, and once the group dispersed, we kept hanging out. this turned into what we would later consider our first date. (we both wrote poems about it.)

trish and i left the meeting and walked through lovely bidwell park -- the third largest municipal park in the country after new york's central park and san francisco's golden gate park, i'll have you know -- and talked and laughed and connected in that wonderfully electric way two people who have just found each other do. she was smart, she was funny, she could tell a great story, she was really cute, and she laughed at all my jokes. as it got dark, we still couldn't imagine having it end, so we rented a video ("scent of green papaya") and hung out at her apartment.

i remember not knowing if i should be all making moves and shit, so i was just chill and trying not to think too much about it, but then i thought i'd be all sly, so i hatched a plan. i'm rolling my eyes at this now, but, at the time, i thought my plan was simple and elegant and brilliant. we were sitting at either ends of one of her couches, see, and even though we were sharing a blanket, there was more than ample space between us, but i wanted to get closer, see, but i wasn't sure if i should, see, so i suggested we move to the other couch since it looked like it had a better view of the teevee screen, only i excused myself to the bathoom first. so, i was in the bathroom, and i figured that if i came out and she was sitting at the far end of the other couch when i got out there, that would be a clear sign that she wanted to maintain the distance. okay, cool, then i'd respect that.

when i got back to the living room, trish was sitting perfectly in the center of the other couch with barely enough room on either side for me to slide up right next to her.

awww yeah.

after the movie, which was at times very sensual, we went to her room and sat together on her bed and just kinda stared at each other and played with our hands, stroking them, holding them, and i remember her hands were so warm. eventually we kissed, and it was sweet and warm and wonderful. it was pretty much decided right then and there that we were going to date, although both of us expressed a desire to "wait for a while" to have sex, which was totally cool.

we waited a whole week.

at the next writers group meeting, it was obvious to all that we had hooked up and were now seeing each other, and this caused our mutual friend quite a bit of distress. little did either of us know, but he had had a crush on her for ages. he was big-time taken aback that we had hooked up so quickly when he had liked her for so long first, and, needless to say, the writers group didn't last very long.

(nothing breaks up a writers group faster than jealousy. thoughtful ellipses...)

and trish and i didn't last very long either, maybe two and half months, but boy that first month kicked so much ass. i really liked her a lot, and she seemed to really dig me, and we spent a lot of time together, usually sleeping together at one or the other's apartment most nights of the week. but, after about a month and a half, little things started to pop up that were distressing.

trish was a really good page poet, and she participated in several readings associated with the university's english department. i usually found these events to be dreadfully boring and pretentious, but i usually went anyway, and i always thought she was great. i would always suggest she read at my event, but she always demured, saying that her stuff was just... different.

after a while, i found this kinda odd, and i asked her about it. she said something about feeling like she was afraid she would be seen as some sort of scented handkerchief in my pocket, some sort of extension of me, and she did not want to be defined by me, to be seen only as "eirik's girlfriend." she had a reputation in the english department readings, so she chose to stick with those. and i guess i understood...

and then i started noticing that she got really irritated when people who had seen me at the readings would greet me as we walked together on the sidewalk. someone would say, "hey eirik! that floss poem the other night was great!" and i would thank them politely, ask if they were going to read something the next week, blah blah blah, then trish and i would keep walking. and this... wow... this really pissed trish off. she fucking hated it. and i would try to introduce trish to whoever it was, but she would seem to get even more annoyed, so whenever it would happen, i would just try to limit the interaction as much as possible.

i really didn't know what to do about it, and it would happen all the time. i remember one saturday afternoon we went to the farmer's market, and i think i was stopped four or five times by people who mentioned the readings, and trish was livid. i remember trying to ask her what i was supposed to do, you know, was i supposed to ignore someone who says hello? be mean to them? did she think i was somehow overly impressed with it, like i was thinking i was some kind of rock star? she couldn't say, just said it made her mad. we cut our afternoon short because of it.

i'm not really sure what the deal was even now, but not wanting to be "big poppa e's nameless girlfriend" probably had everything to do with it, mixed with maybe a little creative competitiveness. i remember that trish used to ask me my opinion of her latest poems, and i would give them to her very gently, pointing out the strong parts and complimenting her work (which i genuinely liked), and if there was a part i liked less, i would say that part didn't seem as strong as the other part, you know, suggest that maybe that would be the area i would focus on. something like that.

she would be so quiet and sullen afterwards no matter how i phrased it. there were several times when she would come back from her writing workshop with comments from the other students that mirrored mine, but she always seemed to accept their criticisms better than mine. so i asked her what she needed from me as far as critiques goes, and she said she really couldn't tell me why it felt different from me... it just did.

the third-to-the-last thing that happened that marked a change in our relationship was when we visited her family in grass valley over a weekend. it seemed like her parents took an instant disliking to me, and from the very beginning they barely talked and interacted with me. i didn't know if it was just me, or if they were just like that, or what, you know?

after the weekend was over, i asked trish about it, and she sighed deeply. she comfirmed that her parents had not liked me all that much, but she seemed to think it was because i looked just like her step-brother. she showed me an old photo... yep... short guy... shaved bald... goatee... kinda chunky... earrings... i asked her why this should upset her parents so much, and she was kinda quiet... said something about how they don't talk to him anymore, about how he had been kicked out of the house when she was in high school, something about inappropriate behavior. she wouldn't go into detail, but it made me really, really uncomfortable.

the second-to-the-last thing that happened that marked a change in our relationship was when i asked her to read something i had just written. we were eating burgers in a local place called the madison bear garden (great burgers!), and i handed her a folded piece of paper with a poem on it, and asked if she could take a look at it sometime and tell me what she thought.

she paused.

looked at the paper in my hand.

then very quietly said that she couldn't. she wouldn't. i asked her why, what's wrong, and she just shook her head and said she didn't know, she just knew she couldn't look at it.

now that i thought was a little weird. she made it clear that the subject was closed, so i didn't ask her about it again, but it really bothered me that we couldn't talk about it. she stopped asking me for critique of her work after that as well.

it was probably right around this time that things started to get kinda tense. we would bicker. i can't remember many specifics, but we both started being unhappy with things.

i do remember one thing that signaled the end was near. i had been publishing a literary zine in bakersfield for quite some time, and i had just released the latest issue right around that time. this must have been the end of april, maybe beginning of may, and i got a letter from some girl asking for a copy of the world music mix tape i wrote about in exchange for one she'd just made. so i wrote back and said that would be a great idea, and we decided to meet for coffee. her name was michelle, and she seemed pretty cool, but she talked a lot about astral projection and time travel with a disconnected gleam in her eye, so i kinda thought she was flighty and odd.

after about 45 minutes, we said goodbye, and i went to trish's. we talked about our days, and when we got to my day, i told her about meeting michelle.

and trish freaked out.

she was all, "why didn't you tell me you were going to meet some girl in some coffeeshop? when were you going to tell me about this?"

and i tried to calm her down by telling her that we had just decided today to meet, which was, like, an hour earlier, and it was really not a big deal since i had shared the letter with trish when i got it and told her about our plans to exchange mix tapes, but she was totally pissed and accused me of flirting with "new people," accused me of flirting with people at the poetry readings i organized (the ones she never attended), accused me of trying to hide things. nothing i could say would dissuade her, so i ended up leaving in frustration and going home.

i think some of the problems we experienced had to do with jealousy and competition, mostly over our poetry and the different reactions it garnered, and maybe even that whole unspoken ex-step-brother thing, but i think it was also the fact that trish was about to graduate and move back to grass valley. we had met in february or march, and graduation was in may, so i suppose something had to be done about the whole "us" thing. maybe that exacerbated the problems. probably did.

i was politely asked not to come to trish's graduation since her parents were coming, but we made plans to get together with a bunch of friends for drinks later that night. the appointed time came... and went... i was hanging out in her apartment waiting for her, as per our plans, but she never came home. i left her place around 2 a.m. i took my pillow and my toothbrush and the few other things that had migrated over there over the past two and a half months, and i left her a note asking her to call me when she had the chance.

i was going to break up with her the next day, but she called me a few hours later, drunk, and whispering that i was "not the one." i agreed, and i wished her the best of luck in grass valley.

and that was that.

a few days later, i got laid off from the graphic design job where i worked in anticipation of the summer slump in sales, so i decided to move out of my apartment and spend the summer in wichita with my parents, something i hadn't done since they moved there in '91, and just come back in the fall when school started again.

trish didn't keep in touch.

oddly enough, michelle, the mix tape girl, did. (and that's a whole 'nother story.)

trish ended up coming back to chico, though, and i guess she started dating a boy and got pregnant. from what i heard, she and the guy didn't stay together long, and she raised her daughter herself.

i did a google search for her the other day, and apparently trish went on to get her master's degree at mills college in the bay area, and now she writes for a bay area paper and teaches english composition at a junior college. i read several of her poems online that she's written since we hung out, and it's all really good stuff.

i hope she's doing well.

poems about trish: bidwell park, graduation day.



*****



Bookends

I: Serendipity

our journey began
with crisp fuji apples
and kiwi pepper jam
bought
with pocket change
from a parking lot farmers market

drizzled by honey-sweet sun
from a sky too blue
for words,
we walked — no,
we traipsed —
through wooded parks
kicking oak balls
under fallen birch
snacking on wild miners lettuce
sharing chapstick and
singing songs
until our voices
went numb
and our cheeks
flushed cherub red
from smiling so hard

and later
beneath great aunt johnny's handmade quilt
we snuggled
entwined like
grape vines
caressing
each other's hands
our faces
our lips

and it felt so warm
and it felt so nice

more then anything
it felt
like our first few steps
together

II: Graduation Day

our serendipity
didn't last
nearly as long as we had
hoped

how could we go
from the warmth of hands held
stomachs trembling
at the thought
of our first embrace
and whispers
hoarse with passion
"i want us to be together for a long time"
to the cold static
of a long distance phone call
from four blocks away
"eirik, you're not the one."

we dove in
head first, eyes closed,
and sank straight to the bottom
so deeply
so quickly
never got the chance
to adjust
to the pressure

true bliss
hardened
in the amber of silence
the death of conversation
of our walks through the park
making love
kissing
touching
until it was all gone

the last time i saw her.
she was so beautiful it hurt.
i knew.
she knew.
when she left.
i emptied my drawer in the bottom of her dresser.
packed my toothpaste.
my socks.
my pillow.

we never made it to summer time
the laughs we shared
over turkish delight and gyros
made us think of more long walks in the park
leaving the key in the door at the hotel at Disneyland
spooning
lucky charms
the warmth of her hands
but it was only the last laugh
before summer
before graduation
before goodbye