Hmmm, this is interesting. I am now the same age that Kurt Cobain was when he died, meaning, to my seventh-grade self, that I am now A Grown Up. He was married and had a kid called Frances and a wildly successful band and a talent for grunge and hanging from chandeliers, so, you know, he was way ahead of me in a lot of ways. I remember thinking that he was young and charming in that depressive, angsty, poetical way (so I have a thing). But I also remember thinking that he had an adult life and an adult existence – however muddled by riches, fame, a rockstar lifestyle and an ample supply of intoxicants. Still.
I am also the same age that Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin were when they died. Janis had, like, a gravelly voice. A grown-up voice. A weathered voice. Again, I don’t think of either of them as old – these tragedies are particulary poignant because it seems that all of these people bid the world farewell at the height of their beauty, creativity, youth, and potential. But they were at the beginning of something, and that something was a proper adult life, a career, a long string of a story.
This is the beginning of my story: in our nation’s capital, the tulips and magnolias are blooming. I’m a few blocks from Capitol Hill, stealing Kevin’s seat next to Jane in Crim Law. I’m walking through a throng of Grateful Dead fans in Chinatown and watching my most favorite president drive by Jane’s apartment building with his entourage of guards. I’m drinking coffee in a cushy armchair at Tryst and learning where the good farmer’s markets are. I’m meeting Con Law professors who say things like, “You should come. We’ll, like, hang out and stuff.” I’m getting my drinks paid for and being stared at like a woman (instead of a zoo specimen). I’m being told that students interested in research and writing are sought after by their professors. And I can make it to Friday prayers at Capitol Hill.
But adults don’t make decisions based on stuff like that. They are rational. Whatever that means.
This is the first thing that happened: I walked into the building that houses the admissions office to go say hello and get the pitch (only fair to get all the pitches; a girl has to compare apples with apples). So I walk into the atrium and I’m looking for the elevator and my eyes happen – just happen – to fall upon a boy in skinny jeans, Chuck Taylors, and pretty magnificent chops. And all I think is: I belong here.
But that is not how adults make decisions.
So I go up to admissions and meet the director and blah blah she’s telling me about the curriculum. She has a surprisingly weak pitch for someone supposed to woo, but no matter. I have already been wooed by Biker Boy downstairs. I call Jane.
[Jane and I lived roughly five doors apart our freshman year of college. We came to DC together to protest Bush's inauguration (last time I was here, actually...). We did a lot of theater together, and worked on building the college's chapter of Students for Tibet. I drank my first mojito with Jane.]
She walks over to where I’m sitting. Her hair is slightly longer; there is a handful of grey strands I can spot when I hug her. She is thinner than she was freshman year (aren’t we all). She’s in a grey sweater dress, black stockings, and exactly the kind of slouchy black boots i like. A colorful scarf is wound around her neck. Other than the five grey hairs and her sveltitude, she looks exactly the same. I’m amazed. I can’t help but wonder: will my reaction be the same if I see her in another ten years?
She is warm, totally open, as though I’m not wearing a scarf over my hair. Or I was wearing one the last time she saw me, instead of short hair and two piercings on my face. Or like there’s no difference. It doesn’t really matter – in any case, it’s nice to meet an old friend who doesn’t look, just for a second, like I’ve caught Plague. Her friends are similarly unwary and unphased, at least apparently. I feel like I can breathe, like I am taken for granted – or it is taken for granted that I belong here just as much as everyone else. I don’t feel like I need to defend myself at all. I don’t feel prickly. People feed me candy and eat my cake without asking. It’s fantastic, like finding childhood friends you never knew you had.
In the midst of a Crim Law lecture I receive an email from my dream, my first choice, my long shot: denied. Ah well. It still hurts a little, of course, some register somewhere that I am not, after all, a person who commands the admissions process; I am a person at its mercy. It could mean that I’m not as together or as smart or as accomplished as I’d like or as other people are, or it could mean none of these things. It just sucks not to be wanted – even when I’m not wanting back.
But adults take this in stride. They take a deep breath and listen to the fallout of Miranda, because they are here to learn, not to nurse a bruised ego.
And like an adult, like the older student I will be, God willing, I venture out from campus and seek out the cooler places in the city. In one of these I meet a man one of my best friends once wanted to set me up with, only to realize that he would, in fact, be a total disaster. Not because he’s bad. Just because he’s an F-sharp to my G. We don’t sound good together, we’re awkward to touch at the same time, it’s just bad all over. This too rolls off my back like so many drops of water, which feels good; it’s not some reawakened-and-lost dream, it’s just guy #3,287,394 I’m not that into. Who could be a friend.
All in all, it feels like I’m stepping out of a cage I didn’t even know I was in. Thank God.
I get back on a plane to a life that barely still exists. Destiny awaits, taking hold of my heart, pointing it south. I want to ask Kurt if this is a legitimate way of choosing a life: observing my heart’s compass, and setting out.
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