crushed

1. I had a crush on S., a woman I worked with. She had a boyfriend. One summer night I drove across the Bay Bridge, parked in her neighborhood, and strolled through the rose-scented night along her block. The building she lived in abutted the sidewalk, with a garage on the first floor, and the living room on the second. The lights were on in the living room, and the windows were open. Evidently she was having a party--I could identify the voices of some of her girlfriends from work, though I was too low to see anyone, and they of course couldn't see me down there in the dark. As I stopped to listen, they started to talk about me. One of her friends told S. that I was attracted to her, to which S. responded with a snort of derision.

2. I had a crush on J., a schoolmate of my two younger sisters in a little hippy-run 'alternative' junior high school. J. had long blond hair and a cute overbite. I was in public high school, and never had much of a chance to talk to J. Twenty years later, I was living in a small town about 350 miles from the city where I had grown up. One day in the supermarket I saw J. She was with her husband and six or seven kids, all of whom had blond hair and cute overbites.

3. In college, I worked part-time in the "children's room" of a science museum. During each shift, there were two workers, and the person who usually worked with me was a girl named L. I liked L., but wasn't physically attracted to her. She was, as I thought then, plumpish, and had acne. I think she had a crush on me, though. Ten years later, I attended a dance recital in which my youngest sister was performing. I wasn't very close to my youngest sister, and didn't know her friends. At the end of the show, my sister introduced me to her closest girlfriend, who had also been in the audience. It was, of course, L., who had turned into one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen.

A frail shelter

When the little white-haired Polish grandmother appeared in the hall, last night, I knew that Doris Lessing had arrived. Her hair was parted in the middle of her head, and it had a hint of wave as it was pulled carefully back, becoming more gray as it descended to a small knot above the nape of her neck. Her eyes lay at the bottom of two round dark hollows in her face, which otherwise appeared largely unmarked except for two vertical furrows guarding her mouth and chin. She was dressed well, in a navy blue suit, its straight skirt ending a few inches above her ankles. A violet scarf filigreed with gold dangled from her neck.

After the introductions, a much taller woman took her by the arm and led her slowly up the steps to the podium.

Her clipped British voice was only slightly blurred by age. It was a no-nonsense voice that, from time to time, came to a stop with a wry sally. I thought of a hen, of a biddy. Here are some of the things that she said:

[introducing a story from which she read] "No one is happy for ten years."

[reading from the story] "Tom was unhappy, but he didn't know it."

[introducing another story] "When I wrote it, I realized how much I had forgotten. And how much I wanted to forget, which is worse."

[reading from that story] "It was appropriate that such a frail shelter, always seeming about to dissolve into the sea, should be a place for lovers."

[reflecting on the eventual fate of a character in that story, which had been told to her as being a true one] "He is still waiting, hoping that his child will turn up. But I don't know if he will turn up. It seems unlikely."

[in answer to a question about why so many people tell her their stories] "We all hear stories all the time. After all, what is gossip?"

[in answer to a question about her opinion of a biography being written about her] "I don't want a biography written. When I'm dead, I won't care."

[asked about her favorite writers] "There is such a lot of good writing going on...the Russians were important to me when I was young...our life situations were similar [an educated elite living among a mass of more primitive people]...Primitive people are always admired by their conquerors or rulers for having wells of untapped wisdom [the last few words said ironically]...Stendhal--I've just reread most of him. I am limp with awe at Stendhal."

[while refusing to answer a question about the physical details of her writing process, i.e. pencil vs. computer] "Why do you ask? This question always gets asked. It's as if people think that there is a trick to writing, and once that trick is discovered, then it's all easy. Well, it isn't. The trick is hard work."

[speaking of "The Four-Gated City," while answering a question about her favorites among her own work.] "It is maybe my best book. There is something wrong with the beginning, but it's too late to change it."

[responding to a question about the Women's Movement] "I am astonished that young women don't know that they are the first women in history that haven't had to worry about getting pregnant. They don't know what their ancestors' lives were like. The lives of women were terrible. They don't know what they've been saved from. Science and technology did it, not the women's movement."

I didn't stay afterwards to buy a book. I should've. I was stupid. Oh well.

Glenn, during the war

On a beautiful day in spring a young man came walking down the sidewalk. He played a wooden flute and joined the girls in hopscotch. He wore a white cap with a little plastic seagull on the top, and he had a baby's red mouth which he tried to hide behind a large mustache that drooped and then curled up at each end.

He introduced himself: Glenn Miller, toymaker. Later we found out that he had driven a truck for a toy company for a few days until he was fired. He liked to play in the backyard with the little kids who lived in the flat above ours—intricate games of House and Horsie.

I thought he was crazy at first.

He was an artist. He showed us his old drawings, which were precise and surrealistic. He showed us a tiny news clipping about his winning first prize in an art contest in New Orleans. He did a portrait of my mother which we kept up on the wall for a whole day. Once he went wild and started chasing everybody, trying to mark our faces with a red felt pen. We took him to the beach to give him more room, and he pushed one of my sisters into the ocean.

He told us about his past. In New Orleans, he had been in the Air Force. He had signed up to be a medical technician, thinking that it might involve drawing. Medical technician meant bedpans. There were complaints to the authorities about his tardiness, his association with the patients, his failure to get haircuts, his failure to complete his assigned duties. When questioned about the latter, he said that he hadn't performed the assigned duties because he didn't feel that he should. The authorities concluded that he had an impoverished personality which was incompatible with the military way of life. He was given a psychiatric discharge.

One day Glenn walked into our house carrying a bucket of Colonel Sanders' fried chicken and a paper bag. Inside the bag were a white suit and an Erik Satie album. He went into the bathroom and came back out wearing the suit, and we all ate chicken with biscuits and coleslaw and listened to the album. Glenn said he was leaving in the morning, hitching to Boulder, Colorado, taking with him the puppy he had just acquired. He said he would stop by on his way out of town to see if anyone was up.

The next morning when I finally got up I found Glenn's Paul Siebel album lying by the front door. It had that song that he liked:

Oh sing for us you children, tinkle bells
and rhyme the purple, green, and blue,
and think of us as fighting fools
who wintered through the seasons loving you.

Oh we can give you nothing, nothing
but survival in a desert bare,
but you can teach us how to love
and live and tie bright ribbons in our hair.