July 29 2000 ~ Loving You...

I'm listening to Toni Braxton. I'm SO not an R&B person. But I like her. Don't tell anyone. I'm a little more embarrassed about my secret Napster stash of Mariah Carey stuff than I am about my fascination with Limp Bizkit. I'd rather discuss my masturbation habits online than my R&B stuff that I keep saying is everybody else's. Helena is SOOOOO not an R&B person. Usually. Don't tell. You don't know anything. Shoosh.

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My mom and Penny asked me to make them a mix-tape for their wedding. I'm not sure WHY, because my CD-collection is DAMNED depressing. I've got plenty of CD's, mind you -- enough to make many good mix-tapes -- but very few of them are love-song-like. You cannot bring Portishead to a wedding. But I sifted through a few things, and borrowed a few things, and came up with half a tape of love songs. I didn't really listen to it while I was making it, because I knew all of the songs well enough to know they all had decent lyrics -- and weren't break-up songs... On it, I put "Ice Cream" by Sarah McLachlan, and an instrumental version of "When I fall in love," and "Slide," by the Goo Goo Dolls (Okay, so it's not EXACTLY a love song, but it's pretty...), and then I accidentally put "Total Eclipse of the Heart" on there, but it turned out to be one of Penny's favorite songs anyway, so I left it. And an instrumental version of this song, "Loving You," from the musical "Passion." It was a decent mix-tape, even though it was only half-full.

So they were playing it in the car the other night. I was kind of half paying attention. Until "Loving You" came on. And all of a sudden, I barely knew where I was. The whole world around me disappeared.

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The first time I heard that song was December 31, 1995: New Year's Eve.

Peter had invited me to his New Year's party in Ithaca, NY. My parents, of course, flipped out. My dad didn't want me at any out-of-town party. I was only 15, after all. Not only was it an out-of-town party, but it was a late-night/sleep-over type thing, obviously, being a New Year's, ring-the-bell-at-midnight party. Not only THAT, but MEN would be there. Not just boys, but MEN. Yeah, my pop threw a shit-fit, because he knew I was going to be like, tied to a wall and molested viciously by hordes of homosexuals. Please! My dad wouldn't even let me share ICE CREAM with Peter, because he thought I'd catch something. And so of course, he didn't stop to ponder the fact that, generally speaking, homosexual men do not WANT to tie 15-year-old girls up and molest them

So I explained to him that homosexual men did not want to tie me to walls and molest me. I explained that Peter and I hadn't so much as KISSED (slight exaggeration), and that I wasn't romantically attracted to anybody who was going to be at the party, least of all Peter (total lie). I also explained that you can't catch STD's from toilet seats -- it was one of his main concerns. With my mom's help, I talked him into letting me go to the party until 1 in the morning. NO LATER. And at 1, he would personally pick me up and drive me back to Binghamton.

There were a few other people at the "party." It really wasn't a party so much as a get-together, but it didn't matter anyway, because the whole night, it was just Peter and me. There was nobody else in the world.

We went to Café Decadence, on the Ithaca Commons. We sat in the window table and watched snowflakes slowly drifting down. Café Decadence was the coolest place in the freaking world. I don't think they had ever cleaned the milk-wand on the espresso machine, but it was still the coolest place in the world. Peter and I had bagels; I had a Café Mocha and he had cranberry cove tea, I think. Peter didn't drink coffee and Café Dec had about four varieties of tea, so cranberry cove sounds about right. I always had the mocha.

Café Dec always smelled fantastic. You could throw rotten eggs through the windows and leave them lying on the floor for two weeks; you could make a sculpture out of roadkill in the dessert case -- and it still would have smelled fantastic. So Peter and I sat in the window, sipping our drinks, and watching the world go by. People outside walked by, snuggling into their coats. Snow fell, but very, very slowly, as if it was kind of THINKING about falling, but in the meantime, it would just kind of hover. The Commons were decorated for Christmas, still. Not tacky Santa Claus stuff, but strings of lights and things. And inside, we were warm and I was looking into Peter's eyes across the table from me. And something gave me the distinct impression that he really, truly loved me. I was 15. I was Peter's best friend. We were in Ithaca, which is a hilly little college-town on a lake, full of lesbians and hippies and professors. And Café Dec smelled FANTASTIC. I didn't really think anything could have gotten better.

Peter and I went back to his apartment, which was three stories up, but right on the Commons. And Craig, his boyfriend at the time, told him to go back out and get some more potato chips. So Peter and I left again to get potato chips. Salt-and-vinegar, of course: our favorite. The guys in front of us at the gas station were discussing their tattoos. I found this more-than-amusing. We giggled about it all the way back again. It was cold. And so he held my hand.

Back at the apartment again, we watched a movie -- "Clueless," if I remember correctly -- and Peter and Craig made dinner. So I and the other guests, one of whom was Peter's brother Chris, and one of whom was this horribly irritating dude named Kevin, watched the movie while dinner finished. In the kitchen, they had some gahdawful Barbra freaking Streisand music playing, and Kevin kept leaping up and singing along. Peter must have whispered, "he's SO annoying!" about a thousand times.

Dinner was ham and mashed potatoes and broccoli. I hated broccoli, but I ate it anyway. The mashed potatoes had sour cream in them. Peter kept complaining that the ham was cold, but it wasn't. And we turned the lights down, and ate by candlelight. Peach incense was burning by the staircase; they'd probably gotten it downstairs at one of the little shops in Center Ithaca, directly downstairs. It was probably made in a sweatshop-type-thing in Taiwan and sold by a white 20-year-old with dredlocks who wanted to free Tibet, rode his bike to work, and drank $3.50 cappuccinos three times a day. THAT is the true essence of Ithaca, or at least it was then. I haven't been there for a long, long time.

We killed Barbra Streisand -- at my insistence -- and put in Peter's new CD, "Passion in Jazz." And that was when the whole world disappeared. It was just the two of us. Kevin was talking and Chris was mumbling, and Craig sort of sat there grunting occasionally, but they kind of faded away, and it was just Peter and me and candles and the Christmas tree blinking in the next room. And "Passion."

He watched me from across the table, and I watched him. And he smiled. And I smiled back. And I think we were closer then than we ever have been, ever. We didn't say anything. We didn't hold hands under the table. We didn't give anybody else any sign that we were communicating in any way, but we were, sort of. I knew then, as "Loving You" was playing, and we were all toasting each other with iced tea in fancy goblets, and discussing our New Year's Resolutions, and Peter and I were staring directly into each other's eyes, that he loved me, and that I loved him. That was it and that was all. I don't think I'd ever said aloud, "I love you" to anybody, ever. I came very, very close then. But I didn't really need to say it aloud. He knew it.

Then the moment was over; the song ended and we finished eating and Peter and I blew out the candles and turned the lights back on. But when we stood up to clear the dishes and things, he took my hand and we smiled at each other. Then we cleared the rest of the dishes. That was that and that was all. And nobody ever knew quite what had taken place, maybe not even Peter and myself.

We all forgot about midnight. 1996 came in silently, and when we saw on the microwave-clock that it was 12.02, we toasted again and that was that. My parents showed up at 1.15 in the morning. They would have been on time, they said, but they'd gotten lost someplace down by the lake. Before we left, Peter slipped a mix-tape into my hand and hugged me. It was a damned depressing mix tape -- except for the Jennifer Holliday song I absolutely hated -- but I played it until it finally self-destructed. On the end of the first side was "Loving You."

I heard that song the other night. Peter and I aren't that close anymore. "I know you," he said the other day when I went to the mall to buy a CD. "I KNOW you're not getting that CD for yourself." I protested: "Yes, I REALLY am." I REALLY was. But he wouldn't believe me. He was so sure he knew exactly what was going on in my head, and he REALLY didn't. I'm not so sure that's a bad thing. We've changed. That's fine. I love him. But it's not quite the same anymore. It will never be the same as that New Year's Eve party. And that's okay too.

Café Decadence closed in 1997 or so, and became a police substation. It doesn't smell very good anymore. Peter moved to Cortland, became legal, and stopped drinking iced tea at parties. I've outgrown salt-and-vinegar potato chips and have moved on to sour cream and onion. Also, I stopped obeying my dad's orders not to sleep over at homosexuals' houses.

...But I heard that song... It's funny how the only thing permanent about falling in love is the soundtrack...

~Helena*