In the fall of 1993 I went to Italy with a bunch of fellow American architecture students. A lot of them were hippies, but I wasn’t. I was a closeted, scared introvert. Closeted might be too severe a word because I honestly didn’t know where I was sexuality speaking. I hadn’t been with another man, but I was very curious. The two stories I’ll share really don’t relate aside from happening in Italy. I suggest you try to divine some cosmic significance from their pairing. You know, for kicks.
Story 1:
We were in the architecture studio working on our final projects for the semester. The hippies were drinking coffee, listening to something college-y, talking about how much they learned about a different culture like the Real World housemates do on the last episode of a season. They say insightful things like, “I never knew I was a bigot! This experience has really opened my eyes! I never would have thought I could have a gay friend! I thought Aaron would be having ass sex every minute of every day! Wow! Gays are people now!” My American hippy classmates were slightly less caricature-esque in their debriefing of the semester.
One of the hippies asked me what I was going to do after graduation. I was only a semester away from graduation, where most of the other students were juniors. I told him that I would probably, you know, get a job…doing architecture. The guy who asked me said, “Have you ever listened to the lyrics to ‘Once in a Lifetime’? That’s going to be you… ‘This is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful wife. How did I get here?’ Man.” I imagine he said “man” like a stoner hippy, although that might be unfair. “You’re going to wake up one day and realize you sold your soul to Corporate America.” I was listening to a lot of Talking Heads then, so I knew the song. I hadn’t heard the meaning behind the song until then. That sentiment still hits me in the chest plate whenever I hear it.
Story 2:
We lived in a small town outside of Florence. If we wanted to take a day-trip, we took an hour-long train ride in. One Saturday I went by myself. I did a lot of traveling by myself that semester. I went to shop, to browse the Ufizzi, to go to the Duomo for the fifth or sixth time, to sit in a piazza sketching, and to just be in Florence. I sat in the piazza next to the Duomo watching the gypsies rob innocent passers-by thinking, “Whaddya know? It looks so obvious. Those gypsies are really good.” I sat on a concrete planter or bench. I felt a mild, lonely melancholy, the kind of melancholy a person feels on a sunny fall day where lawns have blankets of brown and red leaves and the bright sun gives no warmth, where the day is so quiet that a person might feel like if he listened hard enough he could hear ants crawling in the cracks in the cold sidewalks. A guy sat down next to me and pulled out his cock for me to look at. I got up and ran in to the Duomo.
I looked for that concrete planter or bench when Jerry and I went back last year, but I didn’t find it.
sodajerk | 22-Nov-06 at 2:39 am | Permalink
Story 1:
Those hippies weren’t your friends, Alex, and even if they were that doesn’t give them the right to judge you or make you feel bad about following your dream. Not everyone with steady employment and health insurance has sold their soul. And this is from a hippie-sympathizer in her 11th year of higher education who is still a long way from having either one of those things. But I’m following my dream, wherever it takes me.
However, I do understand the sentiment of how powerful words can be even when the person speaking them forgets them as soon as they’re spoken. We can remember things like that for the rest of our lives (some positive, some not) that the other person treated sort of flippantly. I wonder where that hippy is today? Does he think the same thing when he hears that song?
P.S. I’m also not so much of a lyric-listener. I’m a musician so I can usually sit down at a piano after hearing a song a few times and figure out how to play it, but I can hear a song a hundred times and never listen to or understand the words. My sister is the opposite - she hears a song once and like a savant she’s got every word memorized.
Story 2:
I love when stuff like that happens. Not creepy propositions, but just weird, unexpected stuff. At first you’re pissed or freaked out, but soon after you realize how funny it is and you get to forever amuse people with the anecdote.
Lynch | 22-Nov-06 at 5:25 am | Permalink
Story 1:
When I was dating my wife we were amazed at how much the other enjoyed going to the movies and enjoyed film in general. Her friends used to tell her that she would never find any guy that went to movies as much as her.
Story 2:
I proposed to my wife at the movies.
A month before it happened I approached the cinema manager to set it up and he gave me a blank frame of film that I could print up some titles on. After a showing of Phenomenon with John Travolta in which he dies in the last few seconds of the film of brain tumors, the slide came up on the screen and asked her to marry me. After the ending of the film everyone in the audience had tears in their eyes already as I led my wife up to the front of the theatre and bent down on one knee. And the rest as they say…
alex | 22-Nov-06 at 1:33 pm | Permalink
Awesome stories, Lynch.
Sodajerk: “I love when stuff like that happens.”
Wow, sodajerk, you’re a lot more of a free-thinker than I thought. How many times has a total stranger shown you their cock? And you thought, “Awesome!” Huh. You’re a weirdo. -wink-