Just Beginning To See

dry cleaner

This happened. It was the depths of the 1970s, and I was taking classes at the state university in Albany. One semester more and I'd have a degree, and that would mean I'd finally accomplished something, or so I'd been led to believe.  I was renting a room above a dry cleaner store in a place that always smelled like solvent when it didn't smell like something unappealing being fried in the kitchen on a cast iron pan by one of the two young women with whom I shared the apartment, both of them lonely and peculiar, and I guess this was where I belonged.

I was still romancing the alcoholic professor in Syracuse, and I'd had a fight with him before boarding the bus back to Albany, and  there was nothing unusual about this except that he'd swung a punch at me this time, and I'd made my exit with drama and pathos, filled with outrage and self-pity in equal parts and sporting an actual black eye. But I had friends, and one of them, a medical student, had given me a couple of pills called quaaludes. (Yeah. I know. Some friends.)  This will relax you, he said, and oh, did it ever.So I was back in my room above the dry cleaner's in Albany relaxing with my quaalude. I remember that a particular song was spinning on the record player: Tuesday Afternoon by the Moody Blues, either a very long version of it, or over and over in an endless loop. (If you survived the 70s, you know the song too.)

Pretentious, over-orchestrated crap is how one impromptu critic described the music of the Moody Blues, and someone else referred to adolescent lyrics trying too hard to sound profound. But in my quaalude state of mind, Tuesday Afternoon playing over and over was a custom-made anthem and a personal lullaby, the song to which I'd restart my life or sleep it all away.It happened to be Tuesday, even. How's that for serendipity?Tuesday afternoon. I'm just beginning to see, Now I'm on my way. It doesn't matter to me, Chasing the clouds away.

Whatever it meant, those were my feelings exactly, especially the "it doesn't matter to me" part because really, nothing did. I was all druggy and drowsy, lying in my narrow bed with a view of the bookie joint grocery store across the street and the eerie glow of a neon sign flickering on as daylight slid into evening, with the smells of dry cleaning fluid and frying onions wafting through the rooms...and someone knocking at the door.

It was Jim, a grad student, Vietnam vet, casual friend. He'd grown up in a little town outside of Syracuse and was studying at Albany now for a career in administration of something or other. Anyway, he knew how it was with me and that professor jerk, and he'd heard about this latest turn of events and hoped a punch was the wake-up call I needed, but for now he was just making sure I was okay. He sat by my bed as Tuesday Afternoon played over and over, and he offered me orange juice and put an extra blanket over me as the room grew dark and drafty, and he stroked my head and stayed with me, and I closed my eyes and drifted. Hours passed.This happened too: Right before he left the room, believing I was fast asleep, Jim leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead.

It was the tender gesture of a parent, almost. It was innocent and gentle, secret and spontaneous, not made for response or observation. It was decent and kind and quietly given, the sort of behavior that had lately been so lacking in my life, I had forgotten it was normal.

So something did call to me and draw me near on this Tuesday long ago. I woke up feeling valued. Simple as that. A little bit better, subtly changed.

Neither vigil nor kiss was ever mentioned.  Jim was just someone I knew, and I was a confused young woman, slowly and painfully inching my way forward with plenty of big mistakes still ahead. And yet.I was beginning to see.