How Not To Fall In Love

Goodbye

“Love has the power to rescue us and not let go, otherwise it isn't love”
— Garrison Keillor

When I was in college in the 1980s, I fell in love with a girl who did not return the feeling. Instead, we had an intense platonic relationship all through college and for several years after. Unrequited love may be cliché, but it was the most painful experience of my life.

After our “relationship” finally ended, the memories continued to torment me. Even so, I treasured them, collected them, replayed them mentally. I didn’t want to forget what had happened to me, even if it meant further suffering. Forgetting would force me to accept that the entire experience was pointless, so I preferred instead to wallow in the memories, trying to gain some insight with time and distance. I hoped that perhaps some explanation for the unexplainable would eventually emerge. It was pathetic, but I didn’t care how it looked to other people. As far as I was concerned, keeping the flame alive was part of the noblest thing I ever did. I was broken and bitter, but Don Quixote had nothing on me in the idealism department.

I moved away, pulled myself together, was rescued lovingly by my wife-to-be, but was still bothered by my past. Now, nearly twenty years after my first love and I met, my life is happy and stable. Recently, I’ve noticed that my memories of her are fading on their own. I can’t quite remember who she was with when we first met. Did I visit her during the summer after sophomore year or junior year? I have mixed feelings about letting these memories go, but it’s not really a choice. The time has come to gather up what’s left of the experience in one place and say goodbye. It no longer feels like a self-betrayal to do so.

During quiet times as a newly-minted adult, my thoughts dwelt constantly on our relationship. I’d be lucky to go five minutes without thinking about her. Then the ugly reality of my predicament would jolt me again, making my stomach lurch. When I would awake in the morning and stumble to the shower, I’d usually have a few minutes of blissful peace. Then the memories would slowly tumble back in and I would lean my head against the wall of the shower in agony. Those first few minutes of ignorance were always wonderful, but of course I could only enjoy them in retrospect.

Nowadays, I go several weeks at a time without thinking painfully of my past love. Perhaps it’s usually a month or so. Keeping track of my thoughts on the matter doesn’t seem as important as it used to. She still appears occasionally in my dreams and I do savor the visits, but I know that the girl behind the dream is long gone. It’s been 15 years since I last saw her, and if she’s still alive she’s nearly 40 by now, like me. I do sometimes wonder whether perhaps she died somewhere along the line and no one told me. She’s certainly vanished as far as I can tell. I google her name every once in a while and there’s little indication that she’s alive today or ever existed at all. I suspect she prefers it that way. A few years ago, I heard that she cut off contact with everyone else from college shortly after I last saw her. So it seems she erased me long ago.

My involvement with this girl was of some concern to my friends and family at the time. I heard many theories about what was really going on. Most of them thought I was delusional or least very confused. She did her best to keep herself private from my friends, which contributed further to the impression that I was inventing a relationship where nothing really existed. Once we saw a school counselor together who told me that he understood what I was experiencing and said he could help.

“Help how?”, I asked with great interest.

“Help you fall out of love”, he explained to my horror. I didn’t return for another visit. Why didn’t I want that kind of help? Perhaps that might become clear below, but my primary intention right now is simply to document what happened as objectively as I can.

So that’s why I am writing this: To give a grand sendoff to my memories. To provide them a dignified final resting place. To wipe my hands of their dust and turn away from true love at long last.

Freshman year

In late August of 1983, I was nearly 17 years old and a member of the incoming freshman class at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. I was looking forward to college as great adventure. Although I was a year younger than most of my classmates, and at least a year less mature, I had enough enthusiasm to fuel my entire dormitory. I was more than ready to leave high school behind and start something new.

I first met Sue in the 3^rd floor hallway that we shared freshman year. We had been in our dorm, Perkins Hall, for a week of orientation before classes started, and by then I knew everyone on my floor. Since Perkins was the most remote dorm on campus, most of us had already spent many long hours together. It seemed like we knew each other well even before classes started early in September. That’s why I was mildly surprised one evening to see a friend walking down the hall with a girl who I did not recognize. Because my neighbors and I were sprawled on the carpeted floor in conversation, the two of them had to step carefully through our legs to avoid tripping. I made an inappropriate comment to him, along the lines of “Who’s the new chick?”, and was immediately embarrassed when he introduced her as a new resident of our dorm floor. She was named Sue and she explained that she had missed the orientation week. I can’t remember the reason she gave — maybe she said her parents needed her that week. Who knows. It doesn’t matter because the truth is that she was dreading college and thus deliberately delayed her arrival as long as possible. Of course, I didn’t know that at the time. I was so eager for college that I could not understand how anyone would willingly miss orientation.

Our initial conversation was very brief, little more than an introduction. I don’t think either of us made much of an impression on the other. All I remember from that day is that she was a slight girl, with boyish brown hair cut short. In contrast to me, she spoke quietly and politely. I felt a bit stupid about what I had said. I had a tendency to be too casual with people.

For her part, Sue always said that she knows right away if she’s attracted to a person romantically, so perhaps my fate was sealed right then. It doesn’t take long to decide whether you find someone physically attractive, and I was hardly handsome. In that sense, the whole thing was over before it began.

I had several classes with another resident of our dorm floor named David and we quickly became friends. As budding young geeks, we were in the same Computer Science and Physics courses, and began to work together. David had made friends with another young lady on our floor named Risa, based initially on their shared religion, if I recall correctly. Risa was a nice girl, but seemed a bit sheltered and naïve. I think she was in a continual state of shock those first few weeks. Risa, in turn, had made friends with Sue. Soon the four of us were spending time together late at night, just talking and horsing around. We were still young kids, and under a lot of stress, so we spent much of our free time being silly. I remember a few fun battles with paper products and tin foil in the kitchen at 3:00am, with David and me barricaded on one side of the room and Risa and Sue on the other. There were a lot of laughs, but also many intense discussions. Sue had been sheltered, like Risa, but seemed less naïve somehow. Although she was usually very kind and correct, she would occasionally surprise me with caustic observations that seemed to cut to the bone. She impressed me with her quiet intelligence — nothing escaped her eye, or appeared to faze her for long.

Sue told us how it bothered her to live in close quarters with so many people. The constant noise and chaos of a building full of restless teenagers disturbed her and she longed for peace. She and I seemed to have little in common, so I took her stance as a challenge, enthusiastically casting myself in the opposite role as a fun-loving hedonist. She said that she planned to live in a quiet country village after college, far away from people, so I said that I wanted to live in a big city that never rested. I still have a few postcards from her that year of, say, an umbrella alone on a sandy beach, which she chose specifically to emphasize her desire for solitude. I glibly re-invented myself as needed to duel her world-view.

Many of those initial conversations came to revolve around sensitive personal issues like religion and drugs. While I was never a heavy drug user, I had the typical (or what I thought was typical) collegiate interest in drinking and smoking pot. To my surprise, neither Sue nor Risa drank or smoked at all. I therefore took it as my gleeful duty to tempt and corrupt them. They wouldn’t budge and so we spent many hours playfully arguing such issues around and around. In this way, we came to be a little foursome, composed of two pairs — the two boys and the two girls. I didn’t really have a direct relationship with either Sue or Risa outside that dynamic.

After a few weeks of school, I came down with a bad case of mononucleosis due to an ill-advised liaison during orientation week. (I was truly too enthusiastic for my own good.) I landed on a bed in Brown’s little infirmary for a few days, but even that didn’t slow me down for long. My friendship with David, Sue, and Risa continued to evolve that first semester. At one point, David suggested that we spend a weekend at his family’s cabin in Vermont. The girls seemed interested, but nothing ever came of the idea. One day, I heard Risa say that she had been talking to her mother about David. “David who?”, her mother had asked. “You know,” Risa had said, “‘David Vermont’, the boy with the cabin in Vermont.” Risa laughed when she told the story.

“What is ‘David Vermont’ supposed to mean exactly?”, I asked her.

“It’s just a name we gave David for our parents so they know who we’re talking about,” said Risa.

“We have a name for you, too,” said Sue, laughing. “‘Brian Mono’.”

I bristled at the name right away. It was just a silly nickname, but it felt so wrong. Seeing myself through their eyes for the first time, I suddenly realized that these two girls with whom I had spent so much time didn’t really know me at all. To them, I was just a caricature — not much more than a bit of two-dimensional entertainment. My counter-suggestibility had unwittingly led me into this “Brian Mono” persona, but I certainly didn’t want to be him. I felt like a pet kept in a cage for someone’s amusement. To break out of the cage would mean establishing real relationships with both Sue and Risa.

I think I actually worked on Risa first, since I had known her first. I wanted to make an impression on her and was open to whatever came out of that. But it didn’t take much time with her to realize that she wasn’t very interested at that point in her life in having a real personal relationship with me (or, perhaps, with any flesh-and-blood boy). She seemed to relish the shelter of our little foursome and it made her uncomfortable to spend time alone with me, so I backed away from her quickly.

Between the two girls, Sue seemed to be the leader and was more self-assured. I began trying to get through to her personally. Although we continued to have fun as a foursome, I attempted to avoid our usual pattern of late-night hijinks, seeking another avenue.

Around that time, several of us Perkinites had a big assignment due in our Intro to Computer Science course. It turned into a group all-nighter, not exactly fun, but a classic collegiate bonding experience. I don’t think Sue was actually enrolled in that course, but she ended up with the group of us for some other reason. Night turned into a beautiful morning and we traipsed to the Ratty for an institutional breakfast. There were many people sitting at the table, but I was tired and losing interest in socializing. The conversation became a hubbub floating over my head. While the others chatted, I happened to notice Sue sitting on the other side of the table. When she turned and looked at me, I caught her eye. It was fleeting, but for a moment it seemed like we were a pair within the larger group, no longer at arm’s length. It was a minor triumph, but one already tinged with bitterness because I doubted that she would have looked at me that openly if we were alone. Still the connection buoyed me, and after breakfast she and I decided to check our mailboxes in the nearby post office building. Once we were outside, she began to run playfully and I quickly caught up. She was a good runner, and in a few moments we were racing at full speed. I remember leaping up and down the concrete steps, taking every shortcut to keep up with or pass her. As we ran, I saw a look of joy on her face that struck me; I felt it myself. The freedom of running through the glorious morning had opened her up again. I was impressed by her spirit, doubly so because it seemed fierce enough to fight its way through her reservations to the surface. We arrived at the post office a bit winded and laughing. Again the moment passed, and we went inside.

Sue and I continued to spend time together, both on our own and with Risa and David. It pleased me to think that we were developing a real friendship. While we continued our light-hearted debates, we also found a real rapport. We had fun together when I was able to make her laugh or when she made me question my assumptions or when I occasionally managed to pierce her reserved demeanor and glimpse the girl underneath.

On the last day of that first semester, Perkins 3rd floor was the site of an immense party. Unfortunately, I missed it because I had left to go home for the holidays the day before. I imagine it as a drunken riot of relief, but it was mostly unplanned and I don’t think I even heard about it until we had all returned in January. By then the stories were already legends, although I could never quite pin down exactly who had done what with whom under the influence of which chemicals. The rumors buzzed the first few weeks of the new semester. I heard that even Sue had been sucked into the party, although I couldn’t imagine how.

In the middle of that second semester, I invited my best friend from home, Peter, up to Brown to see how we lived. He was still in high school, and I was enormously proud of our little collegiate enclave. Having Peter with me at school for a few days was like eating dessert first thing in the morning — strange and indulgent, but good while it lasted. At one point he and I were in my room talking with some of my male dormmates when I stepped out for some reason. Later that night Peter said to me, “Is Sue the name of that girl you told me about?”

“Probably,” I said. “Why?”

“I think those guys were talking about her when you left the room. They said you’ve been spending a lot of time with her.”

“Yep, that sounds right,” I said.

“It was a bit weird when they started talking about the guy she’s been sleeping with,” he said. “Roberto, I think. Did you know about that?” I was utterly shocked, but tried to hide it.

“No, I sure didn’t,” I managed to say. I pondered this news. Roberto was another resident of Perkins 3rd floor. I didn’t know him well, but I certainly couldn’t picture Sue (or any other girl) with him. If he was manly, I thought, I was Clark fucking Gable. “I wonder if it’s really true?” I said out loud. It was.

This simple, brief conversation with Peter was so crushing that I repressed it for three years. It wasn’t until senior year that I finally remembered exactly how I learned about Sue and Roberto. It was devastating enough to learn that my close friend — innocent and demure Sue — was having such experiences without telling me. On top of that, it was embarrassing to think that, orientation week aside, I hadn’t had any kind of sexual adventures at all, and yet I was often with Sue pretending to be so worldly. Plus, there was the sobering fact that she was having sex, but wasn’t having it with me. The cherry on top of the whole dish was that my friend Peter, who I had been striving mightily to impress with my sophisticated college ways, had managed to uncover in a day or two a secret that I had not discerned in weeks of close contact with the girl herself. It was a double-whammy: I had been simultaneously deceived by Sue and humiliated by Peter. It was easy to forgive Peter — he really hadn’t done anything wrong. On the other hand, I was in no mood to forgive Sue one bit.

After Peter had gone back home, I confronted Sue and wasn’t too gentle about it.

“You lied to me,” I said. She denied it vigorously.

“I never told you, but I didn’t have to,” she protested. “I never lied about it. And it’s none of your business anyway.”

“But all this time you’ve been acting so innocent and pure. It’s just not true. I believed you, and you made a fool out of me.”

“Why are you reacting this way?” she pleaded. “You don’t understand. It’s a private thing. Why do you have to be so angry about it? It’s got nothing to do with you.”

“Why do I have to be so angry?” I sputtered back in disbelief.

“Brian,” she said with some discomfort, “it’s actually been a really difficult time for me. If you’re not going to be nice about it, the least you could do is just leave me alone. It’s not like it was some casual affair.” She then explained to me that she had fallen in love with Roberto, but that the relationship wasn’t working out. “It would be nice if you helped me through this, actually,” she said hopefully.

“Now that I know what happened, you mean,” I spit out bitingly. She nodded sadly. I was down, but she was also down, and now I was kicking her. It didn’t matter — I had little sympathy for her. I could only think about my own shock and disappointment. When I started to get over that, the thing I couldn’t shake was the irony. Here I was expecting from her the kind of devotion that she was expecting from him. Neither of us were getting any satisfaction this way. If she was looking for love, I had to wonder, why doesn’t she look for it from me?

By the time we parted ways at the end of the school year, I was already in deep and knew it. In the relative peace of my parents’ house, I had plenty of time to think about what had happened to me over the last several months. I felt like a bus had run over me, and yet somehow I was the one driving it. I had been sucked into a difficult relationship by the sheer force of my own determination to rise above it. I didn’t want it to be so difficult, but I didn’t know how to stop. She had certainly hurt my feelings, but I couldn’t really hold her responsible for everything that had happened between us.

We exchanged a few letters that summer. Hers were unfailingly sweet and seemed so mature. Mine were ragged and passionate. I asked her how she could fall in love with a guy like Roberto, who reminded me of a plucked chicken. She responded that he was “Roberto Redford” in her mind. I told her that she was a great friend, but that the pain I was experiencing from knowing her was not worth it. I suggested that maybe we shouldn’t spend so much time together any more. But she pooh-poohed that idea and my resistance melted. I meant a lot to her, too, she told me. She didn’t want to lose my friendship. I took hope in this, although even then I knew I probably shouldn’t have. As the summer ended, I approached sophomore year with trepidation but also with a growing hope that we could straighten things out.

I was wrong. I was so wrong.

Sophomore year

My new friends and I had spent most of freshman year in Perkins Hall, isolated from the rest of the university. I enjoyed the intensity of our strange little world, but after nine months of close contact it began to be a bit suffocating. There were no social boundaries or structures in our lives. I was ready for something a bit easier on the soul. David and I managed to secure a room together in Chapin House, one of the organized “social dorms” in the center of campus. Chapin offered all the fun of Perkins, with less of the chaos.

Sue and Risa decided to room together as well. For all their protestations about wanting quiet, peaceful lives, they also decided to live in Chapin. I found this surprising, but it seemed to confirm the basic point I had been trying to make to Sue all that first year — she enjoyed being with other people, even though she was loath to admit it. Living in Chapin let her straddle both worlds — she could continue her supposed pursuit of solitude while basking in the glow of a social group. I think that having known quantities like David and me nearby made it more attractive for Sue and Risa to join as well. He and I represented a degree of safety for them in bridging the gulf to a new school year. I again had the faint sense of being used, but it was comforting for me as well to think that our foursome (and my relationship with Sue) would continue.

As sophomore year dawned, Sue and I picked up where we had left off. In addition to our existing friendship, we now shared a desire to fix the trust that had broken between us. Openly discussing our feelings about the situation gave us an intimacy that we both relished. There was intense positive feedback in trying to work things out. But were we actually working things out, or just savoring the process? It was only the latter, unfortunately. In real terms, we quickly got stuck in the desert between friendship and romance. We couldn’t go backwards and we couldn’t go forwards, though we discussed both at length.

“Brian, we just have a special relationship, that’s all,” she would postulate.

“Fabulous,” I mocked her playfully. “I can be your ‘special friend’. Like the slow kid who lives next door.”

“Don’t be like that,” she would smile. “I’m serious. There’s no one else like you in my life.”

“Fine, OK,” I would say. “I’ll be your special friend and you can be my special friend and we’ll live happily ever after. Except that you have to remain completely celibate for the rest of your life.”

“Oh, come on!” she objected. “You don’t want to be my boyfriend, do you? We’re not like that.” I had to admit there wasn’t much physical chemistry between us. Our attraction seemed to be purely emotional. Thinking about her sexually seemed a bit repulsive at first, but then slowly kind of intriguing, like imagining seven impossible things at once. The concept of being “Sue’s boyfriend” was further confused because of her still-murky fling with Roberto. So did I want her? Not want her? It made my stomach flip to contemplate. But I didn’t have to figure it all out right then because one thing I knew was that sleeping with Sue certainly wasn’t my primary goal. We could agree on that much at least.

On the other hand, I was a certified omnivore — one way or another, most girls looked pretty damn good to me, including Sue. I wanted both sex and love, but I didn’t care a bit which one came first. I knew that if I ever found a girl I truly loved, sex with her would be wonderful regardless of what she looked like. I had no doubt that a friendship could blossom into love. Heck, I could see it happening right now! I wanted to win her over, not just get her in bed.

We bantered this way for several weeks but the fun started to go out of it pretty quickly. Our usual playfulness turned into frustration, at least for me. Once or twice, I agreed to the “special friends” idea because I was willing to give anything a try, and I could see how happy it made Sue. But it was like holding my breath indefinitely. I felt like Brian Mono again, a character who filled a niche in Sue’s life but had no soul of his own. He was charming and funny and kind and brotherly and devoted, but he was a sucker and the pieces of him didn’t add up to a whole person. Sue didn’t seem to notice that this was a problem.

I would try soldier on like that for a while, until the dissatisfaction got the better of me. A horrifying awareness dawned on me: she actually preferred the superficial sense of well-being that she got from this kind of limited relationship. She just liked having me around, that was all. Wasn’t that enough for me? It wasn’t, and she was oblivious, had no idea that I was unhappy.

She didn’t have a desire to push the boundaries, as I did. In fact, she found the idea threatening. I couldn’t understand why she wanted to hold back. Life had seemed like an absurd joke until that point of my life, but things were suddenly becoming quite serious. I began to think that perhaps the very point of being alive was to somehow find closeness with other people, to transcend the gulf between one person and another. I couldn’t disguise or moderate myself. To me, her preference for maintaining a safe distance seemed nearly sacrilegious, a complete waste of the intense personal connection that we had discovered.

“OK, that does it,” I would say at these moments. “We’re going forward or we’re going back.” This was breaking the rules of our little game.

“What does that mean exactly?” she would ask with some trepidation.

“It means you get to choose: Either we go out together, or we end this nonsense.”

“That’s an easy one. Let’s end the ‘nonsense’, as you call it. Let’s just be friends. Aren’t we good friends, Brian? Let’s just go back to the way things were. The way they’re supposed to be.”

“I don’t know how they’re supposed to be anymore,” I’d say in frustration. Then, after some thought, I might add, “And I don’t think that’s what I meant by ‘going back’ anyway. Going back might mean going back to not being such good friends. To not knowing each other so intensely. It’s too hard on me, and then I’m too hard on you.”

“Don’t make me pick, then. I don’t want to lose you. Why do we have to choose?”

“Fine! Great!” I’d say in disgust. “Let’s just continue to live the Grand Charade then.” Then we would pause and start the whole discussion again. Round and round we went.

When we weren’t together discussing it, I would face the dilemma alone. I was truly ready to break things off. Yes, she meant a lot to me, but knowing her was not worth the strain on my psyche and on my self-respect. I was 17 years old and becoming impotent in the middle of what was supposed to be my great college adventure. One thing I knew for sure was that I couldn’t go back to being “just friends”. How would I ever fall in love with another girl with Sue around soaking up my emotional energy? “Just friends” didn’t exist anymore for me.

Eventually I realized that I was kidding myself if I thought I didn’t love her. After all, I was spending most of my waking hours either talking with her or thinking about her, trying to find a way to get through to her. I didn’t want to love her, I certainly hadn’t planned to love her — wasn’t she just a sad, confused girl I happened to know? But there it was nonetheless: I had fallen in love. At the same time, I developed an iron determination to end our relationship if she didn’t feel the same way. I couldn’t live halfway anymore. One evening I approached her and asked her to walk with me around the campus. I was less talkative than usual and she picked up on my unease. I think she knew what was coming. If I recall correctly, we ended up on the small concrete plaza in front of Brown’s immense new medical center. It was just starting to rain lightly. We had known each other for a bit more than a year.

“Look,” I said once I had built up the courage. “The truth is that I’ve fallen in love with you.”

“No, no, no,” she said, backing away slightly, shaking her head. It was the last thing she wanted to hear. I noticed the rain on her face. She looked sad and shocked, which broke my heart.

“I have, and there’s nothing you can do to say otherwise. You mean so much to me, Sue. I just want to find a way to be with you.”

“I don’t think you’re really in love with me, though.”

“Please, can you just let me confess this without contradicting me?” I asked in desperation. “Don’t you feel the same way, Sue? Deep down?”

“God, Brian, you know I love you, but not like that. I can’t pretend I do when I don’t.”

“Fine,” I said in defeat. I hung my head. It was over. For the first time in our relationship, the conversation ended on its own. We walked back in near silence.

I spent the rest of that evening, late into the night after everyone else was asleep, throwing pennies out of my dorm room window onto the ground below. I must’ve had a dollar or two worth and they all went out the window, one at a time. I wonder if they’re still there now, sunk into the dirt. It was October 1984, more than 20 years ago. It was the saddest night of my life.

The new silence between us hardened over the next few weeks. We were occasionally friendly, but I also acted like a complete jerk sometimes, especially when Sue would go into one of her typical anti-social discourses. I knew she didn’t want things to be this way between us, but she seemed to recognize that there was no longer an alternative for me. I lost track of her as best I could, although it was like trying not think about pink elephants. Fortunately, I was making close new friends in Chapin and knowing them helped me enjoy what I actually had in my life rather than dwell only on what I had lost.

A few weeks later I started getting phone calls from a girl I didn’t know. “I saw you in the computer science lab today. I think you’re really cute,” the voice said.

“Who is this?” I asked, trying to identify her voice. But I couldn’t imagine who it might be.

“Meet me in the library and find out?” she proposed coyly.

“Hah, hah. Is this a joke?” I asked. It was obviously some sort of prank. But who in the world would be juvenile enough to do it?

She called again a few days later. “Hi, it’s me,” she said. “Let's meet in the library?”. She was certainly persistent, I thought, but what was the point? I still didn’t recognize her voice, and doubted that I knew her. I didn’t relish the thought of meeting some strange girl in the library. It seemed more than likely a bad idea.

“No,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know who you are.” I hung up.

That evening a friend from Perkins asked if I would meet him for a late-night meal at EC-DC, a grungy campus fast-food joint. Trevor was an ultra-preppy kid from a wealthy family, but he wasn’t stuck up. He had a gregarious, friendly nature that I enjoyed whenever we talked (which wasn’t often). I knew that he had also been interested in Sue at times last year, but he seemed to be even more omnivorous than me, chasing every passing girl. I thought of him as a good guy, not as competition.

“So have you talked to Sue lately?” he asked as we sat in our booth eating.

“She lives on the floor above me,” I said, “but we’re not exactly on good terms at the moment.”

“Sorry to hear that,” he said. “Man, I have trouble figuring that girl out.”

“Tell me about it!” I exclaimed. It was good to know I wasn’t the only one who found her puzzling.

After we had finished eating, I was getting ready to leave, but he said “Listen, have you been getting any prank calls recently?” I immediately sat back down.

“Yes! Some girl wants to meet me in the library. Do you know anything about it?” Was Trevor involved in the calls, I wondered.

“Well, I’ve been getting calls from the same girl, and I agreed to meet her in the library. When I got there, it was Risa and Sue and Sue’s little sister, up visiting from high school. Sue’s sister is the girl on the phone.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” I said.

“Nope, they think the whole thing is hilarious. Sue said they’ve been using her sister to call a lot of guys they know, pretending to be a ‘secret admirer’. Can you believe that? I had to laugh. I guess it’s supposed to be good clean fun.”

“That is fucking twisted,” I said. “That’s what they’re doing with their spare time?”

“Seems to be. Just thought you’d like to know,” he said.

“Yes, thank you. Thanks a lot, actually. Good to have that mystery cleared up.”

As I walked back to Chapin, whatever fun might have been intended by their stunt drained away completely. I was left was an extremely bitter taste in my mouth. The more I thought about it, the more furious I got. “It was one thing to fall in love with that little screw-up”, I thought, “but then she rejects me and now she’s tormenting me! If she wants to play games with her pet boyfriends, that’s fine with me, but doesn’t she know enough by now to leave me out of it? It’s not funny, it’s sick.” By the time I got to my room, I was in a rage. I paced the floor like an animal, boiling mad. After a few minutes of that, I had to get out. I went up to Sue’s room to tell her off, but she wasn’t there. Where was she? It was getting late, so I figured she’d be home soon. I went to my room, picked up a little squirt gun I had, and filled it with water from the bathroom. I went to the landing in the stairwell near my room. She’d have to walk past me in order to get to her floor. I resumed pacing there on the landing, under the ugly fluorescent lighting. A cute girl I knew from my floor came by and asked me what I was doing. I would normally have been happy to see her, but I was in no mood to chat.

“Waiting for someone,” I managed to say, trying not to sound angry. “We’ve got some unfinished business.” She regarded me for a moment then said goodnight and went to her room. Rotten luck, I thought, but I couldn’t do anything about it.

After another 15 minutes or so, I saw Sue and Risa walking up the stairway with a girl I figured must be Sue’s sister. I was so angry, I couldn’t say a word. I just started squirting them from above.

“Hah, hah, very funny, Brian,” said Risa, smiling. “I guess you figured out who’s been calling you.” I kept my face blank and didn’t say anything. I looked at Sue and saw in her eyes that she knew it wasn’t funny anymore. They continued walking up to their floor. I followed silently and continued squirting them from behind.

“OK, cut it out now, Brian,” said Risa in growing irritation. “Enough’s enough, OK?” I followed them down the hall to their room. Sue stopped at the door and turned to look at me as she unlocked it. She had a look of anguish on her face. All the air had gone out of her balloon. I squirted her smack in the face from about ten feet away. Then I walked forward a few steps and did it again. She didn’t move. I could see the water dripping from her face and hair. I wanted to mess her up as badly as she had messed me up.

“Hey!” yelled Risa, coming towards me. “Stop it!” She looked at Sue in puzzlement, trying to understand what was happening. I turned to Risa and squirted her in the face from point blank range. She sputtered and reached for my squirt gun. I shoved her against the wall, hard. It must’ve hurt, but I didn’t care. To this day, I’ve never apologized for that. I turned back to Sue and squirted her again.

“Come on, Risa,” said Sue quietly, opening the door to their room as I continued to squirt her. “Let’s just go inside.” Risa gathered herself and the three of them walked inside and shut the door behind them. I stood there squirting their door until the gun was empty. Eventually I walked down to my room, spent.

It felt so good to get back at them, to show them exactly what they had accomplished. I’m sure I slept like a rock that night.

In the days and weeks that followed, I channeled my energy into hating Sue as much as I could. When I saw her approaching, my heart would leap, but I would refuse to give her the satisfaction of even “hello”. Instead, I would try to bore holes through her eyes with my stare. When she walked by me, I would bristle noticeably. When she walked away, I mocked her silently behind her back. It was cruel, but pumping myself up like this was the only way I could maintain distance from her. I felt love and I felt rage, but I no longer distinguished between the two — it was all one big poisonous stew, swirling around with me in it. Everyone around me could tell something was wrong.

For Sue, receiving the silent treatment was worse than uncomfortable; it was intimidating. She was usually alone or with Risa when I saw her, while I was usually with a group of friends. Encountering me was like running the gauntlet for her. She was so private and self-contained to begin with, and now she lived with the threat of silent humiliation around every corner of her own home. I made myself blind to this by imagining that she was heartless and impervious to my influence, for which traits I loathed her even further. It was truly unforgivable of me to be so mean. I have apologized since, but I don’t think I ever fully made up for my actions.

But even these lows did not break our relationship. We still occasionally reconciled, usually against our better judgment and the advice of everyone I talked to about it. The problem was that we still lived within a few feet of each other and shared an intense emotional connection. At times, we were simply unable to resist the temptation to be together, just to talk and enjoy each other. The intensity of our battles just added further sizzle to the experience. Our relationship became electric, and we would endlessly discuss how to move forward. Since we floundered on the “boyfriend/girlfriend” labels, we would instead negotiate subtle gradations of affection that she might find acceptable. She was adamant, for example, that we not hold hands in public or slow dance together — she blamed this on her father’s influence, to my bewilderment. But within these constraints she finally seemed ready to establish physical warmth in our relationship.

Her willingness to acknowledge some sort of romantic attraction, as limited as it might be, was completely validating to me. A drop of that magic elixir washed away all the pain. I would agree to anything if it meant being close to her and her being close to me. But even in these good times, I don’t remember a single embrace or any other physical demonstration of love. It was all talk, purely platonic. And the good times never lasted long. She would inevitably slip back into treating me as the “brother she never had”, which was by then not only insulting but also completely unbelievable. “Why would you want a brother like me?” I would ask her pointedly. I would plead with her to recognize the true depth of our feelings, to stop holding back. She was unable, even if she sometimes agreed in principle (and under duress). We must have repeated this come-together, break-up cycle at least three or four times that year, and then many more times in the years to follow.

As the school year ended, I was more unhappy with myself than with Sue. I was aware that I had had a similar unrequited relationship in high school and was crushed to see myself mindlessly repeating the pattern, like one of Pavlov’s dogs. I also saw that my frustration was turning me into an ugly person with little respect for myself or others. Although the notions of personal behavior that Sue espoused still struck me as crippled, I realized that I was indeed irresponsible, as she had always implied. My confident self-image was shattered and I began to see my flaws objectively for the first time: no discipline or self-control, hypocritical, disheveled, overweight, unprepared, and woefully self-deluded. I wanted to prove that Sue was wrong about me, if not to her then at least to myself. I resolved to clean up my act, no matter what it took.

Junior year

Junior year I lived in a suite in Hegeman Hall with David and my freshman year roommate, Bill. Living with Bill again was really refreshing. He came to Brown a bit early that year and painted a wonderful triptych on the wall in our new common room. One of the images was of a guitar player wearing a t-shirt with the slogan “Never Wash”, the second was an oversized rendition of the country Irkutsk from the board game Risk, and the third was captioned “It’s only funny until someone loses a nose”. I took them as icons of mental health in an insane environment and was inspired to try live up to them during the year.

Sue and Risa remained in Chapin, but, still craving privacy, took separate single rooms. For the first time in two years our Perkins foursome was separated, although the two buildings were still no more than 100 yards apart.

Our awkward summer visit seemed to be an aberration, and Sue and I picked up pretty much where we had left off the previous semester. Although I was trying harder than ever to fly straight, I still oscillated between fervent romantic declarations and frustrated criticisms of Sue’s behavior, which I found to be bizarrely inconsistent. She sarcastically noted the “complicated” nature of my love. I tried not to start any outright wars between us, but there were still frequent cold spells. One of these was triggered by an affair she had with a guy I don’t think I ever met. I could not understand how she could seek pleasure from a relative stranger and still expect me to stand by her. I wished I could pay her back by finding a real girlfriend of my own, but that was nearly impossible in my condition.

During the fall, I wrote her several letters which serve as an embarrassing record of my emotional struggles. In one, I got Sue’s age wrong by a full year (she was actually a bit more than one year older than me, not two as I claimed). It was a stupid mistake and she seized on it as evidence that I did not know her as well as I thought I did. It was hard to argue, and I berated myself for contributing to the impression that I was obsessed with a fantasy girl rather than in love with a real person. I believed in my feelings for Sue, and I think she felt similar strength. Unfortunately, most of my friends and family suspected that I was deranged, which didn’t help my plummeting self-respect any. Sue sensed their disapproval and avoided them all as much as possible.

In her elegant reply to that letter, Sue wrote that she loved me and was “powerless” to end our relationship, but that it was “only natural for [her] to be more emotionally committed to a boyfriend than [she] was to [me]”. To my extreme consternation, she said that she continued to reserve a “place” for me in her life, but I could not imagine what this place might be or why I would want to occupy it. In fear of my ever-looming anger, she asked me to remain calm, saying that she “[couldn’t] live being hated by me”.

When I pulled away, she reeled me back in. When I got too close, she pushed me away. Although she was always quite kind about it, she seemed continually determined to maneuver me into this supposed place between friend and lover.

As evidenced by my augmentation of her age, I sensed that she was moving ahead without me. She again seemed out of my league at times, both emotionally and physically. For such a shy person, she could occasionally bowl me over with her boldness. I remember, for example, that around this time she acquired a tight, leopard-print blouse that she would wear on weekends, or for no special reason. On her it somehow seemed subtle and attractive, although the sight of it nearly made my eyes spin.

Her supposed boyfriend faded away as quickly and quietly as he had arrived. I knew that the only guy that Sue claimed to love uncontrollably was Roberto. Unfortunately, she had confessed to me, his interest in her was purely sexual. Since she would no longer put out for him, he was a non-factor from my point of view. In fact, I took her love for him as a positive sign, since it proved that she was at least capable of the emotion in question. I don’t remember seeing Roberto more than once or twice in the three years after Perkins, and never with Sue. He still seemed like a plucked chicken to me, but I’ve got to hand it to the guy for getting what he wanted while he could.

On the other hand, I began to realize that I was not the only male in orbit around Sue, though not one of us had ever managed to win her heart. So she got emotional intimacy from me and physical intimacy from the occasional random boyfriend, and in that way managed to hold us all at bay. It seemed possible that some of these guys were even less lucky than me! Somehow, Sue collected such admirers effortlessly, in a way that other deserving girls (such as Risa) did not.

The first semester ended in a chill, but over the break she wrote me a deliberately mundane letter with a single offhand zinger at the end: “Have you thought of any exotic new relationships for us to try?” She knew how to keep me hanging on, and she did it purposely, of that I am sure.

We resumed trying again in the second semester. How she managed to be sweet to me when I was so hard on her is beyond my understanding today. Knowing that I could never really have her, and having no other means at my disposal, I continually used anger to drive her away as firmly as I could. She would retreat in pain, but after some period of separation we would always come back together. She won me over with tiny gestures and with brave deeds. For example, she once noted charmingly that she “had fun with the ‘B’s in [my] name” when addressing a letter to me in large swirling print on the front of the envelope.

Perhaps her bravest deeds occurred when she was forced to acknowledge our relationship to my confidantes, who, she knew, were concerned about my well-being and thus quite suspicious of her. Jeff and Evan, for example, were two very good Chapinite friends who now lived in the adjacent suite (which made up the other half of the first floor of our building). Jeff was particularly dubious about Sue, partly because he had not experienced the Perkins crucible with us, and partly because he tended to be critical of everyone, but also because he had become very protective of me. I remember one rainy night when, to their mild astonishment, a phone call from me to Sue resulted in her visiting Hegeman. As she arrived, a group of us stood by the window together watching her struggle up the stairs in the rain. When I opened the door, she stumbled in soggily and said hello to each member of the group, whereupon I took mercy on her and led her downstairs to the laundry area where we could speak in private. Of course, it turned into a typical late-night “negotiation” session, but at least it was a fun one because she had put me in a good mood just by showing up.

During these sessions, she usually seemed to enjoy my entreaties to her. I delivered elaborate pleas with great passion and conviction. She liked to be persuaded and at the end of the night would sometimes say that she was convinced, or nearly so. Once again we were on the brink of… something good, I hoped.

“I just need to think about it a bit, but you’re probably right, Brian,” she would say cheerfully.

“Great, but I’m not trying to talk you into loving me!” I would reply in surprise. “I’m just telling you how I feel as honestly as I can. I’m kinda hoping that you’ll realize that you feel the same way on your own.”

“I know,” she would say. “But when you explain it that way, it just makes sense. It feels right, and I know I do love you the way you’re saying. I wish I had the courage to make it stick. Unfortunately, when we’re not together, the feeling fades a bit. I need to be around you, I guess.” I found this sort of non-rejection rejection less than encouraging, but (as usual) it sufficed to keep me in orbit, not too close and not too far. The closest we got physically was holding hands in her dark dorm room one day, until Risa came in and surprised us.

Another time, she asked me bluntly, “Am I a cold-hearted person, Brian?”

“What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

“I’ve been told that I’m chilly,” she offered without further explanation. “I know that I’m not demonstrative, but I don’t think I’m really a cold person, am I?” She was genuinely concerned. “I do have feelings, even if they don’t always show.”

I was struck by the question. I, for one, certainly felt a lack of warmth from her end of the relationship. But I also knew that she was every bit as passionate and intense as I was. Her inner world was vivid, I think. I could almost hear her motor humming sometimes. I struggled to reconcile the two images of her, opting to bolster her by painting the second one verbally. She seemed somewhat relieved, but the paradox stuck with me, and I puzzled over it many times in the years to come. It was only recently that I finally resolved it to my own satisfaction.

During a subsequent talk, another passionate plea from me was mixed with criticism of her behavior. We were getting nowhere, as usual, and my frustration was again showing.

“Three-quarters of the problem is that you're in my head all of the time,” she said.

“That's a problem? I thought that was three-quarters of the solution!” I said in exasperation.

“But do you always have to scrutinize me like this, Brian? I can’t be comfortable feeling like I’m always on stage with you. I can never relax.”

“Sue,” I protested, “I’m trying to be constructive. I’m not trying to tear you down.”

“No,” she said definitively. “You’re choking me.” She put her hands to her throat and made a horrible gagging sound. That was more than enough to drive me away. The last thing I wanted was to be a nuisance. If she did not want me around, that was easily remedied. I walked out in anger and we did not speak for weeks.

During this period, I was an unpaid “consultant” at the computer science lab. This meant sitting at a computer near the door where other students could approach me for help. When on duty after hours, I would sometimes be the only official in the building. One late night, I found myself with a packed house of students because of a programming assignment due the next day in one of the intro courses. I was busy fielding questions, managing the waitlist for seats, and directing pizza deliveries. To my dismay, Sue and Risa appeared at the door with a friend who was in the course. We were most definitely not on speaking terms, but I tried gently to ask them to leave.

“Please don’t come in,” I begged. “It’s really busy. I can’t deal with having you here tonight.” I looked directly at Sue, but in one of her rare cruel moments, she broke eye contact and brushed past me into the building. Although we did not speak or interact further, the effect on me of having her nearby was enormous. I felt as though I was connected to an immense sound system that had been turned up to maximum volume. The speakers were crackling with electricity, but there was no sound on the line, just the feeling that a loud concert was about to begin. The silence was truly deafening. The connection between us was nearly palpable that night, my heart to her heart across whatever distance. Such intimacy, but no communication. Nothing to say, nothing we could do, just two souls joined together silently. Once or twice I caught sight of Sue in the lab and could tell she was just as uncomfortable as I was. It was too much for me to bear at one point, and I abandoned my post for a walk around the block to clear my mind. She put us both through some hell that night, I think. I shrank before the pure power of whatever it was that connected us. I was broken and helpless, and finally wanted only mercy, but none was forthcoming.

Most of the rest of the second semester went that way, but somehow we managed to reconcile towards the end and begin the cycle yet again. Over the summer break we talked a bit on the phone and exchanged letters, much like the summer before. I invited her to visit me in Washington, but the idea of facing my parents made her too uncomfortable. She suggested that we meet instead on “neutral territory” and urged me to write until then, saying “we have a whole semester’s worth of talking on which to catch up.”

Senior year

As seniors, Jeff, Evan, and I were able to get an apartment together on campus in one of the Young Orchard buildings. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Sue and Risa also decided to live together in another Young Orchard building about 50 feet away. Was she following me? I don’t know, but I’m sure I wasn’t following her.

Sue and I started the school year on fine terms. Although I was still deeply unsatisfied with our “special friends” arrangement, I had made great strides in controlling my behavior. I began at last to treat Sue with the kind of dignity and respect that she deserved, hoping that good behavior might have some rewards. She responded in kind and we experienced a kind of honeymoon. If there was ever a chance to win her heart outright, this was it. But what a strange honeymoon it was.

Having some peace and gentleness in our relationship was undeniably nice. Picking up the phone to hear Sue’s quiet voice saying “Hi, Brian” was better than stealing cookies from the cookie jar. She would address me so gently that she almost sounded like she was whispering, but there was also sweetness in her voice. I could hear her smiling as she invited me over or to meet somewhere.

Our new arrangement was predicated on my self-restraint — the paradoxical idea being that the more I could keep my passions in check, the more attractive she seemed to find me. This approach worked wonderfully at times. At one point, Risa invited me to their apartment for Sue’s birthday party. When I arrived, I quickly realized that nearly all the other attendees were males who were in orbit around Sue one way or another, like me. I actually felt sympathy for some of the guys at that party — they seemed even more clueless than me. It was a bit awkward, but I was on my best behavior. The nice thing was that having me there actually seemed to help Sue get through it. After the party, she buttonholed me to say thanks. My heart melted instantly, and she didn’t seem to want to let me go. Even though the physical chemistry between us was still embryonic, I could see she was trying to overcome whatever it was that held her back from me.

On the other hand, my deliberate suppression of passion was completely self-defeating at times. The intensity that we (or at least I) had once enjoyed started to attenuate noticeably. Things got really boring once when Sue and Risa took me on a shopping trip to a nearby department store. Although I had an OK time talking with Risa, shopping with Sue seemed so mundane. I was disappointed. Where was the girl I had fallen in love with? Or perhaps, I thought with some dismay, was I just starting to see her objectively? I felt like we had settled into the pattern of an old married couple whose best times were decades behind them. I dreaded these enervating, “brotherly” experiences — they sucked me dry.

So treating Sue gently did indeed pull us together, but perhaps not in the way I hoped. I knew that if I left it to her to initiate the next step (whatever it might be), I would probably have to wait a long time. And the rules of our game precluded me from making an advance, so the ball was in her court. I had no recourse but to go at her pace and see what happened. She still seemed to enjoy being with me, so I was optimistic, but I wasn’t sure I would be able to follow her lead, assuming she was even trying to lead at all.

Even when we were in synch with each other, perhaps playing Spit or talking late into the night in her apartment, she would still pull away in the end.

“I’m tired,” she’d say. “I think it’s time to call it a night.”

“Hmm, OK. You really don’t want me stay?” I would have been happy to curl up together in her room or on the couch, or even on the floor, and sleep the night away with her near me.

“No. I’m sorry, Brian. I just…”

“OK, no problem. Your choice. Good night.” And I’d walk out into the cold night with no further ado. But I had to wonder: Why was she spending time with me like this? I couldn’t tell if she actually wanted to be with me, or was just trying to be friendly out of some sense of obligation (perhaps more to herself to be social than to me out of love). Even when I could see that she found me entertaining, I would usually feel more like an intellectual curiosity than a whole person by the time I left. I had no idea what she actually saw in me.

I was trying so hard to do things her way that I started to doubt my own instincts. I would become tongue-tied and stupid around her. But even so, I never lost faith in the connection between us. I was sure it would bring us together in the end.

After one miserable experience like this, I came home to find Jeff and our mutual Chapinite friend, Karen, on the common-room sofa. They looked quite the relaxed and warm couple and so I assumed they wanted privacy. But instead they invited me to join them, so I made myself a drink and sat down nearby. I immediately felt myself starting to unwind as I explained where I’d been.

“Brian, why do you do this to yourself?” Jeff asked. “That girl is no prize anyway. She looks like David Bowie! You want to go out with David Bowie?” I couldn’t help but laugh. It was great to have him looking out for me, and I appreciated his sarcastic objectivity. I wished that I could explain, but I couldn’t.

After a while, Jeff excused himself to go to sleep, but Karen and I continued talking. She was warm and open, and as I became comfortable, the pain of what I had been going through with Sue began to pour out. When I started to cry, Karen wrapped her arms around me in sympathy, determined not to let me torture myself. It was so damn nice to have someone who cared about me to hold onto for once. Spending a lot of time with Sue had somehow just made me more lonely. Karen was my angel that night and into the morning — it was her, not Sue, who actually wanted to be with me. The contrast between my interaction with the two women in a single night was so obvious that even I could see it.

And yet, according to my diary, the next day I talked to Sue on the phone and she put me in a good mood immediately. She could really be amazing, when she felt like it.

Around this time, Sue surprised me by saying that she was considering plastic surgery on her nose.

“Why?” I asked incredulously. I could not imagine what was wrong with her nose that might require surgery. She looked fine to me.

“Can’t you see that it’s got a big bump in the middle?” she said. I peered in closely. There was a very subtle bend where the cartilage attached to her nose bone. I had never noticed it before.

“I guess so,” I said. “I mean, I can see what you’re talking about, but it looks fine to me. You really think it needs surgery?”

“I always have the feeling that people are staring at my nose,” she answered. “It makes me very uncomfortable. I think I’d be much more sociable if I had it fixed.” I was baffled. The bend in her nose was so minor that I’m sure no one else had noticed it either. I couldn’t believe that she thought it needed surgery.

“I don’t know, Sue. I don’t see how a nose job is going to make you more social. You don’t need to change your personality, anyway. You’re great the way you are. I really don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“My father doesn’t want me to do it, either,” she said. “He thinks it’s too much money to spend.”

It struck me that her reserved demeanor, which I had always considered an artful put-on, was apparently more than just a public façade. She was hiding deep insecurities, even from me. I wondered where her fears came from. What could cause a person to bury herself the way she did?

One day in November, Sue and I were hanging out in my room, having a good time. She was going through my diary, asking me about various comments I had made.

“What does this mean, Brian? ‘I wish Sue would just acknowledge the part of our relationship that actually keeps us together.’?”

“Uh… well, we’ve known each other for three years, and I think it’s more than just the occasional long talk that keeps us going. Don’t you? I just think we belong together, spiritually, romantically, physically. It’s silly to deny it.” Being so direct made me feel like an idiot, but at least it was the honest truth. She became very quiet and seemed uncomfortable. I was afraid that I had said too much.

“You know,” she said. “I’ve been thinking the last few weeks that we should have a physical relationship.” I was ecstatic. I could barely contain myself, but I also had to leave for my job at the lab, so we left things hanging.

The next day I was unable to concentrate on work at all. I was so amazed by what Sue had said the night before that it was an effort just to sit still and read for an hour, so I called her and asked if she would like to get together. She was busy but said she would call me back when she was finished. After an hour, she called to say that she was going to a party but would be back soon. She wasn’t. As I learned the next day, Roberto had invited her to the party and she had had such a fine time that she didn’t come to find me until 3:00am, after I had given up waiting and gone to sleep. I was completely annoyed, and not a little jealous, but at least not furious as I would’ve been in the past.

The day after that, we spent about five hours trying to straighten things out. In the end, she said that anything that required so much thought couldn’t work romantically. I was crushed again, but after the excitement of her admission I could not imagine going back to the tepid way things had been that year. I couldn’t pretend to just be friends or siblings or whatever it was that she preferred. I was too proud to love someone who did not similarly adore me, which she clearly did not. We had it all, and we squandered it, and now it was gone. We agreed to make a clean break. That was Nov. 22, 1986.

The next several months were some of the most difficult of my life. Although I had some great friends who cared about me, I spent most of the time alone with my thoughts. Loving Sue was the truest, purest feeling that I had ever had — it was the strongest thing about me. If I could not be true to my heart in this simple matter, how could I trust myself to be true to anything? It seemed like I had come to a fork in the road and had chosen the path less traveled, but found that it led to a dead end. Was I supposed to continue on somehow, or backtrack? I was too exhausted to do either. I didn’t want to do anything but eat and sleep. Even watching seconds tick by on a clock was more than I could bear. I came to understand why some people kill themselves rather than endure the passage of time in a life they do not want, but I was still optimistic that somehow things would get better. I had every intention of living on to graduation, finding a job, marrying, having children. I just had no idea how to get there from where I was.

My diary records my struggles. In December, I wrote:

When I am tired or upset or lonely, I think of being with her. I always thought of her as a refuge and it was always so painful not to be allowed to take comfort in her. I think maybe she takes refuge in God or in her family, but certainly not in me.

That semester I had a Philosophy class that met in an auditorium on the ground floor of the medical building. One wall of the room consisted of a bank of tinted windows that looked out onto the sidewalk in front of the building. From the outside, they appeared to be mirrors. During the last class, as I sat listening in amazed disappointment to the professor’s ramblings, I looked out the window and saw a small woman in a bulky winter coat struggling to walk down the sidewalk against the wind. It was Sue, or at least I thought it was — I could barely see her face. She seemed surreally alone, the only woman on the planet. Her head was bent down into the wind and it seemed to take her an hour to move the 15 yards from one end of the windows to the other. There was nothing I could do to even let her know I was there; I could only watch from a distance. It was utterly surreal, and I felt my hold on sanity loosening.

When the semester ended, I went home to lick my wounds. At that point in my life, I had a number of intense friendships with other women friends as well, all quasi-platonic as Sue and I had been. It was clear that I was inept at the traditional courtship process, and had instead established a pattern of tantalizing myself without consummating anything with anyone. I was a passion junkie who had no qualms about mixing friendship, romance, and sex. But as close as I felt to these women, I still ended up lonely at the end of each day. Failing so miserably with Sue made me doubt myself in all those other relationships as well. I began to worry that they were all “hallucinations” — that I was projecting romantic feelings onto women who thought of me as nothing more than a good friend. At the end of December, I wrote:

Spent a few nights with [X]. I know she wants to be with me, but is afraid, as am I. So, nothing happens and I slowly start to believe that I am just hallucinating about her. That maybe I know nothing and no one, and “nice” as I am, that there is nothing for me that I can comprehend.

…

[If Sue and I are not together after graduation,] I truly will not be able to ward off the feeling that all love I feel is just hallucination. I hate being alone like this.

As the new year began, my parents became concerned about my depression. To my surprise, they asked me to call Sue to resolve things, even though there was nothing left to resolve. It was a very short phone call. My downward spiral continued, but my faith in Sue still remained:

I fantasize about graduation, and what saying goodbye to her will be like. I still don’t really believe that she will let everything slip away, but it’s hard to imagine what other alternative exists. Maybe she will come through.

I still had an unshakable loyalty to Sue, even though it was completely one-sided. Back at Brown for the last semester of college, I saw her once at a party. She had had her nose done, although I could barely tell the difference. She froze when she saw me, then turned and walked away. I wrote:

I just stared at her. I’m so unashamed of loving her. It’s great. … I have faith in her, still. I can’t help it.

The deep chill continued like this for weeks, despite a few half-hearted attempts on my part to at least be civil. Then, after a class once in February, I went to get lunch in a nearby campus dining room called the Gate and saw Sue sitting at a table:

[I] figured I might as well go talk to her, as I would’ve been staring at her the whole time anyway. It was pretty good being with each other. No pretending or tension, just caring and sadness.

Without making any explicit commitment, we began meeting there each week at the same time. Walking in each week to see her waiting for me was pure sweetness. At first we studiously avoided our usual favorite topic, “us”, but of course warmed back up to it eventually. One day, apropos of who-knows-what, she said, “Oh, Brian, I just couldn’t be mad at you anymore.” It seemed like a blanket pardon for everything that had happened or might happen in the future.

As the weather warmed up, we would occasionally do something together after our weekly lunch. One warm day we wandered around the campus as an excuse to spend time together. Inside one of the ancient buildings on the main green we found an empty classroom and sat down to talk. The late afternoon sun was streaming in the windows, illuminating a million dust particles that were floating in the air. As I yammered about something near to my heart, the dust swirling around her seemed to slow and then stop in the light, framing her face radiantly. Time stood still for a moment — it’s frozen in my mind to this day. I stopped talking, then Sue looked at me penetratingly and said, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying attention to what you said. I was too busy watching you say it.” After so much time together over the years, we had achieved a kind of spiritual synchronization. Transcendence.

But graduation was approaching inevitably. Evan and I made plans to get an apartment together in Boston and seek jobs in the software industry. We began interviewing with prospective employers, and he accepted an offer right away. Sue told me that she might move to Boston as well, but I still felt that leaving Brown would mean the end of the line for us if she didn’t do something about it. As much as I hoped she would grant a miraculous reprieve, I wasn’t expecting much.

It was a beautiful spring that year, and I spent as much of it as I could sitting on the main green with my friends. One day as the sun was going down, I bumped into Sue sitting with a small group of people under a tree. One of them was apparently her boyfriend — the latest in a long line of anonymous suitors. He and I didn’t exchange a word, but after one glance I knew what he was like anyway: nice guy, nothing going on under the hood. At least I was smart enough by then to keep my arrogant assumptions to myself. There was no point in criticizing him to Sue if she was happy.

Still meeting at the Gate every week, Sue and I once again began talking about what it would be like to be together physically, except that now it seemed ridiculous with graduation hanging over us. She asked me, “So what do we do, just say ‘1, 2, 3, go’?”. I had no answer, but I still loved seeing her every week. In between visits, it pleased me to gather up little questions and issues for us to discuss. Many of our conversations would begin with one of us saying, “I remember last week that you said…, and I’ve been thinking that …”. In that way, our weekly meetings were seamless, as though we were seeing each other every day. The only hard part for me was waiting through the dreary time in between our short visits.

During one of those lunches, Sue casually mentioned to me that she had broken up with her boyfriend. It didn’t seem to be a major loss for her.

“Jeez,” I said. “I hope I didn’t have anything to do with it. If you were happy with him, I sure don’t want to stand in the way.”

“It’s not your fault,” she replied. “I just realized he and I had a superficial relationship. After the way you and I have been talking recently, I didn’t see him in the same light anymore.” This admission did wonders for my self-confidence, but of course nothing to get us over the hump as a couple.

By the time graduation finally came, I was spending most of my time just waiting around for school to end. Jeff found this annoying, since he had actually enjoyed Brown and was not quite so happy to leave. Commencement day itself was among the happiest of my life — I felt like a convict escaping from jail with nothing but the clothes on my back. I relished the upcoming opportunity to start over from scratch. Although I had made several wonderful life-long friendships at Brown, I looked back on it as an enormous missed opportunity that was dominated by my inability to either win or get over Sue.

Brown’s commencement tradition is quite nice. The entire senior class forms a long procession that winds through the main green. While symbolically leaving the school through a large gate, the line doubles up, giving each senior a chance to see every other senior as they walk by. I was gleeful and exhausted as I shuffled along with friends, and amazed that I recognized so few of my classmates. Where had they all been for four years? We came upon a group that I recognized, and I saw Sue and Risa among them. We had only a few seconds before we passed each other. Sue looked at me, reaching out her hand. I held it for just a moment before the procession pulled us apart.

It was May 25, 1987. I expected never to see her again.

Boston

After taking a few months off, Evan and I set up shop in Boston. I was burning through my parents’ cash like it was Monopoly money, but by August had landed a job and was starting to feel a bit more stable. David and Bill also took an apartment together nearby. It was great to have Bill around, although David and I were no longer friendly. That was another relationship that hadn’t survived the crucible.

My goal in life at that point was to recover from college and somehow enter the world of normal adult functioning. Much of my free time was spent reflecting on people and events of the previous four years. I was still an emotional basket-case and didn’t have much energy to devote to anything but holding down my new job. Evan started to call me “Grandpa” because he would come home most evenings to find me sitting in our reclining chair reading the newspaper. I grew soft and thick from inactivity, but I took comfort in the peace and stability of this new routine.

Late that year I heard from Bill (who had learned from David) that Sue had also moved to the Boston area. Looking back now, it seems crazy that she had once again chosen to live near me (in a big city, no less) but by then my sense of the absurd had been completely worn out, and I simply accepted it. I wrote her a letter “from beyond the grave” and sent it to her parents’ address. She answered back shortly afterwards and we arranged to meet.

So, once again, we picked up where we had left off. I loved her as strongly as ever, but the passion and urgency I felt seemed to have waned even further. I sometimes found myself with nothing worthwhile to say to her, and would then usually say something stupid as a result. It was confusing to care so much and yet see that there was nothing really left between us. Sometimes we were still in synch, but it was hard to tell when. I remember once in particular driving with her to her office in downtown Boston to pick up her car. It was a weekend — the building was empty and we were nearly silent as we walked. I was in a good mood, just enjoying being with her. When we had returned to her house, though, she told me that the reason she was so quiet sometimes was that she simply “didn’t know what to say”. I was flabbergasted to think that after knowing me so long she felt pressure to make conversation, but I guess she did — she was painfully self-conscious at times.

Events like this made me wonder how well I really knew her. We had been friends for a long time, and were certainly intimate in our odd way, but our relationship had been going in circles forever, never really progressing. I began to see that there was a lot about her that was still unfamiliar to me. I worried that I was simply hallucinating whatever it was that I wanted to see in her. Was she just a blank slate?

We did have good times together in Boston. Sue could be gentle and sweet one moment, and sharp and direct the next. I enjoyed the combination. She kept me on my toes. One afternoon when we were doing well, I managed to convince her to pose for a photo. She was notoriously camera-shy, and had always refused me in the past. I only got one shot, but it sums up our relationship pretty well: We’re standing next each other, close enough to touch, but contorted. Sue’s neck is bent so I can point the camera over her head. At least we look happy. This photo and the letters she sent me over the years are the only proof I have that our relationship ever existed.

Sue was living across the river in Somerville with a woman named Gina who was her good friend from high school. I would drive over sometimes and spend time with them, although I slowly got the impression that Sue actually preferred to avoid Gina when possible. Gina was a very troubled person — her father had abused her as a child. Tortured her, actually, trying to make her tough. Early in 1988, Gina attempted to kill herself and was committed to a hospital for her own protection. The next day, Sue asked me to go to the hospital with her to visit Gina. As we walked through the bleak halls of the building, Sue seemed unusually antsy and told me that she hated hospitals.

“Everyone hates hospitals. Don’t worry about it. We’re just here to see Gina.”

“No, you don’t understand,” she said. “I really hate hospitals. I don’t think I could come here by myself.”

“Well, Gina needs you, so you kinda have to,” I said. I soon learned, however, that Sue did not feel the same way. Days would go by without her visiting Gina. I was appalled to think of Gina alone in the psych ward and started visiting her myself even when Sue would not. Before long, I was visiting Gina regularly without Sue. I had thought that Sue was Gina’s closest friend — I couldn’t believe that Sue would treat her this way. Perhaps they had some baggage that I was not aware of?

My relationship with Sue became strained. We were boring and dry together, although I think she was maturing in ways that were not very apparent to me. One night she invited herself over to my place on the strict condition that Evan not be around. This I arranged, wondering what she had in mind. When she arrived, after a bit of small talk, she asked if I had any marijuana we could smoke. For years, I had been suggesting fruitlessly that chemical relaxation might help us, so I was a bit taken aback at her sudden change of heart. She explained that she had gotten high with her boyfriend and that they had both found the experience “enjoyable”. Although my interest in pot was actually starting to wane by that time, who was I to disagree with such a request? I prepared a pipe for us and we smoked a bowl. It didn’t really do much for me that night, but Sue began to look at the LED peak meter on my stereo and said that the bars looked like little people standing up to sing and then sitting down.

“Wow, you’re pretty stoned, aren’t you?” I laughed, wondering how strongly the pot was affecting her.

“No, I’m not that stoned. Come on, you see what I mean, don’t you?” And I did. I really did. But we were no longer in synch. We fooled around a bit that night, for the first and last time. The experience was not very enjoyable for either of us, but I appreciated her trying. It was probably about three years too late for us.

By the time that Gina finally left the hospital, Sue and I had stopped talking. I was so disappointed in the whole situation that I couldn’t bear to be with her any more — her abandonment of Gina simply broke the camel’s back. It was one thing for Sue to hurt me, but I couldn’t stand by and watch her hurt someone as vulnerable as Gina. I began going through an intensely unhappy mourning process. It was like the girl I knew had died, and the love I had for her had to die as well. It took a long time.

I continued to be friendly with Gina after she left the hospital. I cared a lot about her, but she was extremely fragile. Her hold on life was so tenuous that at times she seemed to be not of this earth. Due to the circumstances, it was a strange relationship. One awkward thing we had in common is that we had both been deeply hurt by Sue, even though we never talked about it.

It became clear to me after Gina moved back into their apartment that Sue provided her no emotional support. In fact, Sue could not deal with Gina at all. Every time I saw Gina, I just ended up mad at Sue for being so weak and selfish. Eventually, my desire to get away from Sue overwhelmed my desire to be friendly with Gina. To my regret, I spontaneously blew off Gina one day with no explanation. Six months later, I still felt guilty, but since they still lived together I was sure there was nothing I could do about it without causing further pain to both of them (and myself to boot).

Months passed. I hadn’t spoken with Sue in more than a year, but I still missed her terribly. My emotions were as strong as ever, but nothing in my day-to-day life seemed to have much flavor. I remember going out one summer evening in 1989 with friends for drinks and having a lousy time. We talked and laughed, but none of it touched me. I came home longing for true human contact and decided in desperation to drive over to Sue and Gina’s house around 1:00am. I sat on the curb feeling miserable, wondering what to do. I had the irrational hope that one of them would see me sitting there and invite me inside. It was too late to simply ring the bell. Bizarrely, two drunk townies then walked down the street towards me and one of them started harassing me.

“What are you doing sitting there? Move away,” he said.

“Bug off yourself,” I said. But he would not leave me alone, even though his friend would’ve been happy to continue walking.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” he asked pointedly.

“Actually, I’m from across the river in Boston.” But that’s not what he meant. He had a chip on his shoulder because I was not a townie.

Assuming he wasn’t armed, I felt sure I could take him. When he came near me, I moved to defend myself, but his friend then made it clear that he wasn’t going to allow that, so I had to back down. It was a standoff. We continued like that for at least 20 minutes. Eventually, the aggressive one built up enough courage to take a swing at me, hitting me near the eye. Knowing I couldn’t handle both of them at once, I yelled “Help!” as loudly as I could. I screamed bloody murder, over and over: “Help! Help!” I wondered why I hadn’t done it earlier. They took off and I stumbled around the street in a daze. “Jesus”, I thought, “this is certainly not how I had planned on spending the evening”. After a minute or two, Sue and Gina’s door opened miraculously and Gina called out to me.

“Brian, is that you? What are you doing here?” She invited me inside and made me tea while I explained what had happened. Sue, she told me, was out with her boyfriend. “That figures,” I thought to myself. It was a blessing to see Gina, but it seemed like I had hit a new low. I knew that a drastic change was going to be necessary, but I didn’t yet have the courage to make it. I had a black eye for a week to remind me every time I looked in the mirror.

I saw Sue briefly once in the fall. Although I used to worry that I would have no lasting impact on her life, the damage we had done to each other over the years was now apparent. What I had mistaken for standoffishness was actually fragility, and I realized that I had nearly blown her to pieces with my good intentions. She seemed to be at loose ends, and I felt somewhat responsible. I invited her to a Suzanne Vega concert, but she declined, writing me shortly afterwards that:

At this point in our lives our relationship is, because it cannot be worked out satisfactorily to both of us, at a dead end. I feel like I just need to live with that.

I changed jobs in 1990, taking a position with a company in Cambridge that was promptly acquired by another company from out-of-state. In the early summer of 1991, the company offered to transfer me to an office in Santa Clara, California. I leapt at the opportunity, and began wrapping things up in Boston where Evan and I were still living together. I called Sue to say goodbye, and we agreed to meet in a coffee shop near her home.

We had a perfectly nice conversation over cups of tea. She had been saving a few things to talk about, as we used to do at the Gate:

“I want you to know that I appreciate you as a person,” she said. “When we first met, I liked your laugh and your intelligence and the way you talked, but I don’t think I recognized that you were a whole person. I’m really sorry about that.” Somehow, when she said this, it did not occur to me that it was something I had been waiting to hear since Perkins days, seven years before. I let it go without much comment, but it means a lot to me now.

Sue also mentioned that she was in therapy, working through issues from her childhood. She implied that most of them revolved around her father, and I got the impression that their relationship was more painful than I ever suspected, perhaps to the point of abuse. I wondered if that accounted for any of the difficulties that she and I had had, but I didn’t say anything. There was nothing I could do about it now.

I told her that I was leaving in a matter of days. She was glad that I had taken the time to see her before leaving. As we walked out of the shop, I began to hurry to my car.

“Brian, are you OK?” she said from behind me, then increased her pace to match mine. “You’re walking so fast.”

“I’m fine,” I said honestly. The truth was that I needed to pee and my mind was on plans for my upcoming drive to California. We said our last goodbye, and I got in my car and drove away.