What I Really Wanna Know, My Baby. What I Really Want To Say, I Can't Define.

She was eighteen, what did she know. She thought she knew it all of course. She was bright and beautiful, or at least her family and her friends had always told her so. The bright part was never debatable, but the beauty part was of course. She has a crooked mouth and crooked eyebrow,(genetic as it seems many in her family were blessed as such); the eyebrow and lip on one side are slightly higher and more delineated than the other often times making her look at if she is smirking, when indeed she is not. She had always been thought of, except by the closest of her friends, as somewhat emotionless, even cold at times.She was not given to gossip or idle chatter and appeared not to care one way or the other about the daily goings on of people around her, yet she possessed an exceptional curiosity as to what really made people tick and was not at all reticent in her inquiries to the facts of a persons life. It was the little things she cared less about; things like the weather, local gossip, premenstrual symptoms. Failure was never an option. She headed off to college. Her basic needs: food, water, sleep and time to pursue her academic interests. Being extremely focused, as losing focus for even a day or two had dire consequences, (it happened once or twice that first year), she honed in on the only things that mattered to her; at least at the time, academics, social causes and the city. The city and what it had to offer were her life, she made it so; the city was what she wanted, the people, and the sheer diverse humanity of it. The rest could wait, would have to wait. She however, had a living situation which was not ideal under any circumstance. She needed quiet and time alone, time to study and time to sleep. Instead she was subject to being constantly jarred awake in the middle of the night by the noisy and animalistic sounds of the roommate and roommates boyfriend making love on the bed not six feet from her, or drunken conversations at three in the morning when said roommate would come home and want to discuss her evening. This would probably not have been that significant had she had anything in common with the roommate or if she had gotten to know the roommate a little better before the onset of such goings on but as it was she had only been there a week when this began and it did nothing to endear the roommate to her. One night after entering her room to find that it was again, (and perpetually), mating season she left to aimlessly wander and heard music coming from somewhere down the hall. She ventured down the hall to the room from which the music was coming and poked her head in the door; it was open. The Violin Man stopped playing and asked her in. She told him she was homeless and he replied, �we are all homeless�. Not a comforting thought but at this time at least she had a place to sit, and as it turned out that night, to sleep. Not to mention his room was much larger than hers and looked like a palace and he was sans roommate at this time. This is how she met and began her friendship with The Violin Man; that is what she calls him to this day at least on certain occasions. The Violin Man was actually a film student and political science major with eyes to die for and a butt worth kissing, who happened to play the violin among other things.She digresses as she often does. That third grade teacher teacher was so wrong about her never being off task, she lives off task. As luck would have it The Violin Man�s roommate had taken up residence in the apartment of his older lover and he was rarely present except to pick up mail. This was pure luck for her as this allowed her , after becoming fast friends with him , to have a haven of sorts to retreat to when necessary, a place to go when things were too noisy, too uncomfortable just plain miserable or when she had a headache and did not want to smell nail polish or Obsession. She got used to him very quickly and spent countless hours in his room with or without him present. They had no classes together but they studied together often, they ate together, went to concerts together and in general supported each other. They were two disinterested parties able to bounce ideas off of each other which in turn elicited new ideas. The friendship as platonic had been implied from the inception. The best part of this, for her, was that The Violin Man had a girlfriend in Boston and was not likely, or so she assumed, to want anything from her but friendship; she knew anything but friendship would cut severely into her plans and her past experience told her to avoid such energy sucking situations at all costs, at least for a few years until it was pretty clear that the goals previously set were going to be met without difficulty. She remembers later on after their relationship had solidified, and she thought the status quo would remain as such, the panic she felt when he dumped his girlfriend. She does not panic easily, she had snowboarded in the Rockies and the Andes, had flown all over the world, fallen off moving vehicles and broken ribs, ran in the park at night alone, but panic she did. She wanted the friendship, there was no doubt, she felt she would die without it however, she wanted nothing more or even a chance thereof. She decided on a course of action that to this day still perplexes even her; She wrote up a contract, a contract which in a foolish na�ve way stated that they would always be friends and support each other, through whatever bullshit was going on in school and in life. This contract also stated that they would remain platonic friends only as familiarity ( implying intimacy) breeds contempt , and relationships of any other kind were too life sucking for people on a one way track to whatever the fuck she thought they were on their way too. Of course he looked at her funny. Did he censure her? Did he say �go fuck yourself you stupid imbecilic bitch� .... no�he signed the contract. She thinks they toasted with some kind of crappy green tea but she can�t remember. Violin Man told her that he thought he was a symbolic representation of all that she chose to avoid in an effort to keep things uncluttered. He knows this as her basic photographic propensity is for black and white and to him this explains how her mind likes to perceive things. She often wonders what she symbolically represents to the Violin Man. That part of the story ends a year ago. There may be more and then again there may be less. Less is however the new more....... and this is good for people who like to live uncluttered lives.