I was a shy and lonely high school freshman, clustered with the “W’s” at the back of the class, when I was befriended by one of the most popular girls in school. I responded in the way of all adolescent boys: I fell in love. But she was popular and busy, and I did not know how to move the friendship, and then she moved away for a while. When she returned, she was again, popular and busy, and I had managed to find companionship, but still: I loved her.
We were friends, and we shared friend outings, and I was introduced to her family as a friend, silently suffering under the designation. She went away to college and I stayed home for Art School, and we had friend outings when she was home. I became engaged, and then fractured it: the young lady was a version of my high-school love, but was not her, which was unfair to the both of us.
One holiday time, my friend was home to visit, and I “screwed my courage to the sticking point,” and declared my love.
“I don’t think of you in that way.”
I stayed the course, became the friend I seemed destined to remain, the thing that- for her, I did best. Friendship with her became my second greatest passion, and I crafted it like the artist I am. I made myself indispensable to her family, to maintain contact with her. I listened when she called, and worried when she and other students took over the dean’s office. I embedded myself into her family, and her sister’s husband got me a job at the psychiatric hospital where he worked. We became greater friends, wrestling with the disconnected.
One evening, at her sister’s house, I mourned my lost love over a bucket of fried chicken, and through glasses of wine. Her husband listened as I wailed through the wine bubbles, my mouth slick with the chicken grease, inconsolable and unrequited. He then spoke quietly and well, and gave me six words of guidance:
“Get a horse, and a sword.”
I saddled up Rocinante, and went to Boston, in the springtime, where my love’s fiancé promptly knocked me off my horse, and took my sword. Sometimes the love story goes off-script.
James Ingram and Patti Austin sang, “If we can be the best of lovers, yet be the best of friends… the music never ends.” One Christmas break, the music began and we, best friends, became the best of lovers.
I hear people bemoan our bulging landfills as they unwrap a twinkie; they throw the cardboard and plastic into the trash. I watch as they climb into their cars, and pollute their way to another complaint. I listen to the hand-wringing, mournful concerns, and note the lack of fire, of passion for a cause, and want to say to them, “Identify your passion, declare it and go after it. Go full-tilt at the windmill, and bring it to obedience.” A passion for a thing should not sit in a drawer. It should be nourished and exercised, placed into a sling and swung, flung at the head of Goliath. I was knocked into the dirt, but my stand was made known: this thing, this love, this friend, this- I want.
I married my friend, and though the marriage did not survive my stupidity, I would have been poorer less the happiness we shared, and the daughter whose name means “I love you,” had I not declared my passion, and gotten a horse, and a sword.
CJ Woods, III (first pub 07/25/09)
Cathy Ellen Hord Woods Bristow
10/29/47 — 07/23/2024