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I'm Mango's Anchor.
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EXT 2PM DAY: . Athens, Georgia 1990
Blond Sophomore Boy, Kent meets Red-Haired Best Friend's (Chuck) girlfriend, Kristen on top of the bridge overlooking the famed Georgia Bulldogs Stadium of American Football. They do not like each other, but cannot avoid each other during this obvious meeting. It is the changing of classes. She is coming from the science part. He is coming from the Humanities part. They are both sophomores born in 1971. He is an IBM brat. Father Jewish. Mother German. He is blond. We call him "Hitler's Greatest Dilemna" as he is a pug-nosed, bubble-butted, blond, muscular, average heighted, vivid blue eyes, a handsome deameanor. Kristen didn't think he was handsome at this time. Truly, he was to her one of those guys (later like Matt Malloy for instance) who got tons of girls who she respected and liked - yet she was not attracted to him at all. She was his best friend's girlfriend. Kent and Chuck had gone to high school together. Kent had transferred to MacEachern High during sophomore year. He used to wear a belt around his butt - under his pants - so that it would be not so prominent. Kristen dyed her hair red and was coming gradually off of an ugly period where she had a bob and 25 extra pounds and no concept of the freedom that thrift shops afforded in adornation. She is a native georgian of native georgian ancestors - even cherokee blood.
KENT: Hello
KRISTEN: Hello Stranger.
KENT: This is so weird. I'm having a deja vu.
KRISTEN: What?
KENT: Deja vu. I've been here before.
KRISTEN: Oo. How interesting. What is it like? I've never had it.
KENT: I haven't before either. It's like I have been here before. I knew exactly what you were going to say and you look exactly as you are supposed to look.
KRISTEN: I wonder what that would mean. How strange.
KENT: I know.
KRISTEN: Well, off to Comp Lit. See ya tonight. I think Chuck and Steve are praticing.
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I don't have the Spring Break story in me again. If you care, it's perfectly archived in "kristen's words". for now.
We awkwardly but religiously fell in love. I can say suredly that we both were each other's first archetype ripping karmic mate. Whatever you wish to call it, it's that passion you feel. It was our first time. He had had drama in his life before, but I was love.
It scared the shit out of him, and my love play was ruined.
Our album was Tori Amos' "Little Earthquakes". I went totally crazy (I refer to it - when psychologists ask - as likely my first only prior non-committed-in-an-institution manic attack. This was when he went back to Laura and couldn't come out to Chuck about me. I had not mentioned a bit of love that Kent had for me that night that I bawled and emoted and hated myself in front of the man I loved and love and still love: Chuck. I only told him after making him beg me to reveal. You can picture it: me sobbing and gasping in the bed writhing and telling him how I had to tell him something that would hurt him terribly and that I knew he wouldn't understand that I still loved him - chuck but...
"Just tell me Kristen, I promise that I will understand. I promise I won't be mad."
On and on, and I told him - in a nutshell:
I love Kent.
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Look, I had psychic feelings for him. I adored him. The sex was revelatory. Our minds went into orbit together. We were intense. We were writers. I would have done anything. I was 21.
When he went back to Laura and Chuck, I went crazy. We graduated college.
Later I turned older. We lived together when I moved to Wilmington. Mike was there. We fucked but no trust. I had seen "Ju Dou" and often pictured that image with the dye being inserted in the huge vat of water - along with the lyric: "the dye has been cast. the damage is done."
We loved. We fucked. We wanted to love. We tried. We loved. I cried. I painted. I wrote. I listened to sad music. He watched me crumble during my panic - my first black hole encounter with the knowledge of climbing so high (getting more experience) that I could get the view.
He loved me after I had torn him completely from my system (except for the part that no one will see). I couldn't love him, and no one knew how much he hurt than I.
We became friends. We are totally free of it all. We are family. I drive him nuts, but he loves me in a way no one will see. It's OK and not strange though. We all have it.
Ah, Kent. He was the first glimmer. Show respect.
You're in the club.
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