Memorable

I was 16, and (don't laugh) attending a Model United Nations conference at Princeton. It should be no surprise that I was a policy nerd, but this year was different. It was the first year that I was coming out of my awkward stage. Although, to be totally honest, sometimes, even now, when I'm approached by a guy in a bookstore who asks me for my number or stopped at Runyon Canyon by someone who wants to chat me up, my first thought is, "People are so friendly in LA," and then I think, "Oh! I must be coming out of my awkward stage." It's a strange sort of reflex that never quite leaves you. And it's true, I rely on my intuition for all kinds of shortcuts and build stories about people on the subway based on how they look, but I'm rarely attracted to anyone at first or second glance, so there's always something absurd about this kind of interaction for me. Perhaps this is an other male/female distinction I need to address later.

Anyway, Princeton, Model UN. My committee chair was bespectacled and tall and lanky. All weekend he had that serious but under-siege look that I've always liked in people, particularly men. Like a determination to shoulder the burdens of the world even if you know they'll leave you completely worn. Maybe he was depressed. I could tell, either way, that he was someone who was overwhelmed by life. Years later, when I got to college, I gravitated towards people like this - they were often from California and couldn't take on too many extra-curriculars because their three-class workload was overwhelming them and impeding on their happiness. I found this magnetically charming. I, myself, took five classes a semester and ran a magazine and organized an annual conference and threw cocktail parties on thursday nights and hosted brunch in my apartment on Sundays. But secretly, I told myself that I lacked a certain depth that these people had, the psychic pain that made them interesting and made it impossible for them to tackle the externalities of life wholly. And perhaps I gravitated towards them because I was a learned overachiever and inside, I was just like one of them, questioning the purpose of everything.

So Princeton. Tall, bespectacled. A real character case study. You could study him for days, or I would. I found him infinitely fascinating. And smart. And throughout the session he would keep looking at me and smiling, in that way that men often do, when they feel fairly confident that they can or will win you over. And this was clearly an unfair game, considering I was 16 and my life felt hopeless and he was 20 and had that beleaguered-ness that I can still smell like some sort of musk designed exclusively for my senses.

At the end of the session we talked, for two hours about Sudan and about Princeton and college and Canada, where he was from, and we got hot chocolate and talked more about physics and good hot chocolate and vegetarianism and Buddhism. He would pause after I said something, to think, and always respond with something witty and deep. There was something old about him. Like he was 60 and saw though people. He complained about the conference chair. I felt like a confidante. Even now, this kind of gesture feeds me, to be confided in with that sort of immediacy. It's practically all I need to fall in love. And sitting there in a coffee shop with this older guy who was confiding in me made me feel like a rock star. On the way back, standing on a curb, on the corner of Nassau Street, he touched the sleeve of my jacket, to stop me from crossing before the light turned green. Over the course of the next few days and weeks, I would run the events of this encounter over and over again in my mind, ending with this final gesture of familiarity that won me over completely. I would think about this particular day all the time, every day, especially during unpleasant moments, at the dentist's office, in AB calculus class, when my mom was yelling at me for something.

Other people used these trips as a chance to attend campus parties and drink with college students and it's not that I didn't go, it's just that when I did, I found myself wondering why everyone was having fun and I wasn't. College parties weren't fun, they were meaningless. You were surrounded by people you didn't know who were all drinking and laughing and it was like not being in on the joke. It was just stupid and pointless. And I often worried if my seriousness and hyper-sensitivity were going to be a liability my whole life. I needed to connect and there was nothing to connect with.

Greenwich High School was a dumping ground for superficiality in every form. And it was a four-year expanse of emotional gray. I read an absurd amount, and watched people. I observed them in the student center, girls flipping their hair and flirting with lacrosse players, boys in Northface jackets and L.L. bean backpacks talking about their parents leaving for the weekend and a party in the East wing. There were parties and fashion and cars and college applications and this is what people talked about. There were grades and the Honor Roll and the desperate need to get into Yale or Duke and Wesleyan is my safety and let's go to the Ave after class there's a sale at Saks! and can you believe it? My parents only gave me $1000 for my 16th birthday, I mean what the hell?

I felt like a foreigner in this land. One who wasn't welcome. Maybe it would have been better to be a complete outsider, a complete nerd who sat in the corner of the student center, and talked about ninjas and World of Warcraft. At least there was a community there. But I navigated in and out, I had no real friends, or at least not friends by my own definition. I sought a kind of complete and overwhelming connection that is rare even now, at 30. I was president of a few clubs and edited the newspaper. This gave me something to do. But I acknowledged that it was just something to do. I wasn't a complete nihilist, I guess, just dangerously close. To make matters worse, I was terminally incapable of small talk. I still am, or I should say, I am better at it, but it still strikes me as pointless and leaves me uncomfortable. I didn't particularly want to hang out with people in my school, I wanted to stay home and read. I did what I needed to to keep afloat but I felt so many walls between myself and these people, and when I was near them, they felt like sandpaper on my soul. No one had to say it, I just heard it, "You don't belong, you're not like anyone else." And I knew it had nothing to do with race or how I dressed or looked. There was an absurdity to it all, to this system, to what we were all doing and I felt it so deeply, all the time, like a migraine that you have to live with. And I kept on waiting for someone else to come out and admit it, so that I could too, and no one ever did. So that was that then. You accept a kind of psychic loneliness, at 16. The fact that this is what the world looks like, people don't connect, at least not on a deeper level. And somehow, they're okay with it. There's nothing wrong with them. There's something wrong with you. Unlike you, they seem happy. They laugh about mundane things and get into college and go to awful parties that aren't fun and achieve and achieve and achieve and dress nice and there's nothing else.

So to be at Princeton and to be talking to someone who thought about real things, someone who reflected and saw the absurdity of it all was miraculous. It gave me a kind of hope. And being a 16-year old girl, I fell hopelessly in love. This guy could have been a charming but philandering asshole, but who cared? And how would I have known anyway? I was 16. It was practically the first time anyone outside of my family or teachers had paid any attention to me in a real way and I was obsessed.

I went back home to Greenwich and I was energized in some way. I was happier, no longer teenage Sylvia Plath. I laughed, I made an effort. I talked to people, and it wasn't even that bad talking about math test scores and college applications and a sale on the Ave. And I thought about him, constantly. There is nothing more powerful than a teenage girl's capacity for obsession. So I dreamt about a tearful reunion, confessions of great passion, admission into Princeton followed by an intense freshman-year romance, he would help me with econ papers and then beleagured and bespectacled, he would spend the night and get up early to make us coffee and review my paper a final time (After admission to college I actually realized I had a freakish preternatural talent for econ and wouldn't have needed help) and we would take weekend trips to Vermont, we would walk around campus hand-in-hand as the leaves turned red and orange, and we would tell all our friends the story of our first hot chocolate on Nassau Street, and he would laugh when I would admit to him that I spent a year of high school obsessing over him, and then the long distance relationship that would ensue my sophomore year and tearful phonecalls and admissions of missing one another so desperately. And the whole meeting the parents thing and arguments about moving to Canada after graduation. Although of course, I would eventually concede because of their social welfare programs and because of how much it meant to him. And there would be long, heated, passionate conversations about international issues and transcendental meditation and Arundhati Roy. And we were meant to be together. And we both knew it, at first glance. And eventually, we would get married at a Chapel at Princeton and all our friends would come, forget that I didn't have any, I would by then, because I would be transformed into someone who was no longer maladapted to the world by...love. Because this is what I thought a relationship was, a smooth and intense never-ending dialogue with nothing else in between. And to be totally honest, that's still what I wish it was in reality. Shiny and certain and ever-so-deeply connected, like a rubber-band ball, so tightly wound with strands of conversation and connection and memory that there is no room for dissent, for questioning, for breakability. Rubber isn't breakable. It bounces beautifully.

A year went by and I was a junior. The countdown to the conference had begun. There was no way of knowing what committee he was going to chair but he was interested in hunger issues and world finance so I was guessing the financial committee? Or maybe the social issues? No, he was a finance wonk, definitely finance. I signed up for the social issues committee because you don't want to be too obvious when you're stalking someone. I researched issues, wrote a paper. And I dreamt about how amazing our reunion would be. What would we talk about? I had to have some good conversation topics, I had to sound smart. This was years before I realized how easy and effortless it can be to engage someone after you've had a little practice with it. And years before I realized that smartness has little to do with that particular kind of engagement.

I scoured back issues of Time magazine for current topics. The Brazilian rainforest, the Balkans, what was going on in Chad. And literature. I had to be prepared. He was in college, he was smart. And he was perceptive. He would be able to see through anything rehearsed, so I had to be so well-rehearsed that I sounded like a natural when I talked. The planning was exhausting. but exhilarating. On the bus ride to Princeton, I was jittery. A two-hour ride. But I had waited a year, what was another few hours? When we got there, I tossed my overnight bag at the dorm I was staying at, had a cursory hello with my host and then went for a walk on Nassau street. I stood outside the coffee shop we had met at. What was it like, to be here? To live here, to be a semi-adult and to be happy? To be able to access that possibility of being around people you could potentially connect with? To not feel like a pariah. To have people understand you. To have long, meandering conversations about things that actually meant something, to have secrets with people, and sidelong glances and relationships that lasted and held together because of the fundamental depth of the connection. Maybe I just needed a real friend, but misunderstood that impulse or that desire, clearly I did.

The actual conference was starting at noon, after opening ceremonies, a keynote speaker. And registration, we had to make it through that. God, this was going to take forever. Piling into that old wooden boat of a hall for a speech and applause, and then lunch. I couldn't eat. And then getting into the main conference hall. The Woodrow Wilson Building. Finding my room. 119E in the basement. I couldn't concentrate during the session. People introducing themselves, shaking hands, who cared? I don't care about you people, I thought. On the schedule it said he was chairing the finance committee. Room 20B. I was right. I had to make it there during break. To say hello. Or maybe I should wait till the end of the day. No, I couldn't wait anymore. It had to be done now. I had to see the look on his face. We had to have a beautiful reunion. My life depended on it. Everything else felt meaningless. And in fact, Model UN felt more meaningless than ever. What were we even doing here, pretending to solve world issues when the actual UN couldn't do anything about them? Break session. I went to the bathroom, checked my hair and my dress. I looked passable, even pretty. Up a flight of stairs, and then another, my legs were shaking. This meant so much. It meant maybe a lifetime. I was getting a chance to repair my already broken life. And if it didn't happen, my life would never be good. It would be what it was and what it was was becoming unbearable. At 16, I was getting a chance, a chance to reach for something, something. Something that would anchor me. Something that would give me a reason to move forward. Something that would make me happy. And then there I was, standing in the doorway of Room 20B, watching him shuffle papers as he talked to a boy in an Oxford shirt. He had gotten a haircut, but he looked the same. A minute went by, maybe two. And then he was alone, reading something. Still that under-seige look, still that seriousness.

There were 28 steps between him and me. I know this because I counted them, all the way down and then stood there till he looked up.

"Can I help you?" he asked, with no recognition in his eyes.

I felt it, in the pit of my stomach. He was kidding right? he had to remember me. We had talked for two hours. He had smiled at me in that way that no one had ever smiled at me before. Even if it was a year ago.

"You were my committee chair last year? Remember?" I asked.

He looked at me for a second and a flicker of recognition registered on his face. Then, nothing.

"No, I'm not sure I do."

I looked at him stunned. Then tried again, "Remember? We got hot chocolate? On Nassau, at that coffee shop?"

He shook his head, "No, I don't remember."

I was getting desperate, "We talked about how you're vegetarian and you like to cook, and I was thinking of applying to Princeton and you told me that..." I stopped. there was no point to this.

"You should definitely apply. It's a great place," and then he smiled at me in that same way. And this time it seemed so false and even mean that I couldn't smile back. I told him I had to get back to my committee and left.

Looking back, he could have had serious holes in his brain. Or maybe Princeton students do a lot of drugs. Or maybe he was uncomfortable. He pegged me for the high school stalker that I was. But the fundamental message that I took away from it was clear to me. That I was completely and utterly forgettable. That nothing about me or what I said or the content of my mind or even the way I looked left any sort of impression on anyone. I stood there, uncomfortable in my own skin. In an instant, all my dreams of a Princeton admission and arguments about moving to Canada evaporated and in their place was an empty vacuum in the pit of my stomach.

"I'm not sure I do." What does that even mean? Even fourteen years later, I'm befuddled by this. I remember people I had a two-line exchange with on the subway a decade ago. Granted, my mother says my emotional memory is freakish and somewhat legendary and uncannilly accessible at all times, but still. This wasn't a two-line exchange. It was the best day I had ever had.

But it didn't matter. There was nothing memorable about me. And all of this was clearly about me. It was about the fact that I was the most forgettable girl on Earth, the most forgettable person on Earth. You could talk to me for a couple of hours, even spend weeks and months with me and a year later, if someone asked you about me, you would turn and say, "Who? What girl? I don't remember her." And why would you? I wasn't charming or flirty or even pretty. I didn't have that ease that some girls in my high school had, that complete lack of self-consciousness that I would observe and envy. I was serious and plain, but till then, I had thought I was at least...interesting.

I returned to Connecticut on a bus full of people singing and laughing. We had taken home so many trophies, and people lined them up the black rubber floor of the passageway of the bus. I pretended to sleep. The sun was setting and the sky was an orangey pink over Princeton. It was pretty. But it didn't matter. I knew then that I wouldn't apply to this college for admission. I would never set foot on that campus again.

There were two elements to the disappointment, there was the shattered adolescent dream as well as the recognition that even the people you connect with don't see the world as you do, and how do you reconcile that insurmountable gap? What was the point? Of connecting or dreaming? What was the point of bonding or fantasy? What was the purpose of sharing or hoping? Was this how it was always going to be? Not just a disappointment, because that was bad enough. But a disappointment that was beyond the personal; it revealed something about the nature of people and the world - that even the most meaningful things, the experiences you cherished, ultimately meant nothing because they weren't entirely shared. The best thing that had happened to me in three years of high school was something he didn't even remember.

I stepped in a puddle on the way off the bus, to my ankle, and waited till I got home, to my room and to my bed before I started crying. The crying lasted a couple of days and that, combined with the puddle misstep resulted in a full-fledged case of bronchial asthma, which lasted three weeks. I skipped school and I was relieved to not have to go. I would have taken bronchial asthma over the feeling of interminable loneliness any day. I missed two physics exams and an AB Calc one. I retook them when I came back, entirely unprepared. It didn't matter anymore anyway. Everything else was ruined, so why not wreck a perfect transcript too? I ended the semester with a B plus and a B minus. This was charitable on the part of my physics teacher, who could see that something was clearly wrong with me and attempted to talk to me, something I avoided at all cost. There was nothing to say. The student center was grayer than ever. I had a year and a half left of high school, but so what? I couldn't envision anything worthwhile beyond that year and a half anymore. Maybe I would get into a good school, and even lead a decent life on the outside. But who cared, if there was no one out there who would ever understand me? In the way that I needed, the weird, dark, lonely crevices of my brain. I wasn't even memorable, how could I possibly be loved? I was asking too much of life. There was nothing left to count down to anymore. There would be no big drum rolls. It was just...this. The bronchial asthma developed into full-fledged asthma. And till I was 21, I had to carry an inhaler with me in my bag, a constant reminder of the second memorable trip to Princeton.