The following piece of creative nonfiction is part of a series I started on my personal blog a few years ago called “Alphabet: A History,” which is a collection of short, autobiographical vignettes, focusing mainly on relationships (familial, romantic, platonic, and self). I will be publishing the series on Fridays.
Alphabet: A History (H): The Hollow Men
It’s August, 1994 and I’m in my second week of college in Springfield, Missouri. I live in Woods Hall, the only all-women dorm on campus and share an 18′ x 12′ room with a square dancing, biology major from Colorado. Across the hall are my new friends Katy and Jessica. They’re both in the dorky new student showcase with me, a performance where incoming theater students show themselves off to prospective directors…and suitors, I suppose. Katy and I have decided to do a piece together since we’re both totally interested in being avant garde and making people think and stuff. Somehow, we decide to act out a poem and before one of us gets the brilliant idea of writing an original, I suggest “The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot.
I find the poem in a book at the library and make several photocopies for us. In the evenings after we eat dinner in New Hall cafeteria, we practice our performance in our lobby and sometimes walk down to the tent pad where we hope cute boys will notice us. We’re assigned a senior theater major to help us prepare — this guy, Kory, who really spends more time making passes at us than anything; we’re not interested.
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by Wendy on October 28, 2011
· in Alphabet a History,Essays
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The following piece of creative nonfiction is part of a series I started on my personal blog a few years ago called “Alphabet: A History,” which is a collection of short, autobiographical vignettes, focusing mainly on relationships (familial, romantic, platonic, and self). I will be publishing the series on Fridays.
Alphabet, A History (F): Foster Beach
It’s May, and I’m 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 and Foster Beach opens up to me like an outstretched palm holding all the secrets of the summer ahead.
It’s June and Chad has just finished school for the year. He waits for me on his bike outside my apartment on Winnemac and I rush out, wearing a short black sundress over my bikini; I’m carrying a vintage boho bag Chad found for me at a tag sale in New England a couple summers ago, and I’ve got sunscreen in it, the latest In Touch, a couple bucks for some ice cream, and a hot pink batik tapestry I use as a beach blanket. Chad has remembered to bring a bottle of water and the transistor radio I gave him for his birthday the year before.
At Foster, we lie on our backs and stare at the blue expanse of sky and lake and inhale the summer. It’s 1 PM and we’ve got the whole rest of the day to do whatever we want.
“Remember the summer we became friends?” I ask still staring at the sky, “And we hung out on your deck every night and I kept trying to get you to kiss me and you just kept moving your furniture around and re-decorating instead?”
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by Wendy on October 21, 2011
· in Alphabet a History
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