Autumn Leaves

A man recalls his first love in college

The falling leaves outside brought thoughts of her back. The color fiery, like her hair.

Was it love?

It was in every way I knew back then. Now, I wonder just how real any of it was.

Perhaps I’ve just forgotten how to love like that.

Across the street was the building we’d met in, the drama department at the university. The style of it was best described as collegiate Gothic, to be contrasted with sleepwalking modernism from where I looked on.

It was there that we shared a class, two young freshman quickly falling in love.

I’d always found the bells to be exceptionally loud in that building, buzzing intensely when class ended. It was one of the oldest on campus, yet to be upgraded to the more modern systems in any way, shape, or form. Unlike the business school across the street where I now sat, all sparkling newness funded by deep-pocketed corporate donors.

I wonder what the young drama student back then would think of the Executive MBA grad now, looking on.

Maybe it was time to revisit.

I crossed the street and entered the old building. It was once the women’s gym, before being converted into the drama school about a century ago.

Most of the student crowd had thinned out, the last classes of the day already finished and the building now mostly empty, as was typical on Fridays. No one was around to bat an eye at the only guy with a suit on in the building.

I loved the sound of my footsteps in the hall, my dress shoes giving it that distinct echo, one that I thought existed only in the movies. It felt so alive compared to the dull taps and muted echoes in the building I now spent most of my time in while on campus.

I entered the third door on the right and found it unlocked. Inside was one of the old lecture halls, perhaps thirty chairs facing forward in graduated steps to the back. Our old seats were the two closest to the door.

I remembered coming in late and she scooted over so that I wouldn’t have to squeeze by.

The first words she said to me sprang to mind, so mundane in the moment and yet locked in the amber of my memory.

Need me to give you my notes?

I said no, but I was already smitten.

I’d always thought I fell in love first, but thinking back, I had only been a few minutes late. Not to mention that her paper was blank.

Our connection was powerful right then, one that became a jolt when we touched as I handed her a pencil. A fucking pencil, when she had one on the desk.

That first kiss was magical. We’d stayed late as we did that first week, mostly as an excuse to stay near each other as we could. She gave me an impulsive crush of the lips by her as I told her of my favorite live performance.

Her eyes seemed to bore into my soul, a brilliant deep green that I hadn’t seen before nor seen since. I’d long discounted that feeling as the idealization that comes from being young, where everything is more powerful and intense, and your hormones are telling you that nothing is more important in the world than that moment.

Now I realize I’ve held onto that feeling for a reason.

I still feel that connection today as I look at those same chairs.

Things moved at the speed things do at that age. It was all amplified by the fact that we were partners for the project that semester in what would be a shared performance before the class. The project became a forcing function for time spent together, ostensibly for practising.

Most of said practice time was upstairs, so my feet moved of their own accord, and I soon found myself on the second floor. Here were the breakout rooms where the non-lecture classes were taught by the grad students rather than the professors.

This particular room had special significance. It was where we first made love.

We’d stayed late on a Friday like this, using the space to practice for an upcoming performance for class, as we often did.

Things had been charged for us by then, although we’d yet to go all the way.

We were blocking out our scene, a married couple whose marriage had faded, our characters seeking to rekindle a spark.

Reciting lines became practising of our blocking. Blocking moved to practising our kisses — for the scene, of course.

Until it was no longer practice.

It built until she desperately had to have me inside her in that moment. That’s what she told me, so that’s what I tell myself.

I looked on the wall, noticing the slight dent where I’d slammed her into it in a moment of clumsy passion, both of us laughing that we’d crumbled some of the plaster.

Next to it, the window against which I’d first entered her, neither of us caring if anyone could see.

The panes rattled as I pressed her into them, her arms wrapping around my neck as she pulled me in for a kiss. The world melted away, only the two of us existing in that moment.

We continued like that for some time, clothes half on, all clumsy kisses and fumbled buttons as we rocked into one another, our gazes locked when we weren’t trying to swallow each other’s tongue.

She pressed me back after I slipped out of her, pushing me a few steps away to the floor where she mounted me. I walked over to the space where she rode me until we screamed each other’s names and any number of other words.

Yes…yes…don’t stop…

I didn’t last long the first time, but I lasted long enough.

And one advantage of youth is that you get several attempts at-bat.

I entered her many times that evening. In a way I was thankful that I had been determined to close the orgasm gap even at that age. More an accidentally considerate lover than anything intentional, seeing how it was as much for my ego as her pleasure.

I hope they never modernize the building so that I can still see the marks we’d made. Perhaps that’s the only good that comes from a lack of funding of the arts in this country.

It’s probably best that they replaced the desk, though.

Down the hall was the more intimate of the three performing spaces. This was the stage where we’d performed our final for the semester.

Our love had already frayed as the performance came, the inexperience and passions of youth combining in the usual manner of disaster. She caught me with her roommate after I caught her…also with her roommate.

We’d gone from promises of forever to wails of betrayal in a matter of months.

In our performance, the couple breaks up in the end.

In a way, it was as if we were performing the eulogy of our own relationship.

We met one last time, shared one last moment in that room. It was a breakup, and we told each other it was mutual. Perhaps it truly was, as we were both miserable as we cried about it.

It devolved into sex as it always seemed to for us, this now our final time making love, our union the desperate passion of two lovers knowing their time together is coming to an end.

I moved on from drama after that. Transferred to the business school, got my standard issue suit and tie on my route down the MBA-track.

Last I’d heard, she’d stayed with the program. We quickly lost touch, lost connection. By the time I thought to reach out, I’d learned she’d graduated early and moved on.

I wonder what ever became of her.

I’d always told myself I’d find my way back to the arts, finding some way to perform, some outlet for that muscle I’d let atrophy. I never did, of course, the demands of careers and family and life intersecting and displacing dreams until you wonder if you ever had them.

Time just gets away from us.

Another from Jordan