Falling In and Out of Love

A story of immaturity

I often write convoluted stories of my past, mainly because memories are less than straightforward, linear, or logical. It’s difficult to unentangle moments from one fall to the next, and even dicier when trying to attach songs and meanings and true beginnings and ends.

So let me start with one end.

Two or three years ago (see?), Jane died. She died virtually alone, as she had been living for many years before after her long-time lover had passed. I hear that her brother and sister were with her at her end. I hope she had some comfort, though even saying that makes me feel aloof, distant.

Why didn’t I know more about her other than random Facebook posts? Was it that I was too busy with my own obsessions? Was it that, like so many people and places from the past, I cared on a casual, nostalgic level, but not enough, apparently, to re-forge a connection?

A mutual friend told me of her passing, and as I type this, I realize that I should reach out to him, too, for all the reasons stated above.

It had been fifteen years since I had seen Jane, at my close childhood friend Jimbo’s 50th birthday gathering.

Jimbo used to date Jane in high school; they seemed as serious as two 16–17 year olds could be. They broke up when he left for college — not formally, but in that drifting long-distance way. The real break, I don’t think, ever was announced officially, but the sealant was surely when Jimbo revealed that he was gay.

It’s for these reasons that when I think about being eighteen or nineteen, I think seriously about the Alice Cooper song that was released in 1971, when I was only fifteen:

I suppose that when I was thirty I laughed at the juvenility of such sentiments. Now, I laugh at the juvenility of being thirty.

Being eighteen is almost insufferable when it comes to love and romance. I know it was for me, especially regarding a girl like Jane.

I had known Jane all my life. She was a year younger than me, and when I’d see her in church or school, maybe I was friendly because she was always so friendly. But we’re talking elementary school when girls to boys are akin to salt to wounds. It’s irritating because boys don’t know what girls want or even mean. Maybe we never learn.

However, what I did learn was that by the time we got past early puberty, Jane had changed. I suppose I had, too, but it’s harder to notice these things in yourself. Jane had gone from a little girl with baby fat and wavy hair that was way too short and too “straitened” (for me) into a dead on look-a-like for Rita Coolidge, especially as Coolidge appears on her first solo album.

I mean, breathtaking.

At this point, I had started going to our church’s Sunday night youth group (MYF), and one night early on, someone suggested we have a seance (we were that sort of Methodist youth). We sat in a circle, one candle illuminating the darkness of the church basement. Jane sat by me, and whoever the seance leader was (Jimbo?) suggested that we all hold hands. Jane’s much smaller hand fit so easily into mine, and at the appropriately eerie summonings, she squeezed mine and I squeezed back.

What did any of this mean at fifteen?

Just dreams: “have you any dreams you’d like to sell? Dreams of…”

Lost in a world of hormones, I was taken by so many cute girls — taken in the sense that I developed multiple and always unrequited, unreciprocated crushes. So, in a sense, Jane faded into a background of Rita Coolidges and Carole Kings and Carly Simons, and maybe even a few Linda Ronstadts, too.

From those early church/puberty infatuations, though, we grew close, as friends, and I knew even then that I could trust Jane, tell her things I would never tell anyone else my age.

She was a good pal, and even in ninth grade, I knew she had eyes for Jimbo who, unlike me, found requited love any and everywhere.

So, as I said, they found each other in the last two years of high school — Jimbo’s and my last two years. They seemed to fit so easily, and who wouldn’t have been happy for them? They went to proms and club lead-outs and I used to have a photo of the two of them standing under the “Time in a Bottle” emblem of some official function.

Time. In. A. Bottle.

Open at your own risk.

Pop.

Unlike Jimbo, I stayed closer to home — only twenty-five miles away — when I went off to college, and so on so many weekends I’d come home and hang with whatever was left of our old crowd, and that mainly meant Jane.

We’d go to movies, hang out playing cards at the local pizza joint, Pasquale’s, and listen to the music that had once not sounded so gripped with sad memories. I know I couldn’t take it when anyone played “The Way We Were” on that jukebox, and even “When Will I See You Again” felt like too much.

I wish I had asked Jane more questions about how she was coping without Jimbo. But maybe I didn’t want to know, because I, of course, was searching for love. So far, college had brought only more of the same unreciprocation as junior high, and to a slightly lesser extent, as high school had.

So instead of asking about her feelings, I asked Jane to join me at the college when we hosted the country-rock band Pure Prairie League for a Friday night concert. I had a place for her to stay, with a girl I had met, and Jane accepted the invitation.

Living in certain foggy places, I convinced myself that this acceptance meant more than it did. How do we really know if we’re entering a new phase, when almost every day, some door appears with a crack in its seeming closure? What is that crack, where did it originate, and isn’t it worth investigating?

I further convinced myself of any and all cracks when one of my male friends nodded approval at Jane and then at me that evening. This would be a good point to re-listen to that Alice Cooper tune above.

Or maybe it’s time now to focus on the band at hand:

“Don’t you think the time is right for us to find All the things we thought weren’t proper could be right in time And can you see Which way we should turn together or alone I can never see what’s right or what is wrong (will it take too long to see)…”

It would have helped if I had known these lyrics and the band better than I did. But frankly, until they were announced as a coming attraction, I had never heard of them. I wasn’t alone, either, as maybe seventy-five students chose to remain on campus that weekend for the show.

Still, we enjoyed it, and while there was no place to go for a beer after, we did gather in a dorm room and maybe snuck a few in for a while.

Since I didn’t have a car, Jane drove herself home the next morning. Nothing romantic happened between us, but that didn’t stop me from hoping.

A few weekends later, Jane invited me to accompany her to a University of Alabama football game. Of course, for a variety of reasons, I must have screamed my “Yes.”

We made a day of it and even dropped by that friend (who had earlier approved of Jane)’s family home for a bit. His eyes were shining at me, though if I had looked more closely I might have noticed that Jane’s weren’t quite as bright.

Maybe I couldn’t see so well because the game itself proved more excruciating than we thought it should be. Alabama trailed Florida State for most of the game, and couldn’t get out of its own way. Toward the end of the game Florida State gave up a safety in order to dig itself out of its own goal. This made the score 7–5, and it seemed a shrewd move given Alabama’s offensive ineptitude. Football is a crazy game, though, and as the seconds ticked off, with less than a minute to go, Alabama somehow managed to get close enough to try a winning field goal.

The scene took place right in front of us. In fact, I’ve never had a better vantage point to see football more clearly.

Football, also clearly, was something I understood.

As Alabama got set, Jane and I mutually grabbed each other’s hand. We entwined fingers and held tight. Maybe we even said a few seance-inspired words. But whatever we did, we watched as a guy named Bucky Berrey kicked a forty-plus yard field goal that literally died right as it cleared the crossbar.

Alabama won 8–7, and Jane and I hugged and danced, and after those precious moments, we never touched each other again all the way home.

See, these are the things an eighteen-nineteen year-old guy never understands.

We were just pals, Jane and I.

We made plans to see a movie later that night, and on the way home I actually asked if she minded that as we had been spending so much time together people had now begun asking questions about us.

“No, I don’t mind,” she said, which, of course, did NOT mean that we were dating.

Too bad I didn’t get that message, for my response indicated that I was glad that we had become…more.

The next day at church, I noticed that Jane made a real effort not to sit by me, and when the service was over, she disappeared quickly and thoroughly. At least I could read discomfort. After returning to college that afternoon, I called Jane:

“I didn’t mean that we should be dating or anything. I just wanted you to know what other people were saying.”

“Oh,” she responded, “I’m so glad you called and told me that. I feel so much better.”

Though I didn’t, I was still glad that whatever we had wasn’t enveloped in misunderstanding and loss. But when one person thinks a friendship could turn into something more and then learns that that dream hasn’t sold so well, it’s hard to recover the old friendship, the “way we were.”

That’s not to say that Jane and I didn’t see each other on many weekends to come, but rather, those started fading as both she and I moved on.

Not to beat myself up, but it’s so hard to know whether something close could be, should be, something closer. I’ve always believed that a close friendship should become the basis for lasting love. Some would argue that if the chemistry isn’t there, however, the compound simply won’t form.

I took two years of high school chemistry, but much of the time in lab, I read novels while my classmates made esters and alcohol. Funny.

I did end up marrying my best friend, too, so it’s good to know that as lost as I was with girls like Jane (and there were definitely more), I still found my way — a solid path into post-eighteen life.

Things do happen as they should, but I tell you, every time I hear that Pure Prairie League song, I still wince a bit for what was and what wasn’t:

“Amie what you want to do? I think I could stay with you For a while, maybe longer if I do

Fallin’ in and out of love with you Fallin’ in and out of love with you Don’t know what I’m gonna do, I’d keep Fallin’ in and out of love With you.”

Thanks to Counter Arts for publishing.