First Loves Will Be Indelibly Written in Our Minds

Remembering you through the song ‘Dakota’

James Salter, a favourite American author of mine, starts his biography this way:

If you can think of life, for a moment, as a large house with a nursery, living and dining rooms, bedrooms, study, and so forth, all unfamiliar and bright, the chapters which follow are, in a way, like looking through the windows of this house. Certain occupants will be glimpsed only briefly. Visitors come and go. At some windows you may wish to stay longer, but alas. As with any house, all within cannot be seen. (James Salter, “Burning the Days: Recollection”)

I’m on some rolling stairs that lead to a space that looks like the Earth in miniature. I’m visiting London for the first time and I am visiting a museum. The person I am with takes the picture. My boyfriend.

I can still hear my laughter resounding in that space, I can access some of the teasings on my mental bookshelves too. I am twenty-three and a bit naive like most 23-year-olds tend to be. I think the world owes me circumstances that will propel me to unimaginable heights.

The person I am with, the boyfriend, is the kindest person I have ever met. The funniest. We click so well. He is Spanish and he speaks English with an American accent as he has studied in the States for a while. He makes fun of the way I roll my “r’s”, especially when I say “sorry” or “ironic.” The insight jokes.

The story of how we met is a bit unbelievable even to me if I think of it.

I don’t remember why “Dakota” was our song. I remember us going to a Streophonics concert in Manchester (or, was it Nottingham?!) and kissing while the band was playing it as it was our song. Kelly Jones, the singer, was wearing a white T-shirt. You asked me if I found him attractive. I don’t remember the answer.

Thinkin’ ‘bout thinkin’ of you Summertime think it was June Yeah, I think it was June

What happened to the car that you drove us around in to visit places? Who lives in the houses you occupied while working in an obscure town in the UK now? What happened to the note I left on the notebook for visitors at the entrance to Chatsworth, the mansion, and the gardens where they filmed “Pride and Prejudice”? Where is the poster that you wanted to stick on one of the doors in one of the houses you rented?

How many other people fell in love and then broke up since we did?

Wake up call coffee and juice Rememberin’ you What happened to you?

A note on your desk: “Morning. Hope you slept well. Take a look in the closet. There is a blouse there among my sweaters that didn’t fit me. You try it on.”

Not the exact words, but something very much along these lines. So cheesy, yet so sweet. One of the presents for my birthday.

Why did I not keep that note? It might be gone, but it’s been etched in my memory.

I cannot think of all of it without a pang of sadness.

I think of the long, intimate hours in the houses you lived in, with the same songs we listened to on repeat on your iPod, phrases from them like some sort of promises we made to one another. The closeness. The intensity of it all.

Disparate moments that I played and replayed countless times in my mind the years after visit me again sometimes. Out of the blue.

Me dropping a two Euro coin under a bench and you retrieving it for me the first time we met. You walking me home after I got tired of clubbing with the group I was with in Barcelona. A drive we took to see the sunrise on the Mediterranean after we got together.

Sleepin’ in the back of my car We never went far We didn’t need to go far

Your car in our case.

Both of us discussing on the roof of a medieval monastery somewhere in Spain. You saying “dead end” on and on when we were amusedly trying to find the exit from a hedge maze in a British garden.

Whatever indecisive forms my answers took when you asked for reassurance later on, they made both of us fearful of where all of it was going. We both became confused.

So difficult to make the decision to move to another country “just because” one loves someone when one has no idea how to get a job with no working rights. Too much pressure for the relationship to work if one moved because otherwise…

We broke up. It felt like something temporary at first. It seemed like a break. Like a joke. With the air of impermanence that everything had back then, nothing seemed final. We were going to fix it at some point. We were.

We couldn’t.

Only later does one see things clearly, as one is not able to when they happen.

Sometimes you are aware when your great moments are happening and sometimes they rise from the past. Perhaps it’s the same with people. (James Salter, “Burning the Days: Recollection)

If I try to summon your texts, snippets of them flood my mind. It’s the same with your e-mails. I still have those. Not the texts. Details about your friends (what were their names?), insignificant daily incidents, endearments, little misunderstandings, and phrases that hid small insecurities resurface every now and then.

There are moments when it seems that all that has happened since is of lesser importance than what we were. You were really mine for a while and I was really inebriated with it. I even had the luxury of being bored by the authentic thing.

I wonder if we’ll meet again Talk about life since then Talk about why did it end.

Some of those visitors that go may however stay indefinitely in our minds. And some encounters may leave prints that can affect one forever, especially those that stand at the entrance of one’s life as an adult.

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