The packing continues for the move I hope will be accomplished in September, sometime, to my dad's condo. Aside from the packing, there has been shredding of documents that go back more than a decade, mine and my dad's, there have been donations to Good Will, there have been deposits by what I call the "magic tree", the tree outside my current place where, if you leave something you no longer want, someone comes by and adopts it for his or her own. I recently left a free standing bar out there, and I was delighted to see a young couple grab it up! There has been a whole loftof plain ole tossing of things that I have held onto for years (see the entry about how hard it is to get rid of stuff, going back a few months on these pages). It has been hard. The item pictured above is just one such particularly precious piece. It came with me from New York nearly 31 years ago, just about as empty as it is now, and I had it with slightly more liquid in it, some five years before that.
Yes, it is a barren bottle of cologne, called Aliage, which I wore until the contents were no more, except for a few drops that still cannot be sprayed out from the bottom. Perhaps because of the trouble the gifter took to have my initials placed at the top, the item has had even more value to me on the sentimental scale.
For the briefest of three months or so circa the fall and winter of 1975, I sort of dated a classmate--the second and last one, in college.With me, dating was always a bit of a "sort of". Don't get the idea that I am blaming anybody but myself. I just wasn't good at it, and never became good at it. Therein lies another tale, perhaps to be told, or not, we shall see. This young man was in a class taught by an aged stage actor, Vaughan Deering--who carried clippings from his 1918 appearances on stage (I believe as Iago) in San Francisco in his pocket, and lived at the now defunct Lamb's Club, and who, was a prototype for the absent minded professor except one who looked like he was homeless. Len Speaks will remember this class, not only for Mr. Deering's distress at the lack of our actor abilities, but for the fact that he was the note passing conduit from my would be suitor to me, one I recall inviting me to meet him by the coat rack at WFUV. I was suspicious of these entreaties because he had been involved in an intense relationship with another of our classmates, which had broken up with equal passion, and I knew he wasn't over her. And I knew, and I say this with absolute honesty, not self-deprecation alone, I could not compete with that lovely girl on any level.
But this was the second time I had actually been pursued with such obvious intensity (having not been pursued at all before) and well, he was already a friend, and I already liked him. He was New York cute, which for me is a little rough edged but with a boisterous sense of humor. So, for those few months, we went out casually and I enjoyed his company. It was he, I guess around Christmas, who gave me the cologne in the initialled bottle. I still have the card he sent with it (yes, I do. . .) a sweet thank you for my being there for him at a tough time. By January of 1976, he transitioned to the woman, also a classmate, who would become his wife and with whom he had his two beautiful children. I was hurt but I never believed he was serious about me.
It was indeed the sweetness of the gesture of initials on the bottle that made me keep it, and I think, looking backward to my too quiet salad days, it was a reminder of things that could have been but weren't mostly because I lacked the necessary social and romantic skills. Or was afraid of them.
That bottle represented the possibility of youth. It will be hard to let it go, this bottle. On the other hand, I realize I don't need it in the same way anymore, even as only something to discover in the back of a closet and take in my hand with a smile. It will be enough I think to have the picture on this blog.
And move on, with a contentment that surprises even me, to another chapter of my life, with gratefulness for the ones in the past.
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