I have often said that my life has no meaning until I tell it to at least two of my friends. These are some of the people who give my life meaning. Because I haven't permission from all (or any, actually) of them to use their full names, I shall refer to them (and everything else I can) as I do in my journal: by their initials. Some of those pesky married women who now have four initials (or five; you know who you are)....
UConn, the early years: 
EKHDEDBGHEBDMCBNCSPLTSSPSEMSLHSEBBTJZ
(Why are these people heavy?)
EKHThrough EKH I learned about Annie Dillard, Anne Sexton (and Melissa Etheridge).
Her writing life is focused, whereas mine is haphazard. She called me something
like a runaway train with a massive vocabulary once. She has also told me,
"Don't be a tit!" EKH is the anonymous woman in a green hat who
wanted sex, not flowers (for anyone in The Daily Campus's audience
who ever wondered) on Valentine's Day 1989. She rereads Annie Dillard, after
whom she named her cat, to remind herself of how much she has to learn.
And I send her Anne Lamott columns when new ones appear in Salon. When I
saw her at my wedding, it was the first time in four or five years, and
my favorite of my father's pictures is the one of her in the receiving line
(did I hurry those just before her, or that just my conscience yammering?)
and the bear hug we shared. I only wish we had had more than a school year
of neighboring and phone-sharing following by letter-writing, a wedding,
and a visit as shared memories. She is going to have a baby in June of 1997,
and she is already (22 November 1996) reading it poetry and Annie Dillard.
Aha! TEHW, 4 July 1997.
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DEDBG or NisouOne of the E.O. Smith bunch I met very early freshling year at UConn. DEDBG didn't like me when first she met me, in October, because my crush on her best friend SEM, who was going out with her other best friend HEB, was just a little too obvious. By December she had changed her mind, and I am unspeakably grateful. How can I put her into words? She loves people, and when Monique said upon first meeting me that I looked familiar, DEDBG said it was because I am beautiful and there are a lot of beautiful people in the world. And she acts upon that belief daily. I have been angry at her once and my favorite single memory has got to be when she came to the house afterward and I flew out the door and into her arms and who cares why I was angry? Otherwise, being chased by her sheep, attending Charenton parties, and wrestling in the dirt of the Windham Flea Market for a boxed set of Moomintroll books are right up there. Plus her first email to me: "Darkstar, do you have any peanuts on your mission?" and her gently encouraging me to be Me. Now she is married to SPG, whom I didn't really get to know until preparations for my wedding were underway, through my own self-absorption. Which fills me with remorse, because it is he who did a lot of the gardening that made Charenton as lovely as it was that day and I don't feel that I deserved it. SPG mountain climbs and has made a pilgrimage (as I think of it) to Nepal, and he learned English with the help of Calvin and Hobbes.
And with DEDBG came her family. Her mother JUDB,
father APB, brother, and sister ALB(F); her various cousins
and aunts and uncles; and her French foster parents. DEDBG's family was the
first I spent an extended time with in which arguments were arguments and not
bitter expressions of frustration and loathing. I stayed with her for several
days during sophomore Christmas break, to get away from my
mother's house and to begin to work at Scheduling. I had visited other friends'
houses by then, but this was my first visit to anyone's house for several nights,
providing an opportunity to see a real (if atypical) family in action. I remember
a dispute and heated words between DEDBG and her father followed not many minutes
by his politely requesting something of her and she agreeably obliging him.
I was dumbfounded, and later, grateful for the realization that not every family
was like mine. DEDBG was in France when her sister started her Peace Corps stint;
when I called to say good-bye and bona fortuna, her brother slapped his forehead
for forgetting to invite me the rest of our crowd to her bon voyage party. Her
parents have always assumed that friends of their children are friends of theirs,
and I shall always cherish that trust and my position as an honorary family
member.
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HEBDHEBD was the last of the four core Smithies I met. We are opposites in many
ways, but I hope she learned from me a small fraction of what I learned from
her. I think that is the pattern with me and most of my friends, though: I think
I have learned a lot more from them than they have from me, than I even have
to offer them. I griped to Nisou once upon a time that
I wished I could be more like HEBD, less overbearing and more in control of
myself. She laughed: HEBD had recently griped to her that she wished she could
be more like me, less reserved, more open and at ease in company. HEBD and her
husband JPD welcomed a daughter, ZBD, into their lives just recently (23 January
1997). My favorite memory of HEBD is every night junior year that we spent crashed
on my floor listening to Cat Stevens and Kate Bush and waiting until three in
the morning so we could call SEB in England. The most wonderful single moment
was (later than junior year) when I came back to her after scarpering painfully
away hours before, and in the next several minutes resolved years of unease
and missing her. In June 1997, HEBD sent me pictures of ZBD, and she is the
most beautiful child I have ever known. I have not yet met her in person, but
still this is fundamental and incontrovertible fact. In June 1998, I did meet
her and confirm this suspicion. You may not disagree.
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I left him off this list for a long time because for a long time I wanted nothing to do with him. But I've kind of rediscovered MCB recently--well before I made up this list, actually--in a supper at Charenton and Nisou's and TJZ's weddings and realizing that one or both of us have changed to the point I can appreciate him again. There will be no repeat of the vacuum cleaner incident, though.
NCSI am amused to note that this page had been complete for months before
I realized tonight (970620) that I had left out NCS, although I have not
resisted a remark here and there. Not very kind of me, but I do mentally
kick myself at least once or thrice a month for spending two years of my
life with him. In April of freshling
year I met him through SLH. There are a couple of good
memories, and as a first boyfriend (the last of three people I call my first
boyfriend depending on context) I could have done worse, but two whole years?
The stories I could tell...but, as always, why? If I can tell a story that's
more funny than bitchy, up it goes. I will say this: though he does belong
with this group, I do not count him as a Heavy Person; however, he was distinctly
weighty (like an albatross, not obese).
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PLTPLT entered my life as a mountain gorilla and unfortunately that's kind of
how he left it, for a while. It was freshling
year at UConn and I was expecting SEM to come over sometime.
He did, with three friends, but when I opened the door it wasn't to four people
but to four mountain gorillas, two of whom I had never met before (one was PLT),
and among them they reduced my room to shreds in minutes flat. The night got
weirder before it got lighter. He is less than a day older than I and we're
both Geminis so eventually I called us the twins, because we were best friends,
or at least he was mine (he one of the triumvirate that kept me alive in 1991).
But PLT doesn't let anyone in very easily, and so we have drifted. I regret
this, but not having been friends with him or any of our relationship's permutations.
And for what has been, if not for what ever may be, I choose to keep this link.
He and his wife SAL welcomed ZLT into their lives 4 April
1997. One of my favorite memories of PLT is his singing I think an Elvis Costello
song with a combined Bob Dylan drudge and Kate Bush falsetto. ROTFL.
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SSPAs with SEBB, he possibly wouldn't appreciate being included,
but I do anyway. The (mostly self-inflicted) trauma I endured after we broke
up lasted nearly as long as the actual relationship. I refer to his next girlfriend,
AFK, occasionally.
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SEMSEM was the first of the E.O. Smith people I met. Two other friends,
one from orientation and the other my next-door neighbor, went across campus
to eat the first freshling
weekend and, coming home, told me I had to meet these cool people they'd
met. I went, and there was SEM. If I was immediately thunderstruck, well,
spank me. Through him I met MCB, DEDBG, PLT,
and HEBD, and others. The crush faded; the friendship
did not.
SEM is. He is Winnie the Pooh through and through, when most people are
sometimes somewhat all the rest of them. When we considered what Tolkien
character each of us was, SEM was a hobbit because of his hairy feet. He
doesn't have to do Pooh's Stoutness Exercises and in that wise does not
fit the usual hobbit profile either.
He climbs, teaches ropes courses, eats vegan, and altogether lives closer
to his ideals than anyone else I know personally. I've heard several people
quote Yoda's concentrated gem of philosophy "There is no try; there
is only do or not do"; SEM is the only person who lives it.
My favorite recent memories of SEM are his moment of arrival at my house
in Denver in October of 1995 and his magnificent emcee'ing of DEDBG
and SPG's U.S. wedding in August 1996; my favorite overall memory is every
hug he's ever administered (it's like medicine).
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SLHI had lost track of SLH for a long time until recently I found him through
an Alta Vista search. I found him and emailed him, hoping it was him and
not some other random H who lives in Boston: "Stevebud? Stevebud, is
it you? It's me, Polly. Polly Ploidy." And he, who loses my address
and phone number on a regular basis, emailed back; and it's really him!
(The nickname Polly
Ploidy comes from freshling
biology, which we had together and achieved D's in. Something about genetic
structure being either haploid or diploid--one or two of what I don't remember
(pro'ly why we got D's). Anyway, he decided that I am weird enough to be
polyploid.)
We met in history first semester freshling
year because we both had a crush on the same guy (despite what you hear I mark
my life by what I was reading, not whom I lusted after). Then second semester
(I had just read Less than Zero, which had just come out, and The
Lord of the Rings for the first time though I was almost 19. See?) as I
arrived at Mass Biology for the Scientifically Anti-clined, this doofus who
had a crush on me (which led to his falling out of a tree onto his head first
semester; and no matter how silly my crushes were I never did that) sat
next to me so when SLH arrived too, I glommed on him: "Save me!" And
so we were pals. One favorite memory is the suicidal bike-plowing from TLS to
Buckley one lunch hour. I rode on the bike seat and he rode on the pedals, pumping
furiously, hopping curbs (this was a 21-speed racing bike, before the days of
mountain bikes), dodging cars, pedestrians, and trees. As my mother would say,
hell bent for leather (what is the origin of that charming phrase?). Also while
stuck in traffic in the Bronx, howling and barking to attract the attention
of a golden retriever in the station wagon ahead of us. The poor dog wanted
to leap out to investigate us too.
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SEBBI maybe shouldn't mention SEBB because she would probably hate it, as
might SSP, but I can't catalog my Heavy People without
her. My favorite memory of SEBB is one afternoon sophomore fall when I taught
her how to have a leaf fight and then we rolled down Beach Hill. Dizzily
skipping toward Holcomb with our arms around each other's waists, she told
me she loved me because no one knew how to have fun as much as I did.
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TJZTJZ is the first UConn friend I met on my own and befriended just because
she was her and not because we happened to meet at orientation or because
we were next door neighbors. As I meandered the halls of Shippee, I saw
through a door ajar a certain poster on the wall: the movie poster from
"The Breakfast Club." I stood staring, knowing I had to meet the
person who owned it, until I realized the owner was the woman at the end
of the hall on the phone. TJZ and I have had our ups and downs, but she's
another of my Heavies who is actually doing what I dream of: worthwhile
work, teaching, knowing another language (or two), traveling to Russia,
Korea, Yugoslavia, France.
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