The Making: A Revealing Memoir

By A C R

The Blonde... The Redhead... The Brunette... The Latina...

The sequence is engrossing and I am bombarded by sensation, as though the whole of reality were nothing but some abstractionist exhibit in a universal gallery of the mundane and at the center of all inspiration, of all art, of theology, philosophy, sociology, metaphysics and such; would be the two of us there, in that moment, among the human exhibits.

In The Making the author presents a vivid and revealing account of what is admittedly the most poignant time in his life. Via an intimate first person viewpoint, the reader delves into the heart and soul of an individual caught up in misdirected sentiment and given to escapism as he searches the urban landscape for meaning yet even more so, love. Based on true events, yet written without identifying anyone; this is his story, his interpretation of the world as viewed through his interactions with four specific girls. Trying to graduate from college. Illegally cultivating cannabis in Central Florida. A day and night in New Orleans during Mardi Gras at the turn of the century. The weekend smoking base in a strange house. Watching the towers fall while sitting beside the girl he loves and her future husband...

To know joy, one must be accustomed with sorrow.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Youth Wide
• Release date: Jan 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386925378

Book preview

I. The Blonde

She is from the type I call my own and she too has learned her defenses via the social labyrinth of her peers. Liberated youth offered a world she loved, yet once placed in an asylum she embraced madness while enduring the dramas, pleasures, and terrors. Now, in a glorious burst of beauty and light, she mingles in serenity, falls and does not remain but instead rises higher than the last as a warrantied blooming nectar bud, growing and changing, forever I believe. She learns languages, cooks vegetables, dances, prances, smiles a lot, and was the first to discover the infamous candy rope. Within days, elongated plastic, purple candy packs appeared empty, scattered around the house. Her time is precious, savored, and blissful. A young gentleman has monopolized most of her waking moments. He adds to her in a way I have not yet discovered how to describe. A wonderful, mutual, intrinsic sensation is in the air when I am around them and the brunette has even commented that she imagines they will marry one day.

How have you been? he inquires, with warm eyes while reclining into the cushioned thrown I have, on other nights, called a bed.

Fine, I guess, I mutter. My broken heart is still mending. He understands this and speaks with much less than an aggressive voice.

When are we going to go surfing?

I want to get finals done with. This is my last year. I have to pass this exam. I only need to impersonate a student for a little while longer.

Well, I'm glad you're here, his voice is relaxing. Different and intrusive, it creeps upon my conscious and makes me question myself. He could say nothing or ask something trivial of the weather, and I would wonder if I had slipped somewhere. I would wonder with tension in my nerves at the possibility he knew something I didn't.

How do you feel about her? I look at him sitting there, so comfortable and sure. Jealousy arises for one moment, the same moment I asked him. As soon as the words uttered the sentiment reformed to concern and genuine interest. A want to hear of how happy they were together was in me, and I grinned.

Well, I love her of course. Are you all right? He is surprised by what I had asked.

I'm good, the tone in my voice testifies that I'm still unsure. I'm unsure about many things, but mostly about myself. My friend's eyes locked on me with empathy. Not knowing what to do, he offers me a drink. I accept, and he goes to the kitchen, likely to pour a glass of white, German wine. She is in the bathroom combing her gold hair. Her singing moves with him from the couch and back. Their connection is inexplicable. She reaches a mysterious and potent chord and the air in the room lightens. He smiles and hands me the drink: Red, not white, wine. There are the things I don't know. I don't know how they are when they are alone or how she endures in entirety, nor am I privileged to her soul. Never have I asked her such a question. Not once have I inquired into her self-assumed fate. I wonder what she would make of the situation. What would she think of me sizing up her future and critiquing the pros and cons as I saw them? She'd smack me in the head, I know it. I can't help it though. I've been closer to her than the others, love her and am eased when she is happy. He makes her happy. The shower stops and she dries herself; he stands and walks to the bathroom; she wraps the towel around herself; he puts his glass down on the way; she steps from the steam into his arms and they kiss. The question, Who's your Valentine? has been on the television screen as the backdrop to a low-budget commercial for at least a minute now and I can't find the remote. It's getting on my nerves. I remember good on one shoulder and evil on the other. I realize selfishness is a vice and I'm sorry. She goes to her room to dress. He sits in front of me and picks up his wine. He rolls it around once and takes a sip. We both sit back. He takes a drink with his eyes closed, grinning. It was a warm and inviting grin. A grin your mother may have shown you the last time you scrapped your knee playing dodge-ball. Slim, the grin one finds on the lips of a Victorian Madonna or during a high-stakes card game. I drink wine in gulps and I like it cold. Whether it's a bottle of '87 Opus I or a bottle of grape Mad Dog, chilled is my serving preference. He drinks his wine room temperature and after it has set to breathe for an adequate period. I doubt he knows what MD 20/20 is. Wine and women are a lot alike, both being savored, indulged, feared, and respected to a grand extent. Each different grape crop has its own unique flavor, texture, and aroma. Each moves along the glass in a unique fashion, delicate and precise. Having the ability to, all at once douse, mimic, and exaggerate any emotion, she may be a lethal seductress. Yet, the US Surgeon General has stated that red wine thins the blood and helps to regulate important circulatory functions of the body. Each tilt of the glass he makes is slow and gentle, but with precision of force and pressure. Sometimes I'll drink wine all night and never sit or drink one glass, then fall asleep. I have hit the glass with my front teeth and pulled away too soon, staining my clothes. I drink wine in gulps.

I'll get another glass, I swig the last while standing. The blonde and the redhead live under the same roof. The redhead's dog follows me. It is a magnificent female, wolf looking animal with eyes of different colors. The right is a bright and vibrant blue. The left is brown, like the earth. For one or two seconds I fool myself into assuming the dog could read my mind and emotions. For a moment I entertained the notion that maybe man's best friend gleaned my insides and wanted to console me. Even you can't fool yourself for long and I hand her a treat, as I always do, and why she always follows me, no matter how I feel. Unsteady, I fill the wine glass and put the bottle back. I turn the corner from the kitchen to the living room, passing through the dining space of a small wooden table, a plant and two chairs. The blonde sits there reading, alone. He has left the room. Her forehead is tight with concentration. This time she reads a novel of romantic extremes, written in German (either her third or fourth language.) Sitting across from her I'm inclined to utter something stupid, So, what's it like to read something in one of the love languages?

German is not considered a love language, she snaps, and looks up from behind her glasses. Her eyes can hurt when she wants.

Sorry, what's the book about, I smile.

Well, it's about this French girl in the seventeenth century who is a blacksmith's daughter and, her voice drawing the pictures of the words she held. Excitement tooled her eyebrows to dance on her forehead as she told me the story. She told me of the girl's falling in love yet kept from being. A little girl humbled to be a boy. A girl kept from truth by those she had before relied on for life. At the moment her face, having once been dynamic with surprise and excitement, fell sorrowed and sad. Graceful, truthful, painful and sad were her eyes. All at once I could discern the pain of this little girl in France, hundreds of years ago, with a family ashamed and fearful of her gender. Born to a world produced with a distorted goal: Everything for what the stronger desires. Whether to live forever or to atrophy in one's own sin, mankind has constructed a world of the I. She well knows this and agrees that her own strengths go beyond the fickleness of objectified values. She always intended to fall in love the right way and I now know it takes a period spent in madness to comprehend love. I won't conjecture that if I handed her a pen she'd return an exact account of her mind or soul not because she is incapable of producing immaculate verse, but because such wonder could not translate to words. Such splendor is of the soul, accessible only by God and one's self. Madness is the clash of institutions and imaginations as seen by an angel viewing a small child, first witness to dying. For this, she shines. A paradox of the greatest proportions is the mark of a soul conceived in grace and light; then taken far beyond lunacy and brought back to a calm and forgiving place. Hers is such a soul.

Do you believe the way the girl believes? Do you believe how you feel inside is you, or do you think your past forms you and that's it? I ask her and hold my breath while waiting for her response.

Well, she pauses. It is a slow and reluctant pause. As though she is pondering something she has not wished to ponder, she moves in her chair, seethes with discomfort. In that moment she is a child. Yet the genesis of her expression from child to creature of experience is quick and debilitating. The ferment of the first reaction was stunted and replaced with a look of soft wisdom. Well, we all have a past, she explains with her eyes bright, and our choices make up our future, now she is certain, and how you feel inside determines what you choose, the grin on her face stretches wicked, so your question makes little sense. It's all the same, and she turns back into her book. I notice the hem of her pink blouse is darker than the rest of the garment's fabric. I smirk to myself and take another drink of chilled wine. She is still pretending to ignore me through her reading.

So, I am intending to interrupt her. She stops, closes the book and looks at me. I'm thinking she's such the little pioneer when I implore her to tell me of where she will visit the next