Organizer

Lana was one of those people who bloomed in college.  I'd known her vaguely for years, a girl fit to "swell a crowd" as Elliot puts it.  She was in school clubs, and she may have even been a cheerleader.  She helped decorate the gym for dances and she sold pep ribbons.  But it seemed to me that she was background, a dirty blonde without distinguishing features.  

Of course, that may have been due to my own eyes, vision that was damaged by distance as I sat on the outside of things trying not to look in too deeply.  Perhaps people bloom, but then again, it might be something else.  Circumstances change.  Whatever it was, she had become a lovely, beautiful woman.  

I talked to her one day in the student center and was immediately smitten.  Her hair was blonder and her teeth whiter, her outline more sharply drawn.  But what stunned me was how happy she was.  She was the happiest girl I'd ever met.  It was a quiet happiness, not the obvious sort, but something that radiated from her hair and skin.  So it seemed to me.  But it was contagious and she made me want to be happy, too.  

I was more than sufficiently smitten.  

I'd had a date now, though it had been a misery of sorts.  I'd picked up Terry's girl at the appropriate time, and thank god we had gone to a play at a college renowned for their theater.  We had seen"Dracula," and afterwards, I had taken her out for a hamburger. Then I took her home.  Her interest in me was obvious.  She was just trying to piss Terry off.  There was no thought of a goodbye kiss.

  

Rather than trying to ask Lana out, I had a better idea.  I would organize an outing.  I could invite a bunch of people to meet up at a local State Park, a natural spring that fed a beautiful river.  I'd never done anything like this before, never organized big, beautiful fun.  But I was changed, I thought.  Opportunity lay here.  

It worked.  It was a good idea and everyone came.  There was food and drink and girls in bathing suits.  And there was Lana.  

There were other boys, too, though, and maybe that was a mistake, for Lana spent most of her time surrounded by one bunch or another.  As I watched her laughing and walking and talking and spreading her happiness far and wide, I became more and more morose.  Perhaps it was proximity, or the lack of it, that shielded me from all that joy I felt when I was near her.  But it now seemed like a fire on a cold night, sitting in the distance, seeing the beauty but feeling none of the warmth.  

As the day wore on, I thought, "I have friends now, lots of them, college kids whose lives were this and not the other, the thing I am trying to leave so far behind."  Of course it was not so stilted or organized a thought as this.   It was a feeling, really, and a rationalization, for truly, what did I care about such things just then.  I wanted Lana.  

Finally, at the end of the day, as people were beginning to pack up and leave, Lana came over and smiled.  

"How're you doing?"  

I had not been much of a smiler since I was nine or ten, but I could feel the corners of my mouth curl up as the muscles of my cheeks pulled tight, and I nodded my head up and down, up and down.  

"Fine," I said.  "I'm really fine."  

We walked along a path that led through the woods, a nature trail that looped back to where we started, and as we ambled, we talked about the day.  "This was a great idea," she said.  "I had so much fun."  I could feel the heaviness in me growing in direct proportion to my desire.  Unrequited, I knew, which accounted for the heaviness.  She looked like a wood nymph or sprite as we walked along.  She had put some flowers in her hair and wore a thin gossamer shirt.  OK.  Not gossamer, but I had come to the knowledge of gossamer when reading "The Hobbit", and it had all the hallmarks of gossamer, I thought.  A pixie.  Elfin.  

When we got back to the picnic table where we began, I stood awkwardly looking at her.  Expectantly, perhaps.  But she was distracted.  Someone called her name.  And in a little while, she was gone.  

At least there was nothing to clean up.  I had stayed to the end because I wanted to see Lana and because, it seemed, I was always reluctant to miss something.  Years later, I would realize it was something else.  But now the day was done, and it had been a good day.  I had done it, I thought.  It had been mine.  

When I got into my car and was alone, I felt the familiar longing in my arms and in my legs.  I was OK, I thought.  It was familiar.