"Don't you want to do this with someone you love?" Margeaux asked.
"No," I said. "I don't think I do."
In Sam's bedroom drawer I find a packet of Trojan reds, the ones without the spermicidal lubricant. I don't bother asking since he's already sleeping, also because I feel this is one of those implied consent situations--most best friends would be happy to have you lose your virginity in the comfort of their own home. I find Margeaux how I left her--sans pants, like me, on the living room sofa.
I used to believe it was only the guitar playing Sam's cousin liked about me. She was quick with the compliments when I played for her, yet was otherwise aloof and reserved in conversation. But there was more than met my eye with Margeaux, as I learned she was keen on communicating with me in alternate ways.
She'd come to visit Sam's family in Mantua Bay after graduating high school in the Netherlands. On her second night here she let her hand slip into mine. I didn't recall reaching for it, the thing just sort of showed up there--her clammy palm, getting acquainted with my own, invisible inside a crowd of teens sitting on a dark beach. Invisible is how we tried to keep things. I knew to wait until everyone had gone home before making out with her in the street.
We talked little about what was going on, the way it ought to have stayed for both of our sakes. Margeaux was an eighteen-year-old woman bound for higher education after all, and I was me. Outside of this one silly week she surely had no further need for whatever this might've been. Whatever it was, that night in Sam's house was the culmination of it.
Her departure wore on me badly. For one, there were the feelings I had developed, and two, I figured it was the last time I'd be getting sexed for quite a while.
Thanks to my summer homework I kept a lot of these sentiments in check. No need to try to control the things you can't. Better to focus on obtaining the sounds I wanted to come out of my classical Dean guitar.
P, I, M, A
The letters run under arpeggiated notes in Fernando Sor's "Variations on a Theme of Mozart," suggesting finger placements for the guitarist's left hand. The 'P' is for 'pulgar,' a Spanish term for 'thumb.' Then it's index, middle, and annular.
The Dean laid silent across my lap while I analyzed the onslaught of E-major crescendos wrapping up Fernando's ambitious piece. After a few years of jazz and rock lessons with Dave Glad I was wanting for more. I had bought the Dean after watching Amadeus. The film, while centered around Antonio Salieri's murderous plot, is really made compelling by that of Mozart's music, with which I became obsessed. No more pentatonic jams to "Breakdown" or "All Along the Watchtower" after that. Dave and I had become all business.
Every lesson in those last handful of months of freshman year was purely classical training. After a potpourri of intermediate samplings from Tarrega, Guiliani, and Byrd, Dave had left me the Variations as my homework. Anyone who has listened to a recording of this thing knows I had my work cut out for me.
My real troubles with classical revolved around the interpretation of the treble clef. Dave's organic tutelage never extended to note reading, and the glacial shift from guitar tab to more classical forms of transcription had been taking its toll. Early on he'd take mercy on me and translate from one to the other, but this wasn't March anymore--it was July. Time to grow up.
When I wasn't practicing the Variations I'd think about Margeaux, what she was doing, and whether or not our intimate moments bore any significance to her whatsoever.
A few weeks later she called me long-distance. We talked while I sat inside my grandfather's tool shed, simultaneously racking up my father's Verizon bill, and trying to avoid the chiding from my mother about a prospective girlfriend.
Expensive phone conversations led to a single meeting in New York City right after the summer. She'd come back with her father while he was on business in the States, so I took an Academy bus to Port Authority, not knowing what was going to happen.
I found her standing outside the Soho Grand Hotel, where we ended up spending most of our afternoon. Heavy petting commenced, leading to more heavy petting, to a lunch I could barely afford. The same naivete which led me up here without any money or condoms was the same which made me believe this situation would amount to something.
Odder things have taken place. Margeaux got back with her ex a short while after, leaving me to wallow in a pathetic self-loathing limbo, which did no favors for my geometry grades. Nothing seemed to have a point for a time, with the exception of my guitars.
Joining a band seemed to alleviate these blues, yet like my guitar lessons, such opportunities were a fleeting window of time, launching me mercilessly back into reality well before I was ready.
