Rose & Thorn Journal - Fall 2009
______________________
Patrick Dorsey, twenty-four, has a background in journalism and feature writing. He has lived on both coasts and in the Midwest, including suburban Chicago, South Florida, Orange County (Calif.) and rural Kansas.
Patrick Dorsey
Raquelle Hall has uploaded a video. 11:43 p.m.
I clicked on it.
I had to.
Not that I followed every lead Facebook fed me—Friend A is in a relationship. Friend B is sad. Hey! Check out my new puppy pics!—but this one was different.
This one was Raquelle.
***
Lonely—a first breakup will do that to you.
Looking—but around a college campus that seemed as bleak and barren as the frozen lake that lay next to it.
So when my friend Kate mentioned her, in my mind the lake began to thaw.
Raquelle, the silky-voiced music major who sounded too pretty to pass up.
Raquelle, the starry-eyed sophomore who seemed too naïve to notice my senior-year insecurities.
Raquelle, the next reason to wake up? To shower and shave before class? The next rest stop on that highway of mind-scrambling economy exams and sleep-inducing poly-sci essays?
I didn’t “meet” many people—the contrarian in me thought the setup too contrived; the insecure little kid in me thought it too awkward. But I had to meet Raquelle.
So I did, at random, in some warm apartment on a cold, snowy suburban Chicago night, just Kate, Raquelle, the rest of their a cappella choir, and—thanks to Kate’s finagling—semi-conspicuous me. And I drank and talked, and Raquelle talked and listened. We bonded, over God knows what—I probably could have recited one of those essays, told her all about Zaire’s kleptocracy or the pillaging of Africa or whatever, and she would have been wholly, genuinely interested. But it wasn’t me, I thought, just her. There was adventure in her eyes, and human interaction was her path to it.
Still, could there be more?
I needed a second spin on Planet Raquelle: A choir show—I was there to “support Kate”—this one complete with a hug, one of those Euro-style peck-peck kisses, my intent-filled “Oh you did so well!”. . . and more ambiguity. It was blurry outside, another blizzard whitening the streets and sidewalks and air. It was even blurrier inside.
Was it her, or me?
The next show, same question: Her, or me? She stared in my direction from the stage, or was it really my direction? It was a big audience, but . . . could it be?
You need to ask, Kate prodded.
I need to ask, I agreed.
And . . .
The snow melted into spring.
I never asked.
The moment never arrived, I said outwardly, but inside I knew the real reason. I was a double-major: one degree in journalism, the other in fear—fear of rejection, of humiliation, of wasted effort. And that B.A. in Fear came summa cum laude.
So I took both degrees, framed in a fantasy that never played out, and left town. Raquelle stayed, maybe acting out my vision, the one where she’s gazing from her perch on that stage and wondering where that seductively strange skinny guy went.
Maybe not.
I never asked.
***
Click. Fade in. Cue piano.
The slender brunette sits inside an empty music studio, on a bench, with one of those boom mics hanging from the ceiling, as if God himself is holding it and begging her to sing. She smiles and bobs to the music—you know that music, the gleeful, inspirational stuff with a calm keyboard intro that slowly builds into a sweeping epic that makes you BURST with life.
The hazy camera image shifts to her face—with her slightly, cutely crooked nose, marble-smooth skin, eyes oozing innocence, golden-brown hair drifting down her shoulders, off-camera, on down into her history, my history, our history.
She’s singing now, with a radio-friendly voice. She sings about “him.” Who’s Him? Am I Him?
She kissed Him, she sings. I am not Him.
But still she sings, about Him, about more. About flowers, and sunshine, and all those beautiful things—that’s what this song is called, my computer says:
“Beautiful Things.”
Like a soft, cooling breeze on a hot summer day, she sings.
“Beautiful Things.”
Like being locked in a stare with His blazing blue eyes, she sings.
“Beautiful Things.”
Beautiful things, like Raquelle—her allure apparent even in this cheaply produced video, directed and shot by some film student grasping for “art.”
But she’s the real art here, that oh-so-enticing piece on the wall that I examined and analyzed but never bought. And here I sit, examining and analyzing again, no money to buy, no agent to sell.
Suddenly, though, the image becomes fuzzy in my eyes, as another one fights to replace it—this one from my memory, this one from just weeks ago. So I click the “stop” button on my computer’s video player and scroll to the “start” button on the screen in my brain.
Click.
***
I peered outside the coffee shop as I sipped my black-and-two-Splendas, waiting for an old college friend to show for a quick reunion at our old after-midnight hangout.
This time it was morning, and I was early, letting the medium roast’s jitters set in as I watched the buzz of a Sunday near campus, noticing how much had changed and how much stayed the same and all that—isn’t it always the case when you go home again?—as every building bred a distant memory and every pedestrian looked vaguely, faintly familiar, like déjà vu.
There was that short redheaded kid with the glasses and no chance of facial hair—wasn’t he that annoyingly talkative freshman in your senior-year stats class?
Then there was the chunky Asian girl, wearing a bright-yellow UCLA hoodie as she shivered and cursed away Lake Michigan’s bite—didn’t you see that hoodie in the library a few times?
And then there was . . .
Raquelle.
Of course.
The memories flooded my mind. I didn’t get up, though—I never made a move when it was logical; why make one now? Instead, I just sipped and watched out the window.
Raquelle lugged a big, rectangular box, angling her body to the left as she sidestepped down the sidewalk at an inconsistent pace. She stopped a couple of times to reposition the awkward package, laboring forward each time after a few seconds’ pause.
Her face, which glimmered with smiles and laughs when she sang, scowled this time, equally mad at the burden in her arms and the biting breeze in her face. Her clothes, usually so meticulously planned, instead blended her in with the grungy, disheveled college crowd. That hair, so often straight and smooth like a bronze waterfall, frayed into thousands of curled, tangled strands, violently whipping in the wind and covering her eyes at random.
When she reached the end of the sidewalk—directly in front of my warm, cozy diner —she shifted the box against her left side, holding it with one arm as she pressed the pedestrian-crossing button with her other hand. She stood, twitching and panting in the cold as she waited for the signal to turn, eyes alternating between the ground and the don’t-walk sign, never leaving those two points.
The light changed. She grabbed the box with both arms and trudged ahead, stumbling a bit as she left the sidewalk for the street.
I watched her first few steps, but soon looked away, taking another sip of my coffee, grabbing the newspaper from the table beside me, and skimming the headlines.
I didn’t look up again until my friend walked in.
Raquelle
Raquelle Hall has uploaded a video. 11:43 p.m.
I clicked on it.
I had to.
Not that I followed every lead Facebook fed me—Friend A is in a relationship. Friend B is sad. Hey! Check out my new puppy pics!—but this one was different.
This one was Raquelle.
***
Lonely—a first breakup will do that to you.
Looking—but around a college campus that seemed as bleak and barren as the frozen lake that lay next to it.
So when my friend Kate mentioned her, in my mind the lake began to thaw.
Raquelle, the silky-voiced music major who sounded too pretty to pass up.
Raquelle, the starry-eyed sophomore who seemed too naïve to notice my senior-year insecurities.
Raquelle, the next reason to wake up? To shower and shave before class? The next rest stop on that highway of mind-scrambling economy exams and sleep-inducing poly-sci essays?
I didn’t “meet” many people—the contrarian in me thought the setup too contrived; the insecure little kid in me thought it too awkward. But I had to meet Raquelle.
So I did, at random, in some warm apartment on a cold, snowy suburban Chicago night, just Kate, Raquelle, the rest of their a cappella choir, and—thanks to Kate’s finagling—semi-conspicuous me. And I drank and talked, and Raquelle talked and listened. We bonded, over God knows what—I probably could have recited one of those essays, told her all about Zaire’s kleptocracy or the pillaging of Africa or whatever, and she would have been wholly, genuinely interested. But it wasn’t me, I thought, just her. There was adventure in her eyes, and human interaction was her path to it.
Still, could there be more?
I needed a second spin on Planet Raquelle: A choir show—I was there to “support Kate”—this one complete with a hug, one of those Euro-style peck-peck kisses, my intent-filled “Oh you did so well!”. . . and more ambiguity. It was blurry outside, another blizzard whitening the streets and sidewalks and air. It was even blurrier inside.
Was it her, or me?
The next show, same question: Her, or me? She stared in my direction from the stage, or was it really my direction? It was a big audience, but . . . could it be?
You need to ask, Kate prodded.
I need to ask, I agreed.
And . . .
The snow melted into spring.
I never asked.
The moment never arrived, I said outwardly, but inside I knew the real reason. I was a double-major: one degree in journalism, the other in fear—fear of rejection, of humiliation, of wasted effort. And that B.A. in Fear came summa cum laude.
So I took both degrees, framed in a fantasy that never played out, and left town. Raquelle stayed, maybe acting out my vision, the one where she’s gazing from her perch on that stage and wondering where that seductively strange skinny guy went.
Maybe not.
I never asked.
***
Click. Fade in. Cue piano.
The slender brunette sits inside an empty music studio, on a bench, with one of those boom mics hanging from the ceiling, as if God himself is holding it and begging her to sing. She smiles and bobs to the music—you know that music, the gleeful, inspirational stuff with a calm keyboard intro that slowly builds into a sweeping epic that makes you BURST with life.
The hazy camera image shifts to her face—with her slightly, cutely crooked nose, marble-smooth skin, eyes oozing innocence, golden-brown hair drifting down her shoulders, off-camera, on down into her history, my history, our history.
She’s singing now, with a radio-friendly voice. She sings about “him.” Who’s Him? Am I Him?
She kissed Him, she sings. I am not Him.
But still she sings, about Him, about more. About flowers, and sunshine, and all those beautiful things—that’s what this song is called, my computer says:
“Beautiful Things.”
Like a soft, cooling breeze on a hot summer day, she sings.
“Beautiful Things.”
Like being locked in a stare with His blazing blue eyes, she sings.
“Beautiful Things.”
Beautiful things, like Raquelle—her allure apparent even in this cheaply produced video, directed and shot by some film student grasping for “art.”
But she’s the real art here, that oh-so-enticing piece on the wall that I examined and analyzed but never bought. And here I sit, examining and analyzing again, no money to buy, no agent to sell.
Suddenly, though, the image becomes fuzzy in my eyes, as another one fights to replace it—this one from my memory, this one from just weeks ago. So I click the “stop” button on my computer’s video player and scroll to the “start” button on the screen in my brain.
Click.
***
I peered outside the coffee shop as I sipped my black-and-two-Splendas, waiting for an old college friend to show for a quick reunion at our old after-midnight hangout.
This time it was morning, and I was early, letting the medium roast’s jitters set in as I watched the buzz of a Sunday near campus, noticing how much had changed and how much stayed the same and all that—isn’t it always the case when you go home again?—as every building bred a distant memory and every pedestrian looked vaguely, faintly familiar, like déjà vu.
There was that short redheaded kid with the glasses and no chance of facial hair—wasn’t he that annoyingly talkative freshman in your senior-year stats class?
Then there was the chunky Asian girl, wearing a bright-yellow UCLA hoodie as she shivered and cursed away Lake Michigan’s bite—didn’t you see that hoodie in the library a few times?
And then there was . . .
Raquelle.
Of course.
The memories flooded my mind. I didn’t get up, though—I never made a move when it was logical; why make one now? Instead, I just sipped and watched out the window.
Raquelle lugged a big, rectangular box, angling her body to the left as she sidestepped down the sidewalk at an inconsistent pace. She stopped a couple of times to reposition the awkward package, laboring forward each time after a few seconds’ pause.
Her face, which glimmered with smiles and laughs when she sang, scowled this time, equally mad at the burden in her arms and the biting breeze in her face. Her clothes, usually so meticulously planned, instead blended her in with the grungy, disheveled college crowd. That hair, so often straight and smooth like a bronze waterfall, frayed into thousands of curled, tangled strands, violently whipping in the wind and covering her eyes at random.
When she reached the end of the sidewalk—directly in front of my warm, cozy diner —she shifted the box against her left side, holding it with one arm as she pressed the pedestrian-crossing button with her other hand. She stood, twitching and panting in the cold as she waited for the signal to turn, eyes alternating between the ground and the don’t-walk sign, never leaving those two points.
The light changed. She grabbed the box with both arms and trudged ahead, stumbling a bit as she left the sidewalk for the street.
I watched her first few steps, but soon looked away, taking another sip of my coffee, grabbing the newspaper from the table beside me, and skimming the headlines.
I didn’t look up again until my friend walked in.
