My first girlfriend at Kenyon. My first lover.
She was a ballet dancer at American Ballet Theater. Her father was the photographer for the Metropolitan Museum - an expert on pre-Columbian art, and the man who took all those King Tut pictures.
You can see her briefly in the movie
The Turning Point.
She danced on stage in the chorus during Baryshnikov's American premiere.
She left ballet because of hip injuries before she went to college. She was an expert in hand-set letter press. One of the greatest personal collections of vintage typeface was bequeathed to her because she loved it and knew it so well.
I was completely baffled as an 18 y.o. at her excitement about receiving the quarterly issue of
U&LC.
One of the last times I saw her was dropping in on her at the old fashioned printing press at South Street Seaport (Bowne & Company) in Manhattan where she was taking apart a 19th century press. She was wearing coveralls and covered in grease.
She was very pretty. She taught me how to waltz for the Winter Dance at Kenyon.
Wow, that fucking hurts. I'm kind of wrecked.
David, I'm so sorry.
Anne, I hope you can smooth things over with your mom.
Goodness. On top of two days' of snow, we're having high winds tonight. If I had hatches, I'd batten 'em.
we're having high winds tonight. If I had hatches, I'd batten 'em.
Yeah, but you've got swans. And eagles.
Shit, crying and Maker's Mark is giving me such a headache.
Raining here in SF.
David, David. It's never easy, I know. I'm so sorry.
I'm sorry, David. That's hard.
She was only 48. But to me she'll always look 18.
Well, she'd be pleased to know I was taking it so hard.
She was that person who waved her magic wand over me and made me not a geek. A good first lover.
She had skipped a grade so she was younger than me. She started college at age 17, and didn't turn 18 until the day before Valentine's Day.
She was very Buffistalike in many ways. Her love of Shakespeare, and typeface. She was...complicated. Not an easy, sunny personality. She was smart and sophisticated. A preppy New York Jew. A very biting sense of humor.
She thought I was a ridiculous bumpkin from South Florida and mocked my white painter's pants.
She tried to bully me about Greek mythology, but when I countered with more than just the usual Bullfinch fare she respected me. She even conceded some ground when I talked about Norse mythology.
I know she fell for me when I told her how much I loved Oscar Wilde's "The Nightingale and the Rose."
We only dated my Freshman year, and broke up weeks into my Sophmore year. But I have a picture of us at our college graduation and we're looking into each other's eyes and you can just see how intense that relationship was.
The last time I saw her was in the nineties, before either of us were married. We shared a bed - just sleeping, but kind of typical that she'd finesse that situation to create something memorable/uncomfortable/familiar.
When I finally wrote a decent poem (many years later) I sent it to her. She told me she hated it (it was about another woman), but I knew she really liked it because she offered to set it in type.
Like that.
Sorry if that's TMI, but she was a constellation in my life. Somebody I charted my life by.
Thank you for sharing, Hec. It's lovely. It's important to remember.
