The Stranger

Chapter 1

I graduate college, move to Eugene, Oregon where I get a Masters and a job teaching college English part time. I begin work on a fantasy novel.  It is about you, or what little I know of you and the traces you've left over the years.  I have to fill in the cracks of character with my own imagination and desire.  In my fantasy world you're an ancient wizard, immortal, cunning, sent to seduce me from my mission to save the world with my big ideas. In the real world, you are a long distance relationship, full of romance and intrigue, but impossible to close.  I got your letter today, and I'm happy to hear you got hired to work as an international lawyer and help your father's business and that you still want me to come with you, but I have to tell you that in the months since I last wrote you, I've met another man.  He is a mortal and in many ways so opposite of you.  His name was Jacob and he teaches political science.  He is an activist.  He is handsome and intelligent, but  not cunning like you.  He is direct in his methods, and practices exactly what he preaches.  Together we march, sign petitions, and complain about the system, but there is no mystery between us.  Sometimes I will get in an argument with him, as if I were trying to light a fire that would burn into you, hoping that something would ignite us or destroy us so that I could start again.   There is no easy way out, you see.  When someone is as good as Jacob is good, and everything checks out on paper, then you feel as if you have to betray yourself and all of decent society when you try to think of a means to escape.  Why have you put this dark passion inside me?  Why can't I let go? 

Jacob wants me to go see a movie about a basketball team.

I tell him I hate sports movies.

How can you hate sports movies when you were a three letter athlete in college?

I moved on, I tell him.  You know, Jacob, sometimes people just move on.

Okay, he says. Jeez.  He knows I am in one of my moods.  And I am.  But it is not a mood, it is a curse you put on me.  I know that now.  It weakens when I don't hear from you, and strenghtens evertime I hear your voice, see your words, or think of us together.  You who know so dearly the secrets of my soul, and the mystery of time,  You who remain so aloof to the present while so passionate in the past.  You who promise me the world in first class, but deny me a ticket home.  The problem in my life as well as in my novel is that I don't know how to break the wizard's spell.  Sometimes I wish I could walk outside of myself and into a novel, it's towns, streets, and theater, and have the world unfold in paper ribbons at my feet.  You took the world with you when you vanished when I was eighteen going on nineteen, and now five years later you stil hold it's keys in your hand.

Later Jacob wants to make love to me.  I tell him I'm not ready, but the truth is that I don't find him attractive.  He is too much Ken Doll for me, and I lacks duende, you know that little demon you told me gives us passion, that no philosopher can explain, but every true artist feels.  It is the duende, I want, not this simplicity.  Have I sold out already, the way you warned?  Is this the beginning of the end? I don't know.

You call me, and say you have a gift for me.  I ask you what it is.  You won't answer.  You say I will know when I reveive it.

Flowers?  I ask.

No.

Jewelry?

No.

Another trip to Ibiza?

No, my amor, nothing so prosaic as that.  This is something I've conjured for you in my absence.  Something to make you happy until I can see you again.

You remember last year when you took me to Paris for three days. It was when you first revealed to me that you were a sorcerer.  I laughed, but the way you said it frightened me.  You read that and told me not to worry because a sorcerer was just a name, and that magic was really just a word to desribe power.

There are many different kinds of power, you said.  Law is power. Science is power.  Banking is power.  Even poetry has it's own power, you said, if it can bring in the woman you want and desire.

I laughed, and you kissed me.  But for a moment I couldn't move any part of my body.  I was paralyzed completely, and I was delerious with how erotic it felt to be totally controlled.  I didn't know if you were wiling it upon me or if I was willing it upon myself but there was power in that hotel room that night, a power I wanted to feel.  A power I wanted to own.  It was duende.

***

I didn't think anything your mysterious gift until my first day of teaching Intro to Poetry this Fall.  There is a student in my poetry class, quiet, bright, and always smiling.  He reminds me of you, but without the quiet eyes.  He is passionate about knowledge and wants to know more about similie, about metaphor, and voice.  He is hungry for the world of ideas but his body speaks of an attraction to me. It is quite easy to see that you've sent your doppleganger here to seduce me since you were angry when I told you about Jacob over the phone, and you told me my love for Jacob was only out of convenience.   I don't know how you conjured this young man, but I know that I'm being tempted by you, and that somehow you are delighting in my unraveling, the way you first delighted in pulling down my panties in the bathroom stall when your desire for me couldn't contain itself as lust run through our veins like wine.

And so this seduction continues, mi amor, a little longer after class one day to discuss Pablo Neruda, Miguel Hernandez, poets you introduced me to, and who your protogee adores.  An impulsive decision to meet this young Pablo an extra hour for tutoring on the weekend.  Lines are crossed, one after another like revisions to a bad sonnet until I find myself in his apartment, his room, his bed.  His body is skinny, and hard, nothing like Jacob's with his thick carpenter's frame of milk and honey.  I'm thankful for the strange cologne Pablito wears that acts as a veil between us, a way of keeping him a strange, even when he comes inside of me like a whisper between blades of grass.   He calls me "profe." an endearing Spanishism for "professor" and best of all he says he loves my writing, and wants to read it all.

I'm getting dressed, feeling like a cliche in black bra and panties. He lies still between the bedsheets watching me the way you did.  I can't look at him because I am afraid to see what he is looking for in me. 

"Well, profe," he says, "do I get an A?"

That depends on how well you do on  your final," I say.

One hackneyed remark deserves another and it makes me feel less guilty to think he is capable of such lines. Oh you must have been laughing to send me this gollum full of lust and sawdust, and the wit of a tea bag.

I hurry to get on my shoes, to end this tragic act and get on with the next. Pablito promises not to tell any of the other students, but something tells me he is lying, that this was a feather in his cap, and one he will want to wear.  I tell him not to worry because I will just deny it.  I smile like I'm joking, but this is my plan, actually, because even in my weakened state of denial, I know that I've really fucked this one up. 

As I'm walking out the door, I see that he's got a copy of the Theory of Duende, I don't know whether you want me to laugh or cry.