Allahna on the Map – Part I
It’s been years since I’ve actually seen Allahna. Before then, it had also been years since we’d managed to get together. We met in high school, while taking courses over the summer at Central Connecticut State University. We’ve exchanged several phone calls over the years, but with her entrance into the army, our capacity to connect diminished rapidly. Fortunately, she hasn’t changed her e-mail address from the one she wrote down in late July in the university’s cafeteria where I managed to establish myself as a jokester. During our time there, we experienced a brief but pleasant incident.
The last time I saw her was while I was still an undergraduate, after my return from studying in France. We both, at that point, smoked. We met in West Hartford for coffee at the place where she used to work. As would be the case, I recognized her, years later, despite how much we had changed, despite how much we had stayed the same. She wore jeans and a pink t-shirt promoting a band I’d never heard of, but which was apparently quite talented. On the t-shirt, a woman sat on a gun.
We talked and fingered our drinks.
“I’ve lost weight since I’ve been in the army,” she said.
I assented.
“But I’ve kept it where it counts,” she said, indicated certain regions.
Again, I assented.
She had received a promotion. She wanted to take courses in Manchester. She was going to Germany. Soon.
A friend of hers called, and we ended up meeting said friend at a tea-themed place with a bar whose actual name eludes me. The reason I cannot remember the name is because I knew it as the Cosmic Bean when I was in high school and a friend (on whose girlfriend I had crushed since the fourth grade) and his band would often play there while we drank coffee and I stared at his girlfriend staring at him as he played the song that he wrote for her.
I ended up leaving before Allahna and her friend. The night contented me, but regrettably, due to personal circumstances, I cannot recall very much of what happened other than the fact that the two of us smoking aroused me. I remember being pleased to have seen her, disappointed that after years of an absence, hours in each other’s presence were supposed to offset the void which would be another set of unknown but countable years.
And then she was in Germany, and I was in Chicago. And then my year in Chicago was complete, and I had another degree and was bound for a horrifying ride on the campaign trail in Boston.
I sent e-mails off into the dark as I had in Chicago: random check-ins with scattered, poorly narrated information and tender closings.
In the summer of 2006, I violated one of the few cardinal rules I have; I answered my phone on the train ride home from work. The reason I answered is because it was an international number. Any domestic phone call would have been screened and silenced. But the international prefixes disclosed that someone in Germany wanted to talk. The three possible people it could have been contacted me so seldom via phone that I sighed, knowing that I was, at least for the moment, dealing in hypocrisy, and answered the phone.
“Hey sweetie,” said the voice. Only one of the three folks I knew in Germany ever addressed me as such.
“Oh my God, hi,” I said, overwhelmed, plugging my right ear as the train screeched to a halt at Back Bay station.
Indeed, she was in Germany, and recounted to me the unpleasant state of affairs regarding a boyfriend who terminated their admittedly turbulent relationship. The end result, the termination, was not bothersome; the methodology employed however, namely, a telephone and not a live meeting, was the source of anger and irritation.
“That sucks,” I noted, keeping a more vulgar sentence in check because I was, after all, on public transportation.
“Well, he’s an asshole,” she quipped.
I then remembered our discussion of that relationship and how tenuous the situation already was with him. And another girl. In Chicago. I think.
In any case, she was still in Germany, liking parts, not liking parts, discovering things about her job, her convictions, herself.
“You know,” she said.
“Yeah.”
Whenever we did manage to connect on the phone and rejuvenate those pleasant, scant, ailing memories of a brief summer years ago, the question always arose.
“When do we get to see each other again?”
“I’m done with this tour in June.”
“Then where to?”
“Connecticut.”
So, thus, the answer: a year.
The phone call was shorter than it should have been. Had I not had to worry about breaking one of my own cardinal rules, it would probably have achieved a more appropriate length and depth.
*
Into the next June our lives propelled. And there we were, still in our same places geographically, but as different as could be with respect to our states and frames of mind.
Again, there I was, casting off another hastily written e-mail. Essentially: Hi, it’s been a while, I’m mildly freaking out about every possible aspect of my life, feeling awash in a sea of nearly-not-missed opportunities and clearer past intentions unequivocally not coming to fruition. Love, Jeff.
This time, a response, complete with a phone number, and later, a confirmation that calling at any time of the day was fine, since the phone was on at all hours.
The same week that her short reply came down the wire, I received the news that I would be moving back to Vermont.
And so I called.
When I called, Allahna was somewhere, never revealed, where there was no dearth of alcohol. But:
“I’m not drunk,” she said, believably.
“It would be okay even if you were.”
She was not expecting my call; she shouldn’t have been. It was nearly midnight where she was.
The conversation turned heavier, more pensive and introspective once we waded through the genuine, but expected admittances of excitement over reconnecting, at least in a manner more personable than e-mails, and also over the fact that the number of days before she was back in the country was now numerable, tolerable, conceivable. And that time off could possibly afford a visit to me.
Allahna had been thinking about things, making decisions about things, since we had last talked. Analyzing decisions about things or perhaps simply pondering things: studies constantly deferred, the army constantly wresting those deferrals and placing them further out of reach, what it was to be an American in Europe in these times, what it was to enjoy beer, what thirty to ninety days of being ‘as un-army as possible’ would entail, what actions it would elicit, what consequences.
She meant it when she said she’d learned a lot, she’s gotten a lot, she doesn’t regret it. And the honesty of those statements are matched only by her honesty when she discloses that there are parts of it she hates, parts of it that are miserable, although those were not her exact words.
“I haven’t been reading or writing much,” she lamented.
We first shared our writing during the summer in which our two universes collided. Eager to expose, to consume. We had exchanged pieces since, but infrequently. I do not like to talk about my own writing, but suffice it to say she is an encouraging critic.
We talked about writing briefly – about my latest endeavors and then:
“We should do some collaborative stuff,” she said. “When I come to visit you in Vermont.”
She wanted her voice captured in my narrative style. Or, if not mine, at least not hers.
“Sure,” I said. “I’ve come to like creative non-fiction.” And then a few more things.
Two factors (her not being able to hear me well and the crowd with whom she was for the evening changing venues) truncated our conversation, but plans were made to call again, and promises to visit and to write during that visit were exchanged.
She hung up and proceeded to have a great evening.
I sat at home, got stoned, and wondered about and weighed the many ideas, demons, and other relevant symbols that this had meant and could mean.
