#and my phone started to randomly play ladytron

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FULL MOON SPECIAL.

(Summer.)

This year Spring came and went a little easier than usual. Aside from a stomach-churning break-up that neither my now ex-girlfriend or I wanted to take part of, the Spring revival brought a brand new charge that I haven’t experienced in a long time. Feelings of meeting someone rare and opening up to them for the first time. An opportunity with an art-school-type Korean girl who nicely put me down but ended in an amicable consolation. Taking snapshots with the who’s-who of the Press at the trendiest post-production parties. Extended drives out west with my friend Jewish Mary discussing thoughts, feelings, summer plans, and laughing out loud over getting to know each other as friends.

The mania continued when we all discovered two social-networking sites that year: Myspace and Facebook. Both had opened a wide portal for anyone who used it. Not only did they offer an opportunity for friends and classmates to keep in direct contact with each other, but it also doubled as a dating or hook-up site. When it first opened people would randomly contact each other through a very curious yet open world with plentiful results. This was before the term ‘stalking’ was taken seriously, and when people were more welcome and less discriminating.

One day I was curious and did a search for people who liked Deftones. The first thing that came up was this black-and-white photo of a girl eating a King of Diamonds playing  by CouponDropDown" target="_blank">card with both hands and a happy chipper smile. I liked cute girls and I liked playing cards…and then I liked cute girls who liked eating playing cards, so who was I to pass this up? I jokingly messaged her to stop eating the King and cease being disrespectful. A day later, she replies.

Her name was Catherine. We messaged each other sparsely for two months being silly and then it stopped. I don’t know why. I assumed it just ran its course and that was that. I thought nothing of it, moved on and forgot about her.

**********

(Autumn.)

One afternoon in the campus news office I open my account to find a message waiting for me, feeling interested as always. Then I see who sent me that message: it was Catherine. Out of nowhere she decided to pop up and say hello…fifteen months later. What the circumstances were of why there was a fifteen-month silence between us I’ll never know. It did not matter anymore.

At first I could not remember who she was until it hit me, but it felt real good hearing from her again and I was amazed that she remembered me after a long silence. Very rarely in this nature would people do such a gesture these days. She told me she liked talking to me when we did which was why she contacted me again. There was no reason to not seize the opportunity to continue so we picked up where we left off. The rate of communication accelerated and quantified. Our next constant starts by getting to know each other.

What I first learned about Catherine had me very concerned. At the time, she found herself at home feeling lonely with a bottle of vodka nearby accompanied by a supply of painkillers and a pack of blades, extreme for someone I just started talking to. She was slipping and I pushed and persisted for answers because I am a savior to my friends. As she reached out to me, I had to reach out to her. I wanted to put the pieces together because I genuinely felt sorry for her. I was not as successful as first since she heavily guarded herself so I decided to tread very carefully.

Alternately, Catherine and I discussed philosophies and logic; life struggles, situations at hand and other miscellany. I discover that we had a good number of things in common. She listened to the very same music I was into when I was in high-school a decade before. (I preceded her by eight years and her birthday was only ten days after mine. I am a Virgo, she is a Libra.) She was into Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Nine Inch Nails, Stone Temple Pilots, and her number one Elliot Smith, certifying her as an alternative-rock sentry in my eyes. She wrote, did graphic design, and even attended the same university as I. She had creative qualities and I saw lots of potential in her, thus the race to rescue Catherine from her own personal black hole had become more essential, more so when I had week-long periods of not hearing from her.

Catherine should not have to drown herself every weekend in alcohol and loneliness nor let alone consume vicodin and oxycontin, so I felt. She also did not have to punish herself by cutting, either. All this as a result of social neglect and mostly being un-accepted in her high-school years, with her using and drinking as a means of coping now ignited due to meeting some guy at a party who introduced her to a sip of beer. I now gave her an opportunity to come out and be at a safer place, to bring her out and have dinner with me to discuss her situation.

During this time, I was going through a very heavy period of discovering music. Tower Records was going under and were closing its doors for good by the end of the year. One night after work I paid my final visit there and I picked up Public Image Limited, The Buzzcocks, Stereolab, and Jesu. Roy Ayers, Ladytron, Leonard Cohen, Boards Of Canada, and much more. Artists I either meant to try or even discovered out of nowhere. And back at the Press office, someone somehow uploaded a lot of music into one of our office computers ripe for the taking. Direct Control, Regulations, Stereo Total, NON, and MF Doom were playing endlessly while I furiously typed away articles for the next issues of the semester; after which I occasionally took a break for spicy fried rice at the campus’ Asian food quarter. A scent of lime was present, in tandem reminding me of the cold air and starry night skies complimenting that Autumn.

The turn of the New Year arrived when I was at the campus radio station doing a countdown set with several on-air staff. I contacted Catherine when the show was over. We decided the time was right to finally meet up after her Thursday secret meeting. We weighed our options including any given Greek diner for midnight breakfast, but we opt for American instead.

**********

(Full Moon, January.)

Daily errands were done. In the afternoon I went clothes shopping and bought a watch, a black t-shirt with a cassette printed on the front and a grey pocket t-shirt with some gold lettering. The scent of lime now replaced by a strong hue of blue and white static powder. Later that night, I spearheaded a radio station meeting as program director with several other talents about what extra equipment, wires, boards, and knobs to buy for our studios. After two hours of sitting through the meeting taking suggestions and going over schematics I finally conclude the meeting. All I had eaten so far was a Snickers bar but I wasn’t feeling hunger pangs. I was still standing.

I walk out of the building and it was extremely cold. A bright full moon and stars were out with absolutely no clouds or snow in sight. I called Catherine on my white cell-phone to let her know my meeting was over. Her secret meeting concluded as well. Both of us were on the way. We would trade several more phone calls to make sure we would stick to our guns.

I arrive at the American restaurant. It was a crowded Thursday night, the day of the week most students from campus migrate here to unwind and eat. Noisy as usual, lots of people talking, cups and glasses clinking, excitement and loud music fill the air. I sit at the lobby waiting to finally meet Catherine for the first time, wondering what she could really be. I had no idea what to expect or what she really looked like in person.

I was about to find out, and here she is.

I see Catherine walk into the restaurant. When I looked up at her for a moment to verify if it was her or not; everything registered to line up with themselves and I call her out. “Catherine!” I get her attention and she turns to me. We were thrilled to see each other and trade smiles and pleasantries. She was this young thin self, her neck-length Trixie hair, slim purple long-sleeve sweater and black jeans torn at the knees. She sits to my left in the lobby and our conversation starts off with three topics in a matter of five minutes: her secret meeting in Port Jefferson which she refused to divulge, how she drove out to and missed the record store in Ronkonkoma, and what was possibly wrong with her cable box. Five minutes later our maitre d’ escorts us to a window-side booth seated adjacent from eight loud and noisy frat boys who thankfully did not start in with us. After a year and a half, here was the first time we would get to talk to each other, face-to-face.

I order chicken stir-fry. Catherine orders only a diet Coke. “Are you sure?” I ask her, and politely she said she wasn’t hungry. I upped the ante and told her that dinner was on me and she could have anything she wanted, no worries. But she stopped at a diet Coke and said it was OK. I gave in and nicely obliged.

We went forward and re-iterated every conversation we had over the last three months. Catherine was very soft-spoken. So soft spoken that I had to lean toward her to focus on every word she said, and on one occasion I kindly told her to speak just a little louder. My undivided attention was on her when she said every word since she had the loveliest eyes I had ever seen. Big eyes. Lovely eyes. Obvious eyes. Memorable eyes. Cat eyes. Eyes that made her very cute. Eyes that ‘made’ Catherine.

We went more in-depth about the parallels we had. I was still very flattered Catherine was into the very music I was years prior. Had she went to high-school with me she would have been accepted to my circle of friends with no problem. She also mentioned that once she was a Cinema/Cultural Studies major on our campus. However, we had no classes together and the two years that she attended our university we did not once cross paths, but very well could have.

We talked and listened to each other more and more, progressing without one single hitch. No missteps, no awkward looks, no slip-ups, no back-pedaling. It was only Catherine and I sitting across from each other with all the time in the world having a complex yet honest, concerning, intelligent conversation; a type of conversation extremely rare in our disposable, attention-deficit, lowest-common-denominator world. She was that someone different than the rest who was exactly on my level. I was that someone who would give her the concern, understanding, and the attention she was looking for.

Our night, however, was drawing to a close and I wanted to end it on a high note. I asked Catherine if she had gotten a hold of Elliott Smith’s Figure 8, one which she was missing. She was in the midst of explaining herself when I take the CD out of my jacket pocket placed next to me and tossed it on the table right in front of her, a late Christmas present for a friend to bring herself and her spirits up. She was in total amazement. So much it spilt all over the table. She could not believe I would do such a thing for her.

Catherine then offered me anything I wanted. She even waved her money in my face for the CD which I absolutely dead-refused to take. What I wanted in return was to see her again, and soon.

**********

To this day, no one I have ever met in my life gave me a surreal thrill just by being with someone for three hours. I felt amazed that I even met her.

Catherine was without a doubt one of the most original and unique people I’ve met, ever. Hands down. No contest. She had a lot of things about her that no one could copy, because everything about her was hers. From the music she listened to, her philosophy, her good parts, her bad parts, even her looks…it was all hers, as if there was an art to her.

She was real interesting and because of her conversations I tried to reach out and look out for her. She made me want to look forward to meeting her again and in the process got my mind off a lot of things because she was really that special. I bought her that gift just to prove to her that I can help her out and bring her up in any way.

It was that feeling of meeting someone who was more to my liking, whose complexion was young, her personality, looks, and features unique and rarely seen, the feeling of assurance because you finally had the answers to those swirling questions. In front of me was someone I believed was truly special despite her severe misgivings and flaws. Despite her errors, I only thought about the good things, colors, and feelings about her.

Every now and then I go back and listen to everything from that era. All those sounds are a watermark of that time when I first met Catherine and conjure up everything else that occurred at the time. That clear cold weather and the memory of lime, infinity, and powdery static. That white cell-phone, the spicy rice. Nights of heavy snow on campus and long night drives home. The series of Wednesday night radio shows and our resident DJ’s coming over to visit at the turn of midnight. Those loud nights of campus techno events and meeting different shades of Jewish women with different colors of hair, skin quality, fashion sense, glasses, make-up, and sweat. Those feelings, thoughts, shades, hues, and patterns of purple, blue, grey, black, and white. But none of anything could come close to that one defining moment of meeting Catherine, where from that point on it would watermark and define an era in a time where everything added up to equal an apex.

**********

We met again in Spring a couple of times thereafter. We sat down over ice cream and even traded more music to each other. I still truly believed that Catherine was someone special and stood out from everyone I have ever met, and I seriously wanted to remain in touch with her. She happily obliged as she gave me a sympathetic goodbye hug in the end.

Later on that season I had an art report to do and she had an affinity for museums. I offered Catherine an afternoon in New York City and we went to the MOMA as I prepared my critique about Joan Miro’s Women, Birds And A Star. At the end of that mostly sunny day we said goodbye to the city and took the train ride home together; our discussion of each others’ individual lives, future plans, and possible outcomes comprised the final hour of the last time we would ever see each other…for a long, long time.

Permission granted by the very same subject presented here.