Courting Blues

If you were to step out, you’d see it was like a set. Only three walls, like a bath tub on its side. No, not like a bathtub on its side, because there was no ceiling, and a bathtub on its side would have a ceiling- one of its former sides. It was like a set, like I said. It was happening in Alabama. Courting could not have been a more sterile word for it. X amount of miles away in G______, Oklahoma a man was auctioning off his daughter for marriage. No one there in earshot would use that exact phrasing, though off-site, perhaps at the drive-in, one friend might quickly summarize the scenario to another, therein sacrificing courtesy and credit to the father for the sake of expediency. The “auction” was actually more like interviews with the suitors to find the most noble. In sylvan settings such as this, it’s easy for the mind to create a mental image of the dramatis personae. Let’s say it’s not that far off. Let’s say I heard about it in school at Auburn. Apocryphal tales of pornography filmed on campus. And you can’t tell it’s East Hall in the video because the walls are fake and they took them all down. And I’m the pope. Suppose there’s a pool on the roof, too. Worst thing you can do is trust anyone or tell them what you really think. I studied a broad. She was death. A haphazardous idea; I had little say in the matter. Pragmatism, cost/benefit analyses, these are what the uninvolved may suggest. Not happening. Head-strong, ass-backwards, the involved always shirk premeditation, for fear of an examination’s effect on the morale.

 “Others live for the lie of love; Echo lives for her lovely lies, loves for their livening.” She was like a car that you couldn’t enjoy while going the speed limit, to resurrect a facile simile. The girl in Oklahoma would go to a young cowboy. A real, modern-day cowboy, with disdain for cowboy films, especially the so-called honest ones. Too stubborn to suspend his disbelief, he preferred war films, a phenomenon he experienced only vicariously and maintained nothing but deference and guilt towards its participants (U.S.). It was his enduring reticence and self-effacement that won him the hand of the fair farmer’s daughter. And they lived happily ever after. And there’s a pool on the roof. There’s a guy my dad knew who always had sex with his swimming championship medal on. Now there’s an entire generation with participation ribbons and nowhere to pin them. The cowboy would disapprove. Wonder if he keeps his hat on. It’s a baseball hat. He’s an honest cowboy. He was in love with her, though, no two ways about it. I was in love with a girl, too. We ran in the same circles, though I knew her the least. Funny how it goes, how it is always those we know the least that smite us so. She was in love with an art history professor named Baldwin. I knew a Baldwin who was a horse thief in Mississippi, couldn’t be the same guy could he? Got a laugh, though no real headway. It would be attrition to actually get her to switch teams. Futile romantic angles are a young person’s third preoccupation behind work and play. Persistence seemed key, as romantic comedies may suggest, yet “hard to get” was the time tested maxim. The most frustrating rules were those with exceptions, as any hopeless monolingual will tell you. Baldwin was a tough cat. I was defeated. I wasn’t depressed, but when walking home at night idly imagining being pounced on and beaten to death, I was too fatigued to feign concern, resigned beyond demuring fate. Time moved fast, I saw her pine over him, equally futile, I audited his class on minimalism, he was a great professor, tons of mnemonic devices. My trifurcated preoccupations were all still well fed. I pursued other women, went to class, went to parties, et cetera. I kept reading the papers. In T____, Ohio a man fell in love with his adopted daughter’s adopted daughter, who turned out to be related to him distantly. I can always go on, but why bother, the voice of the perennially romantic is what matters, not the episode. Brevity is the Sol LeWitt.