And You're Tearing Up Your Photos 'Cause You Wanna Forget It's Over

It's 12:30 on 12/31/06, and she turns around and says over her shoulder, "I don't want to get married."

I say, "Me either."

"Let's just be freshmen," she says.

"Let's be freshmen forever," I say. "That is exactly what we need to do."

I was eighteen when I met her. We lived on the third floor of Whitman Hall in Canton, NY, and it was September, 1999. What happens to everything? That's what I want to know. I am telling you I could close my eyes and be there. I would go back in a second, in a snap of my fingers, no question. Back to the beginning. Back to stand there and wonder and worry and drink Blue and have angst and watch the snowflakes drift silently through the naked fingers of the trees. I wasn't cold then. I wasn't cold at all. Because the stars were stark and distant and reassuring, and the streetlights shone orange, and it sort of spun dizzily around you, and it was too beautiful to be cold.

But she is getting married tomorrow night. And this was seven years ago.

So we're telling this story tonight, a freshman year story, about how this one time I was partying in the track suite until 6-ish, and I make my way back to Whitman as the sun is hovering beneath the horizon and pondering coming up. I believe this is exam week as well. I knock on her door. She answers, and goes, "Where's my roommate?"

I say, "I left her there. She was hooking up with Ike in the laundry room!" [Brief detour while we crack up over how several people at the bachelorette evening also hooked up with Ike. In fact, I am not going to lie, a large portion of the night's conversation consisted of rehashing who hooked up with whom and falling into laughter over it.]

So we're standing there talking when Katie strolls in. It has to be at least seven by this time. She walks into the room, and nonchalantly goes, "So. I just left a guy naked. Tell you about it tomorrow. Good night."

But we didn't go to bed. We said, "Fuck it," and went to Dana and got breakfast. Never mind that we hadn't slept yet. It was just because. Because you're still drunk and it's 7:30 AM on a Friday morning, and goddamn is it fun to watch the good kids trek downstairs to breakfast before a rough day of studying. It was the end of my first semester, and I am still not convinced I ever managed to be more obnoxious in Dana in the next three years. But we went to Dana breakfast that morning. It was totally the thing to do. If you had been there, you would have done it, too.

Seven. No way is it seven. Two years, maybe. Three? Okay. But seven. I just counted it up on my fingers.

I am bad at these things. I let things drift. I mean to see people, and I mean to write about the moments I've never been able to get out of my mind, and I mean to really figure out what it all meant, really get it straight in my head, and I mean to call. I mean and I mean and I mean.

And then seven years.

Maybe it's the writer in me, but I feel this driving need to put my past in these little boxes, to get it down on paper, to fasten it in one place so it won't drift. I am telling you, the drifting scares me. Because I want it to be there if I need it. I want it to be there so someday I can look at it and think suddenly, "Oh! That's what this meant." I want everyone to be there. This is what he said to me. This is what she wore. This is what we did on this exact night. This is how it was.

Seven years! No fucking way. Sometimes I feel like I don't know who I am anymore.

"I'm gonna stay eighteen forever
So we can stay like this forever
And we'll never miss a party
'Cause we keep them going constantly
And we'll never have to listen
To anyone about anything
'Cause it's all been done and it's all been said
We're the coolest kids and we take what we can get
You're just jealous 'cause we're young and in love
Your stomach's filled up but you're starved for conversation
And you're spending all your nights growing old in your bed
And you're tearing up your photos
'Cause you want to forget it's over"