By Nadia (ms.nadia@mail.com)
Date: 13 November 2000
Airport at Night
Where's Goldbug? I'm sitting in the airport looking out through the big picture windows onto the tarmac below, where the buzz of activity reminds me of a book I loved as a child. Cars and Trucks and Things That Go. Classic. Amid a great, confusing mess of a scene, you had to find the little gold bug. In an flash of insight, I saw the metaphor. We're all searching for Goldbug everyday. Life is a mess and we're all in there looking for our hearts, aren't we? But the thought is just a fleeting fancy, a momentary diversion from the name that's been haunting me for days now. Tom. Where's Tom? Tom with his wicked smile. Tom with his smooth strong hands, the very sight of which could send a thrill through me and make my ears hot. My Tom.
I can see it now, of course. Christophe had his smile, Vincent had his dark sense of humour and Menelaus his raw sensuality. And in many other little ways, every man I've loved since Tom had something that reminded me of him. What a shame that it's only now, after all these years, that I can finally see it. Now when it could be too late.
We met 13 years ago, when he was an exchange student at my high school. He had longish, dark shaggy hair, a crooked David Bowie smile and always wore black pants and Chinese slipper shoes. He was a cute little rebel and I don't even remember how we got to be friends, just that we were.
My girlfriends all thought he was mysterious and sexy and when he passed us in the hall and said "Hi Nadia" with that lovely Luxembourgeois accent, they'd turn their faces and giggle. But for me he was just Tom. Poetic and sincere Tom, whose intelligent conversation made me feel like a grown-up for the first time.
But slowly there was more. It started as playful teasing and, eventually, finally, at the 'end of the year' party, I called him on it. We had all driven out to a ranch in eastern Washington and, as the party raged on in the converted barn, Tom and I sat on a bale of hay around back and he cried. I didn't understand it at first and was scared until he explained that he wished we had arrived at this point sooner. He would be leaving in two weeks to go home.
Should we or shouldn't we? Risk the friendship for two weeks of romance followed by inevitable heartbreak? We both thought it over and decided that our hearts would break anyway, so we may as well indulge in the two weeks and take full advantage of our remaining time together. It was a surprisingly insightful decision for a couple of teenagers, and one I'll never regret.
We went back to the barn just as the DJ played a slow song and so we danced. I know I should remember what the song was but I don't. Perhaps it was "Holiday" by the Scorpions - it was the late 80's after all and that was one of 'our' songs. All I know is that, as we danced, I buried my face in the crook of his neck and his hands traced delicious patterns on my back and I felt the thrill of knowing I was finally in the arms of my first love.
After Tom left, we wrote constantly and his letters were full of passionate prose and poetry that I felt honoured to have inspired. At the end of the summer I left to spend a year studying in France. Ironically, the same exchange program that had brought Tom to me now took me to another high school and another 'foreign affair'. I met Christophe and, although nothing happened between us until much later, I knew that I had to break up with Tom.
It was much easier said than done, because I still loved him. But while he was back at his home, feeling the slight depression that follows the return from an adventure, I was experiencing a whirlwind of exciting emotions. I was learning a new language, a new culture and meeting all sorts of people. I was experiencing the wonderful adventure he now mourned. Eventually his letters became so despondent and depressing that I no longer looked forward to receiving them as I once had. So, when he came to visit at Christmas, I broke up with him and after he left I felt sad relief. I made it a clean break and never answered his pleading letters, until finally he stopped writing them.
About a year later my guilt caught up with me and I wrote Tom a long-overdue apology. I told him I was sorry for the way I had discarded him and cast a shadow on what we had shared. I didn't expect him to reply but he did. To my undeserved surprise he wrote that he had already forgiven me. And we've been writing ever since.
Oh, the correspondence has dwindled on and off. For a time, when we both got our first email accounts we "talked" every day. And at other times almost a year lapsed between brief missives - quick postcards back and forth just to maintain a sense of contact. I still love his writing and I've kept every one of his letters and cards. In fact everything he's ever written to me is tucked away safely, filling up cigar boxes in my hope chest at my parents' house. Hope chest - funny it should be called that. I keep them there so I can read them, touch them, remember and…hope? Hope that someday I'll feel that I belong to someone the way I once belonged to him.
It's been over a year now since I've heard from Tom and, for the first time in 13 years, I have no idea where he is. It's totally disconcerting and I don't know why. So the other day I finally typed his name into a search engine and found 3 web sites that had known him. A rock climbing gym in Luxembourg, his father's non-profit organization in aid of children in India and the Love Blender. What's the Love Blender? I felt like a Private I, as though I were spying on him, but I couldn't help myself. I went to see what the Love Blender was all about.
In September of 1995, Tom wrote to Kirk "Just a note to say that your story, Café at Night, really hit home with me…I can understand exactly what you are feeling, I had something similar happen to me." So, intrigued, I followed up this lead by finding the story and reading it. I admit my interest was, at this point, purely voyeuristic. I was hoping to learn about his recent love life by reading a story that it apparently paralleled. But as I read, I felt my ears grow hot again. It was our story. And I was the one, the only one, who knew why "Café at Night" had 'hit home' with him. Except that Tom and I never did have that meeting in a café afterwards. In fact we haven't seen each other in 13 years and the thought that's been haunting me for the past week now is 'will we ever have that chance?'
My plane is here and for now my story is interrupted. But it's not over. I must have realized that when I landed in Europe a week ago and somehow expected him to be here, greeting my plane. And I surely knew it when I was drawn to the Duty Free and bought a bottle of his cologne, which I haven't smelled in years because its not available in the States. And when I sat and had a cigarette, the smell of him mixing with the smoke every time I raised my hand to take a puff, I expected it to be Tom who asked if he could sit next to me. I was actually surprised when it wasn't. And now, even now, I'm still waiting for him to grab me from behind and stop me from getting on that plane.
No, it's obviously not over for me. As long as I can feel him following me, just out of sight, its not over. As long as I see bits of Tom in the men in my life, it's not over. As long as the sight of his cyber-footsteps on an abandoned web page causes my heart to beat faster, it's not over. As long as I can't get his name out of my head…Tom. Tom. My Tom. My Goldbug. In this great, confusing mess of life, where are you?
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