Wrapped in a World of Imaginary Grace

by Alex

December 3, 2009

In college, I knew a girl named Eleanor who was famous for having won a
prestigious art scholarship (endowed by Andy Warhol with a selection committee
headed by Picasso’s long-time mistress). In most years, no student in America was
good enough to win the scholarship; in good years, there was one. My year, it that
was Eleanor.

She was pretty famous for the scholarship, but even more famous for the cult of
personality (which she actively encouraged) that emerged around her. And also the
fact that she wore stockings and flapper dresses.

I met her in a class on experimental German cinema and we hit it off. (I impressed
her with a bilingual pun about the 15-hour version of Berlin Alexanderplatz.)
Then she asked me if I thought the stockings were sexy. I did and told her so. She
said she only wore them as an ironic statement. But the sexiness wasn’t ironic (even
if her awareness and mockery of it was). After class most nights, we’d climb up on
the roof of the art building (she had a key, naturally), where she’d smoke Gauloises
and we’d both drink generic beer.

She told me about the semester she spent in Vienna and how she’d fallen in love with
an impoverished Duke who wrote her sonnets while she filled sketchbook after
sketchbook with charcoal drawings of his penis in repose. She claimed that he was
impotent and had told her he could only make love again after his family regained
their long-lost fortune.

Oddly, this passed for a normal conversation at the time.

Then I’d tell her stories about fin-de-siecle Vienna (a phrase I’d learned
just weeks before) and describe the meeting places of the great poets, writers, and
artists from nearly 100 years earlier. She’d nod, offer me a cigarette (which I’d
politely decline), and tell how she’d been to that pub and this cafe, and how the
alleyway I’d described had been rebuilt and was now part of some resort hotel.

She invited me one night to this bar downtown that she claimed was hosting a
combination “funk night” and 80s video dance party. I couldn’t say yes quickly
enough, hoping this would lead to our magical moment together (during which she
would fall completely and irreversibly in love with me). I spent hours trying to
figure out what to wear, going for a combination of splashy and nonchalant, but
ultimately looking like the dork I really was (only with mousse in my hair).

Eleanor, as usual, looked amazing (but also as if she’d closed her eyes, reached
into her closet and thrown on whatever she touched). The one thing I remember is
that she wore huge hoop earrings and a gigantic purse that matched their color.

When we got inside, I slowly realized that Eleanor was only half-right about the
music. There were no synth drums or 80s tunes, just hardcore funk jams and
long-forgotten R&B songs from the early 70s. Just about then, I noticed two things:
we were literally the only White people in the place and Eleanor was completely
wasted. She later opened her purse — which was stuffed with about five pounds of
marijuana. “Shhh…” she whispered. “Don’t tell anyone.”

And then she wanted to slow dance. To James Brown. Perhaps because there weren’t
enough people staring at us. I remember feeling out of place; her wonderful quirky
nature suddenly felt crazy and dangerous. I convinced her to leave after about an
hour; ten minutes later, there was a huge fight and two people were stabbed. But I
didn’t know that until days later.

As we walked home, I just wanted to escape; I’d given up on finding our perfect
magical moment together. She stopped in the middle of the block and it took me five
steps to realize she wasn’t keeping up. I turned to see her posed under a
streetlight, looking adorably quirky again. And she waved me over and I forgot to
be annoyed with her. And then she gave me the sweetest, most amazing kiss, and I
forgot I’d ever been annoyed with her. “I stop the world and melt with you,” she
declared. And for a few minutes, she really did.

And there was nothing else in the world that mattered. It was just the two of us,
nowhere to go, nothing to do but kiss under a street light. With five pounds of
marijuana at our feet. Her arms wrapped around me, my heart wrapped in a world of
imaginary grace.

She led me back to her small, dirty apartment off-campus. And while she went into
her bedroom to change out of her flapper dress, I looked at her books and her record
collection. And we were talking the whole time, even though I was in a different
room. It was a fairly typical student apartment. But there was no art — no
drawings, no paintings, nothing to indicate that a prestigious scholarship student
lived there.

And then I saw her passport. And picked it up. The photo was amazing, of course.

And she was telling me, from the other room, about Vienna and how she’d felt freer
sexually there than she could ever feel in America. And I thumbed through her
passport, looking for the stamps. But they weren’t there.

I put the passport down just before she came out of the bedroom. And she poured us
both drinks and I wondered where she’d been the semester she wasn’t in Vienna. And
why the lies poured so easily out of her. And why she thought she couldn’t impress
people just by being herself.

And she kissed me again and it felt great. But it also felt bad. And she asked me
if I wanted to go in her bedroom. And I really, really did.

But I knew I couldn’t.

Her stories were great. But they weren’t real.

And I needed the real thing. Because the fake stuff, no matter how wonderful and
titillating and exotic, would soon feel much worse than having nothing at all.

“Can I show you something I learned in Vienna?” she asked. And my body was
screaming yes but my heart said no. And I followed my heart.

A few weeks later, Eleanor took off in the middle of the night. She never finished
school and the story slowly leaked out over the next several weeks. She hadn’t
painted or drawn anything in more than 3 years. But her professors were so
impressed with her scholarship and her prizes that none of them would fail her even
though she refused to do any of her work. They listened to her, watched the crowd
around her, and believed. Or at least wanted to believe.

And her “semester abroad”? There were different stories — she got pregnant; she
worked in a coal mine; she walked every mile of Route 66. I wanted to believe every
larger-than-life story about her (even though I knew deep down the truth would be
simpler, sadder, and far less poetic).

Years later, when I finally got to Vienna, I couldn’t stop thinking about Eleanor.
It was cold and cloudy, a city wrapped in mystery and filled with promise. I’d like
to say I thought I saw her around every corner (or at least under every
streetlight), but it just wasn’t true.

Which makes it exactly the type of story she would have told.

Alex
: I grew up in a college town filled with great used-record stores. Looking back, I’ve found this explains a lot… :
is here.