Follower of the White Rabbit: Finding Aaron

When I first moved to Huntington I started hanging out with this crowd of boys, which I generally tend to do. They lived in this apartment complex in between a Dominos and a 7/11 which was prime real estate for a bunch of stoner college students. We would all kind of show up when we did and drink and smoke. Sometimes new girls would come in and out, but really it was just me a lot of the time. I think it was really Adams house, but Tyler and several other boys I cannot remember the names of were always there. Always crowded around a TV or a bong. To be honest they weren't my crowd. I remember going to a "party" at their house and it was the same crowd playing Halo and smoking weed. I thought, "I came to college, and This is a party?" "I had naked girls and loud music in high school, this looks like a Tuesday." Not that it was a bad time really and I didn't have much else to do or anyone else to hang out with so I just sunk in. Adam was kind of an asshole, he had his moments though. I kinda latched to him for awhile, and I remember many times him looking at me like a younger sibling who wont get out of your room. We fooled around a bit, but neither of us were exactly proud of it. It was getting old for both of us. Of course this was the same time Mikayla turned up. Mikayla was what a frat boy would call "hot". She wasn't classically pretty, but she had a rack and good god she could wrap those boys up. In a week, maybe less, she had them all against each other. It was almost too painfully obvious to watch. Once she got up on a table in the middle of the living room. She was wearing this little black dress and boots, you just got glimpses of inner thigh. They went crazy. Adam probably has pictures to this day of that woman. Whatever she wanted they ran over top of each other to get it to her. Thank god for it because otherwise I would have never seen Aaron again. God knows what would have been in the place of him.

So to explain, there was this coffee house downtown called the Java Joint. It was on the corner of an intersection across from the University. Everyone I knew hung out there, but I had dropped off due to an altercation with a barista. So, Mikayla wanted to go down. It was a Wednesday and she wanted to read poetry at the open mic. I didn't want to, but she dragged me, and I dreaded every moment of the way there. We showed up outside and everyone kind of scrambled in. I stood out smoking and talking to people thinking maybe I could just not go inside at all. Finally for whatever reason I walked in and as I did there was Aaron walking out. My heart did back flips. He said " I waited three days for you to call me, but you never did." I thought "Waited for me to call you?" "Waited, as in expecting and hoping that I would?" I felt pursued, and seeing as I had never been pursued before it was awfully exciting. I had his number in a drawer. He gave it to me at a party a few weeks prior. I don't even know why I was there. I think I followed Adam as usual. It was this kid Heath Kitchen's house who at the time I had never met. I didn't smoke pot, so whenever they all crammed into some back room to smoke, I sat on the couch nursing beers with a bunch of girls. Nothing makes me more uncomfortable than a pack of women. I was relieved that anyone was walking through the door, but I was even more relieved that it was a man who was as drunk as I and in good spirits. He was wearing a green back pack, chucks, a hoodie and this toboggan that he had rolled up above his ears. He stopped at the couch, his thumbs hitched under the straps of his back pack. I liked to make an impression so smiling I said "Well who the hell are you?" He looked around as if to find someone that might know the answer. " I am the man who wears shoes." he said walking over and sitting next to me on the couch. He was with two friends Josh Gwinn and Matt Baxter. He had a flask of port which I tried and loved and drank many bottles of later. I do not remember our conversation. I just remember him being close to me and this shiny flask. Matt walked me home and they all gave me their numbers at some point. I figured we were drunk. You don't actually call those people, and they don't actually expect you to. In my mind if you didn't go home with them that evening the opportunity was lost.

I turned around at the coffee shop door and walked right back out with him. He had his backpack as usual and a guitar case. He had two little hoops in his earlobes, and a freckle above his upper lip that I adored. He asked me if I wanted to go to a party, and I of course agreed. He drove this hilarious truck. It was green and small, and on the back it had a painting of two deer. I loved it, I loved everything about him almost instantly. He took me to Gwinn's house. Gwinn was drunk, which I later found he generally was, and so were you if you stuck around long enough. His room was in the attic of this big second floor apartment. It was a bit winding and when you got to the top it opened up into this great space. It smelled like patchouli and there was a warmth about the place. This brown carpet, a rocking chair, and this huge bed. Hippies. Definitely hippies, which I had no experience with, but liked instantly. He was listening Black Waters by the Doobie Brothers, I remember this so clearly. Adam and Mikayla showed up, which was weird because I didn't know everyone knew each other, and we sat in Gwinn's big bed together dancing and singing. I felt like I fit there. Gwinn was hilarious and loud and he loved Aaron. You could tell immediately. We definitely had that in common and we always did. Everyone loved Aaron really. It was hard not to. He had a presence. He was very clever, witty, and he was very relaxed. He had this way of becoming very important without you feeling like he was forcing it on you. You just believed it. It got late and we walked down the big winding stairs to the front door. I don't remember how, but all of a sudden I was against the wall and he kissed me. I remember his eyes and mouth. It was truly one of the best moments I have had. Everything was falling in and out of place just the way I needed it to. I was 19. God, I was 19 and I thought that this moment was going to be the rest of my life. This adorable little man and me just feeling that way forever. That isn't what happened obviously, but that moment was so influential. It was the first time I fell in love.

Sometimes you meet a person at exactly the right time. It just clicks and you can almost hear it. You can definitely feel it , and everything else seems to fall away. I think I went back to Adams once after that night, and it was in attempts to get a reaction from Aaron. He took over. I went home with him, but I don't remember the specifics. I just remember his room. He lived in the dorms at Marshall. His little double bed. There were plants, and this great light came through his window. It made everything blue at night when the moon was out. I remember him being terribly thin and the glassy look in his eyes from drinking. I was so intimidated by him, he was much older than me. About 6 years I think, maybe 7. I felt that I was in over my head, but I was holding onto this one. We slept and the next day walked off campus to Happy Dragon for Chinese. He got a fortune cookie and somehow I remember this, it said " Just because you put shoes on an elephant doesn't mean it will dance". It wasn't important at the time, but the foreshadowing of that damned fortune cookie haunts me still.

Looking back on it, that relationship was full of incredibly humiliating moments. I can't imagine how he dealt with this little girl so childishly infatuated with him. Sometimes when I talk to him I feel like all of these vivid memories, these powerful moments, may be figments of my imagination. I think its merely because I do not have such intense emotions anymore. I cant believe I felt these things so strongly and quickly and felt completely logical with my actions. I remember saying to a friend when we broke up that I didn't think I could breathe without him. My whole world was wrapped up in him and he was probably just trying to pass the time. Oh the hilarity of youth. I can only shake my head and smile, hoping maybe he does the same.