I keep a notebook on my bedside table, because when the lights go out I am inevitably struck with an idea. And if I don’t write it down that very minute it is lost forever.
Here’s last night’s scrap, written in the dark. My reminder of what I wanted to write about today:
I was in my third year of university and was living with three girls, the J-crew: Jen, Jane, and Joy. It was very fun and very crazy, and somehow I managed to keep it all together and get my degree.
At some point Jen and I decided to submit a classified ad to the Charlatan, Carleton University’s student newspaper. I can’t remember the details of what we wrote, only that we were two gals bemoaning the lack of romance and chivalry in this cold, cruel, sad world of ours. We wanted romance, that is, a romantic correspondence with whoever was interested.
NOTE: this was BEFORE common use of the Internet! During this time, anonymous romantic correspondence took some effort and involved things like pens, paper, postage stamps and trips to the post office.
We placed our ad and we waited. No, scratch that. We chickened out. We found out we had to pick our letters up at the Charlatan office. Because we were both in the journalism program we knew that someone we knew would be working there. And there was no way that we wanted anyone to know we’d placed that ad.
One day we skulked around outside the office and waited until the coast was clear … then we rushed inside to see if anyone had answered our plea. The girl laughed and went into a back office. I remember looking at her face, and then looking down to see what she was carrying in her hand. I expected one letter, maybe two. She was carrying a huge manilla envelope, and it was bursting with letters.
Jen and I hightailed it home and poured over all the letters. Apparently, there were a lot of young men who liked nothing more than candlelight dinners and walks on the beach. Yee-uck. Those went straight into the “ree-ject” pile. And then there was this one letter. It was sweet without being creepy, no mention of anything untoward, just someone who wanted to write. I remember being very impressed by his handwriting. I wish I still had the letter.
The three of us exchanged many letters that year. No one revealed their real name. He called Jen “Aurora” and me “Leigh” after “Aurora Leigh,” a poem written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. We called him Spider, because of the stories he wove for us. He sent us pretty rocks he had collected, and bits of poetry. I’m not sure if we ever sent him anything worthy in return. (Gawd, I studied English lit, took seminars about poetry! I hope at least I copied out a good sonnet in return.)
Getting those letters was a real highlight. They were wonderful.
One day we found out he’d moved. A letter was returned and there was no forwarding address. And that was the end of it, or so we thought.
The next year I took a television production class. I had a mad crush on a T.A. of ours. Oh, he was a cutie: tall, dark-haired, handsome, a former Olympic athlete. He was going to help us do an interview with someone at the Ottawa Citizen. My classmate had a car and was going to drive us all (and all of our equipment) to the interview.
I asked the T.A where he lived, it was #xx Sunnyside Ave. Hmmm. Why was that address familiar? It didn’t hit me until later. That was Spider’s address! Was Spider my cute T.A.?!
When we picked up my T.A the next morning I tried quizzing him without actually revealing any information whatsoever. You know, because when you’re a twenty-something you have to maintain your supercool façade, right? (Isn’t that dumb? I would do it so differently now.) I may have appeared very much like a stalker. But I did manage to find out this: he used to have a roommate who was an architecture student. I am pretty sure it was him, though I never did find out his real name.
