SENSES: Intuition 04.01.2013

It was you that made me say yes to a week long road trip thru the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina with a man I barely knew at 18 years old. He said he wanted to go swimming in the ocean or a river and it wasn’t warm enough yet in Vermont. My mind said no. You made me say yes because I wanted to take risks and I didn’t want to associate risk with consequence. I said yes because my insides were articulating something new and feverish when I was around him and that felt like enough.

You led me to grab his hand in the woods and learn what it felt like to be still with someone; curious and pulsating without the need to control and qualify. Two months later, while talking on the phone in the dark in our parent’s homes, and dreaming up our futures, he was telling me about his upcoming solo trip to Europe. The one he was leaving for in 3 weeks. My heart pumped like a wild animal under my bones until the words flung out like a slingshot from heart to mouth and I asked to go with him. 

We fell in love in Portugal, Spain, Italy. We fell in love back in Vermont, Massachusetts, Montreal, Michigan, Emeryville, San Francisco. 14 years later, and we are going on a road trip around the California desert because it's not hot enough in San Francisco and we crave the heat. We are going on a road trip because while trying to figure out what we want to be when we grow up and where we want to build a home, you got inside of both of us again.  

It was you that led me into that restaurant that often wasn’t open but was open that night. It was raining and the art exhibit on brightly painted walls was entitled, “God’s Greatest Gifts: Fruit and Sex.” I sat in a booth by the window under a painting of a large mango surrounded by various cut out illustrations from the Kama Sutra. You led me into that restaurant where Neil Young was singing about the Harvest Moon or how the world was turning, both of which my Dad used to sing with his band called Magik. Dad had recently died and I had been listening to his recordings on cassette tape and trying to make sense out of the passing of a parent.

You led me into that little container of color and smell and sound and nostalgia. Even though there was no one else dining in the restaurant, I wasn’t turned off; I claimed it all for myself and I dined for everyone.

You led me there. Even though I had just finished college, and then a year as a literacy tutor for AmeriCorps. Despite the fact that I thought I should do something “important” next, I sat there eating course after course of food and drink and I felt my mind fall out and my gut turn on. I felt a new kind of fever and I asked the server if I could be a part of what they were doing there. I didn’t intend on being a waitress, but I had every intention of being a part of something awesome, intimate, and memorable. I wanted to orchestrate that awakening and unraveling in others. I worked there for a couple of years. I wrote my essay to get into graduate school about that restaurant. My master’s thesis was about food, ritual, and performance. I’m still in restaurants. I’m still in love. And 12 years later, that mango painting hangs above our bed.