Synchronicity

Last week I taught a short story called "We Didn't" by Stuart Dybek. Basically the story is about a couple of teens who are overwrought by hormonal urges and after months of petting and kissing and sweaty fumbling decide they're going all the way on a Chicago beach. They're interrupted before consumation by cops who've come to fish out the corpse of a nude pregnant woman found along the shore. The story tracks the collapse of the teens' relationship after this event, and focuses on the competing worldviews of the male (who adopts a cynical, jokey, "it's only a coincidence" attitude) and the female (who believes this is nothing less than an omen that prevented her from giving away her virginity to this guy at this time). I teach this dichotomy as exemplifying the split between Freud (atheist--all meaning is internal and subjective and coincidences are interpreted as having meaning because we selectively see what we like) and Jung (spiritualist--synchronicity means that omens are real and they occur regardless of subjectivity, but one must be perceptive). I start my discussion talking about Dybek's salty, sensuous description of the lovers' fumbling failures to do the deed, and do a little self-deprecating comic routine about how happy I am to be well past that awkward, agonizing stage of life and married.

But since teaching the story and talking about it I've thought with some regret about the fact that those days are gone. Don't get me wrong--I'm happily married and have no interest at all in ever being single again--but suddenly it struck me that, yes, I'm in my mid-and-soon-to-be-late-mid 30s. My days of being an object of attraction to young women are gone (if they ever existed). My days of exploration are LONG gone. I didn't obsess over this; I merely noted it as a passage, and moved on. Then a bit of Jung started creeping in.

On Monday I was helping a young and rather naive blond do research for a paper. The topic? "I don't believe the moon landing was real." She was having trouble finding reputable sources (likely with good reason) which supported her argument. "I believe we DID orbit the moon, but the landing was faked." I was sort of teasing her about her reasoning, and taking her through some critical thinking exercises. I asked what her strongest evidence was, and she said "humans can't survive going through the Van Allen radiation belt." But, I responded, you already told me that you believe Americans orbited the moon, but did not land--they'd have had to go through the Van Allen belt in order to orbit the moon! "You're not helping," she pouted, and showed me a picture taken on the lunar surface of an astronaut and the lander. "Why can't you see stars in the black sky?" she asked. "It's obviously a studio." I pointed to the sharp shadows on the ground and asked what it meant to have shadows stretching out dramatically from all objects in the photo. She had no clue, so I told her it meant it was daytime, ie, they were on the sunlit side of the moon. The sun tends to block out our ability to see stars, I reminded her. "No, that's the atmosphere!" she said, but quickly realized her mistake. "I guess we can see stars through the atmosphere at night."

At any rate, this went on for a while, and I introduced her to Fortean Times, and she kept telling me I was funny, and then she leaned on the counter and was playing with her hair, and asking me what I was interested in, and what I did for fun, and I became alarmed. Is she really...no, she can't...what the fuck!? I'm old and fugly, she's a cute kid! She was flirting with me. Aggressively. She grabbed my pen and played keep away with it. She kept touching my hand "by mistake." She asked if I went out on Thursdays to any of the bars, and I said "my wife tends to keep me home on weeknights," and she complained a bit and finally left. Candi, my student assistant, immediately started teasing me. "She was SO hitting on you!" I was glad to know I'd not imagined it, but remained puzzled until today, when another strange thing happened.

I'd just finished my 263 class, and had spoken to a terribly attractive and awfully shy young student who was too mortified to do her presentation assignment. "I don't like being in front of people. I get very anxious and self-conscious, and I think I'm destined to screw up," etc (her attitude also tied into my own recent musings). She wanted to do a paper instead, and then there was a slacker who'd missed 15 classes and wanted to do some extra credit to avoid failing, and as I was talking to him I noted an exquisite and striking brunette who'd come into the room and moved just beyond my peripheral vision. I sensed she was there to talk to me, and she didn't sit down for the next class. My student was yammering on about being a bartender and a last-semester senior and he liked my class but had to work until 3am, blah-blah, and I told him we'd talk on Friday, and turned to find myself confronted by an incomparable vision. Imagine a Bollywood Goddess with rich lustrous hair and that fantastic earthy figure seen only in idealized illustrations from the Kama Sutra, or on Hindu temples. I was powerfully shaken by her beauty, and also by the fact that I knew her.

My first thought was she looks fantastic. My second thought was I didn't shower or shave this morning and dressed as an afterthought because I was going to run after class anyway why does it matter oh my God stop thinking like this I look like hell I wish I'd worn a tie. My third thought was Oh no how in God's name did she find me. My fourth was wow, this is really interesting, the fact that she found me--is this an accident?

"Are you the Geoff who went to Hereford--you ARE!" she said, and I asked if I'd really changed that much, while thinking I really want to tell her how spectacular she looks, but I'm not going to do so, because this chick is dangerous, or, at least, she was 15 years ago. "I saw your name in the Catalog and then I looked at the course schedule for this semester and I saw the time and room and I ran here..." as she spoke I noted those intense eyes, extreme dark on extreme white, bright and wide as a spooked horse's. Yes, she's still dangerous. "...to make sure it was you and I can't believe it."

I quickly asked her what she was doing at Towson (Master's in Education), then moved on to family (3 kids, married to an accountant, her brother whom I knew in high school is now a Manhattan lawyer). When I was 18-19, this young woman stalked me. I thought she was beautiful, and would've loved a roll in the hay, but she was too freaky. She worked at GNC and I worked at McD's in Hunt Valley the summer after our senior year. She used to leave notes for me with my co-workers with explicit drawings on them. I'd stop to talk to her at GNC and she'd kiss me without warning, or ask me to get something off a high shelf and grab my ass, but I wasn't interested in a relationship and didn't want to take advantage of her, though I must admit I played along with her flirting. One day she invited me to help her move something in the back room at GNC and she locked the store--I won't go into details, but I suspect she'd never played doctor as a child and wanted to catch up quickly. Our parting after my refusal that day was a bit awkward, and she started leaving notes on my car until I agreed to take her out on a date against my better judgment. We met at the Mall and ended up snowed in by a freak blizzard--York Road and I-83 were closed and we were trapped along with a half dozen other Mall employees. If ever there was an omen, it was this unannounced snowstorm. Buf, who worked at Camelot Music, and a couple other guys and I ended up getting a room at the Embassy Suites (I think Yahtzee and Burnt were there as well, and perhaps The Hulk). The idea was to score some beer and have a party since we were stuck. She was enthusiastic about accompanying us, but her uncle (he owned the luggage and tobacco stores at Hunt Valley) drove a Jeep down to prevent her virtue from being compromised. A good thing for all concerned. I saw her a couple times after that, and she always brought up our date, and how we needed to finish our date, and then I didn't see her until like '96 at Borders, and she said "when will we finally finish our date?" and then today, again, here at TU, in my classroom, she was there again, and she brought it up again. THREE KIDS. Both of us sitting atop 10-year marriages.

She needs to face facts--"We Didn't." Nor will we.

Is this synchronicity, or insanity? A coincidence, or an omen? I thought about it after telling her "well, keep in touch!" and fleeing like a pickpocket into the dreary cold rain. I changed into my running clothes and shoes and was surprised to find the weather completely changed in about five minutes to spectacularly clear and warm and windy. I ran three miles, and did what I always do when I'm puzzled by a situation involving "meaningful coincidences," and called Julio, who said "I was just thinking about you." He lost two friends the past couple weeks--Richard Kalter from MICA, and an artist he'd known for years named Marie Larsen, who passed away last night. I think Richard was in his 80s, and Marie was in her '90s--but immediately he started telling me about several strange coincidences surrounding their deaths, and the timing thereof, and I told him I'd called for just that reason, and as usual we couldn't understand what the world was obviously telling us. There's more to say here but I should do some work.