From: joan@med.unc.edu (Joan Shields)
Subject: Re: Books in the time of love
Organization: UNC-CH School of Medicine
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 20:16:20 GMT


I've been lurking about for the past few weeks.  

Deciding on an entrance is always a little
tricky - in this group even more so.  Mark Taranto's thread intrigued me.
At first I was a little disappointed, I couldn't think of any books that had
precipitated a romance or any that I strongly associated with a romance.
I've developed deep and meaningful crushes on a few fictional characters,
the latest being Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, but was this what 
Mark wanted to know about?

After a bit of thinking it suddenly dawned on me that I while I haven't 
fallen in love through a book I was involved in a very passionate and very
intimate relationship where a large part of this passion and intimacy was 
centered on books.  I know that sounds odd, please allow me to explain.

His name was Michael.  He was, well.... Michael wasn't like the others.
He was bright, well read, sensitive, creative, and tragic.  His form and
features were that of an angel tied to earth.  We first met in
Philadelphia in 1984.  We were both Honor students at our respective
universities and were there for an Honors Conference.  We met at one of
the workshops.  I suppose it would have been more romantic had we met in
Paris or New York or New Orleans but we met in Philadelphia.  After the
workshop we had lunch and talked of books, films, and music.  He gave me
his address before the conference was over and I took it back to Maine
with me - the intent of writing him firm in my mind.  

Two years later I unearthed his address and in a moment of impulse wrote
him a letter.

He wrote back claiming that he had been thinking of me a few hours before
he received my letter.  We exchanged many letters - on average one a week.
And there were the phone calls - sometimes late at night a few early in
the morning.  The relationship grew - it became a sort of passion of the
minds - intellectual sex one might even say (a friend refered to it as
intellectual masterbation and while assuredly there was quite a bit of
that going on there was also a very intimate connection between us).  The
letters and calls went on for months - through the late summer and into
those long winter nights.  I finally went down to visit him (he lived in
western North Carolina and I had been planning a trip here to UNC-CH
anyway).  It was a sort of moment of truth, truth for me, a vision of 
reality I had blinded myself to.  The intimacy remained in the intellect,
it did not spread - I was willing but he was not.  Looking back I can see
it was for the best - the intellectual intimacy, sex through discussions
of books, the instruments of incourse being words and ideas - was not
enough for me and all he was able to give.  I said before that he was
tragic and this showed me the extent.  Tragic to the bone, hung on a cross
of intellect and too blinded by his own tears to see that it was all just
illusions and fear.  The clearest image I have of Michael is of him standing
in a doorway lit from the back so all I could see clearly was his outline
with just a hint of the faded jeans and grey sweatshirt.  This wasn't the
last time I saw him but it's the vision that remains clearest in my mind.

The affair ended suddenly.  He refused all contact one day - I never found
out why and he never said goodbye.  No sense of closure, no sense of
finish.  It's been more than five years - perhaps an epilogue will be
written someday though I doubt it. 

Joan
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