Page 77 - WTP Vol.X#1

As he lingered over tea, I began to feel more assured. He must like my company. I got up and put Sargent Pepper on the record player. Back in my chair, trying not to scratch my itchy ankle, I chatted about Mrs. Bed. “She’d like you,” I told Joe, who smiled. “She likes Americans, thank God. I get the feeling not all Brit dons adhere to her views.” I told him about one teacher who had harangued our seminar on Old English poetry, complaining that the US was tardy in helping the British fight the Nazis. “She actually sat there, cradling her gin, I might add, and announced that Britain stood alone in 1940, that Americans ‘did not win the war for us!’”
“Did you mention D-Day?”
I laughed and asked him about his Magdalen friends. Stretching my legs in front of me, having tried to forget my moment of desire, I watched myself smile at Joe and heard my voice in my head. You’re doin’ ok, Kaier. You’re entertaining a guy. Don’t get too excited but you’re doin’ ok. Perhaps Joe sensed my lack of fo- cus. He put down his mug. “There’s to be a bash,” he announced. “Week before Thanksgiving. Tremendous guests. All very sharp. You’ll get an invitation and you absolutely must come.”
“Absolutely,” I said, momentarily thrilled. I pictured Joe and his hyper Magdalen friends and lots of svelte young women in mini-dresses making clever chat and dancing to the Stones. How well would my charm work with this crowd?
“Where will the party be?”
“My digs. Northmoor Road, a Victorian pile in North Oxford.” So he probably roomed with other graduate students in an old house. I felt a little embarrassed staying in St. Anne’s where my parents thought I’d be safe. Although we were the same age, Joe’s choice of a place to live made him seem older and more sophisticated than I—not that it would take much.
We talked a while longer until he left, warmed and pleased. That evening, I wrote home.
Joe Starshak arrived sopping wet, looking for a place to dry off. A nice sort of chap, rather impressed with himself and his high-fallutin friends but he’s cheerful. He’s throwing a party the week before Thanksgiving, which promises to be a rare performance...literally
a performance. They’ve apparently gathered all the wits and wine in Oxford, or so Joe informs me, and I expect to see quite a show—perhaps a rather uncom- fortable one.
~
Already in my mind’s eye I saw myself as an ob- server, destined to be merely a watcher at glitter- ing Oxford parties. Joe Starshak was an NCG—a Nice Catholic Guy—in my family’s parlance. Jane Austen might have sent us on walks and ultimately arranged our betrothal. I was no fan of Austen, thinking her marriage plots were not for me but I could have used her canny advice. Perhaps I hoped Joe would somehow intuit that I found him attrac- tive and would lay siege to my inhibitions. These hopes rose like sea foam on wet sand, easily over- whelmed by the mighty wave of my belief that no man would find me desirable.
While I paced my chilly room or flopped on my Indian bedspread with a cigarette, questions about Joe broke through my determined efforts to forget them. I was so alone in this. I didn’t yet know anyone well enough in Oxford to talk with them about Joe. Letters to and from my college friends took many days to cross
the dark ocean. St. Anne’s had nothing resembling
a counseling center. As I turned my pillow over and over at night, trying to talk myself out of my barely acknowledged interest in Joe, I felt like I stood alone in a windowless room. That’s what I remember most about this struggle. How alone I was.
~
I still have the invitation to Joe’s party. He’d had it printed on heavy stock. When it came, I stroked it although parties where I wouldn’t know anyone made me worry about how strangers might react to my skin. At home we entertained friends, rela- tives and business associates of my father from
the Pennsylvania Railroad where he worked as a lawyer. I was expected to dress up, show up and be cheerful. Joe’s party would be different. I wouldn’t know anyone except Joe. Yet we already had his- tory. We’d been to the theatre. He’d come to my room for tea and gossip. What would happen next?
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