THE BUS LEFT ME OFF by the university which was in a city, maybe Washington in the District of Columbia. Wherever it was, the yellow-hued brickwork and soldierly architecture looked so familiar to me. The hustle and bustle of an urban conurbation, sticky humidity, the metro escalators and streetcar exhaust. I walked along through the pedestrians and noise. Then I went into the school through the side door.
A long time ago, around the time that Nirvana’s popularity peaked, I had been in this same school. The layout of it was familiar to me because it was my alma mater, Sconset Junior High. If you went in by the side door and turned left down the first corridor, it would take you to Mr. Archimedes’ wood shop, where we once fashioned daggers and other weapons using the saws and sanders. In between, the grand auditorium, where year after year the theatre arts program staged productions that were widely beloved. The next corridor led to the music department. It was familiar as I said, except that it wasn’t.
Because the original school lacked a second floor over this wing, but this one had one, with a staircase up. I went up and looked out the windows, which showed that stretch of I Street between 23rd and Pennsylvania Avenue. Trash cans, hot dog vendors, and the shuttle bus to the Mount Vernon Campus. This was exactly where I was living in the spring of my junior year of college, except that my junior high had been transposed onto it. It was truly weird. On the second floor of this strange, fusion school, Marjatta was about to sing. She had a concert and I was going to it. I went to all of Marjatta’s concerts. Who wouldn’t go to see a singer who looked like a maiden from the Kalevala? She wore a red dress, her hair was done up like Little My. I was never sure if she was amazingly beautiful or not, but I liked her. I stood there with my camera, ready to take photos. This, I thought, would be welcome, boyfriend-like behavior.
Around her stood and sat a group of other Finnish musicians. They too were utterly out of place. But when they finished, Marjatta just brushed aside me with her small entourage of bassists and percussionists. She made some quick eye contact with me, but said not a hope-providing word. That was all. Unrequited love and all that. I was stunned and disoriented. I watched her walk away down the hall. I was back where I had started, wherever this place was. My melancholy youth of looking out windows.
north! 