Thanksgiving at Harvard

I visited Elisabeth at school for the first time in three years this weekend.  I arrived in Cambridge on Wednesday night and stayed until Sunday morning.  It was amazing.  I mean, it was amazing.  I wanted to stay forever.  Her friends are wonderful, the things they do are wonderful, and the way they’re organized is wonderful.  I’m jealous.  I want to keep it.

Elisabeth and I and two of her friends called Alex and M.A. made Thanksgiving dinner, which was a big success.  I actually cooked!  And I didn’t blow anything up or set anything on fire or anything!  Elisabeth set something on fire, but it was only a paper towel and it didn’t cause any problems.  The people who came over that night were as follows: Kevin, who is a freshman from Harvard Westlake, who was in his appearance and mannerisms a cross between Jesse, Benjy, and Sam G.  Very sweet kid, "entirely unobjectionable," in Elisabeth’s words; Michael, with whom we also went to tea the next day (Kevin came too, but he was very quiet), who I found I could talk to very easily and very genuinely; Alex, who was kind and interesting, talkative, slightly awkward, very friendly, and either really flirting with me or gay; M.A., with whom I was on the same wavelength all night; Mauro, who was some bizarre blend of all-encompassingly geeky and really engaging, despite his over-enthusiasm about everything particularly his own conversation; Ed, one of Elisabeth’s best friends, who reminded me sort of of a cross between Elisabeth’s father and Aaron G but remained entirely separate from both of them overall; and Vincent, a mystery-man who made fun and interesting jokes and conversation but revealed little.  It was a wonderful evening.  Really exceptional.

The next night, we went out with Michael and Kevin, and wound up back at Michael’s room for a bit; then we migrated to Vincent’s room, where we were joined by M.A. and a friend of hers, Mauro, who was tied up in homework about whether society should be colour-blind or multicultural, Ed, Elena, a girl I met Wednesday night from Russia who I found slightly intimidating, Genya (sp?), also from Wednesday and also from Russia and also slightly intimidating but also fascinating, and another MIchael, who went by Mike, who coached me through a game of Magic played against M.A., who was being coached by Vincent.  We played many fun games, and were there until around 4:00 in the morning.  Have I mentioned yet that Vincent was beautiful?  Well, he was.  Is.  But there is something about him that makes me tread lightly…like it would be easy to say the wrong thing.  He has a lot of edges.  The word I used for him later was "brittle," and I stand by it.  I was very drawn to him.  He seemed to like me well enough, too…we had some kind of nice energy and chemistry together.  Funny.  I didn’t see him again after Friday night, I knew him for two nights, and I find I miss him.

Saturday, I met Elisabeth’s friend Tyler, whom I also liked very much.  We spent quite a lot of time with just him, so I got to know him relatively well, and we got along very nicely.  I would be happy to see him again sometime.  That’s true of all of them, but especially true of Tyler and a couple others.  There was an extra sensitivity about him, a subtle something that reminded me of the things I loved most about Aaron.  That night, we went over to Elena’s room to watch March of the Penguins, and met a couple more people, and saw Cody, who was there.  That was really nice, I’d been actively missing Cody all weekend and wishing fiercely that he were there.  So I was very happy to see him.  The only important person I actually met that night, though, was named Aaron D.  I had heard a little about him from Elisabeth, but what I had heard did not prepare me — this guy was brilliant, knowledgable, and possibly knew more musical theatre than I do.  And he made these elegant, courtly sharp motions that quite caught me.  We played more fun games, including Bottacelli, and left to go to the Kong (a late-night Chinese restaurant) after several hours.  I was surprised at how many people gave me hugs when we left that night (it was my last night in town)…people who I did not expect to want to touch me beyond possibly a hand-shake.  I appreciated it.

Some of these people tried to encourage me to transfer to Harvard.  Let me say, I was tempted.  Not that it’s really possible.  And it would probably wreck the rest of my forseeable professional life.  But these people read fantasy books.  They’ve read more fantasy than me — I’m dreadfully behind because I haven’t read George R. R. Martin.  These people play games that I love, regularly, together.  They hang out all the time.  They do Live Action RPGs, known as LARPs, for weekends at a time in the tunnels beneath the dorms on their campus.  That’s like playing college-level Imaginary Games, the games Elisabeth and I reluctantly gave up in middle school.  Can you wonder I’m jealous?  I didn’t want to leave.

Tyler, Aaron, and especially Vincent are very much in my thoughts since my return.  I sought everyone out on Facebook the day I got back, and everyone accepted me as a friend immediately.  I couldn’t find Vincent and concluded that he wasn’t on Facebook, until yesterday I got a friend request from him — apparently he has himself set up so that only Harvard people can see him or something.  His profile is a little disappointing, as in there’s almost nothing there, and the picture of him looks so unlike him that I wonder if it was digitally altered to make him less attractive.  I mean, it’s recognizably him, just about, but it doesn’t really look a thing like him, except his hair.  I was sad.  Oh well.

I miss Elisabeth, of course, most of all.  Being with her is so right, and being without her is incomplete.  That’s easy to forget, because I’m so used to us being apart.  Late, late one night, we had a talk about our relationship…I had realized recently that I thought we were best defined as twin sisters, not as friends, and I was comforted and calmed that she agreed.

And now I am home.  And there are mundane things that must be done, like cleaning the kitchen, and scary things that must be done, like evals.  But Dan S and I finally started rehearsing our scene and we’ve planned out all our rehearsals for the rest of the week, and it’s looking good.  I might actually pass.  It could happen.  Dan K and I have not started our song yet, he’s in The Sound of Music and it begins previewing tonight before its official opening on Friday.  In theory, we’re going to practice every night between now and evals, but it depends upon him calling me, since he’s bloody hard to get in touch with, and he hasn’t actually done that yet.  We work so well together.  The hard part, the only hard part, is getting into a practice room with him to begin with.

I’d best get to work on the kitchen.  Anna’s having one of her weeks, when she holes up in her room and doesn’t really talk to anyone unless it’s

to snap at us for something random, and she left a note in all caps saying that somebody must clean the kitchen.  And she cleaned the bathroom, so one of us should do the kitchen, and I don’t know where Alicia is so it will be me.  I’m fine with that, it just means I have to do it.

In other news, I’m back in close touch with Barry, my Irishman who is too serious about me for our relationship as it stands.  I can’t quite decide if he’s a hopeless romantic who thinks he’s found something too special to let go in me, or if he’s socially awkward and slightly lost when it comes to propriety and will be hard to escape from.  He seems a little too good to be true.  But he works for Dreamworks, and he’s invited me to go to their Holiday Ball with him if I’m back home in time…it seems a shame to miss that.  So perhaps I’ll try to arrange things so I can be home by the 15th.  That would mean shipping my car home, but my mother actually suggested that first, she says it might not be any more expensive than the cumulative cost of the drive.  So we’ll see.

–Stephanie