The First Time I Fell In Love

Falling in love at Georgia Tech was like Monet in Math Class. But sure enough life throws you some tricky ones when you least expect it.

This happened maybe five years ago, but I remember it very well. I was headed up the walkway past Skiles, the campus building that housed the Mathematics department, when she walked by me.

At first, I thought I got it wrong. I figured my glance must have been a peripheral one at short speed and my brain didn't get a clear picture of what I just saw so it made up a pretty face for my consciousness to interpret. Brains do it all the time- everyone has a blind spot somewhere between their eyes that our minds interpolate between for instance. People think they see something moving in the shadows, magicians constantly deceive us, so I held guarded, as I saw her walk into Skiles. I went in after her, just to be sure.

I looked around for a bit, but to no avail. I turned to leave, but then there she was, up against the rail, smoking a cigarette, and facing the courtyard. I saw the full breath of her there and realized that the report my eyes had given me before was vastly understated- she was so beautiful that it ruined my life.

Her hair was like the country in Georgia and its earth in its best in every season. Her spirit was the sixties and seventies and all of its promises of freedom and love. The boots and chapped leather she wore contrasted with her Nehru shirt which clashed with her blue eyes in a melange of emotions and colors and eras that no one would have ever suspected to bring together but found resonance in the kinds of melodies that uplifted the soul of any man who ever longed for anything he couldn't hope to have in his life.

My life was ruined then because I didn't know how I could approach her or what I had to offer her. Sometimes things just work out your way, though. And without stopping to consider whatever karmic debt I might have had to payback in the future I looked on in disbelief as one of my old friends from childhood walked up to her and began talking to her.

He knew her. They were friends. I had my in.

I casually walked up to greet my old friend who was one of those guys with the 'Class President' mentality and attitude that resulted in him knowing pretty much everyone worth knowing. He casually introduced me to her.

Her name was Olivia. It was one of those names that was always a good name but you never really realized how beautiful it was until you met someone that embodied everything it had the potential to be.

She exhaled the contents of her smoke out into the air. I watched the wisps of smoke grasp in futility at the breeze, attempting to claw their way back to her beautiful lips. I felt for those poor little tendrils of nicotine.

She told me she was a math major. I couldn't believe it. If I had been a math major, and walked into Linear Algebraic Theory and seen her in class I would have dug up the corpse of Pythagoras and french-kissed it for creating the foundations of modern mathematics that had attracted this woman to it.

I was doing a Shakespeare play at the time and she told me she used to act- she had played Lady Macbeth once in High School. I invited the both of them to come see the show that night and they agreed. Sometimes things just work out right.

Not always perfectly, though. We had a competent enough theater out there at Georgia Tech that turned out some really good shows- but Shakespeare was never our forté. We always gave it a shot, though, entirely inconsiderate of what we would be subjecting our audiences to. That show was Henry V, and we had a damn good Henry, but little else. I turned out one hell of a sober and lackluster performance in my dual roles as Williams and the Archbishop of Canterbury, but she still wanted to hang out after the show and she told our mutual friend that she thought I was cute and she liked me.

“She likes guys with long hair,” he said.

That revelation was like the raw power of Three Mile Island run out of control threatening to annihilate everything inside of me.

I flirted with her gently every time I saw her since then, rearranged my schedule so that we would have more chance encounters, and asked her out every chance I got, but the Shakespeare was a little too dull and I wasn't old enough (I was four years younger than she was) and I was just kidding myself from the get-go because she was way out of my league. I wasn't the only one that noticed her. Every man that she walked by suddenly had his neck snapped around like they were bad guys in a Steven Segal movie. I never stopped trying to win her over, though.

I reasoned that if I ever managed to make it work out I would be so enamored of her that I would do anything for her and be there for her always and surely that sort of doormat persona couldn't help but appeal to her.

Yes, I was still a virgin in college.

One day, she just disappeared. None of her friends, no one that knew her, knew what happened to her. She had been telling me that her parents wouldn't help her out with money because they were the traditional sort that believed a woman should settle down with a well-to-do gentleman and take care of the house. And she loved Math, but she was lousy at it- her grades had been horrible. So I assume she dropped out, but I have no idea. She just disappeared.

I look back on it now, and I think, we never had a relationship, but she was so much the way love is- burning and intense and fleeting and then...

it's just gone.

When it goes away it can seem so sad. Love, when it's there, seems so wonderful that you can't imagine ever being unhappy again. Then, when it's gone, you can't imagine that it was ever worth it in the first place for the heavy toll it takes on you. They should stick the addicts and the heartbroken in the same methadone clinic. The way it leaves you desperate and sick searching for a fix anyway you can get it- even making someone else fall in love with you only to be satiated by the sort of superficial sensation that could have been achieved with a big bar of chocolate and a hot shower and end the rebound relationship prematurely, devastating the other person and subjecting them to the same cycle.

I'm sure there's an upside to it too, though. Happy Valentine's Day, I mean.

I cut my hair and I took on new interests and tried to make my life about something more than just falling in love. Right now I'm operating on the assumption that when that is accomplished, true love will find you. If I'm wrong, I'll start hitting up the online dating services or something.