"WAIT!"
I literally stuck my arm in the door of the train as it was closing for departure. Not a subway train... an AMTRAK. The conductor met my desperate plea with a grimace; she was probably trying to decide whether or not to leave me in ugly Penn Station.
"Please, my best friend is going to Iraq..."
It's amazing how that softens people's faces--you'd think I was going myself. The door opened and I hustled in, thanking the woman about twelve times as she gestured to show me toward my car.
People often find it hard to believe that my best friend in the world is a soldier for the United States Army. Well, technically she's an officer, a lieutenant. I'm a pacifist, an isolationist and a bleeding heart liberal. The military leaves a sour taste in my mouth with its just following orders attitude that acts without regard for an individual's belief (or disbelief) in a cause. I realize it's a necessary entity, but I'd like to see less of the "defense" money spent on guns and more spent on ways to reduce the necessity for them. Also the Army stole my best friend and partner in crime, and I've always been a little bitter about that.
-----
I will always vividly remember the moment I first saw AJ because I immediately fell head over heels in love with her. Four weeks into my freshman year of college I was in the lobby of my dorm waiting for the elevator with my laundry. I was saying goodbye to Three First Names, my sort-of boyfriend, giggling at him as he made a goofy joke and then wandered off to his room on the first floor. That elevator always took forever, but all traces of impatience disappeared when she danced up (literally, she danced) to wait with me.
Her curly blonde hair was haphazardly pulled back into a ponytail, and her cheeks and lips were rosy from the unseasonably cool September weather. She wore a lavender hoodie over a white tank top and had on flared jeans and white sneakers. I was sporting the goth look back then in a black minidress with tiny red flowers all over it, and a curtain of straight hair that hung to my waist in a shade closer to purple than to red. I probably had some serious eyeliner going on too. If anyone had been watching they would never have guessed that we would become friends. They definitely wouldn't have suspected that my heart was racing about a mile a minute or that I was dying to pin her against the elevator doors and kiss her and entangle my fingers in that messy blonde hair. I was totally smitten. "Hi," I squeaked.
"Hi!" she chirped back. "You're [Miss Adventurous], right? You're friends with PDF?" (See? I was popular in college. People knew who I was and stuff.)
"Yeah. Do we live on the same floor?"
"I think so. I'm [AJ]."
Her name was like a whisper through leafy trees in the forest. I completely forgot that Three First Names existed...or anyone else, for that matter. Her smile melted me. The sweet smell of vanilla hovered in a cloud around her. I saw her only in soft focus with a key light gleaming in her green, almond-shaped eyes. I couldn't stop noticing the little sliver of exposed skin between her jeans and her hoodie (remember when shirts weren't all hip length? Good times). We chatted for a minute but I was so busy gawking at her and marveling at her breezy, comfortable essence that I don't remember what was said. I just loved her instantly and wanted desperately to be a part of her life.
The next time I saw her she told me she'd been sexually assaulted. I was floored that she told me, but she said she was telling everyone because the police couldn't do anything and she didn't know how else to deal with it. I was enraged that some asshole guy had taken advantage of this angel. I asked if there as anything I could do for her. I visited her room, which was down the hall from mine, and we talked about it some more.
We got closer over the weeks that followed and eventually I confessed my hopeless love to her. She generously tried a little to love me back but she just didn't have it in her to love a girl. We agreed to be friends. Then, suddenly, it was like we had never been apart. We were like two trees that sprouted seperately and then, as we became saplings, grew together. We were two separate identities completely entwined with one another. There was no separating us.
Although our physical relationship never seriously progressed beyond warm hugs and pecks on the cheek, we were the perfect couple in every other way. Eventually her roommate left school and I moved in in a matter of hours. We had a hamster together that I pretended to hate. I followed her to cheesy college keggers and she came with me and PDF to the gay clubs and drag shows. I toned down the goth look and she got her tongue pierced. She got me stoned for the first time. We dressed up in funny costumes together. We played cowboys and Indians in the halls. We danced and danced and danced. We stole a drag queen's wig out of his apartment and had a million late nights at Denny's. She was the one at the hospital holding my hair back while I vomited charcoal into a trash can. She was the subject of all of my student films and I coached her monologues and enthusiastically applauded when she practiced singing and dancing. We founded the Circus, a motley group of like-minded, creative kids who would be an informal institution on campus for years to come.
A year after we met she went away to basic training for the Army. She never was the same after that. When she came back she was a nineteen year old grownup, and I was coming down from a year of sex, drugs and poor academic performance. We never really shared the same friends again. She still had dreams of the stage and the spotlight but they were overshadowed with a new rigidity (which I have since recognized as discipline, something totally foreign to me at that time). I wanted New York, she wanted LA. I was dreamy and experimental and she was driven. Even though we spent two more years at the same school I hardly ever saw her. I found myself saying "I miss you" on the phone. I met JH. I moved away.
Through the years though, "I miss you" became "I love you" on both ends, and with greater significance than the puppy love I once felt. And though the gap of our fundamental differences grows wider and wider every time one of us makes a life change our respect for one another grows too. I used to love her so intensely that I think it was hard for me to see how different we really are... Now that we're older my blind adoration has smoldered to a deep appreciation for a great and dear friend...although I have to admit a little jealousy when I found out her boyfriend had proposed.
Much as I disagree with the war and the military, I am proud of AJ for the life she has chosen to lead. She and I agree on one thing though; it sucks that she has to go. It blows my mind a little that she is strong and noble enough to follow through on her promise to a country that basically screwed her and stuck her and millions of other soldiers between a rock and a hard place.
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