| | Memory Residue
This must be what is meant by associations. Memory residues, sometimes long enduring but
infrequently presented for reflection, other times rediscovered as if for the
first time, but always familiar. Recalled liked fragments of a dream poorly
remembered.
Standing in Harvard Square at a crowded outdoor musical
performance, I am seventeen. The square is across the street from the noble archaic brick building where I share a dorm room with another summer
session student. Sunny and chilly, this summer's late morning smells of pavement, cold blue air, tobacco smoke, soft sharp breezes. Like a rising feeling of
nausea I find myself aware of an older man watching me
surreptitiously from across a smaller intersection. He is in his twenties, unshaven and gruff appearing, weathered skin,
his face in a scowl, looking right at me but shifting his eyes away from me as
I notice him. This is important, why now though? Driving to my work, thinking
about my patients for the day, unfinished clinical notes, my weekend
moonlighting schedule, I wonder about my unintentional recall of this event as
I take control of the memory and follow its course, intentionally now, through
the foggy narrative, rich with emotional resonance. He appears different
from the rest of the crowd, in sharper relief, more real or more important than
the multitudes engulfing us.
Everything is quiet in my mind, the music, the crowd noise
fades away. Two more figures become a part of our private sphere as if all three are connected
by dotted lines. Two men, associates of the first, dressed in street clothes, not unkempt but dangerous.
They too appear to be working hard at paying attention to me without attracting my
awareness. I move to another area of the crowded square, but quickly notice
their triangulation of my position once again. This is absurd. Am I paranoid or
at risk? Do I work through my anxiety or act to protect myself against
potentially imaginary blackguards? They are closer to me now, distant enough to be
out of physical contact but raising the ante of my sense of amorphous risk. My
skin crawls.
The story has by now unfolded itself to completion in my
memory. What's left is rumination and pondering the relevance, if any, of this
event and its need to be recalled. The summer has been a rich experience of learning and novel activity.
Apart from sitting in undergraduate law classes (my older never realized
ambition to become a lawyer), I have been working with an acting troop from
Brown University, performing Hair at the Hasty Pudding Theater. I am a "hanger-on," working as a volunteer usher for the performances, in love with the
cast and their off stage explorations into the life style portrayed in this
60's psychedelic love fest. I have felt myself on the margins all summer, not quite in my element, but this day I am alone, and feeling it profoundly.
I move again trying to blend in with the crowd like I'm dancing with my demons, temporarily out of site.
It is clear to me I am an intended victim, but of what I am
not sure. I am only certain of the nightmarish quality of my fear and the
constant guarded vigilance of the three men. In the crowd there is a large
black cop in uniform. How does one explain this need for help? What trumps the
day, my fear or the humiliation of asking for succor against a real but
unexplainable threat. My emotions are high in my throat as I explain the
impending crisis to him. As I speak his massive figure looms over me, listening
with a passive accepting face. He may think I am making things up, manipulating
for some devious gain myself, but I ask if he can help me get back to my dorm.
The first, "dangerous man," still stands across the street, no longer watching us but
still outlined as if in a spotlight in my mind's eye; the crowd vanishes away as I point him out.
The big policeman offers to drive me to the dorm in a circuitous route to
avoid giving away my place of residence. He is the hero of this real world children's story. Why is he so cooperative when I feel
so irrational? As I remember it, we don't speak during the drive, and he brings
me to the other gates of the dormitories to drop me off. The entire event plays
itself across my memory in less than a few seconds, this emotionally terrifying,
humbling but ultimately benign adolescent experience. I never did see these men
again or understand what they might have been after, although I can form an
image of the first man, vividly, now some 25 years past. My dream state fear is palpable. Hair completed its run (full frontal
nudity included), and for a few years after I tried to maintain friendships with
my favorite cast members who tolerated my doting hero worship as we gradually drifted
apart. I kept a weather worn copy of the poster advertising the play for many
years, the cast members' faces huddled together in blurred red ink on thick yellow card copy, a tangible connection to a time of rich memories and change in my life.
It is like a particularly favored song, hidden on a dusty and scratchy LP in the closet. My non-trauma plays itself unrequested on occasion, but I
can't explain to myself or you what brings it to mind. |
