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Sat | July 16, 2005
Virgin of Loneliness
thought I'd post my crappy exercises from writing class. or shouldn't I? I still have no idea what I'm doing with this blog. but I did resolve to stop having so many reservations and just do anything I felt like, even if it's inconsistent or doesn't make sense as a whole. this blog will just be, "stuff I wrote." it fits because I wrote it.
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Annie Lin had ready eyes, a seemingly infinite amount of coursework and an incipient affection for Henry Marsh. Their paths had coincided several times at the university computer lab, and they had begun to say hello, and then they had begun to talk. She did not remember when he first started coming to the lab. Perhaps he had always been there, like her, but she had not noticed. Now she would always notice if Henry walked into the room. She was always ready for it. She had started to hope that he was going purposely to run into her.
She didn't hope for a relationship. It did not occur to her. She was surrounded by friends and classmates she could talk to and busy with deadlines. In a real sense she did not know loneliness.
Though she didn't want a relationship the roots of one grew naturally between her and Henry. It was the best kind of relationship—one germinated by affinity and affection rather than one planted in fear of age and to plug a hole left by an unsatisfactory life.
Henry drew a comic strip for the college paper. They hardly ever talked about it though. One day Annie said, "Your comic was funny today."
"Oh yeah?" he said.
"Yeah."
"It isn't always funny?" he asked.
"It was particularly funny today."
Another day she told him that she had rearranged all the furniture around in her room for no reason. "Where do you live?" he asked.
"Anderson Hall. Where do you live?" she asked.
"McKinley."
"My friend Kris lives there," she said.
"Is he a good friend of yours?"
"She--" she corrected, "is a pretty good friend."
After that Kris became a better friend, since visiting her brought Annie geographically closer to Henry. She looked his room number up in the directory and walked past sometimes even though it was not on the way. Sometimes the door was not quite shut. It just touched the frame and music could be heard from within.
One night on her way out of the dormitory she ran into Henry.
"Come see my room," he said.
His room was pleasantly neat.
"Do you want to see some drawings?" he asked.
Henry brought a large tablet and they sat on the bed, their backs to the wall. They put the tablet on their laps. He told her about some of the characters and where he got ideas for some of the strips. After awhile he stopped talking and put his arm around her and she flipped through the rest of the pages.
"I have to finish this up now," he said, showing her an incomplete strip he wanted to submit the next day.
"Good night," she said and waved goodbye.
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