My Addiction To Eve Garner
Jonathan Soriano

 

      She was like an angel, a gift of God descended upon to Earth, for no mortal could ever come this close to perfection. The first time I saw her was one of those moments in life that you never forget. It was as if I were being born again, as if all of time before that day had not really mattered. It was biology class, eighth period, when she walked in late through the door of a crowded classroom of high school freshman, when she walked into my life.
      Her name was Eve Garner, and I could not take my eyes off of her. Her every movement seemed like magic. The way she gracefully walked towards an empty seat in the back of the room, the way I became entranced by her very being, as if I were walking with her, felt like something out of an episode of "The Wonder Years."
      Every guy deserves to meet an Eve Garner at some point in his life, and here was my opportunity to meet mine. I had dreamed of her all of my life, and there she was, my dream turned true. She took her seat quietly, trying to make herself seem unnoticed, but it was impossible for me, impossible for any male possessing a single heterosexual gene in his body to not notice Eve Garner. Her eyes like crystals, her hair like midnight, she momentarily stopped what she was doing, looked across the room at me and smiled. For me, not yet fifteen, those two brief seconds that I spent looking into her eyes, when it felt as if I were looking through the gateways of Heaven itself, were the highlight of my young life.
      I went home that night ecstatic that the most beautiful girl in the world was in my biology class, and even more enthused because it seemed as if she were interested in me. I thought about what it would be like to be with her: how we'd be inseparable; how I would move mountains for her if I could; how I'd do anything physically possible just to be able to breathe one breath of her hair or feel one touch of her hand; how she'd be my inspiration, my strength, and my hope, which in a way she really was. The thought alone of being with her encouraged me to push myself to the limit in all aspects of life. It had made me a better person.
      I thought about all of this every night. Whether I was riding the bus home, or whether I was in school or out of school, eating breakfast or about to go to sleep, there wasn't a moment of the day that Eve Garner wasn't on my mind in some way or another.
      However, I could not bring myself to actually tell her all of this. Don't get me wrong now - I wanted to tell her how I felt more than anything in the world, but my anxiety and insecurity wouldn't let me. I worshipped this girl as if she was a goddess, and I couldn't fathom the ramifications that a possible rejection would have on my fragile heart. With each passing day, the time left in the semester grew shorter, my window of opportunity getting narrower. Unfortunately for myself, patience is a virtue that I've inherited in excessive quantities. But, I don't know exactly what is it that I was waiting for.
      Certainly, I wasn't waiting for a sign, for those I had in great multitude. The way that she would always look at me during class, as if I were the one who was special, as if I were the one who was so significant, and the way that her eyes always seemed to magnetically find mine no matter where we were spatially with one another, were reasons enough for me to believe that the feeling was mutual. Perhaps, I was waiting to conjure up enough courage to actually have a conversation with her. It sounds really simple, the whole idea of one person having a conversation with another. Yet, for me, it was the most difficult task that I've ever experienced. This girl wasn't any ordinary person. She was the glue which I had built everything else in my life around. I struggled so much trying to turn fantasy into reality. For this reason, the semester ended without me saying a word to her about how I felt, and Eve Garner and I never became a reality, my window of opportunity shut tight forever.
      There was a day in March later that year, when I finally accumulated enough testosterone to approach Eve, who I adored equally as much as I was petrified by, the way that I should have months prior to this. "Can I talk to you for a minute?" I remember saying to her. For the typical individual, this wouldn't hold much significance. But for myself, this was big. This was success. I finally had a communication breakthrough with the girl whom all of my thoughts and hopes had revolved around for so long, and I was the one who initiated it. The rest of our conversation should go along really easy, I thought, for I felt as if I had already done the hard part in confronting her. Ah, how wrong could I have ever been!
      My heart racing, adrenaline taking over my body, there was so much I wanted to tell her. I wanted to let her know how beautiful and smart I thought she was, how much I looked forward to seeing her each day, and how much she had meant to me. Yet, I found none of those things coming out of my mouth on that March day. Instead, I was tongue-tied and when I did manage to say something, it seemed as if I either tripped over my own words or that my words didn't make any sense. I felt like a little boy trying to explain himself, only I had no idea where to begin, which is the way I always felt when speaking to her.
      Interrupting my mindless display of lack of wit and experience, and possibly saving me from further humiliation, I recall her telling me how she now had a boyfriend. The natural reaction one would suspect, after having a dagger pierced through the center of your heart, would be to feel saddened, lonesome and depressed. I didn't feel any of those emotions initially. I felt rage.
      I stormed off mad at the world, bitter that fate hadn't granted me a perfect storybook ending to then the most significant chapter of my life. "Why?" I thought to myself. "Why can't things in life go right just this one freakin' time?" I demanded to know, displacing my anger upon an innocent door, slamming it hard enough so that it's echo and my discontent could be heard by all that was present.
      I found myself searching for reasons, looking for excuses that would help me put what had gone wrong in perspective. One thing peculiar about me at that time was that I was always full of excuses, and I always had someone to blame.
      I blamed my parents, for they were the logical ones responsible for my social incompetence and inferiority. Prior to high school, they had placed me in five different schools for each of the last five years. When you're a kid and you become accustomed to moving to a new school year after year, and having to meet a whole new set of faces, you eventually give up trying to meet new people. By the time I reached the ninth grade, I was light-years behind everyone else socially.
      I also blamed Eve. I questioned whether she had been toying with my emotions the whole time, which in my belief is the cruelest thing that someone could ever do to anyone else. Today, I sincerely doubt that scenario was likely, rather that when I approached her on that mad March day, it was simply a case of too little, too late.
      But still, that's what I wondered to myself back then. I wasn't thinking straight, the way people don't think straight when they're under the influence of drugs or alcohol. I was under the influence of Eve Garner. She was my opium. Some people would say that I became obsessed with her, but I prefer the word ''addicted.'' I was addicted to her, and I needed her in the worst kind of way.
      Soon, our relationship (or non-relationship) began to decompose like a rotting corpse. Co-existing with one another wasn't always the easiest thing in the world to do. We shared a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs, with a substantially larger number of low points than high ones.
      There was a time in the summer of that awkward year when, missing the natural high that her presence so often faithfully gave me, I found myself in the mode of desperation. It was vacation time, but weeks before this when school was still in session, I stumbled upon her telephone number in the guidance office. Now, there was no way I could let such a valuable resource such as this go to waste, not when I was feeling that lonely, not when all I wanted was to hear her voice. When things in my life weren't going the way that I wanted them to, Eve Garner was my fix. The feeling that I would get from seeing her each day was the one constant in my life full of inconsistencies.
       I needed to see her. Feeling compelled and daring enough to call her, I punched in her digits on a Bell Atlantic payphone near the beach, not too far away from where I lived. It rang twice, and then somebody picked up. It was Eve. She asked who was calling, and I told her who I am. But then something strange happened, something that sparked confusion and outright bewilderment on my part. She claimed she hadn't the faintest idea of who I was and then hung up the phone on me!
      "What in the hell was that all about?" I wanted to know. Breaking a twenty dollar bill (the only money I had on me at the time) to get change for the payphone, I tried calling her again. This second call produced the same result as the first one. Again, I called her and told her who I was. And again, she had hung up on me. Ok, now this really ticked me off. I wanted answers. I demanded an explanation, and she was going to give me one whether she liked it or not. I kept calling, with each failed attempt adding to a growing juvenilistic side of me, a side of me the world had not previously seen before. I called for the greater part of that summer, and when I got tired of dialing, I had my friends call. When nobody would pick up the phone, I left messages on her answering machine. Only, I wouldn't do any talking. I would leave the receiver of the phone by the television and let commercials play on her system.
      It wasn't until one day sometime around August, when the summer was half over, that I finally stopped what I was doing. That day, I called her house like I always did, and she picked up the phone. This time, however, instead of saying anything, she screamed. She shrieked at the top of her lungs, the vibrations of her yell so loud that I can still hear it more than 5 years later.
      It was then that I looked into the mirror and saw what I had become. I was a psychopath, a stalker, a person who wouldn't take no for an answer. I was an addict of this beautiful girl who I so desperately wanted to be with. I would later apologize to her for all of this, the way that I always found myself apologizing to her for something stupid that I did.
      Several times, in hindsight, I second-guess myself. I ask myself the question "What if?" What if I had told her how much she had meant to me when my window of opportunity was still open? What if I had not been so childish? What if I had not been so afraid of her?
      "Carpe Diem," my high school Latin teacher Mr. O'Neill used to say occasionally, advice more useful followed than simply just knowing of the English translation, and advice that I now ideally try to live my life around, for there's no telling what tomorrow might bring us.
      "There are worse things in life than a broken heart . . . like the love that you don't explore," says Joey Potter, a character on the WB TV series 'Dawson's Creek', advice that would've came in quite handy five years ago.
      Several times, I've pleaded with time to have back just one day of one period of my life, when I was 14 years old, so I could do things right this time. I'd look into her eyes, and without showing the slightest bit of fear or hesitation, I'd let her see my soul and inner-most thoughts about her. But, time is very cold and unforgiving. It remains indifferent as to whether you did something right or wrong at any time of your life, and it moves on and proceeds accordingly.
      Some may argue that maybe I'm living in the past, which is pointless, for the past is something that cannot be changed. But, I believe that sometimes it's important to understand your past and learn from your mistakes, so that your less likely to repeat them in the future. Never again will I fail by hesitating, as I search life for that indescribable feeling that she once gave me, just by being herself. Never again will I let an angel like Eve Garner escape me.
      Eve Garner, the girl who once captured my heart and then crumbled it several times over, remains very much a part of my past, a past in which I'd be lying about if I said that I hold no regrets.
      One thing about History is that people tend to have a selective way of remembering it. I choose to remember Eve by the way she made me feel when I first met her, when I thought that she didn't have an imperfection in the world. I choose not to remember the same girl who on the last day that I ever saw her crushed me emotionally and made me want to walk blindfolded into incoming traffic. It was Yearbook Day in my school that day, when all of the seniors were outside in a festive mood, because high school was all but over. I went up to her and asked her if I could sign her yearbook. "Why?" she said, with a cold look of disgust, a look that stated that I obviously wasn't worth the space that my words would've taken up in her book. I just wanted to be nice on that day, and end things with her with no hard feelings. I didn't expect for her to be so mean to me then, but I should've known better. For all of high school, I was like a stray mutt looking for a home, who would keep coming back to her, no matter how many times she brushed me away.
      There was a moment in the winter of the same term that I first saw her, when I believed that I still had a chance with her, a chance as good as anyone else's. I remember it was the last day of school before Christmas vacation. She was standing across the street waiting for a bus with some of her friends. It was ten minutes past dismissal and most of us had already left school and went home, but I couldn't - not without saying something (anything) to her. Not being able to see her for two weeks was something that I was very much not looking forward to. I must have appeared weird pacing back and forth alone along the sidewalk opposite to her, internally engaged in a war between my need to speak with her and my conscious nervousness, when much to my surprise, she called my name. This was my chance, the opportunity that I was looking for, I thought. She yelled my name again, thoroughly grabbing my attention. I side-stepped the bits of dirty snow on the curb and walked across the street, across the hardened piles of snow and clumps of ice that laid lifelessly on the surface of the pavement.
      I had seen her so many times before this, but each time I see Eve Garner, there's something uniquely special about her, something entirely different about her that leaves me completely awestruck. She smiled at me. Ohh, that smile - I've never seen anything like it before. It's a smile that's well worth paying any price of admission to see. She asked me if it's okay if she could borrow some change for the bus. Sure, I'd give her some change. I wanted to give her the world, for I felt as if she deserved nothing less. Conforming to her wishes, I mechanically reached into the depths of my pocket and pulled out a fistful of quarters and Susan B. Anthony dollars. Taking fifty cents from my extended open hand, she thanked me and wished me Merry Christmas. Nodding accordingly, I knew little at the time that this would be one of the last moments Eve Garner and I would be this cordial with one another.

      
      
      

 

 

Copyright © 2001 Jonathan Soriano
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"