|
I've been thinking a lot about Morgan lately, remembering him and our
time together in vivid detail. I was attracted to him the moment I
met him, a darkly handsome lad who was as drawn to literature as I
was. We had both come to Santa Cruz a few weeks before our freshman
year of college to participate in Wilderness Orientation, a ten-day
backpacking trip designed to help ease the transition into university
life. Morgan and I ate lunch together on the benches below Cowell
before we were divided into our respective groups. That was really
the last I saw of him before I returned to Orange County to pack up my
life, but the damage had been done. I dreamt about him, I wrote about
him, I cooked up schemes about how I was going to track him down, I
guiltily cast a love spell. Finally it was time to move to Santa
Cruz for reals, meet my roommates, and (above all) go to the lit major
orientation. Because that's where Morgan was sure to be, and, oh
frabjous day, there he was, completely undiminished by a month of my
singular obsession. I smiled at him, and he smiled back. Did he
remember me? How could he forget? Would he like to come back to my
place for some Spaghettios? He'd love to.
It took me two days to work up the nerve to turn to him and press my
lips against his. It was my first kiss. I was so embarrassed I
buried my face in his neck for a minute, then came out and kissed him
some more. He gave me tingles.
He was not the type of guy I was supposed to fall for, according to my
conservative church upbringing. He wasn't a Christian, and he talked
freely of sex and drugs. He liked me. A lot. I realize now that it
was the last part that scared me more than anything else, and I didn't
know to fight the urge to run. After a couple of weeks I took him for
a walk and sat him down and broke up with him. Though I tried not to
be cruel, I still hurt him. He cried.
I promised we would still be friends, but I didn't know how to do that
either. He didn't try to contact me, and I hoped I wouldn't run into
him on campus. The last time I saw him was in an anthropology class
we happened to be in together. He stepped over me to get into my row,
and I pretended not to know who he was.
I want to be able to say that I'm writing about Morgan now because I
just tracked him down on the Web and I was finally able to apologize
to him for what a jerk I was. I wish that was the end of the story.
Near the end of my sophomore year at UCSC I was walking out of my
Latin class at Stevenson when I saw a flier pinned to a bulletin board
announcing a memorial service for Morgan Jones. I made it back to
Kresge, pale and shaking. My housemates, who hadn't known I knew him,
told me they'd heard he'd died of a drug overdose. It had already
been a couple of weeks. I'd missed the service.
Morgan and I had swapped fantasies of becoming writers. In one of the
dreams I had about him after I'd just met him I found myself writing a
book of literary criticism about his work, ready to present it at a
conference. But I've really never written about him at all. Never
written about how talented I thought he was, how hard his death hit me,
how I still cry when I think about him.
My words cannot do him justice.
His dad's version
| 
Heidi J. De Vries
