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One time, Jared asked me to come to a function at the house he lived in. He had advantages, living in that house. He was special for living there and he was probably special all on his own, though I don't remember, or possibly I never knew, what it was about him that made that so.

He was from California. He had great hair. He was charmingly nervous underneath his coolness, adaptability, and intelligence. I was...I don't know what I was. I was 19 years old. I didn't own a dress. I borrowed someone's plum-colored cotton sheath in a size two sizes too big for me. I had some white satin ribbon, I'm not sure why. I tied a cord of it around my throat and I sewed some of it to my shoes and wound it around my ankles. I put my hair up. That's how dressing up still goes pretty often for me. I think its safe to say now that I'm not the girl with the right thing to wear, or the ease. I don't hate it, or mock it. It just moves away from me, like same-poled magnet ends.

He liked the way I looked. He liked me well enough although he did all the talking. He liked, I think, my listening. I think I can now and could then listen so hard that it would knock you out. Its not my party trick or my thing. Its not my way in or my way of getting you to stop thinking about you, while you're talking about you, and instead notice me.

Its just what I would like to do, usually. I'm generally interested. I'd like to know you, usually. And also it works with my shyness. That hasn't changed. I do now have a dress appropriate to each season that fits, and shoes and some jewelry that will go with it. Its 20 years later, and now I have something to wear that I don't have to sew an hour before I get picked up. It seems like a grown-up thing to arrange for myself that makes me feel a little better. It alleviates the background anxiety a small amount, to have that in place, and to know its in place. I don't want to have the outfit for you, so that you like the way I look. I just don't want to have to find something to borrow and then sew on it to make it OK. Its for me.  It gets it out of the way.

Anyway, that night we listened to a famous newsman give a speech. We had a glass of wine and we held hands and we had a small kiss goodnight after sitting for a long time afterwards in his musty basement apartment, him smoking weed, me in the beanbag chair, him talking, me listening, with party lights on and ska music playing. Then I got a ride home with a friend and the friend and I had a small kiss goodnight with the car idling, the dashboard lights on, the radio playing the college station. He liked the dress too, and especially the choker ribbon.

I walked into my dormitory and waited for the friend's car to pull away. I think back on that, and I thank fucking god for the world without a smartphone just then, no texts, no pings, no notifications, no nothing. Just watch someone pull away in secrecy, from a room with the light turned off on purpose, and when they're gone, they're just actually really gone, and its over. Its done, its ended, its over. And you can say, OK, and goodbye to that whole thing.

I waited a few minutes and then I walked down the hill through a cemetery that was there. I found a particularly soft spot in front of a very old slate headstone, worn and illegible, under a pine tree, cobbled with mounds of pincushion moss. I laid down and untied the ribbon at my throat, ripped the ribbons off my shoes. Rubbed my neck a little. Put an arm back bent under my head. Looked at the stars through the pine branches. Was alone. Felt comfortable.

Listened to the wind in the pine branches overhead, and the murmur of voices going on up the hill.