January 12, 2001
An Old Friend
It’s really good to have friends you
can talk to on the phone about anything, even your continuing 12-year obsession with
Steven Tyler and Joe Perry.
I first met Celeste in September, 1986.
We were college freshmen. This fall we will have known each other 15 years.
Our first encounter: I knocked on her
dorm room door in Brumby Hall, at the University of Georgia, and asked her if I could use
some notebook paper to write my first paper for college English. She handed me half a ream
of paper and would not let me leave the room with less. My first impression of Celeste:
aggressively generous.
(No, I did not go off to college
without any notebook paper. Like any overachieving freshman, I arrived with a lifetime
supply of college-ruled paper. But my English teacher wanted standard-ruled paper. This
was before the days of every student having access to a word-processor.)
 Our first year of college was wild. We
were on the 8th floor of a high-rise dorm full of women. We ate together, socialized
together, and played together, like a bunch of lab monkeys. We lived in each other’s
pockets. Actually, the rooms themselves weren’t much bigger than pockets. We slept
four feet away from our roommates (and sometimes their boyfriends). We sat in the hallway
talking until morning. We studied and watched TV in a tiny lounge with no windows or
ventilation. We all got our periods on the same day.
Their names still bring back their faces:
Susan, Chris, Jennifer, Liz, Heather, Lisa, Raquel, Fran, Val, Claudia, Micki.
My roommate, Delia, was a hell-raiser.
Celeste lived next door to us with Susan (who had moved in after Celeste’s original
roommate, Siouxsie, went home after two weeks). Celeste’s side of their room was
decorated with U2 posters. Candle wax covered just about every surface. Celeste was
seriously cool. Nobody knew what she did during the day. At night she went out.
 Celeste was enrolled in music
appreciation class, but the truth was, nobody appreciated music more than she did. She was
the first person I ever met who loved U2. And she really loved U2: when she took
English, she wrote a paper for her composition class about Bono. She went to shows in
Athens every night of the week. She took me to the 40-Watt Club. We saw Mary My Hope, the
SkinPops, the Chickasaw Mudpuppies. She also loved the Beastie Boys and Guns n Roses. We
went to see Aerosmith together. And we still discuss the Toxic Twins after all these
years.
Celeste knew people all over town -- in
the clubs, in the library, at Macy’s, in the black fraternities. She was cool, and
she knew cool people. She introduced me to the first gay boys I ever met (well, the first
ones I ever met who were out). Today people look at 32-year-old Celeste and think
she’s quiet and retiring. Shy, they think. I just laugh.
Winter quarter of our freshman year, I
moved in with Pervin, across the hall from Celeste. Pervin and I would stay roommates for
the next three years, living in two other dorms after Brumby. Celeste would frequently
live down the hall from us. The three of us are still close friends today. I feel like
we’re due for another three-way visit. Maybe this will be the year for it. |
