Lea pt. 1

Why is it that every time I meet a woman who can make me forget about the entire rest of the world she has to have some self-proclaimed personal defect that makes her "not worth my time"? I've heard that phrase more than once. I believe it's bullshit. I believe it's an excuse. I feel certain it's a lie, having heard it so many times.
"I can't cope with how much you make me feel." That was Lea. Lea Barnes. I was nineteen, she was twenty. We met in history class.
I remember the second day of history class. I counted that day, how many times the teacher said Uhm. Ahhs were counted as well, so the tally turned out to be six-hundred and two. I remember the class laughing over how many students had taken the time to tally up the stutters. I remember Lea sitting in her desk against the far wall with her friends. I remember that they didn't laugh, but she did smile at me.
Two weeks later, I was sitting in my own desk against the far wall with my new friends. We would pass notes back and forth about what we would be doing with our weekend, or even just later in the day. We'd smoke cigarettes together out in the "smoker's alcove". During this time, I got to know Crysta. I really liked Crysta. My only issue was that she was pregnant and not entirely separated from the father. I was with Crysta for probably three weeks. In the third week that I was with Crysta (she will deny this) she wrote me a letter which said that she wanted to slow down and perhaps see other people.
Three days later I asked Jim to give my number to Lea. I knew that she wanted it. I also knew that she would not ask for it. I also knew that she was going to be out of school for four days and Jim knew how to get ahold of her.
The first night that I spent with Lea was spent in complete platonia. We sat up and talked to each other for eight hours while Lea was house sitting for a friend. I remember her face perfectly now because I spent the better part of that night studying it. She had heavy lidded, almond shaped eyes. They were so deep a shade of brown that they appeared red in certain lights. Her hair was dark as well. Chestnut, you would call it. She had short, unruly bangs that she had to blow out of her eyes every twenty seconds or so. Her lower lip was slightly lop-sided. I found that simple imperfection to be deeply endearing. It was very slight and so subtle that it looked like she was merely smirking. Her upper lip was a little thin, but felt natural between mine. She had white teeth. They weren't really white white. They were as close to white as I've seen outside of tv. She had a small roundish nose. I used to press it with my finger and she would kiss the air. Her face was oval shaped. She had freckles all across her high cheekbones. I still remember how her ears felt between my lips. Her body scent is still familiar to me. There are times when I think that I smell her in some public place, crowded like a jar of pickles. A person trying to pass by will have a hint of her about them, and I swoon a little from the weight of the emotions caught up in that scent. People receive 90% of all information from their eyes; however, it is the sense of smell that we react to first and most instictually. Lea smelled like white jasmine and musk, dark musk.
I remember laying with her on her bed, talking for hours. I could talk to her for hours on the subject of the concept of nothing. I have never met anyone since that has stimulated me so, intellectually. She wrote a poem when she was in high school entitled, "Butter". As you might imagine, this was a provocative poem. She said once, that I was like that poem for her. Not the butter, but the knife you see. I suppose I should have taken that as a warning sign.
Lea and I didn't have much time together. She was scheduled to go to Ecuador for the foreign exchange program. I met her only four months before she was supposed to go. We started seeing each other almost two months before she was supposed to go. Perhaps it was all just bad timing. Perhaps I'm a chimpanzee dressed up for a post card photo shoot.
I remember one night, we were in my room and the condom broke. I tried to get up to find another, but Lea wrapped her legs around me. She pulled me in and kissed me. Then she whispered in my ear, "This is what I want to feel."
Lea would do little things to let me know that she was thinking of me, as often as she could. She would write out a short note and have one of our friends bring it to me. She would dial my pager late at night and leave 07734 as the call back number.
I took her to Lover's Lane one day. I made her blush a very deep shade of red. I won't tell you how I did it, but I will say that she did try on the french maid outfit for me. We very nearly didn't make it out of the store. Well, actually she would have probably kicked me in the knees had I tried that.
Lea and I used to sit at denny's for hours. We would talk about everything we could until we couldn't find anything to talk about. Then we would go and have a more in depth conversation. This was almost every day leading up to her departure.
I remember one day, I saw Lea with scratches on her face. She said that she had broken it off with both of her other lovers and her girlfriend didn't take it as well as her other boyfriend. She told me that she had broken it off with them so that she could spend more time with me.
I only saw Lea cry once. It was four days before she left. She and I were sitting in her room, and she was resting her head on my shoulder. Tears were quietly streaming down the side of her face and her voice was just a whisper as she told me about everything that she was going to miss. I'm getting a little ahead of myself though. It happens.
The day after I took Lea to Lover's Lane, she asked me if I would drive her over to HF to drop off a petri dish filled with bacteria. I was not fond of the idea of traveling with this petri dish in my car and was not shy about voicing my concerns. In answer to this, Lea grabbed me by the neck and kissed me. Then she said, "We just exchanged more bacteria than is in that dish. After that, I had no further complaints of trepidation. I think that I've written enough for this entry. There's just too much for me to write it all out at once. I need to let my memory work out the kinks. There are certain things that aren't quite so clear, but I'm working on remembering them as accurately as possible. This was over 10 years ago.