essay excerpt: we met in a basement music room
an unpublished scene from my 2024 Autostraddle essay
The first time the dean and I sang together, we met in a basement music room on campus. She swiped her all-access key card at the building’s entrance and I followed her downstairs, my guitar in tow, flushed with excitement.
“Thank you for trusting me with this,” I bubbled.
“Thank you. I am so excited.”
“Don’t thank me y — ”
“Ah!” She held up a finger and I grimaced. “See? You’re always apologizing.”
She was right. I was always saying Sorry, always getting ahead of the worst thing anyone could think or say. I felt sheepish about the predictable dance of my self-loathing, but I liked the intimacy of her observation, how she referred to me in such a familiar way. Always. She sat on the couch wedged next to the piano and I started strumming chords.
“I haven’t figured out the verses yet, but I think I have the chorus.” My fingers strained to remember what I had worked out on my own.
“Fuck.” I stopped, fumbling. “Sorry, I’m not…I’m usually alone.”
“It’s ok. I don’t wanna put any pressure — ”
“No no, you’re not. I just, um…”
She paused. “Try it without the guitar.”
“The chorus?”
“Yeah.”
She leaned forward onto her elbows and after a moment my voice filled the small room. When I was done, she spoke.
“I like that. Do it again.”
So I did. She closed her eyes and hummed with me and when we were done she exhaled a soft moan of pleasure, an invitation to continue.
“I have some harmonies too, if you want — ”
“Yes.”
“You’ve got the melody?” I felt my pulse in my throat.
“I think so.” This is happening.
Our eyes met and I gave the starting note. When I broke into harmony, electricity rippled under my skin. We sounded good. After we finished, she leaned back, beaming.
“Oh god.”
My face was warm. “You like it?”
“I love it.”
W e soon began meeting one night a week or so in the basement practice rooms and often her office to harmonize. There was wine, sometimes, and then there was wine, always. I knew it looked odd for me to be spending so much time with someone in her position, but the world had labeled me an old soul early in life. Friendship with adults was a familiar territory.
Collaborating on music encouraged an emotional closeness I was eager to share with her. And then there was the confidential nature of her lyrics — about falling for a woman for the first time a few years prior, about her desire-filled marriage to her compersive husband whom she’d met in college, about a student muse from her recent past. I welcomed her secrets. They made me feel important, and her attention distracted me from my boyfriend-less loneliness.
I started to place myself in her path, spending hours in locations I didn’t need to be in order to orchestrate a chance meeting. I would stroll past the bushes outside her office window, pretending to check my phone as I glanced in to see if she was there. I bought two plastic lawn flamingos and stuck them in the bushes so when she looked outside and saw the pink birds, she would think of me.
