Mitchell College - Thames Log Yearbook (New London, CT)

Page 77 text:

thing by which the rest of the world and of mankind will mark your presence here on earth. History does not remem- ber factory workers. A machine can assemble or sort or print or inspect. Only Man - and God - can create. I stopped, and debated whether to elaborate. i'Do you know what I mean ? jef f was watching the progress of the pool game. Chris did not look too captivated. Yes,l' she fibbed again. As if on cue, jeff returned his attention to his two friends. Chris lives in Cambridge and works downtown in Boston. As if you couldn't tell, she is very Italian. You should meet her parents sometime, Tom. They're nothing short of magnificent! They both speak more Italian than English, they'll smother you in attention, wine and food at the drop of an introduction. I've never known such charity and unselfish generosity! They're the two greatest old people I've ever known! Old people? I said, with a look intended to remind jeff that he was saying this in front of Chris, for God's sake. She entered in. My father is seventy-two, and my mother is almost sixty-five. At times it feels as if I'm living with my grandpar- ents!' Although she might not have meant it to be an all-condemning statement, I took it that way. Why don't you move out, then? How old are you? Twenty-three. Really! Why don't you? It might get through to them that you don't want to end up the spinster who lived and died under her parents' protective captivity. They might come to realize that not all the children of Old World ances- try want to remain so completely uninitiated into the American way of life - and particularly the American way of growing up. And you MIGHT even discover some exciting differences yourself. You can't stay sheltered all your life. You've got to get out and make some decisions on your own. And some mistakes of your own. At least it will result in your destiny being determined by your wishes, not theirs. Looking back now, I wish I had caught the look in her eyes at that moment. I would have understood that she did not take the same view of living with her parents that I did, that she didn't see it as a prison walled with stuffyN Old World mores. She didnlt want to forsake all the rich tradition and the firmly-delineated heritage, which she cherished a great deal, just to become a more typically troubled and turbulant young All-American woman. she loved the com- fort and security that this personal inheritance gave her. It provided her with an almost religious sense of serenity and confidence. I wish I had seen that then. But, with the clatter of the break shot coming from behind me, I continued sermonizing for several more minutes. When the crowd at the party began to seep away, I mentioned to jeff that we should invite a few of our friends up to my studio for a while. He agreed, and a few minutes later a caravan of autos, led by my antiquated and almost- completely-windowless Ford van, made its way to the dead-end country road where I lived in an old single-room studio above an empty four stall garage. As we rattled up the winding driveway which left the road at the Dead End sign, Chris looked over -Ieff's shoulder and took note of the locale, which, she was surprised to discover herself thinking, was the perfect lair for an unsuspecting seduction scene. A true bachelor's paradise. She noticed also the windows popped out of the van and never replaced, a small crowd of motorcycles sitting and lying half-buried in the snow, and

Page 76 text:

atural Charm by Thomas H. Finnegan This would not be a very difficult shot: one of those familiar half-table-length, slight-angle-to-the-right, end- pocket shots, it would leave good position for the fourteen and then a perfect break shot. And yet, as I looked it over and watched Bruce lean over his table with a confident smile, I knew he was going to miss it. I could feel it. Too much angle, the nine would hit the cushion a foot before the pocket with that air of ineptitude about it that can put you off your game for hours. If it were my shot, I told myself, I would sight it in once, pause while staring down the nine, line it up again, wait for that curious sensation of certainty that tells me everything is right, and then . . . pink. Click. Rooolll. Kapunk. Tom! Corne on, partner, concentrate. We need this break shot. Watch your bridge. Pull your fingers up higher. Hey, Tom! Not yet, Bruce. Make sure you . . . Hey, FINNEGANW' Pink. Click. Rooolll bump roolll. I was annoyed as much at being called by my last name as I was at Bruce,s shot. Among friends at a party, a last name echoes coldly off postered walls. Through a hovering gray cloud I could see a corduroy arm waving over at Bruce's basement bar. Bette Midler crooned to us that she's In the mood . . . as our opponents prepared to finish off our rack. Wake up, shark! Come on over! I Want you to meet a friend of mine! The voice was that of my good friend, jeff, whose companion, I could barely discern over that smoke-obscured distance, was a short, dark-haired girl. With the Divine Miss M urging me on, I threaded my way past the butt of a cue, over a tangle of limbs on a pile of tasseled cushions, and toward jeff and the short, dark girl. He was smiling amiably, standing with his left arm resting lightly on her shoulder. Hi, Tom! I'm really sorry I had to tear you away from your favorite game, but I wanted to introduce you. This is Chris Bongiornig Chris, Tom Finnegan. I smiled down at her and observed that she held her head at a slight angle, as if she were embarrassed or had poor posture. Her black hair was cut quite short and did not look particularly attractive to me. But she had marvelously large brown eyes, a broad but pert nose, and an intriguing smile. Hello, Chris. Are you artistic? Already I had forgotten her last name. Am I artistic? she asked quizzically. 'QDO you paint or sculpt? Or Photograph ? I paint a little, she fibbed. Why, do you? No, I don't have any ability at all myself . But I admire people who do have talent. I should have stopped at that, but I continued. I think that there cannot be a nobler ambition than to be creative. There couldn't be a more desirable achievement in one's life than to leave behind something of one's own creation - a little piece of oneself - some-

Page 78 text:

the unshoveled sidewalk over a foot deep in the stuff. She was wearing saddle shoes. As she got out of jeff's car she found herself, as if projected into the future, and having just climbed out of my van, looking around for the lights of other house. Which she could not find. She stood dejectedly for a moment at the end of the sidewalk, and, as she resigned herself to the impossible task of leaping to the widely-spaced impressions my boots had made up to the porch, was suddenly swept from her feet into jeff's arms, he carried her up the sidewalk and the flight of stairs which were treacherously iced over from the melted snow which dripped off the roof in the day- time. Even now long icicles hung down in front of her eyes. With difficulty, jeff climbed the steps and entered the screened but snow-swept porch, where the scattered pieces of another motorcycle lay everywhere save for a kicked- open path to the door. We clomped noisily, and Chris tried to follow the echoes off into the black, still night. Every- one poured inside. A while later, the seven or eight people sat or lay around the room, which had more backless sofa-beds than chairs under its low, canted ceiling. Leonard Cohen came from the tiny speakers of my Budget-Priced, Low Grade stereo. From time to time I had to club the top of the receiver to make the left speaker work. After a survey of 'fYes, please's', and No, thank you's I disappeared through the room divider into the kitchen half of the studio. When I returned many minutes later, Chris was staring at the oily motorcycle chain under the dresser and was idly toying with a glop of dust and thread she'd found near her hand. On a reflex, I served her first. She looked at her mug of coffee and the two slices of cinnamon toast on a plate, and thought, I should have told him I haven't eaten for a week - I might have gotten a grape, too. Curious, she excused herself and walked around, through the kitchen, looking for the sink piled high with dirty dishes, and on to the bathroom. There she found the medicine cabinet sparsely occupied by one razor, one blade dispenser, one can of shaving cream, one toothbrush, one tube of paste, one bar of soap, and one deodorant spray. One washcloth, one face towel, and one bath towel hung on the rack. Coming back through the kitchen she noticed in the farthest comer of the ceiling a tiny spider, the food shelves nearly empty of groceries but crammed with spark plugs and carburetor parts, and a cod draft from the cup- board doors beneath the sink. She propped herself against jeff, observed the only other girls present doing likewise with their dates, and saw me talking with a friend about a bike poster which hung over the far bed as I sat polishing a gas tank. Abruptly, she began to feel tired and wanted to go home. Two nights later jeff and Chris invited me, and another couple they knew, to an evening at the Lion's Den, a cozy night spot they frequented. Through the night, Chris danced occasionally with jeff, the other two roamed the dance floor all evening, and I remained at our table and drank twelve whiskey sours, placing the swizzle stick from each in my coat pocket. I wore the only coat and tie I possessed, a rather old and extremely unfashionable tweed with a too- thin drab tie and sickly pale yellow shirt. All my money was continuously funneled into bikes, parts, and accessories,