Miracles

The intense craziness of my relationship with Jennifer Strawser, as is documented in Silly Putty, took much of its velocity from our being young, but also sprung from culture-shock, hot-wired into opposites attracting, then shaken and re-stirred without either of us being aware it was happening. Jen was clearly out to impress everyone in State College, especially the Daily Collegian crew, that she was from a solid lower middle-class background. She was not. Yet the headlong lunge into hard-core mattress-thumping calisthenics took Jen and I into a slanted, enchanted la la land where I hadn't bothered to venture with Kelly or Mandee. In the middle of our antics, Jen and I might as well have looked like Yellow Submarine cartoon versions of ourselves. Jefferson Starship catches Jennifer Strawser and I red-handed with what it means to, y'know, be able to handle things. We got lost. If Jen felt she had no choice but to lie, it all got busted when I visited Liverpool that summer of '96. At that point, I was occupying more than one la la land, owing to a dose fit for a Piper. Intense craziness. But the intensity is something, in retrospect, that I like. There was nothing tepid, bland, or insipid about who we were then, or what we did. The Marty Balin character in Miracles is about as pixilated as we were. And as horny. Jen visited Upper Merion, then, too, where I was stationed on semester breaks. We did a real roundelay routine. If I had trouble tying my own shoes at that particular juncture, so be it. Jen could tie them for me.