Nadine (1962)

He met me at the dock in Genoa and I barely recognized him. The moustache and the long hair made him look European. Thinner too. I hoped he would meet me. The letter I sent must have got to him in Rome just a week at the most before I was to dock. The mail was so slow in those days. But I was in need of something to feel sheltered by and his confidence always made me feel better, made me less vulnerable. Had he not been there at the dock, I don’t know what I would have done. Somehow I knew he would be there. Garbo always had to play the hero.

My Garbo, I don’t think we were ever in love. But we made each other feel better about ourselves and isn’t that what people mistake for love nowadays? He, the wonder child of the art department. Janos does this, Janos got that, Janos is the favorite of this professor and that professor. And when I met him, what a pushover. All I had to say was that I had taken a year in Perugia while my father was on sabbatical. All I had to do was put my hand on his shoulder while we walked back to my dorm. Not that I didn’t like him. There was simplicity to the guy that bordered on simpleton, but he got by with a terrific sense of humor and his capacity for mimicry. Play a tune, he could duplicate it on any number of instruments. Give him a movie star, he could imitate him. Show him an image , he could replicate it. I always wondered if he could ever be his own artist. But always an energy that was attractive and an easy guy to be with.

Our breakup was not kind; I had run off with a graduate teaching assistant in the English Department. Tall and blonde and a real sweet talker, this guy spoke poetry, described my lips as worthy of a Shakespeare sonnet. ‘Yes I said, I will yes’. The weekend we spent together began well and ended awkwardly. I felt insecure and inferior. I could see he tired of me rather quickly. And so, back in Santa Barbara I confessed to Garbo and hoped to rekindle that old thing we had. I could have chosen a better moment to admit to my tryst. He had been drinking and smashed a glass of wine against the wall and stormed out of the party where I found him. Next thing I knew he had taken up with a blonde of his own. A blue eyed surfer girl ,all tanned and “golly gee”.

Then it was summer and I went back home and later heard that Garbo somehow got out of the draft and went to Italy.