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Heidi J. De Vries

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October 7, 2002
Hindsight
I've been thinking a lot about Morgan lately, remembering him and our time together in vivid detail. I was attracted to him the moment I met him, a darkly handsome lad who was as drawn to literature as I was. We had both come to Santa Cruz a few weeks before our freshman year of college to participate in Wilderness Orientation, a ten-day backpacking trip designed to help ease the transition into university life. Morgan and I ate lunch together on the benches below Cowell before we were divided into our respective groups. That was really the last I saw of him before I returned to Orange County to pack up my life, but the damage had been done. I dreamt about him, I wrote about him, I cooked up schemes about how I was going to track him down, I guiltily cast a love spell. Finally it was time to move to Santa Cruz for reals, meet my roommates, and (above all) go to the lit major orientation. Because that's where Morgan was sure to be, and, oh frabjous day, there he was, completely undiminished by a month of my singular obsession. I smiled at him, and he smiled back. Did he remember me? How could he forget? Would he like to come back to my place for some Spaghettios? He'd love to.

It took me two days to work up the nerve to turn to him and press my lips against his. It was my first kiss. I was so embarrassed I buried my face in his neck for a minute, then came out and kissed him some more. He gave me tingles.

He was not the type of guy I was supposed to fall for, according to my conservative church upbringing. He wasn't a Christian, and he talked freely of sex and drugs. He liked me. A lot. I realize now that it was the last part that scared me more than anything else, and I didn't know to fight the urge to run. After a couple of weeks I took him for a walk and sat him down and broke up with him. Though I tried not to be cruel, I still hurt him. He cried.

I promised we would still be friends, but I didn't know how to do that either. He didn't try to contact me, and I hoped I wouldn't run into him on campus. The last time I saw him was in an anthropology class we happened to be in together. He stepped over me to get into my row, and I pretended not to know who he was.

I want to be able to say that I'm writing about Morgan now because I just tracked him down on the Web and I was finally able to apologize to him for what a jerk I was. I wish that was the end of the story.

Near the end of my sophomore year at UCSC I was walking out of my Latin class at Stevenson when I saw a flier pinned to a bulletin board announcing a memorial service for Morgan Jones. I made it back to Kresge, pale and shaking. My housemates, who hadn't known I knew him, told me they'd heard he'd died of a drug overdose. It had already been a couple of weeks. I'd missed the service.

Morgan and I had swapped fantasies of becoming writers. In one of the dreams I had about him after I'd just met him I found myself writing a book of literary criticism about his work, ready to present it at a conference. But I've really never written about him at all. Never written about how talented I thought he was, how hard his death hit me, how I still cry when I think about him.

My words cannot do him justice.

His dad's version



   



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2002

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