On most weekday evenings of my sophomore year of college, a tight group of friends and I would whittled away the hours with the sharp edges of beer and cigarettes, enjoyed to the detriment of our health in my second story room in the fraternity house. This was also the year that my best friend and I started writing songs together. The fraternity house crowd was subjected to our initial cacophonies, but slowly we got to the point that other people could join in. Soon, people were putting down bottles and cans in exchange for acoustic guitars, and music mixed with the smoke in the air. We wrote songs about ex-girlfriends and lovers with titles like “You Chose Him (Instead of Me).” There is a cathartic aspect of making music; we were working out our insecurities and uncertainties born of failed relationships and shaken self-confidences.

And so, she stepped onto this stage and quickly took the spotlight. A description of her needs to heap comparatives on top of each other: she was so-very-much-more-sexier. Sex seemed to be her defining trait. She transferred to our school among rumors that she had been a high school stripper up in Philadelphia. I don’t know if that was ever true, but, at the time, I hoped it was; it made her alluring and dangerous like Stevie Nicks. When she started playing with us, we were singing and playing songs with a girl who was so-very-much-more sexier than any of the ones who were the object of our sappy lyrics.

She learned her guitar licks from a fraternity boy who was a genuine musician. She developed a poetic soul from another fraternity guy who was a genuine abuser. Musical skill and heartache; when she parted those full, sensuous lips to sing about love and loss in that raspy voice, I didn’t give a damn where she’d been or who she’d been with.

One night was so beautiful that our crowd almost tripped over one another to get outside. My friend suggested getting high at a small park about a half-mile from campus. We all agreed, even me. I have always felt out of place when I was high, though I practiced regularly for years. This night was no different.

My friends were all seated along a stone wall surrounding a water fountain. Not wanting to miss the conversation, I stood awkwardly in front of them, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. I couldn’t follow the thread of conversation, so I resigned myself to sitting in the nighttime dew. Confused and wet: neither version of grass was treating me kindly.

Then, in that sexy voice, she suggested that I play a song on her guitar. She had a beautiful instrument, a wooden acoustic died deep purple and shining with brand new, silver strings. I immediately started plucking the strings to Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.” I did not play the tune very well, but, in the magic of the garden, the rhythm of the crickets and cicadas provided the bass section and kept me on rhythm. More than anything I did, it was her voice that captured and kept everyone’s attention. With red-eyes, I took in the picture of my friends, singing softly together. With a dry throat, I added my voice in gratitude.

Vivian Gornick wrote that it is everyone’s inclination “to make of his own disability a universal truth.” One might indeed question the purpose of retelling the story of yet another white, suburban youth who went off to college and experimented with sex and drugs. My reply would be that I am one of the fortunate ones who lived to see a brighter day.

By understanding where I have been, I can fully embrace who I am and who I want to be. I have come to believe in a God because I have come to believe that this God suffered with me when (as my mom says), “I journeyed to a land far away.” To claim to believe in the divine now that I am happy and whole is not an act of faith, but mere lip service to my present state of comfort. I want to believe in a connection between my dark past to my present hope. This connection is always there, always present in the form of a little widow of light, shining in testimony to a better place.

For me, this idea of viewing oneself in relation to God and to others addresses my past insecurity about my self-image. Truly, human sexuality is a great mystery, but I have come to believe that God is big enough to handle our desperate searches and miserable failures with love and forgiveness. I listen to my past and say my prayers and, wonder of wonders, no longer feel so transparent, alone, and afraid. Even now, when I think about where I have been and where I am now, I get a little teary eyed. With a dry throat, I lift my voice in gratitude.

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