Jeet

In 1994 I lived in Oxford. England, not Mississippi (though I do have a fascination with that state's name, but that is another story for another time). The school I went to was a conglomeration of international college students doing a semester abroad, plus English high school students trying to get accreditation for going to colleges in other countries. In my program, there were a bunch of Marquette students.

I had heard of Marquette before because it's where my grandparents always hoped I would one day go. This being, of course, back when we still lived in Milwaukee and I was six. Fourteen years later, and raised in the south, I was running into these Milwaukeeans via North Carolina. I was fascinated by the idea of people my age actually living in what I had always previously considered an old people town, seeing as to how my grandparents were my only exposure to it.

One student in particular was a guy named Jeet. Here was the thing about Jeet: he was perfect. There are times in my life where I randomly run across an individual such as this, a person who fulfills all my little requirements to get my brain chemicals bubbling in that certain way. One of the characteristics required for this combination of synapse firings is that Jeet was in love with my housemate Lydia. Lydia had big boobs. I liked Lydia at first, but Lydia was exactly the girl that this guy always likes: quiet and soft-spoken and seeming so sweet but kind of dumb with not much to offer and then it turns out that she's a cold hard mean ass fucking bitch from hell. At least, that's when I started not liking Lydia so much any more. It wasn't the jealousy over her having Jeet's heart so much (because I was making a go at being a lesbian at the time), but it was about the way she treated Jeet. I could have done so much better. They never learn.

Neither do I. I keep trying it again and again and it's always the same with the same outcome. See: Todd, Crooked John, Mary, Lauren, Carrie, Matt and dozens of others. They all fit the profile of what Nate refers to as "a chump." Nate is my own current chump and I am his Lydia. See: Aaron, Dan-Danny-Daniel, Randy, Sensitive Shoes Guy, Jason, Birch, Rebecca, Joy, Pink Haired Girl, and countless others.

Jeet had a thick head of dark curly dense hair. He had a shy posture and kind demeanor. A smile that lit a warm personal lamp between us and drowned out the rest of the din. He took endless amounts of explosive and bitchy shit from Lydia as she told him to come here and go away where are you going come back for more and he did. He read quietly in his room and made me mix tapes of REM and 10,000 Maniacs and when he was finished with reading one of his books, he gave it to me, inscribing that he thought I might be interested. I never read it and eventually weeded it out somewhere in a yard sale after my third move back to Atlanta. He stood in cold raining line, waiting for the premiere of Pulp Fiction and when they didn't let him in, the last seat sold to the person ahead of him, he came back hom and drew a picture of himself at the end of that long stretching line and gave it to me.

There were some mumblings about staying in touch which we never did.

In 2004, I found myself working in a book store in Milwaukee. I got called to the register to help a customer with something. He was holding my book and asked if I knew if the author had written anything else. "I can tell you that for certain because I am her and she has not," I said. Then I said, "Hey! Are you Jeet Chadha?" He displayed that smile.

I had just been broken by my most recent version of him, so my heart fluttered with hope. Maybe this could be a chance to make it turn right. Maybe he's grown up enough and learned over time and changed in some way, though obviously I had not, myself. We exchanged numbers and emails and I called a couple times, wrote him a note just to see if he wanted to get together for a chat. Catch up on what's new. And I never heard from him again.