{"id":15177,"date":"2018-07-16T18:22:10","date_gmt":"2018-07-16T22:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=15177"},"modified":"2018-07-16T18:22:10","modified_gmt":"2018-07-16T22:22:10","slug":"the-talk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/the-talk\/","title":{"rendered":"The Talk"},"content":{"rendered":"

July\/August 2018 | view this story as a .pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

By Gibson Fay-leblanc <\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\"JA-18-Fiction\"Kate was a devoted women\u2019s studies major with long hair that seemed to have a color and life of its own. A brown built from gold and rust and fresh-dug earth. She raised money to put a rape whistle in every student\u2019s mailbox; she wrote a thesis analyzing the paternalism inherent in the college\u2019s expansion plans.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was a longhaired peacenik, ex-hockey player\u2014the one who dropped his free ride to study Shakespeare and the Metaphysical Poets.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our lengthy courtship was either one night at a keg party, or two years of subversive work followed by one beautiful night at a keg party.<\/span><\/p>\n

I noticed Kate at freshmen orientation. Something about the way she carried herself: her small frame, the angle of her chin and neck, her eyes\u2019 bright secrets. I was distracted plenty by the large-breasted bottle-blondes who hung around the hockey house\u2014the kind of girls I dated in high school\u2014but I kept my eyes on Kate.<\/span><\/p>\n

For two years, I noted where she studied in the library and found chairs not too close but close enough that she might walk by and see me intent on Love in the Time of Cholera<\/i> or the complete John Donne. After I quit the hockey team, I volunteered to build houses in Kentucky over spring break but got put in the group Kate wasn\u2019t leading. Sophomore year I brought my own home-made sign to the annual Take Back the Night walk Kate organized: Dudes, No Means No<\/i>. She never looked twice in my direction. I began to wonder, though, if never looking at me twice was a strategy, something she was proving to herself.<\/span><\/p>\n

That night I was deep into a paper on the lyrical appeal of Satan in Paradise Lost<\/i> when barbaric hooting and yelling shattered the library\u2019s quiet. It grew louder and louder until three senior defensemen, Big Will, Macky, and Strapdog, rushed through the swinging leather doors of the main reading room, called out \u201cT Went,\u201d hoisted my chair above their heads, and carried me out in it, whooping and grunting all the while.<\/span><\/p>\n

Acouple of hours later, I sat in that same chair on the porch of the hockey house, pumping and pouring from the keg, checking out the star-lidded sky, and thinking this wasn\u2019t so bad, when I looked up and saw Kate standing there with two empty cups.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDouble fisting?\u201d I said.<\/span><\/p>\n

She almost smiled. \u201cFor my friends. Had to get outside.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I nodded, tried to be cool. \u201cQuieter out here.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIs it always like this?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWait till the Jello shots come out.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI plan to be long gone by then.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I pointed behind her, above the roofline of a row of three-deckers across the street. \u201cVenus is in the crescent phase, about to disappear.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She looked.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it\u2019s closest, we can\u2019t see it. Only 27 million miles away.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

What the hell am I saying? <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The light from inside flashed green in her eyes. \u201cWhy does it disappear when it\u2019s closest?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s reflecting all the light away from earth. If it was daytime and we had a telescope with a solar filter, we\u2019d see a black dot moving across the sun.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHockey player and star gazer?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t been a hockey player since we were first years,\u201d I said, patting myself on the back for not saying freshmen<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMust be weird, living here.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen in disgrace with fortune and men\u2019s eyes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

A dimple flashed in her cheek when she smiled.<\/span><\/p>\n

We talked about classes. I told her about Milton\u2019s blindness, his daughter writing for him, and how my hockey buddies still couldn\u2019t accept that I\u2019d found something that wasn\u2019t on ice.<\/span><\/p>\n

A guttural roar came from inside\u2014probably someone doing a funnel.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWanna get out of here?\u201d I said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhere?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I shrugged. \u201cI like to walk at night.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She was still holding the two plastic cups, now full. \u201cI should bring these in to my friends.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey could figure it out for themselves.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnd you could walk by yourself.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBeautiful night, though.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

I turned and walked down the stairs, forcing myself not to look back. The screen door slammed.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the corner I stood next to the stop sign for a minute. Loop back to the party or a long, lonely walk?<\/i> There were more of these walks lately than anything else.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAre you beweeping your outcast state?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I turned and saw Kate walking down the block, her teeth lit by the streetlight. Her thin legs below her jean shorts, her ankles above her black sandals.<\/span><\/p>\n

We walked and talked about books, the right-leaning campus newspaper, the best pastrami sandwich in town, and why Kate drove the Women\u2019s Studies van. She told me about a roommate who was raped two months into freshman year.<\/span><\/p>\n

That night, as we walked and talked, I didn\u2019t so much as hold her hand. A couple of hours later, as we wound our way back to the party, I described how fathers should take turns staying home with the kids.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s more equitable,\u201d I said, gesticulating with my right hand, \u201cplus fathers have lessons to impart without the mother around.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd vice-versa.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOf course.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t a lie. It\u2019s not like I concocted another Sam to convince Kate to invite me along for her end-of-the-night route, dropping several tipsy girls back to their dorms. But I was aware of my audience.<\/span><\/p>\n

The piano and harmonica of \u201cThunder Road\u201d came on the radio as we drove back up the hill toward the parking lot. Oh, come take my hand<\/i>, I sang out the window quietly, stars a meager chorus over the streetlights, Riding out tonight to case the promised land<\/i>. At the left-hand turn at the top of the hill, Kate gunned it an extra block and took a right down a dark cul-de-sac. She pulled over, put the van in park and turned toward me\u2014teeth marks on her lower lip. She grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the long seat in the back.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gibson Fay-LeBlanc was Portland\u2019s poet laureate from 2015 to 2018. \u201cThe Talk\u201d is an excerpt from a novel-in-progress, A River Between Us<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

July\/August 2018 | view this story as a .pdf By Gibson Fay-leblanc Kate was a devoted women\u2019s studies major with long hair that seemed to have a color and life of its own. A brown built from gold and rust and fresh-dug earth. She raised money to put a rape whistle in every student\u2019s mailbox; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[227],"class_list":["post-15177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-julyaugust-2018"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15177"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15180,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15177\/revisions\/15180"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}