Slope Day: 1993

Today is a bit of a dark anniversary for me. And now I think I should confess.

Sixteen years ago, on May 7th, I experienced something that I have, blessedly, never felt since.

I suppose I should just tell the story.

In 1993 I was a junior in college, at Cornell, and at Cornell, on the last day of the school year the entire campus gathers on Libe Slope, a particularly challenging hill, to celebrate, the biggest party of the year. Three of the four years I was there that day was cold, dampening the festivities quite a bit, but that intervening year, 1993, the weather was perfect. I smoked some pot at home with my roommate Lisa and my best friend, Sharon, and I'm pretty sure we drank a bit too, though I don't actually remember that part, and then we headed out to the Slope. Thousands of our classmates were already there, drinking, smoking, tripping, whatever. Lisa, unfortunately, had to leave after not very long because she was working that evening, which left just Sharon and me.

Sharon and I had been best friends for pretty much our entire college career up to that point. We had met through mutual frinds, a group who all ate breakfast together, and we lived in the same dorm. In the second semester of our freshman year some circumstances conspired to bring us closer together, and by the end of that year we were inseparable. Predictably, I fell in love with her, and equally predictably, she did not fall in love with me. I was fine with that at first, just my lot and I accepted it, but as time went on, it grew harder to see her dating other guys and always wishing it was me. I was aware, even at the time, that this relationship was essentially a cliche mined by countless angsty teen films, but it wasn't just a cliche, it was real. No one has ever made me laugh the way she did, in the twenty years that have passed since I met her, and even though I turned out gay, my emotions were real. I soldiered on because her freindship was worth it, and of course I harbored secret hope that one day ... one day ...

Shortly after Lisa left the Slope, I started to feel a bit sick. I knew that if I took soem tylenol I'd be fine and there was no reason to stop the partying, but I'd have to go home and get it. I made a plan with Sharon: I'd walk home, which would take five minutes, take my pills and lay down for exactly ten minutes, and then return, another five, so we set a meeting place for twenty minutes later and I set off. And everything went according to plan. I rushed home. I took my pills. I rested and felt better. I rushed back. I arrived at the meeting place and Sharon wasn't there yet. I thought I might have even gotten there a bit early. I waited. I looked around and everywhere there were people, people I knew or ones I didn't, all in groups of two or three or five or ten. No one alone, no one but me. I waited. I thought maybe I'd gotten the meeting place wrong so I moved around a bit but kept my eye on the original place. No Sharon. No Sharon.

After I waited what felt like a sufficient amount of time, I started to look for her. I knew she was around, knew she must just have run into a friend, probably a mutual one, and lost track of time. Not like her to do that, but it was a special day and we were all a bit drunk and stoned after all. As I moved through the massive crowds I did see people I knew, people who offered me drinks and invited me to join them, but I always told the same story: I got separated from my best friend and I really want to find her.

No one was alone but me. Groups were camped out with picnic blankets and coolers. It was a perfect day. I encountered a number of guys that I had seen around in various places, from various classes or whatever, shirtless and drinking with their friends, and sometimes I'd stop my search to sit and watch these guys, none of whom knew me, envious, burning with my secret desires. Expanses of skin I'd never expected to see were suddenly everywhere, available for my eyes but still not for my hands, and the smoldering secret made me feel filthy. And alone. I'd never been more alone in my life.

I spent the next few hours like this, searching, stopping, searching, searching, until the sun had lowered and the party had thinned out so much that I could actually catalog every single person remaining on the hill and Sharon was not one of them. I went home.

At home I didn't know what to do with myself. I tried writing but I was too depressed. I was too depressed to do anything. Sharon called and I didn't pick up. She called again and she was crying and I still didn't pick up. Then, from my window, I saw her heading down the street towards my building, and I knew she was coming over, and I knew that when she buzzed I would let her in.

During the twenty minutes we'd been initially separated, she'd run into my friend A.J. and gone to his apartment to have sex. By the time she got back, I'd already left the meeting place. She'd looked for me but then run into another guy she knew, and left with him to also have sex. Do you forgive me, she asked, crying, heer head on my shoulder, as we sat on the sofa in my apartment and faced out on to the city. Of course, I said, but I didn't, couldn't, and maybe still don't.

That night my friend A.J.'s band was playing at Oliver's, the cafe where Sharon and I hung out, which was also where my roommate Lisa worked. I didn't want to go but went anyway, with Sharon, and sat right in the front.

None of this is what matters. This sort of stuff has happened to everyone and I've certainly had more unpleasant experiences in the decade and a half since then. But the reaction that I had that night was unique.

Watching my favorite band play, sitting next to my best friend in the world, I no longer wanted to be alive. The pain had gotten to be too much and it had dulled my vision such that the first clear thought to come out of that fog of depression was that I would kill myself. Not that I could, or should, but that I would, and not for revenge or attention or to make a statement. I just didn't see an alternative and I wasn't even thinking about the impact. My calmness about it was terrifying. After the show was over, I started to leave but Sharon begged me to take a walk with her, and I didn't want to, but somehow she talked me into it.

We returned to the Slope, united there at last, and I don't remember anything else about what happened there except an image fixed in my mind of the trash littered on the dark grass, under moonlight, looking like strewn bodies. But I'm relatively certain that Sharon, in forcing me to go for that walk with her, saved my life. I never felt like that again, and maybe I never let myself, but this has been a profoundly hard year with a lot o setbacks and even in that, I've never felt like death was a viable option. Maybe it's just because I was a kid. I don't know, and I guess it doesn't matter. I'm just grateful to be here.