what Nora would think of a person like that, someone who considered viewing a series of tiny black dots on an index card a good time.
Nora and her crowd were alive in a much more vibrant way. They missed classes, and didn’t seem to care. They stayed up all night long, staring at the ceiling, talking for hours about things they didn’t know anything about. Nora was the best of them, and they seemed to realise that, coming in tight around her, as if trying to make a little bit of her power rub off on them.
I didn’t want to be like those members of her group. I didn’t want her to think I was a hanger-on. But I realised fairly quickly that she liked me back. She appreciated my sense of purpose, organisation and dark humour. I’d never tell other people the jokes that I told her, but when I was by her side, I could give in to the wicked observations that I made mentally on a daily basis.
What I learned from being friends with Nora was that sometimes opposites do more than attract. Sometimes opposites perfectly balance each other, keeping each other sane and safe. Nora and I were able to provide eachother with the type of flat-out honesty that you can’t always get from a lover, that you can’t even expect from your family. We were there for each other, to extremes that boyfriends and girlfriends hardly ever reach.
Nora created her first club while we were still in college, transforming her dorm room into a members-only environment. Waxe Wod (or WW) was an anti-sorority/anti-fraternity environment to which both male and female students could retreat, like an officers’ club. The words Waxe Wod were from a poem circa 1200. She didn’t take the poetry class. I did. She read the piece in my book one evening when she was bored, coming upon this poem:
Fowles in the frith
The fisshes in the flod,
And I mon waxe wod ,
Much sorwe I walke with,
For beste of boon and blood.
(Translation: The birds are in the wood and the fishes in the flood, surely I go mad, all the grief I’ve had, for best of bone and blood.)
Nora decided that ‘waxe wod’ stood for ‘surely I go mad’. And she liked that.
Most of the patrons at WW were punk and goth, art-house friends of Nora’s who dressed like her. Well, perhaps not quite like her. I have never met anyone else who actually named their outfits – and I’ve hung out with my fair share of artist types. But these were the students who I should have looked more like. We shared classes together on art history – ancient and modern. We sat in the sculpture gardens together, cramming before tests from coffee-table-sized tomes. Yet I was the most out of place physically, never having the nerve to dye my hair the colour of a ripe plum or pierce my eyebrows, tongue, nose or any other body part. But Nora always made me feel welcome.
Even if I am conservative in my own dress style, I’ve never judged Nora. And even if she is more adventurous in her lovemaking, more adventurous in every part of her life, she would never judge me.
There were times back in school when Nora would hide out in my room to get away from the circus she’d created at Waxe Wod. She’d slip away, unseen by the masses who’d come to pay their respects to her, ducking under the clouds of clove cigarette smoke, manoeuvring around the velvet pillows spread all over the floor. I’d hear her knocking and, when I’d open my door, would find her standing there, similar to the way she found me at her place this very evening. Not bedraggled, exactly, but insecure. Nora exudes confidence. She is a bright flame. But every so often she has moments of self-doubt. On nights like these, she would climb onto my twin bed and lay her head on my pillow, wondering when the people in her room would notice her absence. But almost as soon as the curious clouds would come, they would lift, and she would be Nora again. Filled with animation. Fully sure of her choices.
I watched her the way I viewed art. She taught me to take
Nora and her crowd were alive in a much more vibrant way. They missed classes, and didn’t seem to care. They stayed up all night long, staring at the ceiling, talking for hours about things they didn’t know anything about. Nora was the best of them, and they seemed to realise that, coming in tight around her, as if trying to make a little bit of her power rub off on them.
I didn’t want to be like those members of her group. I didn’t want her to think I was a hanger-on. But I realised fairly quickly that she liked me back. She appreciated my sense of purpose, organisation and dark humour. I’d never tell other people the jokes that I told her, but when I was by her side, I could give in to the wicked observations that I made mentally on a daily basis.
What I learned from being friends with Nora was that sometimes opposites do more than attract. Sometimes opposites perfectly balance each other, keeping each other sane and safe. Nora and I were able to provide eachother with the type of flat-out honesty that you can’t always get from a lover, that you can’t even expect from your family. We were there for each other, to extremes that boyfriends and girlfriends hardly ever reach.
Nora created her first club while we were still in college, transforming her dorm room into a members-only environment. Waxe Wod (or WW) was an anti-sorority/anti-fraternity environment to which both male and female students could retreat, like an officers’ club. The words Waxe Wod were from a poem circa 1200. She didn’t take the poetry class. I did. She read the piece in my book one evening when she was bored, coming upon this poem:
Fowles in the frith
The fisshes in the flod,
And I mon waxe wod ,
Much sorwe I walke with,
For beste of boon and blood.
(Translation: The birds are in the wood and the fishes in the flood, surely I go mad, all the grief I’ve had, for best of bone and blood.)
Nora decided that ‘waxe wod’ stood for ‘surely I go mad’. And she liked that.
Most of the patrons at WW were punk and goth, art-house friends of Nora’s who dressed like her. Well, perhaps not quite like her. I have never met anyone else who actually named their outfits – and I’ve hung out with my fair share of artist types. But these were the students who I should have looked more like. We shared classes together on art history – ancient and modern. We sat in the sculpture gardens together, cramming before tests from coffee-table-sized tomes. Yet I was the most out of place physically, never having the nerve to dye my hair the colour of a ripe plum or pierce my eyebrows, tongue, nose or any other body part. But Nora always made me feel welcome.
Even if I am conservative in my own dress style, I’ve never judged Nora. And even if she is more adventurous in her lovemaking, more adventurous in every part of her life, she would never judge me.
There were times back in school when Nora would hide out in my room to get away from the circus she’d created at Waxe Wod. She’d slip away, unseen by the masses who’d come to pay their respects to her, ducking under the clouds of clove cigarette smoke, manoeuvring around the velvet pillows spread all over the floor. I’d hear her knocking and, when I’d open my door, would find her standing there, similar to the way she found me at her place this very evening. Not bedraggled, exactly, but insecure. Nora exudes confidence. She is a bright flame. But every so often she has moments of self-doubt. On nights like these, she would climb onto my twin bed and lay her head on my pillow, wondering when the people in her room would notice her absence. But almost as soon as the curious clouds would come, they would lift, and she would be Nora again. Filled with animation. Fully sure of her choices.
I watched her the way I viewed art. She taught me to take
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