North of Normal

Christopher Marlowe and me


I could spend a hundred thousand words on the myriad ways that my ninth grade English class changed my life. Don't worry, I won't do that (at least not right now), because today is Christopher Marlowe's 440th birthday.

That ninth grade English textbook had a great selection of poetry. I've still got poems lodged in my head from book: A E Housman's "To An Athlete Dying Young"; Gerard Manley Hopkins' "Spring and Fall."There was one page that I read over and again so many times that I am surprised that the ink isn't worn. On one side was Christopher Marlowe's"The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" and on the other, Walter Ralegh's "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd."

The more I read them, the more I swore that one day, some guy would look at me and say, in his sincerest tones, "Come live with me and be my love . . ."

I would smile at him, and reply "If all the world and love were young . . ."

It wasn't just the wooing, though that was part of the fantasy. To have someone chase after me with pretty words and a thousand fragrant posies? Yeah, that would be nice. But nicer still would be someone who understood the power of words, and who would know about Marlow and Ralegh and laugh at the joke. I never quite found that. To be honest, I didn't try hard enough at looking. Afraid that I'd always be the girl that never got wooed, I never let myself be. I clung to whatever was around and told myself that a little bit less was better than nothing at all.

Unlearning that was hard.

So there was this guy, years after ninth grade English, with whom I was walking along the precipice of friendship and something else. I sent him a Valentines card--not out of any real romantic feeling, I just saw a funny card and sent it to him. It came with a horrid pink envelope with hearts and cupids, and I wrote a joke on the outside about how people would talk. Not that they weren't talking anyway.

He called me in my dorm room to tell me that he had received it, and was sending me a card himself. It would be late, but he'd bought it before Valentine's day, honest. I laughed and believed him. Then he told me about another card, one he made for himself, for a girl who wasn't me. He had quoted that Marlowe poem on the cover of it, he said. Come be my love.

When I hung up the phone, I sat for a moment. I was honest, for just that time, about my feelings for this guy. Someday, I thought, someone will read that poem to me and mean it. I had really thought, hoped it would have been him. Flowers do fade, I wrote in my journal. Rivers rage, and rocks grow cold. I packed it all into that mental box of denial and repression and added another strip of duct tape at the seams. In a few days, I called the girl that wasn't me and invited her to join a bar crawl that would also bring him into town.

It sounds like a sad story, so far, doesn't it? But it's not. Because a week or two later, I stopped in the lobby to get my mail and burst out laughing. There, through the little window was a horrid pink envelope with hearts and cupids, sealed with a shiny strip of duct tape. I knew it was from this guy before I even pulled it from the slot. "The adhesive wouldn't stick. Can you believe it?" he had written on the flap. Inside was a card that said "Whoever discovered you could fill chocolate with more chocolate--we salute you!" The duct tape just did me in. I giggled up three flights of stairs and showed the card to five people in the hall. That mental box broke open and there would be no packing it back up.

Roses and posies and kirtles of myrtle--it's a line, and it's a load. It's Marlowe trying to get into the pants of a pretty little thing just above his station, and not even being as subtle about it at as John Donne was. This guy? He knew that, but that didn't mean he wasn't above trying it where he thought it would work. Sincerity isn't practiced and pretty, it's simple. And sometimes shiny and sticky.

When the girl who wasn't me called to cancel on the bar crawl, I didn't press it. The guy came with his roommate and we went out to get rippingly drunk. By the end of the night, we were kissing outside the English Department office. Smiling stupidly while the world was shifting beneath our unsteady feet, it hit me. Youth can last, joys have no date and age had no need. Laughter and duct tape and easy conversation, these were the delights that would me move.

Nobody's ever going to ply me with coral clasps and amber studs, and I'm okay with that.

Happy birthday, Chris. Sir Walter and I say "shove it."



Define "kirtle" without consulting a dictionary and I'll give you a dollar: