I can't tell you what finally made me do it. I'd been thinking about it for weeks. At first it was just a wild fantasy, but as time went on, the fantasy turned into possibility, and from there into a plan. I knew my opportunity was going to be during Spring Break, but for the first several days I was stuck--just couldn't make a decision. It was all I could think about and I wasn't getting a lick of work done, but somehow I couldn't bring myself to do anything. Finally, something had to give. It was already Friday and several chill, rainy days of miserable Midwest weather had somehow morphed into this beautiful sunny, warm day. Those don't come that often in this part of the world, and almost never in March. I took it as a sign.
So I put on one of my new outfits: a sexy black denim skirt, a light spaghetti-strap blouse (no bra--what was I thinking?) and my new laced platform sandals. I knew the sandals and the skirt would really highlight my nice legs, of which I was justly proud. How had I become such a tease?
I stuffed a few overnight items and a change of clothes in my backpack (ejected textbooks strewn onto the floor in haste), grabbed my purse and hopped in my rickety old Escort for the two-hour drive back to the small town where my former undergrad school was located.
Like I said, I can't tell you why I felt I needed to do this. The last 6 months had been the most amazing of my life. I just felt like a whole new person after just 1 1/2 semesters of grad school. Here I was, a naive little small-town girl in a big city at a big state university. All the things that I discovered there--I just can't tell you! Well, one of them was sex, and another was love, or so I thought for a while. The sex was great while it lasted, but it was all hooked into this love thing and I felt it and I thought he did too, but it turns out, not so much. So I fell pretty hard that first semester when I got dumped. At least I was able to channel my misery into my piano studies and I really progressed. Amazing what you can accomplish when all you do is practice. Turns out that getting dumped is also good for the artistic expression. Ain't that a bitch!
Well, next semester, same damn thing. This time I wasn't falling for any stupid trumpet players, and while I was at it, why not avoid musicians altogether? So I met this really cute guy in my French class and we started dating. That's about when I died my hair and started using makeup. Why not just start all over? Anyway, the sex wasn't as good, but I really liked him--for a while. Then he started getting rough with me, usually just verbally, but he pushed me around a few times, too. But not many, 'cause I was outta there. Hello practice room!
At least I had my music and that was going really great. All that unlucky in love stuff really does change how you feel about music and I was sure in the dumps. So I pulled out this old piece that I just loved--still do, actually--and started working on it again. It's this nocturne by Chopin. I heard it in the movie The Pianist. It was the first piece of music that made me cry. Well, it turns out that hearing something that makes you cry, and being able to play something so that it makes other people cry are two different things entirely. The only tears that were shed when I was learning that piece were ones of frustration. How many lifetimes ago was that now? I guess it was in my freshman year. But now, it was a totally different experience. Once I got the notes back under my fingers everything just seemed to fall into place. I could hear how the notes meant something, how I could hesitate or rush forward and it said something. And I just poured my soul into that piece, day after day after day. (Musicians are a self-indulgent bunch, if you didn't know that already.)
Anyway, while I was playing that piece I naturally thought back to my old teacher, Dr. O'Brien, or Dr. O, as everyone called him. He was so patient with me on that piece, actually with everything and I got to thinking that, as much as I'd learned and grown in grad school, it was because he helped lay the foundation for me to build on. I'd always remember the way he'd light up when I finally really got something, and the glow in his eyes when I started actually saying something with my playing. That wasn't until my last year, but he never gave up on me. I also remembered what a tough time he had for most of the time I was a student with him. He and his wife were really having problems. He never talked about it with students, of course, but word got around and you could see it those times they were together in public, like concerts and school parties.
He had really changed by my last year, he looked kind of worn down. That's when his divorce went through, I think. It made all of us who studied with him really sad, because we all really loved him, in a student/teacher kind of way, and we were sorry to see him so unhappy.
But as I looked back from my new perspective, I started wondering if it really was a student/teacher kind of thing between us. He never gave any physical hint that he was attracted to me. Of course, I was so damn straight-laced back then, it's probably no wonder. But there was something in his eyes, in the way he looked at me, and in his smile, that now, well, I was no longer so sure.
And in my wallow of self-pity I had this fantasy of going back and seeing him and finding out what was what. I was probably just acting out a school-girl crush thing that I didn't even have the maturity to know I had when I was back there. But I couldn't shake the idea and as I kept on playing my beautiful piece, and thinking about Dr. O's careful guidance, something just started to take root inside of me. That's when the fantasy turned into a plan. A hair-brained sketch of a plan, but a plan nonetheless.
So after days of waffling I was in my car in my hussy outfit and headed back to my old stomping grounds. Once I got into town, it took about 30 minutes for me to get from pushing the first digit of his phone number on my cell phone to actually making the call. Each time I got close to that last digit my blood would be pounding so hard in my head that I'd hang up. I practically wore down the battery on my phone!
But when I finally made the call, I managed to sound calm, even nonchalant.
"Hi Dr. O, this is Sarah."
"Sarah!? How good to hear your voice! How are you?"
Hmm, 'how good to hear my voice'? That seemed a little warmer than might be expected. Just maybe . . .
Well, my first plan, of having lunch to break the ice and to try to get the lay of the land didn't pan out, but he wanted to hear me play, so that was good. But we couldn't meet until four--five hours with nothing do to! I was too nervous to eat, and several times I had the key in the ignition ready to turn tail. But somehow I stuck it out. I found the old practice rooms and played for a while, but I couldn't really focus much.