Let’s Go A Musing, Shall We? Part Two

Our bodies can’t tell the difference between what is real and what we vividly imagine.

Above: I am 17. It’s 1973 and I am a senior in high school.

This is Part Two. If you haven’t yet read Part One, you may want to read that essay first. Here it is: https://karinflodstrom.substack.com/p/lets-go-a-musing-shall-we-part-one

If we are careful, muses can inspire us without the baggage of obsession. When thinking of muses, there are so many delicious possibilities. My early muses were immature and shallow. After all, I was young, naïve, and impressionable. I think of each man I dated as a love lesson. Every man taught me something new.

When I was in high school, girls drooled over the popular 1970’s movie “Love Story.” Now I look back and see a superficial view of relationships, but in high school, the passion between Ryan O’Neill and Ali MacGraw enchanted me.

This was not a two or three tissue movie. No, this was a movie where you needed a whole box of tissues to cry your way through to the ending. Tragic, romantic, with beautiful young people making angels in the snow and wise cracking their way to marriage, “Love Story” wormed its way deep into my unconscious in a way of which I was blissfully unaware.

The summer after my sophomore year of undergrad, I met a man. Let’s call him Brian. Brian tapped into my “Love Story” fantasies. We were from neighboring farm villages, and I hadn’t known him in high school. My brother-in-law brought him to my house one afternoon.

I hadn’t expected them and was standing on the sundeck of my family home when I heard my brother-in-law say, “Karin, I’d like you to meet someone.”

Above: I am on the left in 1978, the first summer I met Brian.

The first time I saw this new man, I fell hard. TIMBERRRR! I was a Tree Girl. I glanced at him, then looked away quickly, hoping he didn’t see the dumbstruck look in my eyes as I was instantly fascinated with this tall, slim, dark-haired stranger.

Like me, Brian spoke thoughtfully and had careful manners. He was from a nearby farm town and grew up as I did. Unlike me, he went to an Ivy League college. My school, the University of Illinois in Champaign Urbana, was certainly not Ivy League.

Brian had an east-coast quality about him that was reflected in the way he dressed and talked. He drove a red Triumph convertible and talked in that slightly sarcastic, challenging way of upper-class preppies. He dressed like a preppy and his “Love Story” style blew me away. A “Tree Girl” for sure, I was thrilled when Brian called and asked me out.

He was from a nearby farm town, but I felt he aspired to an extraordinary life. For three years Brian called me every two or three weeks whenever we were both home for college breaks. He once told me that he replayed our dates over and over in his mind. I was surprised because that’s what I have done too. Even so, it was clear to me that Brian meant more to me than I did to him.

Forty-seven years later, I still remember our dates that mostly took place over the course of three summers. On our first date we went to a local fair and rode the caged Ferris wheel. We sat in a little enclosed car with a pull bar. When we pulled the bar, the car turned upside down.

When the car tipped us upside down, we whooped like children. Brian and I were both the oldest children of large farm families. I could tell he also felt the pressure of the eldest – to be a good example for our younger sibs and help take care of them.

I think that’s one of the reasons I saw us as a good match. Under our carefully crafted serious exteriors of farm kids preparing to go places, I sensed we were both a little dorky and longing to break free.

One of the best things about Brian is that he took me on imaginative dates. He didn’t come from money, so he had to spend carefully. He spread out our dates, and it’s likely I was more attracted to him because he held me at arm’s length.

Once he took me to a beer garden at a high-class restaurant. It was a gorgeous summer night. While sitting at a bistro table with lights twinkling around us, we sipped Johnny Walker Red scotch on the rocks. We talked about our families, experiences at college, and our dreams for the future.

I told Brian how hard it was to adjust to the huge University of Illinois after graduating from a high school where there were only 69 students in my class. He listened as I told him other students called me “Little Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm,” and how I felt intimidated by the beautiful, wealthy, sorority girls.

He told me about his initial struggle to fit in at his school until he learned to copy the clothing, attitudes and speech of the students around him. Brian said he was finally feeling comfortable and as if he fit in.

Another night Brian took me out dancing. I wore an ivory, slightly below the knee, circle skirt I had sewn, paired with a matching ivory boucle, short-sleeved sweater set. The skirt brushed against my tanned legs as we danced cheek to cheek. Brian was wearing well-fitted black pants and a crisp white shirt. I felt so grown-up.

After each date, we found a deserted park where Brian laid out a blanket and we made love. The night we went dancing, he hadn’t been able to buy condoms. He’d meant to, but at the last minute his brother asked to go into town with him. Brian didn’t want to set a bad example by buying condoms and letting his younger brother know he was having premarital sex.

As the evening wore on, Brian drove from bar to bar looking for a bathroom with a condom machine. When he had no luck, he finally gave up and drove toward my home. It was a lovely, still summer night. The top of Brian’s car was down, and I propped my legs up on the dash. The breeze made my skirt fly up, exposing my tanned legs.

Brian pulled down my skirt and said, “Stop it, you’re driving me crazy.”

I pushed his hand away, and let my skirt fly up again, telling him, “Too bad. Maybe next time you’ll find a way to bring a condom.”

One time we played tennis; another time we went out for dinner. There was a weird date where he took me bar hopping at a nearby campus town and I saw my entire high school crowd having a girls’ night out. They had planned an evening together without inviting me.

I pretended to be delighted as I walked up and greeted them. I was glad I was with such a handsome man. Let them wonder who he was and how I met him.

“Hello! What a nice surprise to see you all here,” I said, smiling broadly.

(My best friend, Terri, looked down at the table and wouldn’t meet my eyes. She later told me the girl who organized the party refused to invite me.

“I don’t know why she hates you so much, Karin,” she’d said. “You have never done one bad thing to her. You have only ever been nice.”)

Brian saw my face when I turned away from my friends. I told him this was my high school group of friends, and they hadn’t invited me.

He said, “Let’s get out of here. Just so you know, you are prettier than any of your so-called friends.”

When Brian had a death in the family, my sister Janet called to tell me. She said she was about to drive down to the university to pick me up. Janet said we could attend the visitation together.

I wasn’t sure if I should go. After all, Brian wasn’t serious about me, and I didn’t want to use his grief as an excuse to see him. I feared my presence might be insensitive, but Janet insisted. She told me that of course I had to come home and attend the visitation. Luckily, I had just finished sewing a gray suit that I could wear with a white blouse and black heels.

Janet brought me home and took me to the visitation. When I walked in, Brian’s mother somehow knew who I was even though we had never met.

She pulled Brian’s arm and said, “Look who is here.”

I saw Brian gasp and say, “Karin!”

After I walked through the line and paid my respects to his family, he and I took a walk on the sidewalk by the church. I wasn’t sure what to say and Brian seemed content to walk silently. He asked if he could take me out for drinks in a couple of days and I agreed. Instead of going back to school, I stayed home to wait for his call.

The night we went out for drinks, I listened quietly as he talked about his grief. He became angry and started to fling his arms around while I sat there. I knew he had to grieve in his own way. After expressing some of his feelings, he grew quiet.

He looked at me and said, “Do you know that you are likely the nicest person I have ever met?”

I was glad I’d come home. As it turned out, Janet was right.

My favorite date was the time Brian showed up at my house and said, “I have a full tank of gas. Let’s collect farm towns. When we have found the right town, we’ll turn around and drive back home.”

We headed south, riding with the top down through a beautiful summer day, looking for signs, and passing small town after small town. I don’t care where I’ve been or what I’ve seen, I will always be a country girl at heart.

The sweet smell of the tassels in the cornfields, the blue sky, and basking in the warmth of the sun is easily my definition of heaven. If you’ve grown up in the boonies as I have, you know the unequalled beauty of a country summer.

We barely talked, just drove on and on, calling out the names of the little places we passed, each with its row of homes and barely there downtowns.

At last, we came to a town that was only a cluster of homes.

An old, large, white sign told us that the name of this tiny place was “Starbord.”

We looked at each other and Brian said “This is the place, right?”

I agreed. Reluctantly, Brian turned the car around and we drove back home.

One time, after we had both graduated and I had my own apartment, I made dinner for Brian. He said the fish was perfectly prepared.

After dinner, I wanted to know if our relationship was going anywhere. After all, we had been dating off and on for four years.

I said, “I really like you. How do you feel about me?”

Brian jumped up and ran his hands through his thick, dark hair until it stood on end.

He said, “I am really not good at things like this.”

Then he left abruptly without answering my question. How could he leave so suddenly? I expected him to come back and explain, but he never did.

In the years to come, when my life was unhappy, Brian became my muse. I would relive our dates, counting them off one by one, like pearls on a necklace. I’d remember the perfect nights and know that, maybe someday, a man like Brian might come into my life again.

The difference, in my opinion, between a muse and an obsession is that you accept reality but use it as inspiration for what might come next. I mused about the dates I shared with Brian and the men that might appear, but I didn’t create a fantasy world around him. I hoped he might come back but knew he most likely never would.

I suppose this type of musing is very similar to manifesting. Shortly after this time, as it turns out, a man that matched my musing did come into my life. I thought of him as a “Kennedy man.” After all, the appeal of the movie “Love Story,” really came from the Kennedy fascination that spread like wildfire through our country when JFK and his glamorous wife Jackie were in the white house. In my next story, I will write about my “Kennedy” man.

The story I have written here today is one I’ve written many times before. Each time I write my stories, I heal a bit more and learn more. This is the first time I have been ready to make my stories public.

When I wrote this story in 2001. I wondered why Brian never liked me as much as I liked him. Was it because I was “easy” and too sexually free? Or maybe I wasn’t sophisticated enough for him?

That night I wrote this question in my journal, “Why didn’t Brian want a long-term, committed relationship with me?”

The next morning, this answer popped into my head, “Brian met a woman, and he couldn’t wait to put a ring on her finger. He never felt that way about you.”

I don’t know if this is the way Brian really felt. His feelings belong to him and are not mine to know. Regardless, this answer felt right. Either you have feelings for a person, or you don’t. Maybe this is the true answer? I can accept that.

Another time, I wrote this story in 2021. After writing the story this time, I wrote a different question in my journal.

It was, “How did Brian feel about me? Did I mean anything to him?”

The answer I wrote in my journal the following morning came from a vivid dream, “There was a beautiful girl who came into my life. She was a lot of fun and helped me with my grief. I will always be grateful to her.”

Is this true? Maybe, and maybe not. I’d like to think it’s true.

Today I write this story in 2025 and I am 69 years old, I ask myself this question, “What did Brian mean to me?”

My answer, “Brian gave me the chance to live my fantasy. I learned a bit more about how to separate fantasy from reality. Many young women never get the chance to live their fantasies. I am one of the lucky ones. It took courage to be authentic with Brian instead of playing silly courtship games. I’m proud I allowed myself to be sexually free. Today I have beautiful memories that will always belong to me.”

It’s good Brian didn’t want to put a ring on my finger. I might have said yes and would have missed out on so much – my kitchen designer career and dear friendship with Gail, my psychologist career, and the wonderful daughter I would someday have.

I was a girl growing up in the 1970’s. Yes, my dreams of an Ivy League man were superficial. These are not my fantasies today. Brian gave me a chance to learn so I could evolve into a person with more mature and lasting values. If I had not lived my fantasy, I might have always longed for a relationship that I couldn’t have. Would I have developed the values I hold close to my heart today? I hope so. The path I followed was a better path for me.

The fact that Brian didn’t want me was a gift. If he had asked, I might have married him. Because he didn’t, I had the chance to chase my dreams instead of following him while he chased his.