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In the 1920’s Sense

By Sarah Stodola

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He took me to lunch at a restaurant on the ocean and I was only 20 and in some senses naïve for a 20-year-old and so I thought it was just a friendly gesture. He ordered wine so I wouldn’t have to break the law, but I got nervous as he ordered it anyway. He talked about this school he was leaving for in a couple of weeks, Sarah Lawrence, which appealed to me only because my name is Sarah, too. This was in California. The Northeast was still just a goal, and although I already wanted it I didn’t quite understand all that it entailed.

This man – he was in his mid-twenties, to me, from my vantage point, a man – had bleached blond hair and some silver jewelry in his several piercings and he was maybe just barely as tall as me. And he was a writer. In real life. As his chosen profession.

We’d driven to lunch in an SUV, which seemed incongruous, and even my 20-year-old self understood this. I wonder now if it didn’t belong to his parents. He was just killing time that summer working in the coffee shop in his hometown which just happened to be in Orange County. Having a car of his own would have created problems eventually, no?

The day wasn’t particularly sunny, which irritated him because he was trying to impress me, and a sunny beach is much better at impressing young ladies than a cloudy one (but couldn’t this be said of anything?). I don’t remember what I ate but the wine was white and the restaurant was a dull pink. We sat at a table facing the window, and being that this was the West Coast, I know that I was sitting south of him.

I went back to college in the Midwest when autumn came. He wrote me one letter. It was a literary letter and I found that extraordinary. Otherworldly, even. I read it first in my room, but refolded it and carried it with me to a study room on campus that was my favorite place in the entire university because it was old and wood-paneled and to me, scholarly. I wanted to sit in that room and write him a return letter.

In his letter to me, he spoke of something I can no longer recall, but which he described like this:

It was grand, in the 1920’s sense.

That was the best thing anyone had ever said to me. I remember him because he wrote it. If I’d thought of that sentence myself, before then, I would have already known that this was all I really wanted of life. For it to be grand. In the 1920’s sense.

I tried my hardest to write him a letter back that would do such words justice.

I never heard from him again.

I had a lot to learn about writing.

I’m older now.

And still, I want to steal that phrase. I want it to be me who wrote it.

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Sarah Stodola is the Managing Editor of Me Three.  She can be contacted at sstodola@methree.net.

© 2004 Me Three