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I was a freshman at the U of M and Katlyn lived in the same dorm.  College meant the freedom to do goofy things like stay up all night, even if you had nothing to do.  I was sitting around with some people one night, like four in the morning, and Katlyn came up and asked me what we were doing.  I wasn’t really sure so I looked down and saw that we were playing some kind of card game.  I looked up at her and fell in love so hard it hurt.  Those lips, that baby doll voice, the dark hair with bangs, that lithe figure; I never had a chance.  GABA strikes again! 

Katlyn was from Milwaukee and just learning her way around campus.  We became boyfriend/girlfriend within a few weeks of meeting each other and the affair lasted almost two years.  Unfortunately, somebody forgot to tell Katlyn.  What I came to find out is that Katlyn needed more than one man or maybe even two.

During our early courtship, we spent lots of time together.  She had great interest in being a community activist and while I could care less, there was no harm in helping her man the phones at a crisis center if it meant being able to be with her.  Occasionally, she would be unavailable, once for an entire weekend, so I had to make do with other people.  On this particular weekend, I decided to stay at a friend’s dorm since I had nothing else going on.  On that Saturday night, somebody pulled the fire alarm and everybody had to evacuate.  After it was over I was coming back into the building and I saw Katlyn walking out holding hands with some guy.  She didn’t see me.  When I asked her about it later, she told me that it was her High School boyfriend and it was over but she was just letting him down easy.

My roommate at the time was a sort of odd fellow named Patrick.  He had a moped that he guarded jealously and he never let me ride it.  One night, when he was asleep, I decided to “borrow” it.  I also took his helmet.  I went outside, put on the helmet and was getting on the moped when I saw Katlyn walk out of the building.  There was a grown man standing at the base of the steps.  He pointed to a VW beetle and went around the other side.  She got into his car and they drove off.  Curious, I fired up the moped and followed them.  The older man turned out to be one of her professors.  They stopped at the bottom of the street, at the Arboretum.  Still wearing the helmet, I watched them go in and when they had made it a certain distance in, I saw her start making out with him.

Her explanation was that she wasn’t doing very well in his class and that he had been tutoring her and she just wanted to show her appreciation.  To an ordinary, rational being, they would have gotten the hell out of that relationship.  Unfortunately, I was not rational so I could not break free of the hold she had on me.

My saddest moment with her was also the most innocent.  Over Easter that first year, she invited me to come up to her house for the long weekend.  On that Sunday, she told me that she wanted to get up and see the sunrise.  Even though we went to bed late (in separate rooms, of course) I got up with her and she drove us to Lake Michigan to watch the sunrise.  We were sitting on a bench, it was cool but clear and then the sun came up.  I looked at it and then looked at her and was surprised by the rapt attention she paid and the look of wonder that came over her face.  It was just a sunrise but it was something that she cared about deeply.  I had never seen that look directed at me.  I vowed that I would work even harder to earn it but was never successful.

I did everything I could to win her heart.  I wrote her poems.  I colored her a book.  You may laugh at that, coloring a book; but it was art.  The essence of art is not in the paint, clay or musical sounds. The power of a book isn’t in the actual words nor ballet simply in the movement.  It is in the feelings that are communicated.  A successful artist may not always be the most technically proficient or produce the most beautiful works but they touch the heart.  And I drew from the heart.  When I completed my drawings, I gave them to Katlyn.  It was the most personal gift I had ever given anyone.  I don’t think the depth of my feelings came across.  She thought it was a coloring book.

That following summer, Katlyn told me that she was going to stay at the U of M and work.  She told me I should do the same so that we could be together.  I searched the job boards and found a job as a research assistant to a doctor running a study at the hospital.  I arranged to live at the co-op and I was set.  At the last minute, Katlyn informed me that she had changed her mind and was going to go to work for McGovern in Philadelphia.  How ironic.  Had I just gone home for the summer, I could have been with her.  I was stumped but my plans were made so I carried through with them and let her go.

A funny thing happened.  That summer, completely by accident, my mother ran into her one day, walking down the street holding some guy’s hand.  It turns out this was the man to whom she surrendered her virginity.  She had simply forgotten to mention it to me.  When she came back in the fall, I knew that I shouldn’t be with her but I couldn’t help it.  She strung me along and pretended that we were still boyfriend and girlfriend.  I’d go over there some weekends and we’d make out and I learned the meaning of the phrase blue balls.  But through it all, I never got the slightest hint that she felt the same way about me.

During the winter of our second year together, one time I went over to pick her up.  I went up to her room and they told me she didn’t live there any more.  They told me that she had moved in with a boy downstairs.  I guess she had forgotten to mention it.  When I went to her new room, her roommate told me he didn’t know where she was.  I found her in a phone booth, having a heated conversation with somebody.  She didn’t know I was there.  I sat down on the floor to wait until she was done.  I heard her hang up, the door to the phone booth flew open and she ran down the back stairs and out into the parking lot before I could even say a word to her. I followed her down just in time to see a car pull up, a guy get out and they started kissing and hugging somehow reconciling, maybe from an argument.  I guess she had just forgotten to mention to me that she had another boyfriend.  It was probably just an oversight.  It was 18 months to the day after I fell in love with her.

I walked home that night and swore I’d never see her again.  I was finally able to break free.  I still wanted her but at least I recognized that she was killing me.  Not only did she break my heart, it felt like she cut it out of my chest and chopped it into a thousand pieces. I was in a constant state of depression when I was with her and it was worse when I wasn’t with her.  I was just so addicted to her that I couldn’t let go.  I always thought if I could just try a little bit harder; love her a little bit more, she’d fall back in love with me.  It never happened.

In a very strange way, she hurt me so badly that she produced my children.  She turned me off to being in love so completely, that I married my first wife for the simple reason that I was not in love with her.  My parents raised me to be a true and loyal person so I stuck with her for 19 years.  But I was never in love with her.  Katlyn saw to that.

Much as I have tried, I have been unable to forget Katlyn even after all these years.  Her birthday was July 19^th; the same day that Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon in 1969.  The moon landing was among the most significant events in my lifetime and it is my bad luck that every year, on that date, I cannot help but think of her.  The only thing I know about her is that she has become one of the nation’s foremost experts in bioethics, which is rather ironic because when I knew her, she had none at all.