by Peter Pogany

Created on: June 09, 2010

“She troubled me to no end with her intense, summer-sky blue eyes . . . long, coal-black hair sparkling in the lights of the stuffy pub. My mouth was dry. I lost my appetite.”

“’So, you are a professor of literature,’ she mused. ‘Recite something for me.’”

“How I flee from your bright glance,

Seeking to avoid its smart -

All too late the flying lance

Has already hurt my heart . . .”

“These words of a little known East European poet may have been next to inaudible in the din. But she gave me an oblique glance . . .”

“Two years, almost to the date . . . Her name was Carrie.”

My seatmate on the flight from Philadelphia to Las Vegas who told me this story was a nervous passenger. He talked incessantly, looked around the cabin at every tremor, trying to read the gravity of the situation from the face of the stewardess. He ordered another martini and continued.

“She was a combination sales girl and model at an upscale department store. I spotted her during a fashion show in a hotel ballroom one Sunday afternoon. Her fabulous legs walked the catwalk beat with that well known strut, making eye contact with an imaginary man above the onlookers’ heads; throwing the bolero over her shoulder she turned, passing another prancing girl with a smile.”

“It’s childish for an academic to become infatuated with a model at the age 40, I know. But I’m also a writer. We are like wild dogs that run through forests and meadows, urged by some inscrutable disquietude, the vague scent of thrill, the obscure springhead of conflict and drama.”

“Nothing unlived can ever become live prose or poetry. We are even willing to violate the expectations sane people may have towards us, gamble with our reputations just to coax out a scathingly true paragraph from real life for a work in progress. Be glad, young man, that you are not one of us.”  

“I also try to write,” I ventured but he left this remark unanswered, starring for a moment at the back of the seat in front of him.  

“I tracked her down at the department store; called her umpteen times, sauntered by to say ‘hello’ while she was at work; then called again until finally a trace of reproachful tenderness appeared in her voice: ‘Do you know how many men call me after each show?’ she said. ‘You are crazy. Can’t you see that I’m

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