[stylist] my memoir piece, "Faye"

Mon Aug 3 12:31:20 UTC 2015

Vejas, you are by no means the only person who experiences this. I have a "Spanish friend" in high school. He was the quarterback of the football team and had a girlfriend. Our Spanish was built so that it had a closet — a HUGE closet — at the front of the room. This is where all the Spanish 3 students studied while the teacher taught a class of Spanish 1 or 2. This boy and I happened to be the only 3's that year. We talked about everything, I think. Although I was different from you that I never tried to help him or push the relationship any farther. I NEVER would have even had the NERVE to, even if he hadn't had a girlfriend.
Barbara

Sent from my iPhone

> On Aug 3, 2015, at 01:43, Vejas Vasiliauskas via stylist <stylist at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi All,
> I have decided to take Brigit's challenge with my own memoir.  This is an account of a friendship I had (however I changed the name because I owe her that much).  I have never written this format before, so would really appreciate feedback on structure.  I feel like I could really improve on this, although I don't know how, but at least I have something to start with.  I have attached it and will paste it below.
> Happy reading.
> Vejas
> Faye
> by Vejas Vasiliauskas
> If you were to ask me whether Faye Hyde and I were friends, my immediate answer would be "yes." If you were to ask Faye whether she and I were friends, her answer would also be "yes".
> But the truth is, our relationship was much more complicated than that.
> I first met Faye as an eleventh-grader.  It was on a Friday early September in creative writing club.  I had come to my usual seat, and asked the girl next to me if she was saving it for anyone, to which she replied no.  She told me eer name, Faye, and that she and her mother had more unique names, while their father and brother did not.  She seemed like a great person.  She went to Gay Straight Alliance even when she was straight, which to me said a lot about her respect for them.
> I probably saw her only once or twice more that year.
> My story about Faye really begins in twelth grade.  Not many girls have this name, so when I found that she was sitting next to me in chemistry, I asked her if she was the person I had met last year.  She told me she was.  I hated my chemistry teacher as much as I hated chemistry (or maybe more so?) and the only way that I was able to get through the class emotionally was to talk to her.
> There were a few issues surrounding our friendship that made it difficult.  First, and most obviously, I am a boy and she is a girl, but this was not a dating relationship by any means.  Although there is absolutely nothing wrong with this, there are still going to be aig differences.  The second was that I was a senior and she was a sophomore.  This again does not really matter, but it will make any furingr communication we have with each other difficult because we will not really have much in common to talk about.
> Faye was similar to me in many ways, and different in many others.  Both she and I liked writing stories, although hers were more fantasy while mine were mostly fiction.  She also helped me a little bit with my music style.  Although I enjoy music, I also love birds and have accumulated many bird cds over the past couple of years, so when someone tells me about someone new I go for it.  Because of her, I now like Charli XCX, Tegan and Sara, and Marina and the Diamonds.  Our musical interests differ in that I love to sing just for fun and she aspires to be a musician.  I remember thinking that she was crazy for wanting to take music theory, because I find it extremely boring, but I understand that as a musician, a course in this is critical.
> Our attitudes about certain aspects of life were a bit different.  She really liked to argue with my chemistry teacher and get him all mad.  I was always taught to be obedient and never to argue (within reason, of course; if my teacher started calling me names that would be a completely different story).  Therefore, I found her attitude a little admirable, although I would never do this myself.  Another difference was in her style of music.  I don't like music with swear lyrics, because I want to have the freedom of listening to any of my songs with anyone around, whereas she enjoyed them.
> Reading this, you might think that things were wonderful.  But something in the friendship just didn't seem right.  Sometimes, I would tell her about something I was writing and explain a scene, and she didn't ask any questions or show a whole lot of interest.  But then again, I don't know if maybe she was just having bad days and wouldn't talk about them.  I would tell her probably more than you should a friend, because my relationship with my two other friends was distant to nonexistent, so I think that the friendship meant much more to me than it did her, who had lots of friends already.  One day I asked her if she could sit with me at lunch, to which she asked me why.  I had to admit that I was lonely because the relationship between my other friends just wasn't the same.  I had hoped her to be extremely enthusiastic about sitting with me, but this didn't happen.  Another time, I asked her if we could sing a song together for an open mic casual night.  At first, we decided that I would sing and she would play the guitar.  However, twice later she asked me that if I could play piano,  why could I not just do it myself? I had to explain that although I play, I do not have the passion for it that I do singing, and I hate practicing.  Had she wanted to play guitar, she would have been doing something that she enjoyed.
> I feel lucky as a teenager to have a close relationship with my parents, so they knew about our friendship and the ups and downs.  Their attitude about her was a little bit different than mine.  What I saw as an admirable trait, arguing with a teacher I didn't like, they saw as an I-don't-care attitude.  Yet, they recognized we were friends, and my mom asked me to tell her that she could always give her a ride home if she needed one.  I can only imagine how hard it is to be a parent, when you have to be happy for the child when they are, be supportive when they are down, and not mess up the relationship too much when you do not like their friend.  One day when I was feeling down about it, my mom said that I just had to accept that she was my "chemistry friend." And so we ended the year as just that: chemistry friends.
> Part of the reason I cared so much about her is probably because I have always wanted a sibling close in age with me, as well as a sister.  So I thought that she could be my "pretend" sister, and that we could be inseparable.  Although I later realized that our differences in attitudes meant that we could not be as close as I imagined, I continued to have a fondness for her even on to the end of the year, not in a boyfriend way but in a brotherly type way.  This meant that no matter what happened between us, I still had this desire to make life easier for her if possible.  The last month of school, the choirs had to collect shoes because the choir program was in debt.  We had to collect at least 50 pairs of shoes each.  I had over 150 pairs and she only had 10, so I asked my parents if I could bring in some pairs for her.  They were against the idea, because they said that she would never take responsibility.  Although I was upset with them about that at the time, I ultimately understood that they were right.  If I was going to help her, then she could just expect others to help her in the futuoe.  The fact that she probably would not have saved me from this jam most likely occurred to them, but did not really cross my mind.  I find it a little odd that even when I wasn't taking what I wanted out of our friendship, I still wanted to give, give, give, but then I was desperate for friends my age and she was an easy one to talk to.  Even now, if someone were to tell me that they didn't like something about her, I would know they were right but still be upset with them for saying something.  I have her e-mail and could contact her if I wanted, but at the same time I don't know if I want to.  I invested so much more time in our friendship than she ever did.
> Well, anyway, that's high-school friendships for you.  I still have a lot to learn, and will have lots of other opportunities to make friends.  I just hope that it all goes well.
> <faye.doc>
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