The Boy Who'll Climb Through the Window, or: Randolph Carter, Man of My Dreams
Ten years ago, I was on the doorstep of what turned out to be one of the most important experiences of my life so far. I was fifteen. I was a sophomore in high school. I was in an acceptably happy but comparatively bland relationship with Kent, a sweet Mormon geekboy whose parents decided, that summer, to move to Utah and take him with them; and I had just met John.
That was one of the wilder summers I've had in my life. I spent most of it out-of-doors, roaming Kingwood and Houston at all hours of the day and night, myself and a ragtag band of scum who also served as my first gaming group. Curfew? What the fuck was a curfew? We camped, we drove around aimlessly, we shot Roman candles at each other in the woods, we brewed mead in Coke bottles and discovered that fermentation makes things explode. My parents were never sure whether I was coming, going or staying. Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn had nothing on us. Rousseau would have used us as case studies.
Then it was fall and I had to get back to work. That was fine; I like work. I went into my junior year with all the enthusiasm I'd had for summer adventuring channelled into academic adventuring. It worked, too! My old friend Bryan Goodwin and I, asked to put together a simple class presentation on Ralph Waldo Emerson, worked up an experimental video piece instead. When in trig class we had to use our encyclopedic knowledge of the shapes of various graphs to design graphing-calculator artwork, my partner-in-crime Mark Pellicore and I did a video game. Computer science required a graphics project too; I did an animation in BASIC. And when the Shakespeare Festival wanted 15-minute student presentations, John and I proposed my Brilliant Idea: a 50-minute version of Macbeth, set in the Star Wars universe.
I have always been this fierce creature, this academic bête sauvage, consuming new thoughts and facts raw and bloody, sucking the marrow out of life (thank you, Mr. Hitman). Is it any surprise that I conduct my relationships with people with the same intensity in which I conduct my relationships with ideas?
It surprised me that other people didn't.
I should have known better when I first told John that I loved him and he ran in terror. I knew what I wanted: I wanted to hear that he'd been desperately hiding the same secret, that for months he'd been plotting to climb in through my window late one night and surprise me with the truth. I settled for a phone call a week later, for a whispered "It's okay. I love you too." It was adventurous enough, for him, that I bought it, that I believed I'd found someone who wanted to go on my kind of adventures. This became a sticking point for us for the next eight years. "I wish you were more decisive." "So what do you want to do this time? I'm always the one coming up with plans." And finally, in late 1995, "I'm tired of feeling like I have to drag you along to get you to enjoy yourself. I quit." That motivated him; that led him to get more inventive, and I loved it, but it never convinced me enough to ditch the then-adventurous Leo or the later-adventurous Colin.
I know what I want out of a relationship. I want the boy who'll climb in through my window at night, the fierce courageous boy who doesn't give a flying fuck about the Rules, who doesn't care what his parents or my parents or his boss or my professors or anyone else will say, who has as many adventures in mind as I do and can't wait to show me what he's discovered, or find out what I have.
"Okay, I get what's going on," you say. "Meredith's just turned 25, she's burning out on school again, she's starting her quarter-life crisis, she wants Peter Pan to lose his shadow outside her dorm room and spirit her off to Neverland so she won't have to grow up."
To which I can only respond: you are an idiot, and you have it all fucking wrong.
So who's this Carter mook, anyway? Simple. Randolph Carter is only the most bad-ass hero in all the fiction of the Pulp Age, bar none. Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser are pikers. The Lensmen can blow. Conan the Barbarian pales in comparison. Facing down Legions of Terror is easy when you're a strapping Hyborian mercenary with lats like bands of steel. What if you were a dillettante from Boston? Would you do it then?
Three times Randolph Carter dreamed of the marvelous city, and three times was he snatched away while still he paused on the high terrace above it.
This is how the story begins: H.P. Lovecraft's The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Carter's a city boy, an educated man, definitely no John Carter of Mars. But when a dream comes to him, the most astounding thing he's ever seen, he knows immediately that it must be his, that he will stop at nothing to attain it. He knows the risks going in, and he doesn't care: as long as he can make it to the palace of the gods atop unknown Kadath and persuade them to let him keep his city of dreams, any danger, any privation, will have been worth it. He gets kidnapped and imprisoned. He spends lonely nights asleep under the stars or in murky, ghoul-inhabited caverns. In the end he faces down Chaos itself, and learns the secret of where his marvelous city came from. (I still maintain that DQ is one of Lovecraft's only stories with a happy ending.)
More important is that he does it as an ordinary man. The only thing he has that the rest of humanity doesn't is a dream and the desire to see it fulfilled. But that alone sets him apart from 99% of the rest of the world, easily. He's willing to climb through the window and win his desires.
People's hearts have windows, too.
I can't begin to recall how many times I've told someone, "Tell me everything. I want to know it all. I'll tell you everything too," and had them lie to me, "Yes."
Every time we do this, I fall for her
Wave after wave after wave, it's all for her
"I know this can't be wrong," I said
(And I'd lie to keep her happy)
No, no, no, NO, NO.
I can't come inside by being shut out, and that's what lies do. And don't get me wrong, I'm guilty of the very same sin, of telling someone "Everything's fine" when it's not, of keeping my mouth shut when there were things I wanted to scream.
What happened when I lied, you ask? What happened when I pretended that everything was all right? I waited, that's what. I waited at the window for the boy to notice what I really wanted, stared out at the flickering streetlights, watched every shadow and wondered "Is that him?" But he never came, because he never knew to.
I wish I could just stop
I know another moment will break my heart
Too many tears
Too many times
Too many years I've cried over you
over you
over you.
That's what it really comes down to, you know. I'd rather climb in through the window of someone's soul and see who they really are, let them see me as well, than race down all the empty streets in the world with someone I'll never really know.
Thank you, windowclimbers of the world. Thank you for your wild fancies, your deep weirdness, your willingness to say 'fuck the consequences', your knowledge of what you want, your honesty in confronting even what hurts, your delight in the silliest adventures, your sincerity, your courage, yourselves.
"great things could happen at a place called donutland." --prysmicdork
lyrics: "From The Edge of the Deep Green Sea", The Cure
That was one of the wilder summers I've had in my life. I spent most of it out-of-doors, roaming Kingwood and Houston at all hours of the day and night, myself and a ragtag band of scum who also served as my first gaming group. Curfew? What the fuck was a curfew? We camped, we drove around aimlessly, we shot Roman candles at each other in the woods, we brewed mead in Coke bottles and discovered that fermentation makes things explode. My parents were never sure whether I was coming, going or staying. Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn had nothing on us. Rousseau would have used us as case studies.
Then it was fall and I had to get back to work. That was fine; I like work. I went into my junior year with all the enthusiasm I'd had for summer adventuring channelled into academic adventuring. It worked, too! My old friend Bryan Goodwin and I, asked to put together a simple class presentation on Ralph Waldo Emerson, worked up an experimental video piece instead. When in trig class we had to use our encyclopedic knowledge of the shapes of various graphs to design graphing-calculator artwork, my partner-in-crime Mark Pellicore and I did a video game. Computer science required a graphics project too; I did an animation in BASIC. And when the Shakespeare Festival wanted 15-minute student presentations, John and I proposed my Brilliant Idea: a 50-minute version of Macbeth, set in the Star Wars universe.
I have always been this fierce creature, this academic bête sauvage, consuming new thoughts and facts raw and bloody, sucking the marrow out of life (thank you, Mr. Hitman). Is it any surprise that I conduct my relationships with people with the same intensity in which I conduct my relationships with ideas?
It surprised me that other people didn't.
I should have known better when I first told John that I loved him and he ran in terror. I knew what I wanted: I wanted to hear that he'd been desperately hiding the same secret, that for months he'd been plotting to climb in through my window late one night and surprise me with the truth. I settled for a phone call a week later, for a whispered "It's okay. I love you too." It was adventurous enough, for him, that I bought it, that I believed I'd found someone who wanted to go on my kind of adventures. This became a sticking point for us for the next eight years. "I wish you were more decisive." "So what do you want to do this time? I'm always the one coming up with plans." And finally, in late 1995, "I'm tired of feeling like I have to drag you along to get you to enjoy yourself. I quit." That motivated him; that led him to get more inventive, and I loved it, but it never convinced me enough to ditch the then-adventurous Leo or the later-adventurous Colin.
I know what I want out of a relationship. I want the boy who'll climb in through my window at night, the fierce courageous boy who doesn't give a flying fuck about the Rules, who doesn't care what his parents or my parents or his boss or my professors or anyone else will say, who has as many adventures in mind as I do and can't wait to show me what he's discovered, or find out what I have.
"Okay, I get what's going on," you say. "Meredith's just turned 25, she's burning out on school again, she's starting her quarter-life crisis, she wants Peter Pan to lose his shadow outside her dorm room and spirit her off to Neverland so she won't have to grow up."
To which I can only respond: you are an idiot, and you have it all fucking wrong.
So who's this Carter mook, anyway? Simple. Randolph Carter is only the most bad-ass hero in all the fiction of the Pulp Age, bar none. Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser are pikers. The Lensmen can blow. Conan the Barbarian pales in comparison. Facing down Legions of Terror is easy when you're a strapping Hyborian mercenary with lats like bands of steel. What if you were a dillettante from Boston? Would you do it then?
Three times Randolph Carter dreamed of the marvelous city, and three times was he snatched away while still he paused on the high terrace above it.
This is how the story begins: H.P. Lovecraft's The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Carter's a city boy, an educated man, definitely no John Carter of Mars. But when a dream comes to him, the most astounding thing he's ever seen, he knows immediately that it must be his, that he will stop at nothing to attain it. He knows the risks going in, and he doesn't care: as long as he can make it to the palace of the gods atop unknown Kadath and persuade them to let him keep his city of dreams, any danger, any privation, will have been worth it. He gets kidnapped and imprisoned. He spends lonely nights asleep under the stars or in murky, ghoul-inhabited caverns. In the end he faces down Chaos itself, and learns the secret of where his marvelous city came from. (I still maintain that DQ is one of Lovecraft's only stories with a happy ending.)
More important is that he does it as an ordinary man. The only thing he has that the rest of humanity doesn't is a dream and the desire to see it fulfilled. But that alone sets him apart from 99% of the rest of the world, easily. He's willing to climb through the window and win his desires.
People's hearts have windows, too.
I can't begin to recall how many times I've told someone, "Tell me everything. I want to know it all. I'll tell you everything too," and had them lie to me, "Yes."
Every time we do this, I fall for her
Wave after wave after wave, it's all for her
"I know this can't be wrong," I said
(And I'd lie to keep her happy)
No, no, no, NO, NO.
I can't come inside by being shut out, and that's what lies do. And don't get me wrong, I'm guilty of the very same sin, of telling someone "Everything's fine" when it's not, of keeping my mouth shut when there were things I wanted to scream.
What happened when I lied, you ask? What happened when I pretended that everything was all right? I waited, that's what. I waited at the window for the boy to notice what I really wanted, stared out at the flickering streetlights, watched every shadow and wondered "Is that him?" But he never came, because he never knew to.
I wish I could just stop
I know another moment will break my heart
Too many tears
Too many times
Too many years I've cried over you
over you
over you.
That's what it really comes down to, you know. I'd rather climb in through the window of someone's soul and see who they really are, let them see me as well, than race down all the empty streets in the world with someone I'll never really know.
Thank you, windowclimbers of the world. Thank you for your wild fancies, your deep weirdness, your willingness to say 'fuck the consequences', your knowledge of what you want, your honesty in confronting even what hurts, your delight in the silliest adventures, your sincerity, your courage, yourselves.
"great things could happen at a place called donutland." --prysmicdork
lyrics: "From The Edge of the Deep Green Sea", The Cure