Cocteau Twins

I was back at Hampshire for my final year, ready to dig into my “Div 3”, the final project that would earn me the right to leave with a BA at the end of the year. I had spent most of the year before at my high school, the Interlochen Arts Academy, filming life in that rarified atmosphere for a documentary to be put together under the watchful eye of my committee and to ultimately be given back to Interlochen for use as a recruiting tool. I had gathered my 100+ hours of footage together and was preparing to enter the year-long process of editing.

The first step was to gain access to the best editing suites on campus. In order to do that, I needed to pass a few proficiency tests, so I signed up for the advanced editing workshops. I had already been a fixture in the basement of the library where the media studios were located and had proven my interest and ability to the powers that be, so getting into the workshop wasn’t difficult. When the time came, I ate dinner, grabbed a notebook, and walked down the familiar steps into B-2, the advanced video suite.

“Advanced”, it must be understood, was a relative term. It was still a linear, cuts-only video editing system (Sony’s workhorse RM-440, for those that care), but included a rudimentary Chyron, or graphics interface, plus a (very) few bells and whistles to tweak the video and audio signal. Still, it was roomy and had enough scopes and screens to make it feel like I was in Houston Control, and it made the technodweeb inside of me happy just to be there.

So I settled into my seat with about a dozen other students and listened as Gunther, the post-production overlord, began teaching us about black burst and the red dot syndrome and all the other arcana that went into video editing. About halfway through Gunther’s typically obtuse lecture, I started cramping up, so I rolled my head around and shrugged my shoulders, trying to relax my back. Suddenly I felt a warm pair of hands on my neck, rubbing the tension out. As I was wildly sexually repressed and unused to physical contact, it actually had the opposite effect and made me much more tense, but I pretended it felt as great as I knew it was supposed to. After a moment, the rubbing stopped, and I turned around to meet the eye of Chris, a woman I recognized from a couple of classes and had seen around campus since I first arrived three years earlier, but had never really talked to. I smiled thanks and she nodded warmly with what I couldn’t help but think was a twinkle in her eye, and we both turned our attention back to the lecture.

Afterwards, we started chatting and ended up in the library’s upstairs café, telling stories and drinking tea, and being generally charming towards each other. It was a wonderful evening, and we parted both knowing we had found a new friend.

Over the next few weeks, we became inseparable. The more I talked to her, the more I liked her, and she seemed to be feeling the same way. It wasn’t long before we were spending all of our time together, and most of our friends assumed that we had started “seeing” each other (of course, what people meant was considerably more intimate and earthy than “seeing”, but you get the idea). But, in actuality, we were really just seeing each other a lot, and not really “seeing” each other at all. It was kind of complicated. On one hand, she had a boyfriend in England with whom she was trying to keep up a long distance relationship (in fact, I found out later that he was actually in her bed when she started rubbing my neck). On the other hand, I was terrified. My introduction to intimacy consisted of a short but potent series of damaging experiences that had left me deeply wounded and wondering if I’d have to spend the rest of my life alone. Because of that, every time I tentatively waded into the warm waters of shared sexuality, I quickly found myself dashed upon the rugged reef of humiliation. The spirit was willing but the flesh was weak and I found myself wholly unable to talk about it with anybody and just ended up shrinking further and further into my shell. It was a terrible place to be in, caught between desire and fear, and the older I got, the more debilitating the fear became until I had vowed to stay on the shore where it was safe. Boring and heartbreakingly lonely, perhaps, but safe. Still, I couldn’t ignore the siren song of sensuality coming from off shore, and couldn’t help but think that there must be some safe way out into the ocean that didn’t lead to my being thrown immediately onto the jagged rocks. So I was terrified to act on – or even really acknowledge – my desires and hid conveniently behind her long-distance boyfriend.

But there was no denying the bond that was growing between us. Chris would come visit me in my room and we’d talk for hours or I’d go back to her room after dinner and stay up half the night. I loved being in her room. I loved the otherness of it. Her room smelled different, and was full of different things. Different books and different clothes, different ideas and different experiences. And different music. She used to play the Cocteau Twins and that music soon came to symbolize for me the exotic, erotic feminine sensuality that had me so intrigued and so frightened. The music was seductive and strange at the same time, simultaneously pulling me in and pushing me away. Lace and lipstick, incense and peppermints, the Cocteau Twins beckoned me to the shore once again, and I sat on the rocks with my toes in the water, smelling the sweet perfume, and looking longingly out past the breakers where Chris was swimming with the dolphins.