Enter your email Address

ENTROPY
  • About
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Advertising
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Info on Book Reviews
  • Essays
    • All Introspection
      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Variations on a Theme: Individuation

      February 27, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Our Side Of The Clouds

      February 26, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Side Effects May Include Monstrosity

      February 25, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      WOVEN: Bruises Around the Heart

      February 24, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: Individuation

      February 27, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: Radio Days

      February 23, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: Daddy Rocked the Baby, Mother Said Amen

      February 20, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: The End of the World

      February 9, 2021

  • Fiction
    • Fiction

      The Birds: Canada Geese

      March 1, 2021

      Fiction

      BLACKCACKLE: Cain, Knocking

      February 24, 2021

      Fiction

      The Birds: A Bird Heart for Forgiveness

      February 19, 2021

      Fiction

      New Skin

      February 17, 2021

      Fiction

      The Birds: Skittering

      February 17, 2021

  • Reviews
    • All Collaborative Review Video Review
      Review

      Review: To Limn / Lying In by J’Lyn Chapman

      February 25, 2021

      Review

      Review: Nudes by Elle Nash

      February 22, 2021

      Review

      Burials Free of Sharks: Review of Xandria Phillips’ Hull

      February 18, 2021

      Review

      Review: Censorettes by Elizabeth Bales Frank

      February 4, 2021

      Collaborative Review

      Attention to the Real: A Conversation

      September 3, 2020

      Collaborative Review

      A Street Car Named Whatever

      February 22, 2016

      Collaborative Review

      Black Gum: A Conversational Review

      August 7, 2015

      Collaborative Review

      Lords of Waterdeep in Conversation

      February 25, 2015

      Video Review

      Entropy’s Super Mario Level

      September 15, 2015

      Video Review

      Flash Portraits of Link: Part 7 – In Weakness, Find Strength

      January 2, 2015

      Video Review

      Basal Ganglia by Matthew Revert

      March 31, 2014

      Video Review

      The Desert Places by Amber Sparks and Robert Kloss, Illustrated by Matt Kish

      March 21, 2014

  • Small Press
    • Small Press

      OOMPH! Press

      February 24, 2021

      Small Press

      Dynamo Verlag

      February 17, 2021

      Small Press

      Abalone Mountain Press

      February 3, 2021

      Small Press

      Gordon Hill Press

      December 8, 2020

      Small Press

      Evidence House

      November 24, 2020

  • Where to Submit
  • More
    • Poetry
    • Interviews
    • Games
      • All Board Games Video Games
        Creative Nonfiction / Essay

        HOW VIDEO GAMES MADE ME BIOPHILIC

        February 12, 2021

        Creative Nonfiction / Essay

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: Lady of the West

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Paperback and Anomia

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 12 (Once in a Lifetime)

        November 10, 2018

        Video Games

        HOW VIDEO GAMES MADE ME BIOPHILIC

        February 12, 2021

        Video Games

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Video Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Video Games

        Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the Spirit of Generosity

        December 31, 2018

    • Food
    • Small Press Releases
    • Film
    • Music
    • Paranormal
    • Travel
    • Art
    • Graphic Novels
    • Comics
    • Current Events
    • Astrology
    • Random
  • RESOURCES
  • The Accomplices
    • THE ACCOMPLICES
    • Enclave
    • Trumpwatch

ENTROPY

  • About
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Advertising
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Info on Book Reviews
  • Essays
    • All Introspection
      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Variations on a Theme: Individuation

      February 27, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Our Side Of The Clouds

      February 26, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Side Effects May Include Monstrosity

      February 25, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      WOVEN: Bruises Around the Heart

      February 24, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: Individuation

      February 27, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: Radio Days

      February 23, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: Daddy Rocked the Baby, Mother Said Amen

      February 20, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: The End of the World

      February 9, 2021

  • Fiction
    • Fiction

      The Birds: Canada Geese

      March 1, 2021

      Fiction

      BLACKCACKLE: Cain, Knocking

      February 24, 2021

      Fiction

      The Birds: A Bird Heart for Forgiveness

      February 19, 2021

      Fiction

      New Skin

      February 17, 2021

      Fiction

      The Birds: Skittering

      February 17, 2021

  • Reviews
    • All Collaborative Review Video Review
      Review

      Review: To Limn / Lying In by J’Lyn Chapman

      February 25, 2021

      Review

      Review: Nudes by Elle Nash

      February 22, 2021

      Review

      Burials Free of Sharks: Review of Xandria Phillips’ Hull

      February 18, 2021

      Review

      Review: Censorettes by Elizabeth Bales Frank

      February 4, 2021

      Collaborative Review

      Attention to the Real: A Conversation

      September 3, 2020

      Collaborative Review

      A Street Car Named Whatever

      February 22, 2016

      Collaborative Review

      Black Gum: A Conversational Review

      August 7, 2015

      Collaborative Review

      Lords of Waterdeep in Conversation

      February 25, 2015

      Video Review

      Entropy’s Super Mario Level

      September 15, 2015

      Video Review

      Flash Portraits of Link: Part 7 – In Weakness, Find Strength

      January 2, 2015

      Video Review

      Basal Ganglia by Matthew Revert

      March 31, 2014

      Video Review

      The Desert Places by Amber Sparks and Robert Kloss, Illustrated by Matt Kish

      March 21, 2014

  • Small Press
    • Small Press

      OOMPH! Press

      February 24, 2021

      Small Press

      Dynamo Verlag

      February 17, 2021

      Small Press

      Abalone Mountain Press

      February 3, 2021

      Small Press

      Gordon Hill Press

      December 8, 2020

      Small Press

      Evidence House

      November 24, 2020

  • Where to Submit
  • More
    • Poetry
    • Interviews
    • Games
      • All Board Games Video Games
        Creative Nonfiction / Essay

        HOW VIDEO GAMES MADE ME BIOPHILIC

        February 12, 2021

        Creative Nonfiction / Essay

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: Lady of the West

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Paperback and Anomia

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 12 (Once in a Lifetime)

        November 10, 2018

        Video Games

        HOW VIDEO GAMES MADE ME BIOPHILIC

        February 12, 2021

        Video Games

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Video Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Video Games

        Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the Spirit of Generosity

        December 31, 2018

    • Food
    • Small Press Releases
    • Film
    • Music
    • Paranormal
    • Travel
    • Art
    • Graphic Novels
    • Comics
    • Current Events
    • Astrology
    • Random
  • RESOURCES
  • The Accomplices
    • THE ACCOMPLICES
    • Enclave
    • Trumpwatch
Creative Nonfiction / EssayMusic

Variations on a Theme: Touch of Grey

written by Guest Contributor February 13, 2021

I’ve tried to tell the story of Kristin a thousand times. She’s been a dream, she’s been a poem, she’s been a sigh after a long breakdown of tears, she’s been a smile after a brief moment of joy, she’s been a rumor to others before I met her, she’s a legend to those who I’ve met after. “She’s been a leather jacket on the back of a motorcycle,” my husband once said. “You are mistaking her with someone else.” And yet now she’s that too.

Here’s attempt 10001 –

November 1999. I’m home from college for the weekend. We are driving to the home of our friend’s new girlfriend. “We” as in me and the three white boys I had been rolling with for the past few months – my friend Steve, my boyfriend Steve and Travis, the one with the new girlfriend. I had known these boys since grade school but we weren’t really close until this past summer. That’s when we became good friends, the type that wear each other’s t-shirts and know the smells of each other’s homes.

We had been spending so much time together since the summer that Travis pulled me aside one day.

“Listen Nina, we have to talk.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“This is getting too hard, we have to give the Steves different names.”

“You’re right,” I said.

And with that, it was decided.  My friend Steve, Steve Levitt, became Leviticus and my boyfriend, Steve Kitt, would become Stevonnegut.  Travis and I decided to keep our names with neither Leviticus or Stevonnegut protesting.  Travis’ girlfriend had a name too, Kristin, but for a while, we simply called her the Older Woman.

“Did you hear that Travis is dating an older woman? Have you met the Older Woman?”

Everyone had been talking about her – the Older Woman, older as in we were 19 or 20 and she was 26.

I sat passenger side as my guy, Stevonnegut, steered my Jeep Cherokee – the car that my parents had bought for me and that was at the epicenter of so many of our adventures. We were traveling from my suburb, Edison, to Kristin’s Scotch Plains. Our final destination was Northern Jersey, Continental Airlines Arena, to see Phil and Friends, Phil being Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead. Jerry Garcia died four years ago. Phil shows were Dead shows when you couldn’t see the Dead.

As we made our way to Kristin’s house, the suburban homes grew closer, more compact. “It’s this one,” Travis said and he jumped out. The Jeep idled in front of a narrow 2-story home with beige aluminum siding, identical to house next to it save for a bright yellow VW bus parked out front. Grateful Dead stickers were plastered all over it. A large banner sprawled across the windshield, the band name emblazoned in giant all-caps gothic font. A rose nested in the middle of “Grateful” and “Dead.”

The Jeep was dark and all I remember was a rumble from the backseat, this woman placing stickers on our winter hats, each stick accompanied by a high-pitched squeal of glee. She’s the Older Woman? I remember thinking with every squeal. Now I wasn’t the only woman. Now the group was changing. She was a white woman, an older white woman of 26. I was a brown girl, a somewhat younger brown girl of almost-20, my birthday was coming up in a few weeks.

“How many Dead shows have you been to?” Travis asked her as she settled in. “She’s been to over 90,” he said before she could speak.

And even after this introduction, I didn’t really hear many complete sentences from her, just more squeals – squeals of excitement about the music to come and wishes for the set list: “I am hoping for a killer Magnolia!” and squeals about her dogs, Winter and Sativa, two majestic rescues now at home with her mother’s nervous lapdog, Murphy: “Smurfeeee!”

In the face of all that excitement, I felt old. I couldn’t match that enthusiasm if I ever tried.

I remember the show being long. Dead Shows are so long and so white, I’d think but never say. I just focused on the long part. “Bathroom,” I said to Stevonnegut. And as I stepped out, I felt a wave of secret relief to be momentarily away from the wilds of “Space” into “Dark Star” and in the stark neon of the halls.  I must have gotten a look at Kristin sometime during that interminable evening but I don’t remember exactly when. She’s forever a blur.

Long black hair done up in white-girl dreadlocks, bouncing with her quick step. Their heft was a counterforce on a petite body, a narrow face with sharp features and wide eyes. And then there were the dogs, not there at the show that night but with her all the days after, jumping up and down and all over her. She was always dressed as if she was ready to walk them. A hoodie, jeans, a couple leashes off the belt loop, a joint or blown-glass bowl buttoned up in some stealth pocket, tinkling as she walked. I remember her always in motion. But I can’t tell you when I first really saw her – not the night of the show, not any other.

Maybe I never wanted to look at her, to look getting older in the face.

I was a 19-year-old brown girl doing her best impersonation of a white hippie. I don’t know if I thought past 20. I could only barely look at this older woman of 26. I could barely look at myself. And I saw any age except ours, mine and the boys’, and anything we were doing beyond what we were doing, tooling around in the Jeep Cherokee, attending Dead Shows and going to college in between, as extremely terrifying. I was a shy girl and found what felt like unlikely community in these friends and then found a greater community in Deadhead culture, people like Kristin, whose ultimate joy was to come together, be kind and generous and love this band.

*

Dropping Kristin and Travis back to her house after the concert, I felt a difference in the Jeep, a different kind of quiet than when it was just me and the boys, a restless quiet maybe.  I was supposed to love that there was another woman now. Now I could be with someone more like me, someone who would make me feel less alone with these dudes, someone who would get me in the way they didn’t. But hearing this girl, the Older Woman, express so much squealing glee, I didn’t quite know what to do with myself.  I was bothered that if she could be that enthusiastic, what did that mean for me? I didn’t want to be that enthusiastic.

Do people like that exist? I wondered. People who seem to delight in cacophonous squeals of joy? Is this a way to grow old? I laughed too, with the boys and with my college friends, but Kristin’s laughs felt different. Happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care, an insistence on joy for joy’s sake. Our laughs, mine and the boys’, were a shared snicker, from years together, years we went to the same private school and hated it and lived in the same town and hated it and loved and hated the same bands, movies, you name it. Her laughter was from a life beyond all that, a life we didn’t know, a life I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

I just wanted her gone. I didn’t feel alone. I felt the only.

“I only knew her for a year,” I say now if Kristin ever comes up in conversation.

I always put this at the end of a sentence, at the end of a list of three:

“I have a friend who was murdered.”

“A random act by a serial killer.”

“I only knew her for a year.”

I want to call this the story’s button, a last line that buttons-up the whole thing: “I only knew her for a year.”

*

Kristen was dead at 27. In November, 20 years after we first met, I’ll be 40.

***

On Writing Touch of Grey:

In September 2019 I had begun teaching at my alma mater, Barnard College, and I couldn’t get there fast enough on my first day. Jennifer Finney Boylan had generously lent out her office while she was on sabbatical. I was proud to share space with this iconic writer and activist. Settling in, I was surprised to find atop a teeming bookshelf, a large Grateful Dead dancing bear sign.  I found myself looking at it every time I entered. I began to wonder, if Boylan wears Deadhead-ness proudly, why couldn’t I?  I texted Travis and Leviticus a picture of the bear sign. “Weir everywhere,” Leviticus texted back.

And then, just as I turned in my office key in December, something terrible happened. First-year Tessa Majors was murdered at a park nearby school. I received email after email regarding the wellbeing of our currently grieving students and how our students will continue to grieve and how we can help them with their grief. I was ashamed that I did not want to read a single one of these emails. For me though, Tessa’s death harkened back to something more personal, something I didn’t want to think about, something I wished I could delete or archive away.

Twenty years earlier, I had met Kristin. Like my students, I was a college first-year. I was not yet at Barnard, not yet so many things. Kristin was 7 years older than me – a stretch of time I found unfathomable. The gap between 19 and 26 felt like a century. What grief taught me is that time, our linear interpretation of it, is a construct. As life takes up space, be it moments of grief, joy, rage, sorrow, so does our relationship with time change, the fabric of space-time bends. This might not be what Einstein meant. Maybe the lyrics from “Touch of Grey” are more fitting: “it must be getting early, clocks are running late.”

I don’t remember much from the night I found out she was murdered. I remember picking up the phone and hearing Travis’ voice on the other end. But after that, much is a blank. I had, only weeks ago, just come out of a psychiatric ward, my first of four stays.

Looking at those emails about our students grieving Tessa’s death, I was bothered that I so didn’t want to deal. I so didn’t want to believe in their grief. Whose grief, I wondered, did I not believe in? Theirs or my own? I realized then, I never really dealt with my feelings about Kristin’s murder. I put all those feelings, along with my entire Deadheadness, far deep down inside of me.


Music can hold enormous power in memories and experiences, transporting us instantly to an age, location, or person. What sonic joys, mysteries, disbelief, and clarity have you experienced? Identify songs of influence in your life and explore them like variations on a theme, melding syntax and song structure, recalling the seriousness or levity that accompanies. Whether it’s an account of when a specific song first entered your life, the process of learning to play a song, teaching someone a song, experiencing the same song in different places as it weaves through your life, unbelievable radio timing, sharing songs with those in need, tracking the passing down of songs, creative song analysis, music as politics, etc, I am interested in those ineffable moments and welcoming submissions of your own variations on a theme, as drawn from your life’s soundtrack. Please email submissions to meganentropy@gmail.com and keep an eye out for others’ Variations.

**(“song” is a broad phrase: could be a pop song, a traditional tune, a symphony, commercial jingles, a hummed lullaby, 2nd grade recorder class horror stories, etc)**


NINA SHARMA is a writer and performer from Edison, New Jersey. Her work has been featured in journals such as the New Yorker, Flexx Mag, Electric Literature, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Longreads, The Margins, and The Asian American Literary Review. Her most recent essay, “Shithole Country Clubs,” has been named an Editors’ Pick at Longreads. Nina is a proud recipient of the Diversity Scholarship at the Magnet Improvisation Theater. For more on the ties between her comedy and essay writing, check out “Getting in Touch with the Absurdity of Our Lives,” her Kenyon Review interview with Rosebud Ben-Oni. Nina is formerly the Programs Director at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and with Quincy Scott Jones she co-created Blackshop, a column that thinks about allyship between BIPOC people, featured on Anomaly. She has an MFA from Columbia University and currently teaches at Barnard College.

Variations on a Theme: Touch of Grey was last modified: February 4th, 2021 by Guest Contributor
Variations on a Theme
0 comment
0
Facebook Twitter Google + Pinterest
Avatar
Guest Contributor

Entropy posts are often submitted to us by our fantastic readers & guest contributors. We'd love to receive a contribution from you too. Submission Guidelines.

previous post
We name it love
next post
Forgetting, Forgetting

You may also like

The Etymology of Protest

January 20, 2017

90s Rap Songs for Trump

October 28, 2016

Best of 2018: Songs/Music Videos

December 14, 2018

On Weather: North Dakota

February 5, 2019
Facebook Twitter Instagram
"target="_blank"

Recent Comments

  • furiousvexation Loved this. Killer first line and such a painted picture. Bravo!

    The Birds: a poem ·  February 17, 2021

  • Deidra Brown Wonderful, moving work!

    The Birds: a poem ·  February 15, 2021

  • Ceres Growing up in a rural area, I've observed first-hand the disparate outlooks between urban children with environmentalist parents and children raised in the country. Modern agricultural practices...

    HOW VIDEO GAMES MADE ME BIOPHILIC ·  February 13, 2021

Featured Columns & Series

  • The Birds
  • Dinnerview
  • WOVEN
  • Variations on a Theme
  • BLACKCACKLE
  • Literacy Narrative
  • COVID-19
  • Mini-Syllabus
  • Their Days Are Numbered
  • On Weather
  • Disarticulations
  • The Waters
  • Session Report series
  • Birdwolf
  • Comics I've Been Geeking Out On
  • Small Press Releases
  • Books I Hate (and Also Some I Like)
  • The Poetics of Spaces
  • Tales From the End of the Bus Line
  • Fog or a Cloud
  • 30 Years of Ghibli
  • Cooking Origin Stories
  • YOU MAKE ME FEEL
  • Ludic Writing
  • Best of 2019
  • The Talking Cure
  • Food and Covid-19
  • Stars to Stories
  • DRAGONS ARE REAL OR THEY ARE DEAD
  • Foster Care
  • LEAKY CULTURE
  • Jem and the Holographic Feminisms
  • D&D with Entropy

Find Us On Facebook

Entropy
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram

©2014-2021 The Accomplices LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Read our updated Privacy Policy.


Back To Top