Houses of the Holy

Summer of 1995. I, having just completed 8th grade, am the proud new owner of perhaps my 8th CD – Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy. As was my custom, I listened to it maybe 10 straight times, indelibly imprinting every memory from that summer with that album.

I popped it in while I did my strength workout in the basement tonight. It punched me straight in the face, and really, it’s not even that epic. I remember, I remember everything.

Princeton Running Camp, the first (of two) running camps in my life. I’m there with the core of our budding Goshen empire, Brett and Tim. Tim and I are staying together in one dorm, Brett is in another. We were going to be big, we were young, but hungry, very very hungry. Our roommates did the milk challenge with chocolate milk. They threw matches at us, or maybe it was just at me. The alluring Sasha K, already the object of my young affection, threw tampons out of her dorm room. We ran a lot, I barely slept, I was tired.

That fall I was the top freshman in the county, by a country mile. But I wanted to make states, which was varsity only. In every font our PC had I wrote it, one line in each font. “I will make states”. “I will make states“. “I will make states“. Over and over again. I ate, slept, breathed making the state meet.

I made the state meet.

Today I lifted downstairs. I’ve been doing that since 8th grade. Not to get big, not to look chiseled; for one reason, my only reason, to be faster. To work until I was faster. To be faster faster, to make states, to win states, to win states.

I am a passionate person now living dispassionately. I can’t run. I lift for no reason other than to look strong, but who cares if I am, because why does it matter anymore anyway? I glare at the wall, I snare at the man in the mirror, I remember, I remember all of it, every minute, every step, every ounce of pain, pain etched in my face. But I try to block it all out, I repress it, I shove it into the corner, and pretend it’s OK, that everything is fine, that I don’t mind, that this is my new life and it’s just as good as my old life.

But I’m not fast enough. I was never fast enough. Make states, win states became “eric, be faster”. I’d walk down the hallway at work, fantasizing about being faster, just a little bit faster, faster when I needed it, just now, just faster.

I live in a dispassionate stupor. It’s not that I don’t have things to be passionate about – I do. But I’m not allowed and so I suppress it. Today I admitted to myself that not one thing in the world would phase me emotionally. I was unflappable, maybe I still am, maybe it was temporary, I don’t remember, not without Houses of the Holy running through my veins.

But in vino veritas. In testosterone, truth. I happen to like being held together by twine, thank you very much. The soul is passionate, this one at least.

Oh Lord, wake me up, break me free, let me loose, let me feel the oppression of a new set of passions and desires until that great day when this body awakens, whole and rebuilt. And fast. Faster.

Let the angels have their wings.

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