This is a tribute to Matthew Davis, my childhood love. He passed away exactly 16 years ago on Halloween night 31 October 2000 in Louisville Kentucky. Miss you, love you always.
Matthew is perhaps the only person I have loved selflessly, unconditionally. He loved me with no possessiveness, always wanting what was best for me, as I did for him.
Matthew made me laugh more than any one I knew. And in passing he stole my heart.
It really is perfectly safe to assume I was a hopeless romantic at the age of 14 who had read too many French and Persian poetry for my own good. This mostly from my previous days attending a French school in Tehran, Iran: I soaked up words by Baudelaire, Camus, Omar Khayyam or Hafez. Now I was into French literature, fascinated by Madame Bovary, reading during assembly or hiding the book under the desk in Algebra at yet another new school [Ballard High School, in Louisville Kentucky]. This is where our family settled after the revolution in Iran, after a brief stay in Newport Rhode Island with our wonderful cousins.
When I first came as a Freshman (Year 9) to Ballard, I developed a gigantic crush on Adam, a Junior (Year 11). But there was no reciprocity to this senseless infatuation. He had far too many admirers. What did I see in him? He had Don Juan charms, no doubt, but was extremely preppy (he wore pink button downs! ) I normally went for the underdog, the avant-garde, with a touch of madness. I abhorred mainstream. I usually stayed away from the preppies, the popular kids, as well as straycats, druggies and troubled kids. I looked for the middle ground. Within no time, I had made a couple of international friends, and that was plenty for me.
I met Matthew for the first time in English class. He had short, often uncombed sandy golden hair sticking up east and west. He always wore blue or white button-down shirts, and was heavily picked on by the Seniors (Year 12). I felt so bad because he was constantly bullied by them through cruel teasing. But Mathew was clever and used humour to fend them off.
Matthew was chubby (at that time), walked in long strides, and was considered goofy. I thought he was beautiful. I was absolutely mesmerized. There was a magic about him. He was the most unique person I had ever encountered. Creative, well read. Best of all, his deep melodious laugh resonated in echos around him. We all knew him for his unique laugh which was so was contagious, you’d think he was always happy.
In time, all I could think of was Matthew and I’d concoct ways to see him other than in our regular English class. At first, he loved grabbing my attention. But only really in class, I don’t know why. I sat two desks ahead of him, to the left. At the end of the lesson, before the bell rang, we were allowed to chat, but I tended to remain with my nose deep in a book. Matthew would talk to others and occasionally to himself. Yes, to himself, inventing all kinds of stories in which I was a fantastic character in this epic tale, grinning away, acting out female damsels in distress. Except that one time I turned around to read his expression. Busted!
On one occasion, though I was quite shy then, I had no fear to ask him to the Ladies Ask Guys Christmas School Dance. I had no competition, really, as most girls thought he was weird. We almost missed the dance as my family and I got snowed in Colorado the day of the dance. So I had to call to cancel. We managed to make it on time back to Kentucky by plane, by some destined miracle. I rang him up: “Do you still want to go?” It had been our first kiss, way after the dance had ended.
I remember a snowy night at the pizzeria where we all hung out. The entrance was covered deep in snow. From inside, I noticed mean Seniors were picking on Matthew and his friend, throwing ice balls at their faces. I lashed out, throwing them back with all my might, back at the bullies, in clear open field, while Matt and his friend ducked behind cars. No one expected a girl to come out to defend the victims. So I didn’t get hit back. The Seniors were stunned.
His mother, at each consecutive visit over the ten years I knew him, liked to recount this story: it was Freshman year. She found me one rainy afternoon at their home’s doorstep, after unmounting my bike. My rabbit fur jacket drenched, water dripping from my long dark brown hair onto the doormat, I smiled. “Is Matthew here?” Matt had invited me to his home on a school-day afternoon. Not sure his mom knew. But I do recall that day clear as yesterday. It had taken me one good hour to get to his place. Her jaw dropped at my sight, her elbow frozen, holding up her unflicked cigarette for some time. “Simia, oh, hi! uh…Come on in dear…you are soaking wet !”
His mom was perceived as cold, but somehow she melted every time she saw me. This always amused Matthew. “You know how to charm her!” I think I had brought her a bunch of wild flowers picked on the roadside. We ooh-d and aah-d over baby pictures of Matthew. She also showed me a photo of Matt’s dad, in a navy uniform. He was really handsome. But she was married to someone else now. I can’t recall whether Matt lost his dad, or whether he had left.
On that rainy afternoon, Matthew and I made out for hours on his bed, over a childlike bedspread peppered with the word ‘bedspread’ in blue, yellow, green, red. As it got late, his mom drove me and my bike home. “I can’t have you drive 5 miles back alone in the rain in the dark!”. I didn’t tell her I’d ride my bike a thousand miles to be in the presence of her son.
He was my inspiration, my muse. He was my maestro in humour. I had to learn to tell funny stories just to hear him laugh.
Near the end of Freshman year, Matt left English class to move to Advanced English. I missed him in class. I think he joined choir during Sophomore year.
We were often together, but we never really considered ourselves ‘boyfriend-girlfriend’ or ‘going out’ or ‘dating’, labels that safely define relationships in normal society. We just ‘were’. To live in the moment needed no defining.
We remained friends over the years. Always there to support each other when we were broken hearted by our boyfriend or girlfriend of the time. We’d meet alone, we never mingled with each other’s crowd, even if we knew so many people in common. I never thought for a second I was in love. How ridiculous!
So instead at 16 I fell in love with some one else. Someone more romantic than I (can you imagine?) Todd, a Senior from another high school in Louisville. It was Romeo – Juliet all the way. Or se we thought. For 18 months, at least. Then my family moved to another town. Todd and I were devastated. Long distance, fatigue, confusion, first fights. I was with another boy, but had not told Todd. The punishment (his lack of forgiveness) would come to haunt me for years.
When Todd left, I turned to Matthew, for a shoulder to cry on. I still wasn’t over Todd. Matt himself was into some one else at the time, only it seems that she played him. I couldn’t understand what he saw in her. She was average in looks, banal, but mostly she seemed quiet, nothing to do with Matt’s radiance. Maybe because she didn’t care, Matthew was drawn to her. But whatever they had, when it was over, she was soon dating his friend.
Only Matt knew me, understood me, had me figured out against my wishes. So we carried on, with no expectations, no pressure. By 18 years old [on the brink of adulthood] we were very close. Our first night together was on these big rocks in the middle of a river in a park, after a Halloween party. I remember I was wearing a long gold dress, and the rocks were the least bit comfortable!
Matt and I never judged each other, never criticised, never doubted. When together, time ceased. Instantly. And each time we left each other, time would resume, the clock ticking once again. Or perhaps time doesn’t exist, just clocks. Yet what really did we know about each other’s lives? Naïve, untainted by the outside world. My soul mate. My friend. My only true love… which I didn’t realize at the time.
He was there, always, allowing my head to rest on his strong shoulder. He always smelled good, his long golden hair was often wet, held back in a ponytail. He read complicated science fiction, he loved music. Ready with a bottle of champagne at each of my heartbreaks. Smiling always, bearing beautiful white teeth. Some silly but clever words to mock me, to snap me out of my silly melancholy. “You are too melodramatic Simia!” My car had a moon-roof (termed cleverly instead of sun-roof). We rode on in the night, no idea where we were going, the moon beams shining on our faces, driving at full speed through the riverside tree-lined roads in Westport, (where we would return other times for its scenic beauty), cranking to Adam Aunt, Prince, Billy Idol, or Vivaldi. “We were forever wild, crazy days, the way you played me like a child” [Young and Beautiful, Lana Del Ray]. Immortal we thought we were. Like the person Lana describes in her song, he had an electric soul.
The next day, all would be forgotten. Reality requesting each to follow routine, be it school, work, family events, the usual societal demands…. His world and mine never collided. We only had our world together.
Dark clouds drew in from a cold wind to shatter our innocence. As I said, we saw each other less frequently. I would often be the one to initiate a phone conversation, or make a brief stop at his house just to touch base or ask him to join a party… (though the contact wasn’t as electric as before, it was more grown-up, more like camaraderie). We were each again dating other people. He surprised me at my graduation. I was touched by his gesture. He came with Katie and Greg from Louisville to Elisabethtown. I was soon heading to Lexington to the University of Kentucky. He was heading to Western Kentucky University (here below with his Turkish roommate and another friend, Freshman at Western KY.. very eerie, that pumpkin in there. I was visiting him during Halloween!)
As the years passed, events took over, and like warm sand slipping though my fingers in the wind, Matthew was also slipping away.
Until it all ceased. And now, I scratch my head, I lay still and close my eyes to try to recall exactly when it happened. We were so busy ‘having fun’ in our respective worlds, partying, going to concerts, dating left and right. I thought for a long time that we had ‘forgotten’ each other, being in separate universities and all. But now I know clearly it had a lot to do with a greater force…
Only chance encounters brought us together after that. Which became less frequent. Matthew had withdrawn. To his other world, to the wilder side, to the dark side, where drugs became his other friend. He knew better than to draw me into that. He never tried. He hid me from it. Protected me. Perhaps he was ashamed of what he did? I couldn’t, wouldn’t enter that world, except to be on its edge with wine, beer, an occasional joint. But life was good, there was no need to take such risks, to hurt oneself so much… What was Matthew escaping? He said one day he’d tell me all. But he never did. I never asked. Hints were peppered over months, years… “My father didn’t raise me”, “my mother is too much”, “my step dad doesn’t get me”. Dark secrets. These words ring in my ear: “Pease Simia, I already have a mother” or “Simia, you could never be faithful” or “You are crazy you know Simia?”, I’d tell him: “You are the only crazy one I know… no one beats you on that one”. But we were no longer children. A close friend from those days told me recently: “You were always his girl, Simia, but he was afraid of falling in love.” To this day, I get defensive. “No, I wasn’t [his girl]!”
* * *
The one time Matthew really actually pushed me away was the day I realized I would never go near a cat that scratched again. Ever! I recall when I went to see him at his college (it would be a second and last visit), only to be stood up this time. I don’t know whether he ‘forgot’. Even if so, that equates to being let down. As I drove back to Lexington after having spent a terrible night with a friend in her sorority at his goddamned university, I recall thinking: “This is it! I am done with him!!” I called him days later and told him I never expected this from him. Can’t recall his answer, but I remember being relieved and devastated at the same time. Probably just what I needed to jolt me back into reality, to move on. I had tried to get close and got burned. His single silent act had succeeded in pushing me away.
Yet …. That’s the thing… Yet! a year or so later, we had made peace again. I saw him when visiting my brother at the University of Louisville after we had just graduated. We had a drink at a riverboat restaurant. My brother took the pictures [now on my FB timeline with a eulogy]. Here it is below.
We went out the following night: Matthew in a clean crisp blue and white stripe button down, white jeans, black belt, golden hair on shoulders, me by his side in a black cotton dress, clutching an antique leather Italian bag given by my best friend at the time, Tiffany.. Here we are with a couple of friends at our side at some upscale bar (?) Valerie and David.
We were 21 years old. There was hope for Matthew, that he’d come clean. He seemed to have matured and perhaps grown out of the bad and dangerous phase, at least that is what he portrayed to me. That evening he told me: “Simia, you are cultured, exotic. I am far from that…” I responded: “You are my best friend, I don’t care where you are from.” His words were more diplomatic than standing me up that one time, but they seemed meant to push me away again.
After I graduated from grad school in California, I went to visit my parents in Elizabethtown, before heading out to Geneva for my internship. I called up Matthew, not knowing what to expect. Before I knew it, I was heading on the highway one hour drive to Louisville. Matt and I couldn’t wait to see each other. I went to his home where he was visiting his mother. It was a gorgeous summer day. I found him leaning on a guitar in his room, on his bed, bare chest, strands of his long sun-kissed golden hair gently falling over his cheek and guitar he played so gently. I think it’s the only time I saw him pensive, quiet, at peace. He looked so much like Sting playing Fragile in that video (gold strands also hanging over his eyes, leaning on his guitar, white open shirt). His mom had joined us as we were getting ready to go out. I was brushing his hair, after having conditioned it. She puffed her cigarette, gazing down at us in amusement: “What will you two do once you are married?” We giggled, “I’ll never marry him!” I frowned and smiled. “No”, she said, “I meant when married to others. How will you stay friends and see each other? Your spouses won’t accept it easily”. I went on brushing his silky hair. Matthew looked for my gaze in the bathroom mirror. ”Nothing. No one will ever keep me away from Matthew” I said, looking down, brushing his long hair back into a ponytail. He smiled at me through the mirror and squeezed my hand. I remember the scene as if it were yesterday.
I think that was our last weekend together. We were 24 years old.
I packed my bags for Geneva, for the internship with the United Nations, the international life I had dreamt of. Perhaps Matthew knew all along that was my destiny?
I don’t know how Matthew got a hold of my address in Geneva in 1991. He’d written to me at a house where I was renting a room there in a home overlooking Lake Geneva during this internship. The two-page letter was written in capital letters (even his handwriting had to be unique). There were incoherent sentences, jumping and bumping into each other. I couldn’t make sense of them, mumble jumble, random passages about friends, work, music, not sure I recall the details. Clearly he had written this letter when high. The only decipherable aspects were the words on their own. On the second page were words full of love, longing, regret… stars out of reach. I think the word ‘love’ was there, not Matthew’s style. It threw me off. My heart was pounding in my chest. I put the letter down by my side and contemplated the swans on Lake Geneva, sun slipping behind the mountains. “It’s too late, Matthew….” I thought. I never wrote him back. I wanted to, but never knew how to respond. I think I tried calling once, but never got through. I was relieved. I was too afraid. What would I say? I want to get a hold of that letter, it’s somewhere in a drawer in Switzerland, at my mother’s apartment.
I was engaged, soon to be married to a wonderful Dutchman, an intellectual older than I by far, well known as an international human rights activist. Just the antidote to my wild childhood country love!
Years and cities rolled on by like the tide. Geneva, Stockholm, Kampala, Geneva, Crete, Zanzibar, Dar es Salaam, Geneva, Nairobi… Two marriages, both ending in divorce, one child later. A child requiring much care due to his special needs (Down syndrome). I was moving forward so fast, the past was now galaxies away.
Only in fleeting moments would I warmly recall the sweet crazy days of Matthew and I, like bumping into a photo when packing boxes.
When one fine day, time tells you to put the suitcases under the bed, put the wine bottles in a storage to bring out only for special occasions, watch your boy grow, help him grow beautifully. Time to reflect, enjoy, look for old friends, touch base, easy with facebook right?
I had a bad feeling before I began my search for Matthew some 3 or 4 years ago, occasionally hoping to locate him through internet. It took a while to get the answers. Perhaps he didn’t like FB. He wasn’t there. Perhaps he moved very far away. Perhaps… I couldn’t fathom what it could be, was he hiding? For he appeared in my dreams exactly 16 years ago, I know because I was in Zanzibar, after my husband and I separated. And Matthew kept appearing several times a year in my dreams since. He haunted me for so long, on and off, but I thought it was either just escapism, or the past releasing itself onto my subconscious, as other persons who marked my life so often appeared in my dreams. But why couldn’t I shake off the dreams about Matthew? Why was I always trying to reach him in my dreams, and I just couldn’t… I’d lose him at every turning path. In these dreams, he was always laughing. But I wasn’t. I was hoping he’d be quiet and hold me.
And then, I learned from Greg and Dawn, my childhood friends from the neighborhoud we lived in those days in Louisville (Brownsboro Farm), that indeed he’d died 16 years ago, in 2000. At the tender age of 33. It was Halloween night in Louisville, in front of a bar called Cahoots (where he’d worked as a barman) on Bardstown Rd. Heart attack (related to unhealthy living, said the doctors, he had bypass surgery the previous year). The demons had won. I could never have beat them.
When the devastating news of his death hit me, I was absolutely shattered. The grief that follows a sudden loss is a darkness that seeps through your every molecule like a drop of ink in a glass of water. Purposefully. Yet in slow motion. Memories came flooding over me like a tsunami. He and his demons, his laugh, his voice, our kisses, all came crashing over my spirit, my body. I was numb. Why had I not reached out again? Why had I given up so quickly? Was I wrong in thinking that he did not want me to contact him? A recent friend asked me why I hadn’t tried to pull him out of the drugs scene. How does one do that, when it takes the person’s will to get started? It wasn’t merely that I was afraid to love and get hurt. I already loved him, and I was already hurting. When the time was right, I thought we’d re-connect, rekindle fond memories. Perhaps he was married and had a baby or two and we’d talk about our kids.
He never married. Never had children. Never had a steady relationship (according to his friend).
Knowing how he had died killed me inside: I pictured his long golden hair on some undeserving grease-stained pavement dampened by the rain, his beautiful blue eyes shutting to the world, resigning his pain to the demons, at peace at last.
* * *
I would like to end these memoirs of Matthew and I with a poem I wrote at the tender age of 15, called Separate Ways. My English teacher encouraged me to submit it to the school Art Fair. To my surprise, I won the Poetry Competition.
Separate Ways
When I look into your deep blue eyes
I see a gleam that drives me insane
A sparkle that brings so much pain
It leaves me to hope it dies
I know the pain will be gone some day,
And I will smile as I remember
The good times I had hoped would linger
And I’ll recall when we went our separate ways
- Simia Ahmadi,– Winner of Poetry Competition of Ballard High School Art Fair 1982.
*The meaning of the poem Separate Ways
After I won the poetry competition, Dad [a poet himself] quietly – but with pride nonetheless- congratulated me. He said it was nice, but I had to learn to avoid clichés. I sensed he meant the looking-into-the-eyes issue. Yes soppy, I know! But I was a sop! And in my defense, I felt the rest of the poem expressed genuine feelings of a young heart letting go of the pain from seeing this beautiful person who was troubled and simply couldn’t love her back the way she wanted to. I was asking for the ‘sparkle’ in his eyes [which seduced me] to go away, as it only pained me. “And it leaves me to hope it [the pain] dies.”
Then the rest of the poem is basically all about convincing myself that I would be fine one day, as I would remember all the good times together… and that I’d smile when recalling our separate ways. “The good times I had hoped would linger” is the only place in the poem where I admit to having wished we had developed our love further. But now I was resigned to letting him go, bravely, humbly. How noble and victorious I felt at 15!
The irony is that, though the last part is somewhat hopeful, it never happened. We never really went our separate ways after that! Au contraire. We stayed friends and eventually became lovers. I never knew I’d leave the USA when I wrote that poem. I meant by ‘separate ways’ when we would ‘break up’ and leave each other. Yet we came back together many times over the next 10 years. I moved away when we had simply left on good friendly terms. I thought he didn’t have feelings anymore, after all those years, I had dismissed mine too.
* * *
Matthew is perhaps the only person I have loved selflessly, unconditionally. He loved me with no possessiveness, always wanting what was best for me, as I did for him. There were rare times I expressed my disappointment in him about something he had done (e.g. the unsuccessful visit) or not done as it was hard for me to admit I’d been hurt. I remember once he responded: “You always hurt the people you love the most”. It was the closest he had ever come to express his love to me (except for the letter he sent to me in Geneva).
Perhaps it suits me to think we were too young and immature to know what real love was, to be willing to experience it fully with some degree of commitment or expectations. Or perhaps I should not have read all those French dramas where love always ends up loosing and killing the victms of love. Both of us were frightened that if we wanted that, we would regret what we had wished for, that we’d ruin it all. That the magic would evaporate as quickly as a drop of water in the desert at noon. Being carefree was so much more beautiful, and risk-free. So it was easier to sit on the fence, safer to never define.
I honestly cannot recall whether I really ever asked him to quit the drugs. I think I was naïve, unaware (or in denial?) of what kind he was taking, how heavy they were. He knew I would have disapproved. As I told my recent friend, I did share my concern (through hints) about the shady people he was hanging out with, not to drink and drive etc. But nothing more, not to my knowledge.
* * *
I had forgotten all about the existence of this poem. I think I have a copy at my mom’s home in the Swiss mountains, in an old drawer together with countless photos and letters (probably his letter), articles, certificates collected over the years. I only slowly reconstituted the poem within a few days into learning about his death. Each line came back slowly, one word at a time…2 lines one day, 3 another… I have felt his presence since. I stopped crying 2, maybe 3 weeks later. Since then, I draw inspiration from him once again, in all I do, in my artwork, in my dealings with people. I’ve become more gentle. More tolerable.
It’s my way to honour his life and our youthful love. I know Anouch my boy would have adored him. They would have been crazy fun together. He would have helped Anouch overcome some of his learning disabilities, and would have focused on getting his talents out, as he had so many himself. I heard he played guitar in a band. I wasn’t surprised.
Did Matthew ever know the poem was about him? I had never told my friends who the poem was about (though I suspect many knew who was the blue-eyed boy).
I told him in our early 20s. He seemed surprised and very touched. I was ready to finally open up that I had really loved him, and in some ways it was a way to tell him I still loved him. Otherwise, why would I have confessed to him that the poem was about him at all? 🙂
Matthew’s laugh resonates in my ear, in my heart, in my soul… today and always.
Zanzibar Harbour
Tinga Tinga art
Zanzibari Treasure Chest
Classic Wood Carved Zanzibar Door
Thoughts on Africa 