TOTALLY NOT ETHICAL

RECENTLY, i dropped a bunch of ecstasy and went to the symphony. A couple of lifetimes ago, I did this all the time: sinking down in my seat and wrapping the sound around me like a blanket, timpani dancing in my fingertips, the cello section syncing with my heartbeat. But then, what always happens happened: I got a job, got married, had a kid, and woke up one morning suddenly, surprisingly, a grown-up.

What did you do when you realized you were…old?

I bought a ticket to The Magic Flute, booked a babysitter, and went to my sock drawer, where I’d hid the three little pills of e a friend had given me years before.

“In case of emergency,” she’d said, as if I were going to Africa, and this ecstasy could fend off Malaria. I swallowed them all in the cab on the way to Symphony Center.

Have you been to Symphony Center? On Michigan Avenue, down by the Bean? It’s beautiful: rotunda lobby with chandeliers, tons of people dressed in expensive things, women in shiny makeup—as I stared at them, I got hyper aware of the layers of mascara on my eyelashes, like I could see these feather-like things flying in the air when I shut my eyes. It’s crazy. You have to try it. Like, seriously. Shut your eyes. Now open them, slowly. Look at the light, do you see swirls? Like a Fourth of July sparkler?

That was me in the Symphony lobby: squinting at the chandeliers, trying to see my own eyelashes. And all of a sudden, I heard it: “Megan? Is that you?”

You’ve seen this moment in a thousand romantic comedies. The main character has food on her face, or has recently vomited, or is peaking on ecstasy, having not done that particular drug for over a decade, and it’s then—at the most inopportune moment—that the last person she’d ever expect to see appears: an ex-boyfriend. An ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend. An ex-boyfriend who never really was a boyfriend, just some old guy I slept with a lot; and I probably shouldn’t say old because how old he was then is how old I am now, and I’m not old, right?

Right?

I opened my mouth to say his name, and then realized I didn’t remember it. Not his first name, anyway, which is funny ‘cause usually it’s their last names you forget. What I did remember was this: he’d been my professor.

My ethics professor.

My ethics professor, with whom I’d had an affair.

Totally not ethical, but at the moment, I was in the moment; eighteen, and free, desperate to be an adult. My ethics professor was thirty-five, which at the time was so totally old! I mean, not old like Dating Your Grandpa old; old like he’d lived. He was experienced. An intellectual. Technically, he wasn’t really my professor; he was my T.A., but back then, I didn’t know the difference. It was one of those lecture courses where three hundred eighteen-year-olds cram into auditorium seating to listen to someone waaaaaay at the front of the room talk at them for an hour and a half, and then meet later with T.A.’s to actually learn something. This was the guy who listened to us, who knew our names, who graded our papers, and got us all worked up about empirical truths. His thesis was on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and he talked about it with so much passion—pacing the room, pounding desks, scribbling on the blackboard. Also, he wore really tight pants, so whenever he’d turn his back, all the girls in our group would lean into the aisle for a better view.

Later, in his apartment, after a couple joints, he’d talk just as passionately, except instead of jeans and blazers, he’d be naked, and instead of Kant’s Pure Reason, it was Zeppelin’s In Through the Out Door. This was a man who loved Led Zeppelin. He had very involved theories about the philosophical placement of their lyrics, none of which I can remember because I was stoned for the entire duration of our relationship—if you could call it that—and I’m not the kind of stoned that can process complex thought; I’m the kind of stoned that stares at the orange juice cartons like OMG! Have you ever really looked at one of these? They’re amazing!

Then I giggle for a half hour and fall asleep.

After a few months of this, he asked what I was going to do with my life. We were lying on the couch, on top of a sheet. We were always on top of sheets. He’d gotten divorced the year before and had to get new stuff, so he ordered entire rooms straight out of the Pottery Barn catalogue and then refused to take the price tags off.

It never occurred to me to ask why.

It never occurred to me to ask a lot of things. For example: Did he read the papers he gave me A’s on? Was I the only student he invited home? Who exactly was the baby in the photos taped to his fridge, that chubby little girl with his same eyes?

What was I going to do with my life?

What had he done with his?

But I didn’t say that. I giggled, as though the question were an orange juice carton.

“I’m serious,” he said, dragging the joint. “What will you study? How will you live, eat, pay rent?” He didn’t quite sound like a dad, but he certainly didn’t sound like a boyfriend. He sounded like a professor giving a test, as though my dreams were something I needed to list like chapter headings from Immanuel Kant. And suddenly, when I looked at him, I didn’t see that experienced adult.

I saw a guy with a receding hairline.

“What I’d like to do—”

I could’ve said a thousand things in that moment, and all of them would’ve been true. I’d like to travel—Florence and Thailand and Prague. I’d like to write books. I’d like to fall in love a thousand times. Live hard and desperate and full, my pulse pounding like a bass drum. And when I wake up one morning suddenly, surprisingly, a grown-up, I’d like to be sure in the knowledge that I enjoyed it. Every fucking second.

“What I’d like to do—” I said again, and he leaned forward, excited. It was the first and last time he ever really listened to me. “I’d like to sing with Led Zeppelin.”

Then I giggled for a half hour and fell asleep.

Now, a couple of lifetimes later, we were standing in the rotunda of the Chicago Symphony Center. The chandeliers were singing—a thousand cicadas around us; I could feel them in my veins, and my professor was saying, “John,” and pointing to himself.

“John!” I repeated. “John!” I was stammering. You don’t want to stammer when you run into an ex. You want Be Articulate. And Look Hot. “What are you doing in Chicago?” I asked, relieved to have come up with an appropriate question. And that’s when he introduced me to his daughter, a freshman at Northwestern with his same eyes. I thought of saying, Oh! I saw your baby pictures on the fridge after your dad and I made out on his couch!—but instead, I marveled at her. She was eighteen, free, desperate to be an adult, and I wanted to yell across time to myself at that age: Enjoy it. Every fucking second.

“So—” John said, and I physically lifted my focus from his daughter’s face to his; in his Fifties now, his skin a matrix of dips and slopes. “Did you ever sing with Zeppelin?” he asked, and we laughed, because—really—it was hilarious: him and me running into each other after all these years. I was standing at the symphony looking my past right in the eye.

I thought of all I’d done between then and now: traveling to Florence and Thailand and Prague, living and studying enough to later write and teach, falling in love so hard that sometimes I can barely breathe, seeing my husband’s eyes in our son’s. And when I woke up one morning suddenly, surprisingly, a grown-up.

What did you do when you realized you were lucky?

The light turned on and off, signaling the beginning of the performance, and I said my goodbyes and found my seat. The crowd applauded as the conductor entered, settling himself in front of the orchestra. Then, silence—I’d never heard so loud a silence—and he lifted his arms. This is the moment when, back in my twenties, I’d sink and drown and hide, burying myself under all that sound. But now? Now I leaned forward, excited, anticipating the explosion of all those instruments. And then, for some reason, I turned away from the orchestra and, instead, looked at the line of audience next to me—this wide sea of people, all of us flying.