I Want You to Know...

Hey Lux, 

here’s some of the stuff I said at your service. I bet it’ll make you snicker. 

-Connor

Lux, Lucinda, Lucy.

For a woman with so many separate names, Lux had an astounding skill for pulling things together

Outfits—it goes without saying.

Words—her text messages were something to behold. Never a comma out of place,  she always had a beautiful economy of words but was never miserly with expression.

Items on a Tabletop—Lux taught me a game once that has stuck with me ever since: cosmic chess. There were no rules to cosmic chess, per se. You would face your opponent across a Formica tabletop in a diner somewhere and, with total seriousness, move the salt shaker two inches to the left. Your opponent would spill some catsup onto her plate and trace the word NO in it with her finger. Moves would become increasingly absurd until one opponent either broke down laughing, or shouted out that some move or other was against the rules; there were no rules… or, there was one rule, rather: you always had to treat your opponents last move as if it were an expression of the most staggering genius.

By the end of play, Lux had always managed to pull the tabletop into something extraordinary. A wedding party, a metropolis, a field of salted earth.

Thoughts—Having read through a book on the sun-drenched disaffection of suburbanites near Los Angeles, Lux had written a beautiful essay, far above and beyond the standard undergraduate piece on suntan and racial tension in modernity. She asked me to read through this piece, which took on the westward expansion of European colonists through North America, and the small death of the spirit we experienced when we had come as far as we could, when we dug our toes into the sand, looked out over the ocean, and realized that there were no more worlds to conquer. European colonization, spiritual death, and California. Big topics. It was a big paper. These were difficult themes to pull together. 

She hadn’t given it a title yet and, as I read through it, I looked up at her and asked what it would be called. She gave me that coy look and said “The Pioneering Impulse and the Real Zombies of Orange County”

…

There was  one thing though, that Lux never really seemed to be able to pull together—one thing she could never reconcile herself to. Often, when we would be out together, on the dance floor, someone would give her a creamy look. She was always surprised. Flustered even. Always.

Once, I asked her what was wrong.

“I’m still getting used to it,” she said.

“Used to what?”

“To people thinking I’m beautiful.”