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Chelsea

a true story from I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris

“Behold not everybody’s beauty: and tarry not among
women.” —Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 42:12

That long-skirt, apple-pie brunette from Kansas
Whose wholesomeness shone bright like Moses’ face…
I could go on with praise for forty stanzas
About her femininity and grace!
My recent romance crashed and hit its end;
I swore that Chelsea’d only be a friend.
When David saw Bathsheba on the roof,
Did he, too, think his plan was Satan-proof?

Soon camp was over, yet I couldn’t bear
To end the friendship, go home, and forget her.
I fell right into Satan’s subtle snare
Proposing that we correspond by letter.
(It’s just as well we didn’t all have email.)
“She’s just a friend who happens to be female!”
I swore to Mom, Dad, Jesus, Gran, and Gramps,
And yet, I spent a fortune buying stamps.

I guess I was a fool to be dismissive;
Though “Best Regards” would more than have sufficed,
We scattered throughout each poetic missive:
“I miss you so,” and, “I love you in Christ!”
My constant visions of her angel face
Were proof that in my heart she stole God’s place.
Like Icarus, I’d flown too near the sun;
I played with passion, and I thought I’d won.

I flew to Kansas, hoping to propose.
Alas, we didn’t have enough in common.
My room’s a mess; her things all stood in rows.
I aim for healthy meals; she lived on ramen!
She’d met a guy at school; they were “platonic.”
It broke my heart.  That love spell was demonic,
Yet somehow, I still think God’s Word contends:
Young men and women can remain just friends.

.

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Joshua C. Frank works in the field of statistics and lives in the American Heartland.  His poetry has also been published in Snakeskin, The Lyric, Sparks of Calliope, Westward Quarterly, New English Review, and many others, and his short fiction has been published in several journals as well.

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23 Responses

  1. Julian D. Woodruff

    Common / ramen–that’s using your noodle, Joshua. A fun poem around a serious topic. Thanks.

    Reply
  2. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Reading your poem, I returned to my teenage golden years and the one that got away. Your lamentation gave me nostalgia. You accomplished that with words of elan, beauty, and verve that stirred my senses. Through social media, I found her again. There must be a word between friend and paramour that depicts the situation. The closest words I can get to that are ” adored,” “beloved,” “dearest,” “darling,” “cherished,” “treasured,” and “worshipped.”

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you, Roy.

      To answer your question, I would reserve such words for (depending on the word) a romantic relationship, family, or God. The idea behind what you describe is an unstable state of being, which is the point of the poem; this is probably why we don’t have a word for it.

      I’m not clear on one thing, though: was this old flame someone you had already found on social media, or do you mean you searched after reading the poem?

      Reply
      • Roy Eugene Peterson

        She was someone from my university days that I found nine years ago on social media after doing a search. I wrote a book of poetry, “Lady of Light” dedicated to her and sent it to her. We have shared a lot over the years as she collected my books.

  4. Cynthia Erlandson

    You’ve told the story with excellent poetic skill, as you always do — great rhymes and rhythms, and attention-grabbing phrases.
    I’m not quite sure I understand the moralizing conclusion of the story, though. Perhaps I’m tripped up by your use of the phrase “Satan’s subtle snare” to describe a letter-writing courtship. My husband and I courted through letter-writing, and it worked out very well; we have been married for 38 years and counting. We got to know each other better through writing than we would have in person. (It helps that we both like to write.)

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      I think the speaker in the poem is saying that he had a brief friendship with a girl (perhaps during a vacation), which should have ended with a simple and cordial parting. But his unspoken desire prompted him to carry on a correspondence with her that stoked the fires of his passion, in a less-than-Platonic manner. The girl allowed the correspondence to go on, but when the speaker made a trip to see her and propose, she shot him down with the argument that they had little in common, and she was pursuing a relationship with someone else. There’s no complaint against courtship by letter here; just a recognition by the speaker that his motives were not quite pure, even though he made an honorable offer of marriage.

      What is extreme is the speaker’s judgment that this entire little misunderstanding was “demonic” and a “snare” of Satan. After all, if he believes that “Young men and women can remain just friends,” he hasn’t done anything evil. He simply misjudged a girl’s feelings. This kind of thing happens all the time.

      Reply
      • Cynthia Erlandson

        Yes, I think you’re right. I wasn’t sure about the narrator’s motives; they seemed honorable to me, but I thought he was accusing himself of doing something dishonorable, which brought the question to my mind: If writing letters isn’t an honorable way to court someone, then what is? Maybe that was the wrong question.

      • Joshua C. Frank

        You have the basic idea right, but I’d like to set the record straight on a few details.

        1. Both of them had intended to be friends and gradually fell in love unawares.
        2. The problems described in stanza 4 were the speaker’s own observations; he never proposed.
        3. See my reply to Cynthia for an explanation of the speaker’s judgment.

        In the end, the speaker has an opportunity to realize that he had done wrong by putting himself in the dangerous situation of mixed-sex friendship at such an age. As alluded to in the epigraph, the Deuterocanonical book of Ecclesiasticus has much to say on the matter; hence the Doctors of the Church unanimously interpret Sacred Scripture to forbid it.

        Instead, the speaker decides to interpret Sacred Scripture to give such passions the green light, finding one verse to justify it without dealing with what experience has just taught him. (The speaker is Protestant, though Catholics are certainly not immune to such behavior.) We say, “Live and learn,” but more often, we live and don’t learn.

    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you, Cynthia. I’m especially honored by your compliments.

      Congratulations on 38 years of marriage! To hear that courtship by letter has served you well gives the rest of us hope in a world where it’s so difficult to find other believers in person.

      To answer your question, the speaker intended to remain “just friends” with Chelsea rather than get into any kind of courtship. He was still in his teens, as implied by his meeting her at camp. He tried to keep the friendship going by letter; the idea to do so was “Satan’s subtle snare” because, as he learned the hard way, male-female friendship at marriageable ages can easily turn romantic without any awareness that this has happened, as described in lines 14-16; by stanza 3, he’s already completely ensnared in the idolatrous obsession with Chelsea. I’ve been through this process a few times myself, which is why I had to write this.

      Reply
      • Cynthia Erlandson

        Thank you, Joshua. I wasn’t thinking of the ages of the characters here, which means that I missed the clue that they were at camp together.
        I hope that your gift for writing will help you in this regard. I must admit, I think that those of us who wrote way back in the days when everyone used cursive instead of email, had an advantage, in that there’s something a lot more romantic in cursive.

      • Joshua C. Frank

        Thank you, Cynthia. I believe my writing will help; even now, some of my most loyal readers are young women.

        I agree about cursive. I switched to writing and editing by hand on paper (using the computer to type, make final edits, and submit) when I read that Georges Brassens, one of my favorite poets, wrote his works by hand even though typewriters were widely available at the time.

  5. Rohini

    I enjoyed the poem, told with all the fervour and extreme emotions of youth

    Reply
  6. Brian A. Yapko

    I found this to be a very well-written poem, Josh, with a unique and troubling tone. It is infused with an emotion I’m finding difficult to articulate. I would not call it “regret” nor would I call it “a broken heart” — even though that’s your speaker’s self-diagnosis. You describe a series of events to which the poet gives not only emotional but weighty theological implications. In the end, I don’t think it’s about the girl. I tentatively interpret the emotional state as one of spiritual shame — the speaker’s presumption, his misapprehension of God’s will and the speaker’s substitution of his own will for that of God’s. This poem is one which is well-crafted but which gives me a sense of unease. For that reason, it feels like the first building block in a larger narrative.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      I have the same sense of unease. It is hardly “idolatrous” to have a simple crush on a girl. Joshua says that the speaker is a Protestant, so I must assume that the speaker is a member of a a very hidebound Puritanical sect.

      Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you, Brian, for your interesting take on the poem. Myself, I would say the speaker, upon reflection, has realized that the devil led him little by little to deceive himself into thinking he was following God’s will by being “just friends” with the girl. Had they both been honest with themselves and each other about their feelings toward each other, they could have discussed next steps. Maybe they would have decided to end the relationship because they were too young, or maybe they would have decided to pursue courtship.

      As Joe says, yes, the speaker is a member of a particularly Puritanical sect. He thinks he’s found a loophole by being just friends with this girl, but he’s learning the hard way that Satan imperceptibly sticks his finger into the pot and stirs little by little until the friendship turns into a mutual idolatrous obsession, beyond a simple crush. The story of the poem has been my own several times despite the best of intentions on both sides. According to the Bible passage containing the verse quoted in the epigraph, this is as unavoidable in mixed-sex relationships (the obvious exceptions are implied) as the bad moral influence that comes from associating with wicked company.

      Somehow, the speaker is oblivious to this fact even after his experience. His conclusion in the source material is simply that he should have been more careful each step of the way, when the reality is that (as I know from both Scripture and experience) this would have been like the proverbial trying to eat just one potato chip. God made men and women to be naturally attracted to each other, and we ignore this fact at our peril.

      Reply
  7. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    I love the lighthearted, humorous threads woven throughout this well-crafted poem on serious matters of the heart. I smiled at, ““She’s just a friend who happens to be female!” /I swore to Mom, Dad, Jesus, Gran, and Gramps, / And yet, I spent a fortune buying stamps” – thank goodness it was only stamp money that was frittered away on a lovestruck whim. I also like, “My room’s a mess; her things all stood in rows./I aim for healthy meals; she lived on ramen!” – it reminds me that one must never let such differences get in the way of matters of the heart. Two people can be outwardly opposite, but their hearts are one.

    I suppose what I am trying to say is, this poem is a lot more complex than it first appears. There are many layers of meaning that challenge me to think deeply… a good thing. I’m pulled up by: “That love spell was demonic” which can be read as humorous or serious – I prefer the whimsical take because it leaves the poem with an innocent-just-learning-about-love feel rather than something much darker. An entertaining read that is most thought-provoking. Thank you, Josh!

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you, Susan! I’m glad you enjoyed it so much; see my comments to others for my take on the incident.

      It was the complexity of the true story that led me to write about it, plus how much he reminds me of myself. It’s interesting that you say, “Two people can be outwardly opposite, but their hearts are one.” Like the speaker, I tend to go with Tevye’s line in Fiddler on the Roof: “A bird and a fish can fall in love, but where will they build their nest?”

      Reply
      • Susan Jarvis Bryant

        Josh, thank you for pointing me in the direction of the comments. I can see the subject matter is very close to your heart. I like the quote: “A bird and a fish can fall in love, but where will they build their nest?” But I’m not talking about different species. I’m talking about human beings and matters of the heart. To use the Fiddler on the roof analogy, even birds and fish have unseen driving forces that ensure you’ll never find a hummingbird mating with an American bald eagle, or a shark nestled up to a sardine. And it’s those unseen wonders that lead to couples (one messy, one tidy, one extrovert, one introvert, one whacky, one staid) to falling in love.

      • Joshua C. Frank

        Yes, you’re right, it is very close to my heart. I love women very much, and so the speaker’s story has been my own several times.

        As for the bird and fish, my experience has been that two people can be just as incompatible no matter how they feel about each other. Man says, “Follow your heart,” but God says, “The heart is perverse above all things, and unsearchable, who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9.) Some translations say “deceitful,” which is also true.

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