The Red

a profile of the lovely Erin Murphy

Imagine, if you will, a butterfly. Nothing too frilly, not too much color. From a distance this butterfly appears to be not much more thanäthere. Now walk up to that butterfly, whip out your magnifying glass and take a gander. Notice anything? See that turbo jet pack tucked under her wing? See the towel wrapped around her head? Is that chlorine you smell? Are those neon orange sandals? Did you get a load of her eyes? Probably not, but donπt be offended. She has to make you laugh before she unveils herself to you.

Erin Murphy is not an insect and, as far as anyone knows, she canπt fly. But itπs quite certain she very well could be a descendent of some super-butterfly species, perhaps mixed with a hint of dolphin and jaguar. Now that would make an interesting looking animal. Yet at first sight, ≥interesting≤ is not on the list of words one would use to describe Erinπs looks, if you even see her at all. On any given day her outfit consists of a straight-leg pair of faded jeans and a T-shirt, along with her signature black and neon orange Speedo sandals (only $10 at Target! Who knew?). She has waves of regular brown hair that hang casually down a good five inches past her shoulders- no bows, no braids, no curls, itπs justäthere.

*****

Wednesday night, 6:30pm: time for class. In her Interpersonal Communication class, which consists of 30 or so students, you can find Erin in the first or second row. Until today, though, you probably wouldnπt have noticed her. Tonight she is sporting the new maroon Pi Kappa Alpha ≥Showdown With Cancer≤ T-shirt, the usual pair of faded blue jeans, and, as always, her orange sandals. But in the first few moments of class, all eyes shift momentarily to Erinπs head. The long brown hair that usually functions as a shield against any onlookerπs gaze is now trapped, tightly wound into a massive grape purple towel atop her head. And later, while the professor yaps on about more mumbo jumbo, diffusion reaches the farthest corner of the room and the last of the students get a whiff of todayπs workout. Ahh, the aroma of chlorine. Thereπs nothing quite like it.

Without a sound, Erin subtly makes her presence known in class. If you peer below the giant purple towel, youπll notice itπs as if she is in her cocoon with nothing but her head and feet sticking out-- almost inviting you to open up the rest and see what else is hiding under there. She sits with her knees bent, feet planted on the basket under her desk. Her elbows rest up along her sides, and the curve of her hunched back and neck forms a perfect C. Itπs almost as if she might implode on herself if she could curl up into any smaller of a ball. Do not be fooled. This Erin, she is deceiving you. She may not make a sound in class, she may not wear a speck of make-up, but add some chlorinated water and sheπll rock your world.

*****

Monday thru Friday, 4:00-6:30: swim practice. Twenty guys and girls gather at the Southwestern pool voluntarily to get their butts kicked by ≥Coach≤ (aka TP, also aka Tim Pukysh). Five times a week Erin religiously joins her team, the guys in tiny Speedos and the ladies in well-loved (read: worn) one-piece suits. Today Erin wears a sleek black TYR brand swimming suit with neon blue print that looks like ripples in a pool. Her hair is stuffed tightly into a black swim cap with a giant ≥SU≤ printed in yellow on the side, and her eyes are masked by goggles so dark, you wonder how on Earth she is able to see anything through them. Everyone struts around the perimeter of the pool wearing silly little (and I do mean little) mesh shorts (which, come to find out, are worn to create drag in the water so the workout is harder, not as a fashion statement or to hide that troublesome upper thigh area).

After all hopping into the icy water and adjusting to the temperature for a moment, a couple of swimmers begin the workout, pushing off the wall and heading toward the other end. Erin takes off a few seconds after Mark, one of the teamπs captains. Eventually, the once delicately clear and smooth pool is violently torn to shreds by the fierce kicking and smacking and pulling by the swimmers. In lane two, Erin rides the feet of Mark like an annoying tailgater. From land, you can almost smell the fury that is being unleashed in the water by these athletes. But wait, Erin, what fury?

≥I donπt really think about anything when Iπm swimming.≤ Riiiightä ≤Sometimes Iπll have a song in my head during practice or the 1000, but mostly I donπt think about anything. Theyπre my non-thoughts.≤

One may find this hard to believe, especially because she consistently gets 1^st or 2^nd place in any given event during swim meets. Coach raves that Erin is everything you could ever want in a student athlete, and is confident that she will be voted as a captain next year. So certainly she must be one of those I can do it or Iπll die trying kind of people, hard on herself and bound and determined to be at the top? Think again.

≥I swim because itπs fun! I love Coach and I love the people!≤

All right, maybe itπs a good release when you have a bad day, right? Take your aggressions out on the water! Not really, because a ≥bad day≤ to Erin consists of waking up with a stuffy nose. End of story. Like the butterfly she is, Erin floats through her workouts and races. Not a care in the world, no stress shall she know. Yet when you observe her unleashing hell in the water, itπs nearly impossible to think thereπs not more to her talent and performance. The first and last time she ever cried at a meet was when she was 14 years old and went 1:12 in the 100 free, which she usually does in 1:08. Thatπs it. Coach says that all the swimmers are smart, but Erin, sheπs really smart. To Coach and to the team, Erin is anything but justäthere. Perhaps itπs her smartness that wins her first place constantly. Maybe itπs raw talent. But once you begin to discover the depth to that girl hiding herself inside her cocoon, you begin to wonder whatπs going on up under that brown hair and massive purple towel that sheπs not about to lay out on the table for you.

*****

Pardon the clichÈ, but when trying to get at what Erin is, the eyes are definitely the window to the soul. Have you ever seen a butterfly with huge, almost turquoise eyes? Honest, Erin has those eyes. Not only turquoise, it also looks as if she has a brown sun hiding behind her deep black pupils, so all you can see is the corona in this eye eclipse shooting into her turquoise irises. You probably havenπt seen a butterfly with these eyes, and you probably havenπt seen Erinπs eyes, therefore itπs likely that you havenπt begun to see the real Erin.

≥I have opthalmophobia. The fear of eye-contact.≤ Erin takes another bite of her chicken sandwich at Chilis, her eyes shifting from her plate to the table across from her, and over to the liquor menu on the table. ≥I dunno why- no one knows why people have a fear of heights- I dunno why I canπt look people in the eye.≤ Sheπs right: her eye contact is brief. So how does one get to the soul of Erin?

She pulls the long sleeves of her royal blue SCAC Swimming and Diving Champion T-shirt over her tanned hands, lifts her shoulders up in a shrug and glances across the restaurant. ≥I donπt open up to people until I can make them laugh. I kind of take a long time to warm up to, ya know?≤ Yet she talks and talks, seemingly uninhibited, all the way back to her dorm room.

*****

As an RA on 2^nd Brown Cody, Erin took it as a personal challenge to cover her walls with as much stuff as humanly possible, and thatπs exactly what she did. Six hats of all shapes and sized hang in three neat rows by the closet, one of which was signed by Lenny Krazelburg, an Olympic swimmer. ≥He gave me a hug, too!≤

Erin sits cross-legged in the middle of her black and purple carpet, speaking briefly during the TV show Smallville. Tonight sheπs wearing a long-sleeve SIRA T-shirt and light blue PJ pants with little chicks on them. She picks at a box of KIX cereal and goes on to say, ≥I also watch the Gillmore Girls, all that Thursday night Must See TV, like FriendsäAnd if I had UPN, Iπd watch Buffy. My mom tapes it for me.≤

On the floor to left of the bathroom door is a piÒata, or rather two halves of a disturbingly smiley monkey piÒata. The head and torso are positioned beside the legs, which are still full of candy left over from her 20^th birthday. The walls are covered with posters from all walks of life: everything from Japanimation to Spiderman to the Wizard of Oz. Random souvenirs from places she has traveled and fun she has had with her friends also speckle the room. It would take a nice chunk of time to see everything her room has to offer. Even then, many things would require Erinπs explanation in order to make any sense (for instance, the green piece of paper that says ≥open-ended question≤ hanging above her bed).

On the doorknob of her closet hangs a swimming suit. On the inside of the doorknob of her closet hangs another swimming suit. But [gasp!] her closet does not contain the rack of T-shirts you would expect. Rather, it is relatively full of regular non-T-shirt pieces. But fear not, on the chair beside the desk lays a huge stack of T-shirts just out of the wash [phew!]. From out of the other closet (yes, she gets two as an RA), she pulls a hip-length light brown fur coat. ≥It was only $60 at Goodwill!≤

Trying to imagine her wearing that fur coat tweaks the mold of Erin you started out with once more. Erin continues to stab little peepholes from inside of her cocoonäthe person you once perceived her to be is quickly becoming nothing more than an ignorant stereotype.

*****

≥A friend of mine once said that if we were in the world of black and white, you would be the red.≤ At a glance, Erin the butterfly may not seem to be screaming with outrageous color, but all you have to do is laugh with her, try not to look her into the eye too hard, then watch her unleash the beast in the pool to realize that her friend was right: she is the red in the world. ≥I am unique because I am not afraid to be myself.≤ So maybe ≥herself≤ is quiet in class. Maybe ≥herself≤ doesnπt have to chisel makeup off her face every night. Maybe ≥herself≤ truly does swim solely because itπs fun. But after all is said and done, Erin is not justäthere. Erin will become and already is the beautiful rich red butterfly with the turquoise eyes. Keep your head up, or she may flutter (or turbo jet-pack) right past you.

Authorπs Afterwords

Based on everything I knew about Erin, which was pretty much nothing, I came into this project with nothing but my observances of her in my classes. As luck would have it, she is in three of my classes, yet I had never spoken to her until we were assigned this profile. Therefore I took what I saw, which was a quiet, seemingly shy student, and expected to struggle with prying anything interesting out of her. From day one of my observances, she shot my preconceived notions of what I thought she would be straight to hell.

I attended her swim practice and had a chance to chat with Coach, who would not stop raving about how wonderful she is in every way. He told me she swims the best 200 fly of anybody he has ever coached. I watched her do the butterfly (stroke) during practice, and that got me thinking about tying a butterfly theme into the paper. I found it fascinating that she could be so quiet and simple in class, yet be able to soar in swimming and various other aspects of her life. I thought the cocoon thing went well with what she became to me, too. It kind of represented the emergence of who she is and what she stands for to me as time went on.

I took notes in a notebook during our discussions. In my attempt to take note of not only everything she was saying, but also to write how she said it, what she was doing and what she was wearing when she said it, it was hard to capture it all on paper. Direct quotes were tricky this way too since I didnπt want to ruin the casual conversation by having to go back and ask her ≥say that again≤. I tape recorded one of our sessions which was quite helpful with this problem.

I decided not to use ≥I≤ in this profile, but I found myself using it accidentally then going back and correcting it. By not using ≥I≤, it placed the focus on Erin, not on what I think about Erin. It wouldπve been easier in the first person, but I know I wouldπve tried to tie what I observed into me and my story, and the similarities I found between us, which would have taken Erin out of the spotlight.

I chose this article for the Fear and Loathing collection because, of the three I wrote this semester, this was the only one where everything went smoothly. Unlike my personal and non-fiction narratives, I had several solid interviews with Erin and I gave myself plenty of time to ≥stew≤ before I wrote the actual article. The butterfly metaphor seemed to go over well with the class. I got a lot of inspiration from the articles in the Intimate Journalism book we read in class. It also didnπt hurt that Erin was, in fact, an interesting person.

-LH