ms.chief's scrapbook

“people put so much effort into starting a relationship and so little effort into ending one” ~Marina Abramovic

she has a exhibition at the moma that i will find time to see in the next few weeks.  she is a performance artist and among the many fascinating things i’ve read about her and her work was a recent profile in the new yorker.  for 12 years, she had a symbiotic artistic and emotional relationship with the artist german artist, ulay.  they embarked on their last piece together on march 30, 1988.

she started walking from the from the mountains on the eastern end of the great wall of china, and he, from the desert in the west.  it took them three months and thousands of miles before they finally met in the middle to say good-bye.

maybe it’s because i leave for china in a month.  maybe because i’ve said so many good byes.  the poetry of this moved me.  this was 1988.  cell phones weren’t in wide circulation.  there’s no wireless connection, no way to communicate.  just two people who had decided that they had come to the end of their journey together.  months and miles of solitude, of contemplation, of conviction.

at the end of it she said, you are alone.

i know i am fickle.  i’ve been told it enough times.  i reread journal entries and see complete ardor subside to total annoyance in a matter of days.  i’ve been prone to betrayal and destruction.

when i was 14, deirdre was one of the coolest girls in my freshman class.  i wanted her approval and i guess there was something she admired about me as well.  we cultivated a friendship that was based on mutual interests, humor, and i suppose the desire for each other’s approval.  we could look across the room at each other and know exactly what the other person was thinking.  we went to colleges on opposite sides of the state, but we wrote each other letters, traveled together; we were best friends.  it never occurred to us that we would ever grow apart, that we would ever not understand each other.  really, at the age of 24, we were still sort of new to how relationships must evolve.  we started to disagree, to misunderstand, to judge, to offend.  it hurt and it drove us apart, though we kept trying to mend it, but at the end of the day something had changed and we didn’t know how to fix it.

i was going through a tumultuous time and i was a little crazy then.  i set up a dinner for us and a group of friends.  i got wrapped up with some boy and showed up two hours late for dinner completely wasted.  i didn’t know it then, but i was trying to ruin it or push some sort of boundary with her,  because i felt like she was no longer on a pedestal for me and she couldn’t accept me as an equal.  three days later we talked about it.  well, i apologized and she screamed and insulted me.  i took it, because i wanted a break from her.  at the end of the conversation, we both got really quiet.  we were both sad.  we hoped we’d be friends again, but we aren’t.

that was about ten years ago.  we’ve seen each other, we’ve tried writing.  there’s affection there, but it’s never going to be the same.  it’s over.

i found out a couple of years ago that she was pregnant and something in my heart ached.  there was a time when i would have known the moment she thought she was pregnant, and now i was hearing it second hand five months in from one of my best friends from college who ran into her on the streets of san francisco.

you half expect it with lovers; i think that’s why it’s even more complicated with friends.

where have you been?

didn’t see either of them this time.  i looked.  the 24th street crackhead and homer.

The crackhead was ageless.  i’ve seen her since i was old enough to wander around on my own.  we could have been the same age.  she looked like she could have been 17 or 70.  Her face was completely unlined but she looked like she’d lived a million years as a premature baby.  she was 4’9.

she was always in a rush or rocking herself, sitting crossed legged in the the middle of the sidewalk like a lost buddha.  she could have been a burn victim, but i think that was just her skin that looked like polished brown leather.  i go home once a year now, and sometime in the last few, i realized that there would be a time when i would never see her again.  i was surprised to notice how much affection and relief i felt every time i saw her.

as i so often have said: cities are like lovers.  san francisco was my first.  even if i don’t want it anymore, i want it to always belong to me.  it’s comforting to know something that well.  total acceptance with warm regard for the what you just can’t live with.

i think of skin and bodies, the the tactile landscape of familiarity.  you remember how it feels and you can spend months, years, decades looking for every freckle and mole that makes one’s flesh unique and savor every detail that is distinctive, as if it was put there for you alone.

the 24th street crackhead wasn’t my lover’s skin.  she was an archetype running through the neighborhood psyche and the fact that she wasn’t there anymore slapped me with reality that the city had evolved without me and i, without it.  i don’t want to think that she died.

homer was gone, too.  For a dollar he’d sing you a song and dance you a jig, but never look you in the eye.  he had hair like a lion and the face of a gnome.  He was a schizophrenic.  six months after i moved to new york, i went back home to get another backpack and one more suitcase.  i was getting a bottle of wine and was walking towards hoff street, what we called defecation ally, where my best friend erika lived.  A lot of heroin addicts wandered through 16th st, and many of those who were going through their methadone withdrawals would duck into hoff st. to literally lose their shit.  i once dropped my favorite yellow cashmere hoodie on that street, and for a good second considered if i would just leave it there.  Homer walked by with his guitar on his back.  he looked straight at me.

“where’ve you been?”

i couldn’t tell if he was lucid.  i haven’t seen him the past last three years.

why getting older rules.

for so long, because of the way i moved out here, because of the well-intentioned, but stifling love i experienced in my youth, i felt like i was always just barely keeping my head above water, thrashing around, fighting for survival, looking for someone or something to be my lifeboat, when really i clung to buoys that were set adrift for their own purposes.  then i realized it was all an illusion.  i calmed down, stopped struggling so hard, and realized that i was in a wading pool and all i had to do was stand up and i’d be fine.

i thought maybe because i was so used to having no one to count on, i thought that my capacity for love had diminished, but i’m really pleased to find lately that it is absolutely not true.  i’ve started working with a couple people that i worked with for years when i was new to new york and the great thing about being with people who’ve known you for years is that they remind you of who you are and how far you’ve come.  i think my capacity for love is greater now, in direct relation to my capacity for understanding.  i mean sure, i still have wild child/party girl remnants (i was really never that wild.  it’s all relative.) but this is who i am and i’ve calmed down. i really love the people in my life.  i love their neurosis, i love their defense mechanisms, i love their righteousness and i love that they love me right back.  i’m really lucky to have such good friends and continue to meet good people.

sorry, for this schmaltz.  i’m just feeling good.

breaking up is hard to do

recently, i’ve been thinking and talking about break-ups quite a bit.  as a serial dater with commitment and intimacy issues, i find usually terminating a relationship can be as easy as a sudden lapse in communication.  or simply, “this isn’t fun anymore and i don’t want to be this person.”

i’ve been dumped, disappointed, heartbroken plenty of times, and it sucks.  it really does. what’s wrong with me? will no one ever love me?  of course, why would anyone love me?  it must be another girl who’s smarter/prettier/more successful/better than me. etc., and all the myriad of self-loathing, depressive conclusions that while perhaps are reasons for introspection, can simply be dismissed as: we were not well suited.  this is not the person for me.  the worst part is you feel so out of control.  someone else made that decision for you and you believe it to be wrong for whatever reason, and my thinking on that is if they don’t want to be with you: they don’t want to be with you.

but, i’ve always been more interested with the other side of this, being the heartbreaker, ego-shaker, like maker, if you will.  my case has always been, it’s harder to break up with someone than be broken up with.  because you have to make the move.  you have to get over somebody, make the decision to leave, hurt somebody else, and everybody’s favorite, change everything.

a couple of weeks ago, i stopped in for a late night dinner at my friend jeff’s restaurant.  i’ve known him for a few years now, and as long as i’ve known him, he’s been in an on and off miserable relationship with lisette. for the last 5 years.  but he could never bring himself to leave her.  he went traveling to south america for a year and came back and moved back in with her!

but this year, jeff opened his restaurant; it’s doing very well.  he works 7 days a week, 14-16 hours a day.  he told me he had finally broken up with her, but they were still living together (ah, new york)  but they had separate rooms and never saw each other.  he didn’t understand why she still wanted to be with him.  they hadn’t spoken or seen each other in three weeks.

“we were fucking miserable.  i was an asshole to her and she just took it. and it’s fucked up.  it’s like she misses being abused and i miss being the abuser.  why would anyone want this? it’s horrible.”

we’ve had this conversation plenty over the years.  he’s bad at confrontation but where jeff is really motivated and interested in the world, from all accounts, lisette is a beautiful party girl who sleeps all day and works and drinks and parties all night.  she’s a photographer who at this point, i think, doesn’t take pictures anymore.

one day this summer, jeff and i were sitting out in front of his restaurant in the late afternoon/early evening, before it got busy and i asked him if it occured to him that maybe she was depressed,

“she’s totally depressed. i try to get her to go out and do stuff.  to do stuff for herself, but she won’t. she can’t do anything.” he was so frustrated.

“well, it’s hard to motivate when you’re unhappy.”

“of course she’s unhappy.  i’m an asshole to her because i think she’s retarded.  and then i hate myself for being such an asshole.  i’m unhappy.  it’s fucked up.”

i asked him if it was possible she was depressed and unmotivated because deep down, she knew he didn’t love her.

“i don’t want to talk about this anymore,” he’d said then.

yesterday, i was chatting with my friend john.  john is an industrial psychologist who in the spring ended his 10 year relationship with his boyfriend guillermo.  while john has been having a great time, he told me yesterday that guillermo had rebounded quickly and was now living with his new boyfriend after only a month.  said new boyfriend was prohibiting any communication between them, but guillermo would call john from work, with updates, that frankly sound like an attempt to make him jealous.

john was pissed that guillermo was (sort of) adhering to these rules, mainly because he missed having the everyday connection with him and because when they’d first gotten together, guillermo had a boyfriend and john never forbade any association during the ten years.

“john, you broke his heart, and i know it sucks, but you have to respect that he has a new boyfriend, and he has to do what makes him happy.”  a mutual friend of ours had seen them together and told me that guillermo looked radiant, like a different person.  john was probably never really in love with him.  he, of course, agreed with me.  as friends we are allowed to speak the truth to each other and then, of course trash the new boyfriend.

“well, it’s obviously just a reaction to you,” i said, “do you want him to still be in love with you? a little bit?”

“no, not at all. i want him to be happy, you know?” he said, “and if this makes him happy then, that’s great. just everything i’ve heard about this guy, i don’t like. he’s controlling and i just don’t want guillermo to get hurt.”

“yes, but you’re not together anymore and he’s not your responsibility anymore.”

i’ve been thinking a lot about both these conversations and the sort of similarity and contrasts between john and jeff.  when you’re in a relationship with someone, you have an impact on how they feel and their general well-being.  giving that up is difficult, because it is your choice, and because of that, for other people negates any emotion you might have about that.

jeff is an asshole because when he sees lisette, he sees failure (whether his own or hers or both, is not for me to discipher) and resents that he is a part of her misery.  he hates feeling responsible for her and is trapped by it.  however, and this is so honest, he knows that he can ruin her whole day, can reduce her to tears, can destroy her with one word, one glance.

“i miss being the abuser,” he yelled at me, “how fucked up is that?” i understand where jeff is coming from.  when you’re used to taking care of someone, of being the one that holds it together, and thus enabling the other person to not keep it together, you resent their need.  their weakness. and you hate yourself for not only not loving them, but for being disgusted by them.  because what they have become is partially your fault.

john is an asshole, because he still wants to be apart of guillermo’s life. i think he misses being needed by guillermo and it comes from a genuinely loving place, and wants to take care of him.  however, the issue there was that guillermo wasn’t interested in anything outside of what john pushed him to be.

at the end of the day, neither one of them are assholes.  well, i’m sure to lisette and guillermo’s friends they are.  but, we carve out these roles for ourselves and voluntarily giving them up fucks with our sense of identity and what it is we are really looking for.

it is as jarring to admit that you aren’t in love with someone you know deserves love as it is to realize someone will never love you the way you need to be loved.

where’ve you been?

i didn’t see either of them this time.  i looked.  the 24th street crackhead and homer.

The crackhead was ageless.  i’ve seen her since i was old enough to wander around on my own.  we could have been the same age.  she looked like she could have been 17 or 70.  Her face was completely unlined but she looked like she’d lived a million years as a premature baby.  she was 4’9.

she was always in a rush or rocking herself, sitting crossed legged in the the middle of the sidewalk like a lost buddha.  she could have been a burn victim, but i think that was just her skin that looked like polished brown leather.  i go home once a year now, and sometime in the last few, i realized that there would be a time when i would never see her again.  i was surprised to notice how much affection and relief i felt every time i saw her.

as i so often have said: cities are like lovers.  san francisco was my first.  even if i don’t want it anymore, i want it to always belong to me.  it’s comforting to know something that well.  total acceptance with warm regard for the what you just can’t live with.

i think of skin and bodies, the the tactile landscape of familiarity.  you remember how it feels and you can spend months, years, decades looking for every freckle and mole that makes one’s flesh unique and savor every detail that is distinctive, as if it was put there for you alone.

the 24th street crackhead wasn’t my lover’s skin.  she was an archetype running through the neighborhood psyche and the fact that she wasn’t there anymore slapped me with reality that the city had evolved without me and i, without it.  i don’t want to think that she died.

homer was gone, too.  For a dollar he’d sing you a song and dance you a jig, but never look you in the eye.  he had hair like a lion and the face of a gnome.  He was a schizophrenic.  six months after i moved to new york, i went back home to get another backpack and one more suitcase.  i was getting a bottle of wine and was walking towards hoff street, what we called defecation ally, where my best friend erika lived.  A lot of heroin addicts wandered through 16th st, and many of those who were going through their methadone withdrawals would duck into hoff st. to literally lose their shit.  i once dropped my favorite yellow cashmere hoodie on that street, and for a good second considered if i would just leave it there.  Homer walked by with his guitar on his back.  he looked straight at me.

“where’ve you been?”

i couldn’t tell if he was lucid.  i haven’t seen him the past last three years.