times a day over his defection, but to him my love had been just one more intolerable demand, on the same level as the need for good grades or the fear of ending up penniless—or gay.
The Farewell Symphony
If I remember Sean so well it's because he made me suffer so much. I lay on my bed for hours and hours writhing in pain, thinking about him. I'd picture his holding me and kissing me by candlelight before the mirror; rd masturbate; then, as the sperm dried on my hand and the candle-wax in the memory congealed, I'd start to cry. Without the piston of my fist driving it, the whole vast locomotive of my imagination stalled. I cried until I was exhausted, then I'd start to fall asleep. I'd awaken with a start, sitting up, unable to catch my breath. I was stifling. The blood pounded in my ear so loud that I couldn't sleep on my side. I found that the pulse was louder in my left ear than in the right, so I trained myself to sleep on my right. I'd cry so long I'd become exhausted; my esophagus ached; I felt as warm and snotty as a baby—would a psychiatrist say that I cried in order to feel like a baby, that my reaction to Sean's departure was a search for infantile comfort?
Or was that too ingenious? Perhaps I should have just accepted my loadisome dependence on him and recognized that nothing could be done with it. It couldn't be psychologized in some redeeming or even interesting way, nor was it the cornerstone of a philosophy—or even of my own brand of folk wisdom.
I suppose all of my life has been led in the aftermath of this love; I wish he'd burned his initials into my ass, at least I'd have something to show for all that pain. I'd entered into this passion for him half-jokingly, quite aware I was playing a love-sick role. What I hadn't bargained on was that my little self-conscious smile didn't immunize me from the deep infection that was inexorably changing me from inside, molecule by molecule. By the time the smile began to fade my bones and ribs and inner organs had all been thoroughly invaded and reconstructed.
Love—real, violent love—makes other people impatient. Heterosexuals didn't want to learn about the intricate domestic topography of Sodom; they preferred to draw a big A' over the entire land. Anyway, all the world hates a lover. Friends are jealous, adults irritated, children unengaged, readers bored (the few I could round up to listen to my bulky manuscript). I'd trick friends into listening, not to my novel, but once again to my obsessive chatter by claiming I'd just had a starding new insight; only halfway through the same old circular story did their atten-tiveness surrender to frustration as they realized not one detail had been changed. With the long shot of indifference they'd say, "It just takes time, you'll soon be over it and off and running after some new piece of trouser." What they didn't realize was that I felt that if my thoughts of
Sean faded at all I'd be guilty of sacrilege; he was the Israel I'd promised never to forget. Memory and the repetition of our story was a way of defeating their cure-all, time.
When Sean left New York the whole city began to fade. Each skyscraper lost three floors, the taxis slowed down, the disconsolate vagrants stopped panhandling, the Hudson ran backwards, salty with tides of tears. The only thing that increased was the steam issuing from the manholes, since it was an endless exhalation of lonely desire.
My trip to Paris and the bout of hepatitis set a term to the first agony over Sean. He refused to communicate with me; it was as though he'd become a silent Cistercian. Now that I no longer had any contact with him (his grandparents, polite but firm, murmured, "He's not allowed to speak to his New York friends," and hung up), I began to elaborate his life, our life, in my novel. His blood turned into ink, his pale face became my blank page, the first three lines his deep frown. The power of this disease of love to devastate a spirit surprised me,
The Farewell Symphony
If I remember Sean so well it's because he made me suffer so much. I lay on my bed for hours and hours writhing in pain, thinking about him. I'd picture his holding me and kissing me by candlelight before the mirror; rd masturbate; then, as the sperm dried on my hand and the candle-wax in the memory congealed, I'd start to cry. Without the piston of my fist driving it, the whole vast locomotive of my imagination stalled. I cried until I was exhausted, then I'd start to fall asleep. I'd awaken with a start, sitting up, unable to catch my breath. I was stifling. The blood pounded in my ear so loud that I couldn't sleep on my side. I found that the pulse was louder in my left ear than in the right, so I trained myself to sleep on my right. I'd cry so long I'd become exhausted; my esophagus ached; I felt as warm and snotty as a baby—would a psychiatrist say that I cried in order to feel like a baby, that my reaction to Sean's departure was a search for infantile comfort?
Or was that too ingenious? Perhaps I should have just accepted my loadisome dependence on him and recognized that nothing could be done with it. It couldn't be psychologized in some redeeming or even interesting way, nor was it the cornerstone of a philosophy—or even of my own brand of folk wisdom.
I suppose all of my life has been led in the aftermath of this love; I wish he'd burned his initials into my ass, at least I'd have something to show for all that pain. I'd entered into this passion for him half-jokingly, quite aware I was playing a love-sick role. What I hadn't bargained on was that my little self-conscious smile didn't immunize me from the deep infection that was inexorably changing me from inside, molecule by molecule. By the time the smile began to fade my bones and ribs and inner organs had all been thoroughly invaded and reconstructed.
Love—real, violent love—makes other people impatient. Heterosexuals didn't want to learn about the intricate domestic topography of Sodom; they preferred to draw a big A' over the entire land. Anyway, all the world hates a lover. Friends are jealous, adults irritated, children unengaged, readers bored (the few I could round up to listen to my bulky manuscript). I'd trick friends into listening, not to my novel, but once again to my obsessive chatter by claiming I'd just had a starding new insight; only halfway through the same old circular story did their atten-tiveness surrender to frustration as they realized not one detail had been changed. With the long shot of indifference they'd say, "It just takes time, you'll soon be over it and off and running after some new piece of trouser." What they didn't realize was that I felt that if my thoughts of
Sean faded at all I'd be guilty of sacrilege; he was the Israel I'd promised never to forget. Memory and the repetition of our story was a way of defeating their cure-all, time.
When Sean left New York the whole city began to fade. Each skyscraper lost three floors, the taxis slowed down, the disconsolate vagrants stopped panhandling, the Hudson ran backwards, salty with tides of tears. The only thing that increased was the steam issuing from the manholes, since it was an endless exhalation of lonely desire.
My trip to Paris and the bout of hepatitis set a term to the first agony over Sean. He refused to communicate with me; it was as though he'd become a silent Cistercian. Now that I no longer had any contact with him (his grandparents, polite but firm, murmured, "He's not allowed to speak to his New York friends," and hung up), I began to elaborate his life, our life, in my novel. His blood turned into ink, his pale face became my blank page, the first three lines his deep frown. The power of this disease of love to devastate a spirit surprised me,
Similar Books
