I tell you I’m in trouble by way of an essay. In my e-mail to you, I just type “Rough Weekend” for a subject line and allude to the attached document. You respond by mailing me two books. This is how you say you get it. This is how you tell me that you feel it, too. Or have felt it. I wonder about the depth of your empathy in general, of your sympathy in particular.
I read The Silent Woman first – a book, in this context of yet another close call for Jeff, about the ethics of telling your truth, while casting unwilling characters. The biographers of Sylvia Plath at war with the Plath Estate – what to include, what’s necessary, the morality of peering behind the curtain. And then telling the world.
You know this: that I write to let people in, to have that peek. To surrender the myth that I’m smiles and Sketchy Jeffrey, to take off the mask and say: I don’t give a fuck what you think about my angry sorrow. You know how it feels when someone asks you not to share this or that. And how violent, how total that rage, that indignation can feel. Even if they ask you nicely. Even if you get where they’re coming from. They are your already active voice of writerly doubt, now in fucken stereo. In my case, the scene where my mother waves a draft of a poem I wrote in front of me. She found it while going through my trash. It was about the scene I always talk about: the one where my mother and father tried to strangle one another in front of my sister and me. The sounds of us screaming, of the answering machine breaking.
Stop it. Cha-ching. Like a cash register.
She tells me: I hope you’re not planning on sharing this with anyone. We don’t need to go back to that. I lie; I tell her that I don’t know why I wrote it. I hand it in as a junior in high school. I get a B+. A draft of it makes a good Christian girl cry. This makes me feel good about the piece. And now, a former lover asks you not to share a piece in which he was mentioned. To summarize how that went: Goddammit.
The second book. Crush by Richard Siken. This is what you said about it: This is my favorite book. I carried it with me through Asia, through a dark winter in Boston, through two of the darkest years of my life. It’s sexy, gritty and gorgeous. I want you to have it. And now I do.
You mentioned the book to me in 2007, when I was still writing verse. And here it is. Love at first sight. I’ve read it once already, on the subways and in the hotels ofNew York City. I consumed it with greed, with abandon.
The cover: a man, who we assume has stunning features, such as a strong jaw line and defined back muscles. I want to lick his stubble. The blood off his thumb. Well, we assume it’s blood. But it’s a black and white photograph, so we can’t know for sure. At first read, the words are in synchrony with the cover. A lot of love, a love of blood. Gritty, gorgeous. You’re right again, you.
You know I’ve loved like that. You know how I love, and you know just how fuggin’ sad that can get. It isn’t bottomless, this pit that I’ve let you see. It’s a quarry in coastalMaine, where the young go to swim. There are signs there warning that it’s very deep. That people drown here.
Those who drown are those trying to touch the bottom. I wonder what goes through their heads as they realize, not without a little panic, a little sadness, a little frustration, that this hole is deeper than they thought. That this constitutes a serious miscalculation; and might carry serious consequences. I wonder what they think or feel as the terror slides into acceptance slides into the blurry turning gray, turning white, turning off.
I think: they get the closest to the core of the earth. They die on the ascent. They die rising, floating, weightless. Dancing ghosts who were minutes ago young men, with lives they were supposed to live. The quarry swallows them up. Those young men: stand-ins for my relations.
I would let my lovers in, and they would think it was a swimming hole in Vermont: a ten foot jump and your feet touch the bottom. Okay, no big deal, excited that I took the plunge. I know you better now. But no: it’s that Oh shit moment, seeing the rays of light, the blurry, wavy legs of the other swimmers waiting eagerly for these young men to brag about how far down they went. Those are the last images that they see as these young men, my relations, gulp in water when what they need is air. They die on the way back up. They die moments before the bodies breach. They go without a whimper. An apology, maybe. A dammit, Jeff, maybe.
Back to the cover: I want, in a way, to be that man who we assume has stunning features. I think, as I take the 1 train up to 86th, that I sometimes want a bloody thumb, that it’s been over a year since I drew blood on purpose, but less than a month since I wanted to, since I wanted to go down the quarry myself, since I wanted to bring the insides out. Intestines on the carpet floor. Maybe I’ll die sitting seiza. Without the blood and guts you’d think I was meditating or serene. And maybe, in a way, I would be.
As fortune would have it, I would have blood on my hand by the time I disembarked. It was on my index finger which had been happily scratching my ear. I stopped when it felt wet. I inspected my finger and sniffed it. I looked at the cover and smiled. I thought: well, the boy’s still got it in him. Good. I also think: I think you’d appreciate this.
This is how you say you get it. This is how you say Don’t do it. This is how you say I’m here.
You say: Listen. Listen well.
And then you show me something you know I’ll like, you know I’ll need again and again. A bible for the abandoned, for those who said no to gods.
You say Listen. Every time. Every time. I’m leaning in close. I’m cupping my ears.
{To J.S., again}
