This little guy is demonstrating one of the rules that I live by:

disapprove early and disapprove often

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Now playing: Limahl - Never Ending Story
via FoxyTunes

While Julius Caesar said that, " The evil men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones" it seems that in this, like in all things, I am the opposite. In the absence of a man, I forget his bad qualities-the walking behind, the sweating to the point of fainting at Mont St. Michel, the starving in the hotel room, the running to his pouting bratty daughter for every little thing-and remember only the perfect lovely moments.** I realize how much I miss him. Sleeping next to him-his warmth, his strange mangling of my name, his unpredictability. Being with him was like trying to live on a swiftly tilting planet. But I found myself at any moment of the day trying to think of what he is doing his time, and yet telling myself that I was not expecting to hear from him again. No, no no.

At night, alone in my bed, however, it's yes, yes, yes. Checking my email and each time there is no message I tell myself, he's still in Frehel, tell myself it's better this way, telling myself that I'm not expecting to hear anything from him.

But my heart sinks.

It only takes two weeks of NY. Two weeks of sleeping alone, the predictable disappointment by the usual burbling boozeheads, the unringing cellphone, the optimistic dance of handing out cards and phone numbers and hearing nothing back, the slogging through days of work for no respect and less money, staring down the despondent nights clutching ever tighter to my Grey Goose telling myself as I always have that someday SOMEDAY I'm gonna be someone...and with every day that promise seems less likely to come true and it takes more Grey Goose to convince me that tomorrow, tomorrow is going to be the start of the New World Order, I'll prepare for the GRE, write a best selling novel, and while accepting an award in some European city-a young man will romance me-my autobiography will be optioned, I'll write the script and all those kids who made my life miserable will pay good money to watch it and wonder why they were such fucktards to me all those years ago-and I will finally, finally be able to go to the Oscars and accept an award in a gorgeous gown, delicately weeping, in a very attractive way, mind you, and thank you all for making my life so miserable because without that suffering I wouldn't have the fabulous and amazingly fulfilling life I have now.1

And after two weeks, I decide that's it, I'm moving to France. I'm going. Fuck these dreams that aren't gonna happen. I've had it with this city and this country. I'm out, that's it, I'm off. I want to be back in a place where everything is possible. It's not just that I like France better, it's that I like myself better when I am there whether the Sauvage is involved or not.

And this very night that I call the Doberman and tell him I'm moving to Paris, I don't know when, but I'm going, I get an email from the Sauvage-telling me that he's back in Paris and that he misses me. And think this is a sign...but of what I have no idea.

** or as I would later jokingly tell my friends, the only way I can like a man is if I am separeted from him by an Ocean and common language.

1 I would add "Suck it Jesus", but Kathy Griffin beat me too it.

Labels: frehel

I’ve always been good with words. When I was very little my parents used to encourage me to read at the dinner table so they could talk until they discovered that I could converse just as skillfully as an adult. My mother was always very proud of my ability to engage almost anyone in conversation. As I grew up and my disability invited the ridicule of my classmates I discovered another use for my wit. These kids didn’t know how to throw an insult. I learned how to cut out someone's heart so fast with a casual line that he or she would barely have time to see the blood on his or her shirt before passing out. After one or two verbal whippings, the popular kids had the good sense to make fun of me well out of earshot. In high school, my vicious sense of humor attracted many friends and suddenly I WAS one of the popular people. By the time I got to college, I was working as a columnist for a newspaper gaining fan mail for my turns of phrase. But by then I began to use my words like a suit of armour. I’ve gone out at night waiting for some poor fool of a man to hit on me just so I could cut him into ribbons for my own entertainment. Just to prove that I could.

When I met the Sauvage I thought since I couldn't use all my little tricks that he would get to know the real me. But then I suddenly realized that I had no idea who I was without words. I live a life entirely of letters. My blog. My teaching career. My reviews. My reputation. Christ all I do is deal, trade, sculpt words. And if I don’t have a clue, then how could hell could he?

But then I began thinking why I went to Paris to begin with. I went to forget a person I had known for 14 years. 14. He met me when I first moved to NY. When I left everything I knew to come to the city where I knew absolutely no one. He was one of the first people I met. And I thought because he had known me longer than most people, known me even when my father was still alive, that he knew me better. But he never trusted me. No matter what I did he suspected there was some deception. I was playing games. I was fucking with him for my own sick entertainment. We shared a common language. We had a similar sense of humor. We had similar tastes in movies.

But he didn’t know me.

But this man who barely knew me, with whom I didn’t share a common language, whose life is so different from my own I can’t even imagine what his childhood was like, this man trusted me enough to take me on vacation with him and his daughter, to introduce me to his parents.

He trusted me. And I trusted him. And he appreciated what I did for him as I, occasionally, valued what he did for me. And if he didn’t understand about my trips to Martha’s Vineyard with my father or my disability, he understood the most important part of me. The part that doesn't need spoken language.

And so, as always, whether I return from France with a lover or without a lover or with a book deal or without a book deal, I always come back with a better understanding of who I am and a sense that every once in a great while there is some justice in the universe.