Dear Dana,
I got your letter on Saturday. I would have written to you sooner, I just
couldn't. I guess you've probably been dreading this letter a little too,
wondering what I would say. It’s all right, I'm not angry anymore. I think I'll
divide this letter in two. First I'll tell you how I feel, because I know
that's what you'll want to know first. Then I'll tell you what I think. Here
goes.
When you said you'd gotten the job in the record shop and met this guy John, I knew what was coming sure as shit. And then I got to the line where you said you'd "gotten it together". Come on. What you mean is you fucked him. The way it was written sounds like you maybe locked the shop door for a while and fucked in the back of the store. I keep trying not to imagine how he got you to do that, even if it didn't happen that way, but the image won't go away. It kills me. I was really sick in heart and body for the last three days. The day after I got your letter I had to call in to work and tell them I was sick, and I never call in sick. Being heartbroken is a different kind of sick, because you can't just lie around in bed watching old movies. It's a fever that makes you get up and walk around and go outside and wander the streets picking fights with people you meet. If I'd been smart I'd have written it all down in my journal so I could write about it in a story some day, but I was messed up. It must feel what it's like for a junkie giving up his jones. You just throw up all the time. I ate bananas. So I don't know if it pleases you or not, but I was too sick to move. I read your letter over and over and thought about you and John in the back of the record shop, doing it.
So that's that. I believe you didn't want to hurt me, I don't think you're like that. But before I go on, the chlamydia infection we thought was gonorrhea? Did you take care of that? I'm glad it turned out to be something sort of innocent, a couple of big pills from the doctor and I could pee again without it hurting, but for you it’s different even if it doesn't hurt. It can stop you from getting pregnant someday if it isn't taken care of. You have to get that fixed. It was hard calling you on the pay phone that day to tell you what the doctor said. I didn't even tell my mom. Were you fucking John by that time? Make sure he knows too so he can get checked.
That's what I feel. Now on to what I think.
I knew this was going to happen. Okay? I knew that the minute I put my underwear back on in the back seat of Dad's old Mercury cougar that first night, after we were done and you were crying. You said you were crying because you thought you hadn't made me come. I told you were wonderful, you're a good lover Dana, I hope John tells you that, but that wasn't what made me know you were going to let me go. I'm too young. I'm a year older than you, but I'm too young for you and you knew it even then when I was climbing off of you. I'm not what you need. You never told me what John looks like or what kind of person he is other than that he's "very together".
Let me describe him to you.
This man John, who, in a little while after you finish this letter and guiltily stash it out of sight, is going to pull your t shirt up, and make you lay down or maybe stand up and will slip in his dick where mine was only a short time ago; this man whose hips you will hump against yours and maybe whisper "You're beautiful, you're beautiful." as you did for me in the back of dad's car, that man is going to be an older man than me, and certainly older than you. He will be older by a few years at least, and his personality will be much older than mine. Manly and commanding. He tells you what to do. He tells you to shut up sometimes. Maybe he hits you. You think it’s not what you want, but it’ll turn out to be what you want. He doesn't have that stupid mental disease guys like me have that make us think if we're nice to girls and always do what they want us to do, they'll like us more. Girls like to have guys like me as best friends, we listen to them complain about the way their dumb boyfriends fuck them, we listen the way a dog listens, but nobody ever wants to fuck us. You were my first. That's why I'll never forget you. You were the first who gave me a chance even though I was found wanting. You're too young too. Timing is everything. We were both born too early for each other.
One more thing before I go. I'll be leavingGeorgia
soon. I don’t know where I'll go yet, but the doors are all closed to me here.
You can tell when you’re not going to stay. I might go to Minnesota
where dad is and see if I can go to college there. If college is out of reach I
might go to the west coast where DeEtta is going and maybe she can put me up
until I can find my way. Minnesota
would be the easiest.
If I go there, or if the future finds a way, I want you to know something - Put aside all this stuff about love and saying I love you and all that useless shit. I hate the way it turns out people are so phony with that shit anyway when you think they mean it. Everybody says it, but it’s all bullshit in the end. Dana, listen. I really like you. Okay?
Love gets thrown around a lot. But liking is different. You can love someone and not like them, the way you said you feel about your dad. But I really like you. I still do, no matter what. You were always my good friend, back when we were just friends. I always liked talking to you and listening to your ideas and you seemed to like it too once. I'm not good at remembering faces. It may be the next time we see each other we'll be strangers with common memories, but that's okay. If you see me coming down the street or the supermarket aisle or anywhere - come up to me. Don’t be afraid. Remember, I like you. I want you to come up to me. My future self, who will be closer to the man you need right now instead of me, that man will want you very much to come up and look him in the eye and say "I used to know you." Please - please do that Dana. Or if there's a way for people to find each other in the future through technology or something - find me. Even if you marry John and live happily ever after - find me. Say hi. I promise I'll be happy to see you and buy you coffee. I'll have a story to tell you. I’ll want to hear your story too.
I want to thank you for something you did for me - I'm free. I'm only nineteen. Just a dumb kid, as you know too well. But I'm not going to marry you now like we'd planned. I'm not going to get a job and get settled down in one place and get old with you the way other people do. I’m free now.
I’m scared. Nobody wants me anymore, so I have to figure out what to do with myself. I can go anywhere and become anybody. Until you dumped me I didn’t know this is what I really wanted all along. You get John. I get me. What do we know about what we really want?
I have my future back. What do I do with it? I’ll think of something. All I have to do is try out my new wings and watch out for the cats.
Remember me. I'll become a writer someday. Just so you'll see.
Love Always
Chris
College Park Georgia
June 1973
When you said you'd gotten the job in the record shop and met this guy John, I knew what was coming sure as shit. And then I got to the line where you said you'd "gotten it together". Come on. What you mean is you fucked him. The way it was written sounds like you maybe locked the shop door for a while and fucked in the back of the store. I keep trying not to imagine how he got you to do that, even if it didn't happen that way, but the image won't go away. It kills me. I was really sick in heart and body for the last three days. The day after I got your letter I had to call in to work and tell them I was sick, and I never call in sick. Being heartbroken is a different kind of sick, because you can't just lie around in bed watching old movies. It's a fever that makes you get up and walk around and go outside and wander the streets picking fights with people you meet. If I'd been smart I'd have written it all down in my journal so I could write about it in a story some day, but I was messed up. It must feel what it's like for a junkie giving up his jones. You just throw up all the time. I ate bananas. So I don't know if it pleases you or not, but I was too sick to move. I read your letter over and over and thought about you and John in the back of the record shop, doing it.
So that's that. I believe you didn't want to hurt me, I don't think you're like that. But before I go on, the chlamydia infection we thought was gonorrhea? Did you take care of that? I'm glad it turned out to be something sort of innocent, a couple of big pills from the doctor and I could pee again without it hurting, but for you it’s different even if it doesn't hurt. It can stop you from getting pregnant someday if it isn't taken care of. You have to get that fixed. It was hard calling you on the pay phone that day to tell you what the doctor said. I didn't even tell my mom. Were you fucking John by that time? Make sure he knows too so he can get checked.
That's what I feel. Now on to what I think.
I knew this was going to happen. Okay? I knew that the minute I put my underwear back on in the back seat of Dad's old Mercury cougar that first night, after we were done and you were crying. You said you were crying because you thought you hadn't made me come. I told you were wonderful, you're a good lover Dana, I hope John tells you that, but that wasn't what made me know you were going to let me go. I'm too young. I'm a year older than you, but I'm too young for you and you knew it even then when I was climbing off of you. I'm not what you need. You never told me what John looks like or what kind of person he is other than that he's "very together".
Let me describe him to you.
This man John, who, in a little while after you finish this letter and guiltily stash it out of sight, is going to pull your t shirt up, and make you lay down or maybe stand up and will slip in his dick where mine was only a short time ago; this man whose hips you will hump against yours and maybe whisper "You're beautiful, you're beautiful." as you did for me in the back of dad's car, that man is going to be an older man than me, and certainly older than you. He will be older by a few years at least, and his personality will be much older than mine. Manly and commanding. He tells you what to do. He tells you to shut up sometimes. Maybe he hits you. You think it’s not what you want, but it’ll turn out to be what you want. He doesn't have that stupid mental disease guys like me have that make us think if we're nice to girls and always do what they want us to do, they'll like us more. Girls like to have guys like me as best friends, we listen to them complain about the way their dumb boyfriends fuck them, we listen the way a dog listens, but nobody ever wants to fuck us. You were my first. That's why I'll never forget you. You were the first who gave me a chance even though I was found wanting. You're too young too. Timing is everything. We were both born too early for each other.
One more thing before I go. I'll be leaving
If I go there, or if the future finds a way, I want you to know something - Put aside all this stuff about love and saying I love you and all that useless shit. I hate the way it turns out people are so phony with that shit anyway when you think they mean it. Everybody says it, but it’s all bullshit in the end. Dana, listen. I really like you. Okay?
Love gets thrown around a lot. But liking is different. You can love someone and not like them, the way you said you feel about your dad. But I really like you. I still do, no matter what. You were always my good friend, back when we were just friends. I always liked talking to you and listening to your ideas and you seemed to like it too once. I'm not good at remembering faces. It may be the next time we see each other we'll be strangers with common memories, but that's okay. If you see me coming down the street or the supermarket aisle or anywhere - come up to me. Don’t be afraid. Remember, I like you. I want you to come up to me. My future self, who will be closer to the man you need right now instead of me, that man will want you very much to come up and look him in the eye and say "I used to know you." Please - please do that Dana. Or if there's a way for people to find each other in the future through technology or something - find me. Even if you marry John and live happily ever after - find me. Say hi. I promise I'll be happy to see you and buy you coffee. I'll have a story to tell you. I’ll want to hear your story too.
I want to thank you for something you did for me - I'm free. I'm only nineteen. Just a dumb kid, as you know too well. But I'm not going to marry you now like we'd planned. I'm not going to get a job and get settled down in one place and get old with you the way other people do. I’m free now.
I’m scared. Nobody wants me anymore, so I have to figure out what to do with myself. I can go anywhere and become anybody. Until you dumped me I didn’t know this is what I really wanted all along. You get John. I get me. What do we know about what we really want?
I have my future back. What do I do with it? I’ll think of something. All I have to do is try out my new wings and watch out for the cats.
Remember me. I'll become a writer someday. Just so you'll see.
Love Always
Chris
June 1973
Oh my! I'm fairly sure in my heart that I never met you, but this could have been addressed to me. (Except for the STD part.) I lost count of how many hearts I broke in my adolescent zeal to "sample" as many of the 50% of the humans in the world who are male as I could talk into it, while I was young and single. Some were virgins, most weren't. Some weren't interested past one night, like me. Some were, but I wasn't.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to think that all of them remember me fondly. I've since found out (through Facebook of all things!) that for some of them, I'm a significant memory, while for me I had to ponder on what face/dick to attach to the name. I think that's because as I found out early, a man has to really work at it to get a female to say "yes", whereas a willing female only has to make her desires known and NO man will turn her down...even the married ones!
But the ones I do remember blur with the ones I don't, and it's all a fuzzy, vague remembrance of lots of hot nights with usually only so-so sex. I had a favorite saying back then: There's no such thing as a frigid woman, only clumsy men. In my Sexuality course in college, the professors on the first day passed out clinical diagrams of both sets of sexual anatomy and asked us to label them for the next class. 2 classes later they laughed as they handed them back, telling us that every time they did that, the females labeled most of the parts for male and female correctly, but the men labeled everything on the female as "clitoris" because most of them had absolutely NO IDEA where it was...so any hope their partners might have had would be quickly dashed as their tongues fumbled around trying to find something they had idea where to look for.
That's why I tell my husband often that I'm so glad I met him when I did, a few years AFTER I was graduated from college. Going from "feast to famine" was difficult, but it's not polite to casually fuck men you meet in the workplace...awkward for your career goals. And I had kissed enough frogs to know when I met a prince. I'd have married my husband after a week. He stalled for over 2 years while he figured out if we really were meant to be together. I waited. And 30+ years later, we're still together.
But if I could I'd like to thank all of the guys who contributed in any way to making me the person my husband ultimately wanted to marry. I had a lot of "crazy ya-yas" to get out of my system before I settled down. I've never had to wonder what any other man might be like in bed, because I found out just how many are a disappointment...or at least, lackluster. I only met a few who rocked my world. I married the best of the best.
But I'd be pleased to talk to any of the men I used to know in the Biblical sense. I grew up and stopped breaking hearts. I hope they forgave me somewhere along the line. And yes, I've been honest with my kids. I tell them not to judge women for their sex drives, since that "slut" has more in common with their mother than they know. They groan, muttering "gross". Some have read some of my smutty books. They still love me. So I'm okay with honesty.
Fiona, you're a remarkable lady! Thanks!
DeleteHi fiona!
ReplyDeleteIm tapping this out a tiny ,eyboard in a tiny cafe in the mesabi iron rznge in minnesota so I wish I could write z
a longet reply because you raose so many interesting things. Lile lisabet, iwonder where you girls were when I was young and horny and single and not yet celebate.
Gzrce
Hi fiona!
ReplyDeleteIm tapping this out a tiny ,eyboard in a tiny cafe in the mesabi iron rznge in minnesota so I wish I could write z
a longet reply because you raose so many interesting things. Lile lisabet, iwonder where you girls were when I was young and horny and single and not yet celebate.
Gzrce
Hey Garce, we just got back from 2 weeks up in the Boundary Waters up by Grand Marais! We've been to the Mesabi Range camping also in the past. We love that the Sudan Mine is where atoms are being sent from FermiLab, which is a bit west of us here in Illinois. And the atoms make the trip in a few seconds, whereas to drive straight up there has taken us 12 hours! Have fun! It's nice to spend some time without wi-fi or cell phone signals. It is a HUGE pain to play catch-up when you get back, but for a while that freedom is truly glorious! Enjoy!
ReplyDeleteYou were a great writer, even back then, Garce. How heartfelt. ... and more mature than I was at that age.
ReplyDeleteGarce,
ReplyDeleteI've read this - what, three times? Four? Maybe more. But it doesn't lose its impact. It does make me mad, though. Because I think you're wrong (or maybe, you *were* wrong, if this reflects more on what you thought then than what you think now). Women do love men who listen to them, who treat them with respect, who share ideas as well as flesh. You jump to conclusions about this John - what do/did you know? That's the stereotypes speaking, and I really do think they're full of ***t in some cases.
Glad you've gotten away. Hope you're enjoying yourself!
Lisabet, I totally agree with you. The writer of the letter is making some huge assumptions. For a 19-year-old, however, he does show promise of the writer he will become. :)
ReplyDelete