Journal entry, surprise visit from JOS

A half-hour visit from an ex-lover. I’m strangely calm, unemotive, which means I’m still not OK about it, but it least that part is over with. The meet-n-greet. I have finally seen him face to face after all this time, and I am relieved that I feel nothing for him. Nothing at all. My heart hurts, not because I have feelings for him, but because there is so much water under the bridge, and we can never go back to who we were.

At the end, he said, I’d better leave before I get maudlin. And, outside, he made a move as if to hug me, and I backed off, saying no. That was a trespass. In that split second, I realized he was prevaricating. But I was resolute. We stuck to safe subjects. When he asked if he could show me his paintings, I said no. I am protecting myself as best I can. His stiffness makes me stiff too. Wooden figurines.

He brought me a gift from Mexico, a ceramic burnished black-ware box. I made no effort to give him anything at all from the USSR, because it didn’t seem right. Still, I am unwilling to share anything of myself with him. I thought he looked awful, today’s stubble, and no mustache. I decided I don’t like how he looks without a mustache, there’s an ugliness and callousness around his mouth that the mustache hid. Telling. Though, with a headache, and desperately needing sleep, I wasn’t in the finest shape either.

I hid my truck, parking it at Laurie’s, down the street. I don’t want him to know what I am driving. I got rid of my Bug because I want to have some anonymity when I drive in Berkeley in case I need to sneak up on him, to drop something off. We talked about his car briefly. I made little attempt to be vivacious or friendly. I wasn’t unfriendly, I was a non-person, unwilling to unveil my inner self to him. The doors are closed. He has no right to my inner self. I will always be guarded around him.

He said Mike Tuggle and Susan Kennedy had hoped that I would be friends again with them in the future. I said it would be hard to do that. So much has happened. So, the unsaid betrayal is out in the open. They know that I’m angry with them because they bumped me for the Cazadero reading. I never asked them to take sides, but their meddling, even though it was meant as kindness, is what I have trouble forgiving. 

It must have been bizarre for John to come up to Sonoma and not come to my cabin. Or maybe not, he’s had lots of practice going back to where all his ex-girlfriends’ haunts.

He said he has been running around with the younger generation and was dearly sick of it—not having anyone to sharpen his intellect with. We were good together. Intellectual sparring partners. He talked also about being stuck, and about having to grow. I said, when you finish with one problem, another one always crops up and if you don’t pass the test the first time, you are condemned to repeat it again until you’re ready to go onto the next phase. I was speaking generally, and he was all l/me, responding personally.

We are on such different wavelengths now. He is still so self-absorbed with his problems. New labels and concepts, but has he changed? He always was good at saying with his problems were. Once I believe that by stating one’s problems meant that they were on the way to being resolved, not true. So I am a wary beast while he is a clumsy mammal. 

I didn’t ask him about reprinting Falling to Sea Level. I think he was surprised that I gave a copy of it to Isabel Allende, and to Steve Wozniak, when I told him about Etel Adnan wanting a copy for her radio show, his face showed genuine surprise. On the other hand, I was refusing to make eye contact, so it was hard making the connection.

I’m very sleepy. Not at my best. I also feel a sense of relief. Now, that’s over. I can get on with my life. I was actually feeling much friendlier than I let on, part of my coolness had to do with a profound lack of sleep.

Also, the hermetic sealing off of pain leads to abscesses later. I hope I haven’t done this, and if so, perhaps my wounds will reopen and I will heal again from the inside. I was very aware of how alone each of us truly is. Not even love itself could save us. 

He wants me to read his poetry manuscript, and a translation manuscript. Why? Why does this even matter to him? I am not willing to be his Frida to my Diego. I say, I can read them, or not, in the end, it’s ultimately my choice. He said the translations are fairly safe, but warned me that his poems may bring up some sore points. I’m tempted to read them now and get it over with, and to also ignore them. Always the one to jump into a fracas, I know which I will choose. It’s only fair.

One Sunday he finds my poems on his doorstep, the next, I have two of his manuscripts on my doorstep. Tradeoff. No incantations of love. Climbing the mountains wasn’t enough after all. This opiate, this brain residue, the dregs at the bottom of the barrel. No joy. Only a garden of silence. All my sadness. 

And now, he’s gone safely south. I don’t have to worry. I’ve done it. Seeing him. I looked into the face of fear and emotional abuse, and found it was easy to not let it in, easy to turn my back on it and him, easy to let him go, because he can no longer get to me. I’m no longer his victim, nor am I my own.

Nov 12, or 13? 1989