KL. Nov. 11![]() |
reverent interview Gary |
late October—November 1, 2020 |
Bracing News: Gary shows he can spell ‘quirky’—but avows “I still prefer ‘qwerky’.” So, Gary, I’ve read you were born on Bloomsday. Yes. So, ‘qwerky’’s a Joycean joke? You could say that. Yes, but would you? Funny. I’d say Linda was qwerky, because—this is really funny, seriously—she said (46 years ago) our 6+ years of emerging aduthood together—spring of ’67 through ‘73—were, for her, a ‘frivolous affection’ and—by the way, she added: She lied about trying suicide in high school because, I guess, emotional blackmail is civil procedure— No. She was lying in ‘73. Summer of ’67, her parents were stressed about it when I came to her house the next day... Six years later, she was giving Bonnie confidence that our times had been meaningless. She knew I knew she was lying. But I had fun with it a year later… Anyway, three years after the high school drama, she demanded I marry her, or she’d leave me— Blackmail? Well, she was just 19—but I loved her, and happily did marry for life. Seriously? Yeah. That was forever, to me… But she decided to divorce a few months later, so her parents would pay for law school. No! Right. Well, I’m oversimplifying, but that was basically it. My plan to go to grad school wasn’t something she wanted to defend to her parents. I felt like a girl who’d been jilted by a boy. She had used me to get away from home, didn’t really like Dillard House— didn’t fit in—and evidently thought my easy friendship with others, women especially, was a betrayal of her. She didn’t make friends easily. So, she moved back to her parents’ house. You said earlier you always felt like a girl. Yeah. Most all my friends from childhood were girls—even for all my life since Linda. Women make great friends. Men do not, generally. The Dillard story is really rather complicated. I loved developing new friendships, Linda didn’t. I was doing mescaline, she wasn’t interested. I was reading Sartre and Hesse and Husserl….I remember distinct-ly, soon after she jilted me, I felt like an abandoned girl when I slapped her—the only time I ever slapped someone—like a woman in a Hollywood movie being jilted by the man who’d made her pregnant through promises of love. That day, I was a girl rebelling against abandonment—which, I didn’t realize, embodied Linda’s plight. I was acting out her own anger. It was like a transference relation in psychotherapy, but where I unwit-tingly bought it because I didn’t yet see how she had possessed me. We were in a syn-drome, momentarily—just an episode for me; for her, abandoning me, she was defending against primal rejection. That’s pretty dramatic. So, you weren’t involved in counter-transference. No. I’ve never felt primal abandonment—though everybody has episodic things in rela-tionships, you know…She’d demanded I marry her, as if she was channeling her own abandoning mother. But also, non-dramatically, marriage was necessary in order for her parents to approve living with me. Instrumental. Yeah. Then she left me months later like her own abandoning father, though it was also her anger about feeling abandoned in Dillard. Ha, she broke an LP record of Tchaikov-sky’s “Romeo and Juliet” in front of me. I prefer Prokofiev. Me, too. Oooh, John Cofer—another world. Ha, Omygod Linda: Stacey burning, your idea he said… What? “Nothing, just remembering… Then, a year later, she wanted to remarry, when I was in grad school, and insisted I find an apartment for us in Gainesville while she visited a girlfriend in California. But there she got into fucking novel men, then later blamed me for betraying her, as if I, too, would get involved with anyone when she’s away. Did you? No! I was “married” to her. The divorce was supposed to be tactical, where she made clear later she was going to re-marry me. I wasn’t involved with anyone in Gainesville before she flew in. Then, she thought my file of our love letters was something diabolical. Jeez. Keeping love letters is something girls do. Yeah, well, my “partner” destroyed a lot of those letters, which I didn’t realize until months later. Destroying keepsakes is something men do…. So, anyway, a year later, back in Lexington, she assured me that “not much will become of you,” though I was in the middle of a doctoral program and, OK, I failed to tell her I knew I’d inherit a lot of money when my mom died. She must have thought I’d become a drifter, a grad school drop-out. Why didn’t you tell her? I wanted to be loved for me. My aunt’s money ruined my parents’ marriage. Dad, as a young showman before I was born, hooked Mom into marriage by dangling prospects of my aunt Irene’s money—he was Irene’s only inheritable relative. Then he ruined himself, causing Irene to prefer my Mom for inheritance, because Mom would have custody of my young siblings, when Irene died, which happened December, 1971. It made Dad’s once-harmless alcohol habit into crazy alcoholism…. I think now, maybe money was what drew Linda to me in high school: wanting class mobility with an M.D.—revenge against infant abandonment. Frivolous affection. She sure hooked me. Professor of philosophy wasn’t good enough, six years later. Summer of ‘73 Right. But didn’t you tell me you started things with her in high school? Yes and no: Her interest in the cafeteria table of English Seminar kids, including me, made me believe she was academic minded. Ha! I wanted a young version of the English Seminar teacher: her blondish daughter proxy, a burgeoning literary writer. Linda even told me she wanted to be a professor of philosophy. And “no”? Yeah: She really started things, our second date, maybe third—she said in my car, casually looking out her side window,“It’s a shame I’m a virgin at this age.” No kidding! What age? 16 and a half. She was hilarious! Real shame. Teen sex. Who woulda guessed. No, it was her. She was a riot—and talented—and a fearless girl. Don’t get me started. How could I not fall in love with her? …. I don’t recall she ever wondered why I was in Lexington, summer of ’73, still feeling married. Her incuriosity and anger toward aban-donment did us in. She needed re-mothering—no guy could do that. I connected her with Bonnie. Bonnie’s a lovely person, perfect for re-parenting Linda. Meanwhile, you seem to have “become much.” Thanks. I love writing so much. The Edenic sister I sought knows the love. Bonnie didn’t, I learned. Too bad. She actually wanted to get involved with me, summer of ’73, though she’d deny it: her hanging out in my apartment a lot, across the hall from hers. Brother and sister on High at Kentucky. But I wasn’t interested. Sweet woman, she couldn’t see that I was a girl in her bed at The Chelsea, 1971, and I was a woman across the hall. But I’d lost interest by then…Anyway, her poety was uninspired. I couldn’t see her as a literary sister. I could tell you about inspired!: the Creative Writing program in Gainesville. It was lovely play. I had James Dickey for “professor,” spring of ‘73. He’d come to class drunk, wearing the bushman hat that Burt Reynolds wore in the movie version of Dickey’s book, Deliverance. One day in my place across from Bonnie—winter of ’74, maybe spring—I echoed Dickey’s Holocaust-traumatized aesthetic with an improvisation—a sick poem—about getting put into a wood chipper. But really, Linda didn’t hurt me. And I’ve never been nihilistic. So, you retired early after your mom died, thanks to your aunt’s will. —to make a very long story short. I’ve known literary sisterhood so far beyond trial by Rilke’s cruel angel. What? First poem of Duino Elegies. I was enjoying self-effacements, November of ’74. I got addicted to the Elegies, summer of ’71, when I was living in Missoula, Montana. Now, there’s a story. Mygod. And that was before Berkeley, a couple of months later, first visit, which was transformative. I had to live here. I wanted Linda to want that. But your “aunt” was really your dad’s aunt. Yeah, change the subject, it’s so big…Great aunt so called, to me, but figuratively, too. Nephew Dad blew his chances, in her eyes. I remember one time, during college, just before my ex-family fled to Florida, Dad pulled a gun on me. I don’t remember telling Linda. I must have, but I don’t remember. He pointed it at me and said—like some Hollywood cliché—“Who do you think you are?” Really! Who was I? I didn’t say, but I thought: “I’m the guy who removed the firing pin from your fucking gun.” Which is why you’re so verbose these days: free time through inheritance. And good luck: no thug yet has faced me on the street. Pray I be witless when I’m prey… The whole time that I knew Linda, up to late ‘68—they left for Florida—I tried to hide the pain of life at home. I first broke up with her—that summer “drama”—because starting college—“The Summer of Love,” right?—dealing with home was too much. Would you like to tell me about your dad? Hell no. But I’ll say a little: He was a radio star in Omaha when Johnny Carson was his competition. Radio was still everything back then, early ‘50s. Carson went to Hollywood. Then, Dad dragged us to Hollywood, mid-‘50s. Carson scored in TV. Dad didn’t—of which The Tonight Show reminded him every night for years, part of what made him self-destructive. Ha! He couldn’t stay away from Tonight. Moth to flame. And me: memory to lost love, so saddening. You’ve certainly had a qwerky life. Oh that’s not the half of it, trust me. There’s the alcoholic professor of philosophy in Gainesville I was bolting from, summer of ‘73, when I came back to Lexington. She claimed, winter of ‘72/73, she was going to kill herself, and I—in my sick sense of humor—offered to help her, which so inspired her—you know: honoring her suffering—that she seduced me into an affair the first semester I had a seminar with her, first of two. You were in a sexual affair with your professor? Me and loony women. Those were days before professors lost tenure for fucking their students. I wrote her thirty years later, asking why. She wrote back simply “I was lonely.” Just that, no apology for exploiting me. But it was consensual. Oh, yeah. I couldn’t pass up a trained Jungian psychoanalyst who had become that in Zürich, the capital of Jungian training.... She was 45, me 23. It was an experience. She eventually concluded that I was a “Trickster.” That’s a Jungian archetype. Actually, I was just a philosophy student doing creative writing classes and fascinated by loony-ness. Qwerky. It made me theatrical. But I never deceived her about staying in her life. So, what drew you to Linda in the first place? I wanted an Edenic sister to love forever. In the beginning, she didn’t want to be “Linda.” What do you mean? I never called her “Linda”—her choice, my love, our secret. Who was she? I won’t say. OK…So, you became—what is it?: a “philosophical psychoanalyst”? —which is partly why I was later involved 20+ years with, Janna, who became a psycho-therapist after we got involved. Lover. And best friend. A licensed psychotherapist who killed herself. Late November, 2009. Couldn’t deal with your sense of humor? Ha! Conceptual effusiveness made her cry—no. What? I’d go on exuberantly about conceptual infatuations, and she’d get so intimidated, she’d cry. Not-understanding terrified her. All you had to do was ask me to explain better. Nooo. Anyway, so, I kept more and more of my interests away from our relationship—and she was obsessed with her practice, properly so. We grew apart, early 2000s. She was a good therapist! Aren’t therapists inquiring minds? I’m amazed we stayed together so long….But I love psychodynamics. We analyzed her clients together—not strictly ethical on her part, but we did it anyway. And we shared a commitment to psychology of flourishing, in the early days of the field. I still feel Janna’s alive. It’s creepy. And you cope through irreverence. Only when I think it won’t hurt someone who’s alive. Glad to hear it….Ooo-K…Well… Time’s up. You don’t need more time with me, that’s for sure. I agree. So, what say we go for a drink? I don’t. In monkish solitude, I appreciate my past lovingly (albeit sometimes irreverently) while no longer living there, staying easily open, gracious and large minded, I hope— not repressive, exclusive and insular. So, going forward, I’ll write you some more about life relative to Linda. It’ll be fun for me—and honest, I promise. I’ve always loved you, K. Gary (gemini: twins) Nov. 11 page |