unsolicited midnight polemic (to a young acquaintance in some pain)
Wednesday 9 August 2006 | 2 cookies in the jar
To answer your question despite its retraction: No, I certainly do not know him, nor do I wish to…and anyway, dear, I’m sure that at 37 I’m as old as or older than he is, having been an adjunct instructor myself for 4 years. It’s simply that I despise users and heartbreakers and dumpers on principle and in general, in my curmudgeonly cronage. And, I have sufficient experience with the time-honored tradition of Lecherous Male Creative Writing Professor that I have next to no patience with them anymore. It’s hardly even possible to stomach that particular brand of abuse of power when the wielder is, as they sometimes are, a Nobel laureate—much less when it’s some pipsqueak, pencil-necked PhD with an unpublished dissertation, a tiny dick, an overweening ego, and the burning desire to project all his unresolved anima-mama issues onto some brilliant, struggling, gifted female student. It’s worse than immoral; it’s downright unsanitary, taking advantage of another, younger writer like that. (But come on, tell us how you really feel…)
Finally, I support your every valiant effort to get his toxic crap off your inner t-shirt; you’re doing an incredibly brave job. It sucks, it hurts like a motherfucker, and all I can really promise is: a) nothing will ever hurt this badly again; 2) you are so much bigger than whatever chickenshit betrayal/abandonment he perpetrated; and iii) you really don’t have to choose between having an intellectual equal for a companion and being fucked over—intelligence and kindness are not mutually exclusive. It just takes a few years (or decades…) to love yourself enough to believe you’re worth it, and to notice the compatibly brainy, kind and seriously hot person who’s right under your nose.
Phew—sermon over. I’m in the middle of writing umpteen web-content pieces on why fast food can be good for you (dear GOD) and thought I’d take a break to dispense my contumely all over you. Maybe this is where I should mention that at twenty-three I was dumped after a four-year, royally twisted first marriage to an “intellectually superior” Republican, who interned with Paul Wolfowitz in Bush the First’s Pentagon and who for a long time successfully head-tripped me with his sloppy interpretations of Nietzsche—and who eventually dropped out of Cornell while I graduated summa from Mount Holyoke and went to Cambridge. (One overshoots, sometimes, in the wilful effort to prove one’s worth to the ambivalent and/or indifferent love object.) Anyway, he’s some kind of software shmuck now, who lives in Houston with three kids and a pediatrician wife—whereas me, well, sure, I’m totally broke, “mentally interesting” and an unrepentant copy whore. And, I’ve had poems taken by the Paris Review and AGNI; had smarter (and better) lovers since him; spent seasons in London, Paris and Florence; and do you know, I might now—and this is after some judicious consideration—cross the street to pee on him were he aflame; but immediately following this charitable act, I’d walk away without a look back.
And you will arrive, eventually and probably sooner than you think, in that relieved place of cool remove; this too I can promise. Don’t skimp on the therapy, or on the solitude, and don’t give up. You’re doing fine.
2 cookies in the jar
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Forever and ever, thank you for this.
Well, I look back on this now and am somewhat amused by my editorial, shall we say, flair (not to say exaggeration and/or outright lying). I’m doing this presumably mostly to buck up Miss Bovary? But the Republican and I were only “married” in the mystical sense, and he would say (and did) that thank God we’d never really gone and done it. But to me, we were; that’s how sad I was and how daffy I was about him.
Then too, I’m pretty sure he did graduate from Cornell. Finally, I don’t think “shmuck” is necessarily accurate–the truth is I just don’t know what he is. A manager? A director? Something technical and businessy in telecoms, I think–you know, a transponster. He grew up in the Silicon Valley and was always minded that way, always adept with his Apple IIe.
And if he were on fire I would definitely pee on him.