in the hall of mirrors

A bit dulled

Last night: sitting around with D., V.'s husband and H., V.'s best friend. They were relaxing after a day of doing lists – lists of people not to forget to invite to the service, lists of music, lists of this and that. They are both in rather better shape than they were.

And, fortunately, we were all too savvy to ask the question, How are you doing? – that being the exact invasive demand that has been driving me nuts (and undoubtedly them too).

But it was easy to segue from everyday things – the dumb movie on television with the sound off, the drinks on hand – to carefully constructed discussions of big things: what will D. do now, where will he go?

I drank a hefty slug of the chocolate liqueur that I'd given V. for Christmas. (D. offered me the other chocolate liqueur that V. had given me at the same time – great minds and all that – which I'd had to give back to her as it included cream, and I couldn't drink it.) Which is probably why I'm a big groggy today – not really hung over, well a little bit I guess....

Too many demanding e-mails from too many silly people. I'm finding the Flaky Student thing particularly exasperating these days. Perhaps it's just the hangover.

Exasperate

This is actually the hard part: people stopping me in the hall, being sympathetic, saying how awful it is that V. has died. I always have lots of trouble with this part – actual disasters don't faze me that much, but talking about them afterward in any but the simplest terms makes me a bit nuts.

It's sort of like something I've repeatedly mentioned at the AIDS presentations we make through the year – when you get through something, wherever you are with it emotionally, every time you bump into a new person and have to explain it to them, you have to go back all the way to the emotional beginning. With people who have AIDS, you have to deal with Oh, how awful for you.... And I tend to flee from all that, I'm afraid – today, after teaching and doing various administrative things, I sneaked out to have lunch (with a glass of wine) and then home.

You don't need to tell me that this is a kind of avoidance: I'm sure I must seem cold and quite ungracious – but I just can't revisit all the attendant emotions, let alone appear to generate them when I'm already past certain points. Acting shocked a week later than the truly shocking part is frankly kind of hard, and I get resentful that people seem to want me to do that – it feels a bit like professional mourners weeping and throwing themselves across caskets. I mean, if you're paid to do that it's fine, but....

It's easier when it's in an e-mail; I'm just not very good at the face-to-face evocation of emotional drama. Besides, I can't help feeling that V. herself would have been irritated by the same stuff – she also preferred a rather dry, almost clinical approach to disasters.

Another angle on all of this is the brilliant thing my friend Laura K. said to me once. Laura is very intelligent, forthright, efficient – a lot like V. in fact – but also the sharp one in a family of chaotic and self-indulgent people. When her youngest brother died in his late teens in an entirely pointless and dreadful swimming accident, she ended up managing the whole crew as they flung themselves about in throes of agonized grief; she was mostly pretty patient – but at one point she said to me, "It's already so awful in itself – why do they have to make it awful?"

My sentiments exactly.

After V.

Change, time, sudden breaks, new landscapes. Familiar to me; but this now is after a long time of relative stasis.

V.'s death coincided with finishing several things I've been working on for several months, and of course my increasing well-being over the past three months from the new medications; and considering, with increasing definiteness, moving on from northern England. (No, of course, that may not happen soon, because in my work it is hard to change locations quickly: but I have an increasingly sharp eye out for possibilities.)

Having V. missing from my life means: less kindly nagging, less support for getting things done; less pleasure and fun, and less refined education in the arts of self-indulgence. And, above all, less comfortable trust and safety: over the past year, especially, I had become more comfortable with her than most of my friends and acquaintances; she had the great advantage for me in being, in a way, sort of American in her social/emotional outlook – direct, not skittish or difficult, neither too easily wounded nor xenophobically judgmental. But perhaps I can try again to do what I thought I should do after Philip Brett's death: internalize some of what I got from her – push myself forward in work and life, rather than depending on her to do so.

(Not perhaps so hard to construct, psychologically; I was looking vaguely upwards and commenting to her on various things all day yesterday. I don't claim any particular rationality, nor any formal religiosity, in my attitude towards the dead – I'm just happy chatting with them when it occurs to me to do so.)

Then of course there's illness, and sharing its experiences: but that seems to transform into the idea that I need to take better care of myself. Odd, that every time I am tired or have digestive problems I'll want to talk to V. about it – well, I'll probably talk to her about it anyway – for a long time.

And there is the feeling that I need to allow things to change, a lot: and be more assertive in those changes – to move on, not just to anywhere, not just where the wind blows me, but to some place that works better, for me –

to, in fact, create such a place....

End

V. is gone.

Actually not gone, but – going – they have decided that there is enough brain damage that even if she could be awakened it wouldn't really be her. They are turning off machines tonight; she may continue breathing for a few days, but she really died on Monday evening, when she had her heart attack.

As I said to her tonight: flights of angels, and all that.

V.

Last night I got to hold V.'s hand for a long time – about an hour and a half, I guess. The experience is reassuring – her hands are clean and soft, and pleasant to hold, and there is movement from breathing (or perhaps from the respirator, but the effect is the same); the immediate experience is that she is there, that she's still to some extent okay.

The actual facts don't necessarily match that, sadly – although again we're caught in a web of interpretation: small signs (eye movements, her turning on her side) have made her husband ecstatic that she must be recovering, but more definite problems (discovered in H.'s close questioning of doctors, which V.'s husband avoids) have resulted in H., V.'s longtime girlfriend, being very pessimistic that V. is still 'inside' that body at all.

Anne and I, on returning home, agreed – admittedly without really knowing anything about the medicine involved – that both of them seemed to be overinterpreting; that it still seemed as though we didn't really know, one way or the other, and both were making premature decisions based on personal feelings (V.'s husband unwilling to conceive of a world without V., H. clearly defending herself against raising anyone's hopes, including her own, only to have them dashed).

It's a bit like the old battle between experimental medical therapies and 'alternative' ones, especially in serious cases – both have a lot to do with faith and the assertion that if you only believe they will work. And both sometimes work – which means that being allergic to such faith seems almost as silly as overdoing it.

Oh well. The doctors may, finally, today, be reaching some conclusion on whether V. is still with us or not. My own feelings are in three tangled strands – this morning I realized that, not only would I miss her as a friend and as someone hugely fun to hang around with, and especially to eat and to shop with; and also as someone who, when we worked on writing projects together, could keep me honest and working in spite of myself; but that I would miss her even more as someone with whom I could share simple awareness of illness and the threat of death – there's nobody around me these days who gets all of that without extensive translation or cushioning aside from her, and she has made a huge difference in my past five years here by being a touchstone of reality and real experience, an antidote to both drama and clinical detachment.

The second strand: clearly I am upset, whatever control I may have over the expression of it – but the being-upset is familiar, not shocking. In yesterday's class on music about AIDS (the third time I've taught this class), I explained V.'s situation to the class and how complex people's feelings got under these high-pressure conditions – then, no less than five or six times during a lecture where I was playing different kinds of sad and mourning musics (this particular lecture was about classical choral music, so there wasn't much humor as there is in some lectures), I simply lost it – voice cracking, finding myself unable to go on for a minute or so. It all feels like revisiting familiar territory – which is why I have so much control there, of course, and can offer V.'s husband some support; none of this is weird or alien. But there is a lot of grief just below the surface; just like anybody who is new to the idea of death, I'm simply angry and sad that things might change.

And finally, and probably rather irrationally, there is that sense of holding her hand. It feels as though she's still there: and even if they tell me she's not, and turn off the machines, I'm clearly going to think of V. as still present, in some way, for a long time....

In hospital

The last few days: explaining V.'s condition (clearly serious, but who knows the future?) to a variety of people, interfacing between her husband and the university. An hour and a half sitting with her, by her husband, in the ICU tonight – we talked, and talked to her, etc. Actually it was nice to see her – her color is better; it looks as though she's sleeping (plus her eyes taped and a lot of machines, but all that didn't seem particularly unpleasant). He held her hand most of the time, but before we left I asked if I could hold her hand for a minute, and that was a good thing.

It's actually some years – about a decade maybe? but I have a rather poor memory for dates – since I was last at the bedside of someone seriously ill. After twenty-five years of AIDS, of course, the whole scenario isn't unfamiliar – but as it's been a while, there's a sort of relearning, refamiliarizing process, that feels a bit confusing. This is somewhat different because people with AIDS are part of a social group, a set of expectations, that we're all familiar with, and V. and her husband aren't of course; on the other hand she was frequently in the hospital, so they're used to hospitals, and that part is pretty similar. Plus, frankly, although she's thin as always, V. is prettier than a lot of my friends were with advanced AIDS (she still has lovely skin and her face looks calm, so seeing her isn't disconcerting as it is in some cases).

The tricky thing is the juxtaposition of situations and emotions over time: okay, something awful has happened, and/or will continue to happen, or will become something much worse; and then you wait a long time and relate to a lot of people in connection with that situation, translating it into words, predictions, ideas, different interpretations for different people who may want to hear different things. Of course it's not even faintly as hard for me as it is for her husband, but even for me the contrast between worrying, and thinking about other things, or being upset, and not being upset, and even being overly upset (i.e. rather dramatic), makes everything weirdly complicated.

As I say, it must be much harder for him: his entire life revolves around V., and frankly even she felt he wasn't ready for her to become seriously ill or to die – so he's dealing with: the awful shock of her heart attack itself on Monday (after all he was there, with the vomiting, ambulance, panic, confusion), the possibility of losing her forever, and then waiting, and going home to the house without her but where everything reminds him of her, and then of course he'll have to wait days for news – he has to feed the cat, he doesn't feel like eating but we urge him to, he had to clean up the bathroom where she threw up (he wouldn't let me help, but I commented vaguely as one does on washing the plastic bath mat on a low temperature); over several days, does he go to work, does he not go to work because it's all too serious?

Life keeps intruding; and the interpolation of emotion, and the interpolation of other thoughts and emotions, must be disconcerting. In a culture that tends to hold death at arm's length, we find it difficult to keep bridging that distance – if you fill it with emotion, then you're just dramatizing your own role in the situation (and thereby making yourself The Star – V.'s mother is a bit like this I'm afraid, so it's fortunate that she's off in France and can disturb V.'s husband only by phone and e-mail). And of course with everyone's attention on him – I'm just a friend, I can go do other things, but – he has the stress of not only feeling anxious and confused, but also of having to act anxious in the moments when he's not, because everyone expects it of him....

I'm probably not saying this very clearly, and should just go to bed, as I have things I need to do tomorrow anyway.

Maybe it's just that, however big the situation is, our emotional reactions to it are momentary and unstable – and therefore it's hard to know how to be, in the interstices....

Real trouble

V. is extremely ill – a cardiac arrest in fact; she is unconscious in the ICU unit, and we don't know whether she will recover.

She has been, as it happens, ready for this – in fact she has had the most direct and unflinching ability to look at her condition and possible problems of practically anyone I've ever met.

On that somewhat chilly but completely comfortable plane where she and I could talk with perfect clarity about the possibilities of illness and death, I can state with complete assurance: she is ready for this, as much as any human being could be; it is not a shock, it is not a horror, it is just a thing; and in fact a thing that is not even terribly important, and is not as strong as she is herself.

Concern for her husband, who is not prepared for her to die, is another matter entirely – and I know that he has been her chief worry for some time now – but, in and of herself, she is simply ready for this.

However, frankly – and I am perfectly willing for this to stand in for a prayer, to anyone who will listen – I would prefer that she recover, something which I know she would also prefer.

And – if I can negotiate for even more than that: that she become well.

Signs

[Los Angeles, 1992]

The session chair is standing, the first paper is over, and through a long wave of applause intended for someone else I move through a labyrinth of aisles towards the stage. I’m wearing khakis, emblematic of the Eastern aristocracy, the conservative controllers who went to school with me; shoes beige and just too light to seem quite serious. The chair is introducing me, pausing, trying to remember exactly who I am: he looks at me for confirmation, clues, but I pause, silent and confused, before I start to speak: “I was at the –” He remembers suddenly, cuts me off, and shifts smoothly into a lecturer’s drone, handing out my credentials in the standard order. They are mostly correct. I nod to the audience, settling our relationship into a stable and predictable one, but then ruin it: I pull up a large black leather upholstered piano bench and sit, straight and, hopefully, dignified; but of course the other speakers all stood. Well, last night was very tiring, I really need to sit down.

No tie, I should have worn a tie, and I shouldn’t have this pinstriped blue business shirt open at the throat: not, definitely not, two buttons open, that’s far too much, I discreetly button up the second while shuffling papers, looking as though I’m aimlessly fooling with the shirt front. The shirt itself is conservative, a bid for a Connecticut WASP kind of credibility. I begin introducing my paper, talking about what I’m going to say, preluding everything: the subtly planned hook of the beginning, my dedication to a dead man, and I say the dread word AIDS without flinching or emphasis. The word ‘gay’ is frankly stated in this clearly heterosexual environment, they are academically, liberally calm, but on some of the quieter ones, the men with the correct ties or women with their hair in a bun, there is a momentary look of panic: did they think they were safe from sex, protected from the body in the academy, did they think that the university would keep all this away from them? I love that panic: shocking the bourgeoisie, an old habit from my avant-garde days. I should unbutton that second button again, I always had a strong neck, a square collarbone – no, I’m droning into the main part of the paper, I can’t unbutton it, that would be too obvious. I do wish I’d worn a tie, I’d feel solid, sure, in control, taking advantage of male privilege to coast through this paper. On the other hand, there are the marks on my neck, where the doctor burned off a number of small disfiguring bumps two days ago: they don’t look good, scattered small blistering scabs. It’s like being marked, but people don’t know that they’re from a damaged immune system: those little bumps mark us unless we take out after them, attack as soon as we are attacked.

Moving smoothly into a long abstract patch, will they understand any of this? and if I go too fast they won’t have a chance, I unfold a complex matrix of arguments, stepping carefully and quickly around a rather flimsy link in the chain, I hope no one noticed. Shifting forward on the stool, the comforting, damp softness of the black, soft leather. It helps me to keep going, which is difficult given the fog still hanging in my head, that rich dinner last night: you can tell from my pale face that there were three wines, a sweet aperitif wine followed by a dry white over the first course and then a deep, sharp red, then ending with the rather disappointing champagne that I’d brought.

Moving into my conclusions, tying it all up: making one last mention of AIDS, of people who’ve died. If you only knew, my scholarly audience, my own deep ties to those deaths: the loved men, the dissolving general hopes, the prefiguration of my own death: although I’m still in pretty good shape, there’s nothing to worry about in the next year or two. I like to think.

Ah. Conclusions, and not a moment too soon: I’ve been stumbling too much in the last two pages, my vocal cords fighting through the gunk of this morning after. End. Applause, their eyes distinctly warm, the supposed objectivity of academics up against the pleasure of an interesting paper. Because it certainly is interesting, I know that much. There is a question, easy to handle, I dispose of it neatly. Another one, more broadly stated and positioned, and I start to have trouble: what am I talking about? Am I answering the question he’s asking? I look up at my questioner and pause, trying to sort out my position, my arguments. His eyes are warmly sympathetic, even more than I’d expect, of course we all know what it’s like to be up here in the hot spot. I become aware that some are looking sympathetic, others are looking down or aside. I stop again –

And then the ground opens before me. I suddenly see what they are thinking, see it with perfect clarity. This isn’t sympathy around a difficult question, the genteel encouragement of senior colleagues: it’s my pale face, the scabs on my neck, I’m sitting holding onto the bench and talking through phlegm, I mentioned AIDS as a hint, as a warning, and they’ve guessed much too much. They know, they all know my story, but they’ve gotten it wrong: seeing the signs of my fragility, my illness, they think I’m making some supreme effort, fighting through death in order to – oh my God. Blinking at them, mumbling an excuse and pulling papers together, leaving the stage clumsily, too hastily amid the growing kindly applause. Thank you, thank you. So kind, so supportive of what they think must be just about my last, I can’t hold on to all of this, I wanted understanding, sympathy, but not this, they must stop clapping, they shouldn’t smile in that melancholy way, gentle eyes boring into me, I’m trembling as I sit, they’ll see it and misunderstand, I’m choking, strangling, can’t stand them all so kind because I’m still alive –

[Los Angeles, 3/7-4/1/92]

Memory

Do other people get as confused over the implicit values of their memories?... maybe it's because I've moved around so much, and am so dissatisfied.

When something reminds me of certain angles of life in LA: the Santa Monica bus as it passes that big, difficult-to-negotiate intersection near Rodeo Drive; the cheesiness of Santa Monica Boulevard in places – I wonder whether my desire to live there instead of here actually makes any sense, whether it is rooted in anything that actually exists. The extraordinary bleakness of such moments, the sense of suspended but pointless time....

A brief clip on television, that moves across sunny streets and intersections that are so innately, so casually, so perfectly LA.

And San Francisco: aren't my memories, when they are good ones, highly selective, based only on leisure moments?

Even Australia, though I may not have been there for long, I imagined myself so deeply there: and even a food program that shows a corner restaurant, of a kind I recognize from Sydney, pulls me into a space, a place, a set of smells and possibilities: a whole life that didn't happen, that nevertheless aches.

334

It is dangerous to read books that have certain moods – especially when they are well written. Your own mood distorts and shifts to match them....

Tom Disch's masterpiece is certainly 334, his intricate exploration of various denizens of an overcrowded, rather listless, declining but realistic New York in 2021-26. It's really a series of long portraits that are linked together behind the scenes, as it were – The Death of Socrates, about a young black guy who struggles to survive, including taking university courses, and finally gives up; Bodies, about hospital morgue orderlies with a sideline in supplying necrophiliacs; Everyday Life in the Later Roman Empire, about a social worker trying to negotiate her structured and chemically supported fantasy life with her 'real' life; and, best of all, Angouleme, an utterly eerie picture of a handful of genius children who are going to a school for the gifted that is teaching them almost too much.

All capped by the extended hyperstructured second half, where a complex array of points of view around three women, four sets of concepts and numerous dates scattered across several years are enmeshed in an utterly urban picture of change. Of course it's all rather dark, rather cynical – this is not an end-of-the-world book, but it is about people trapped in the various levels of a dense but drifting culture, in fact the perfect image of a neo-Marxist 'administered society', where no one is really in charge, there are no actual oppressors as such, and yet everyone is oppressed.

Dangerous to read, of course. One starts to look around and see the same bleakness, the same disintegration, the same devolution... although I am always delighted by a favorite, wonderful paragraph from Angouleme, which functions as a sort of phantasmagorical 'false cadence' to a planned murder that never takes place. The gifted children, rather decadently calling themselves the Alexandrians, coming from their school (which has funding from the Balanchine Foundation and therefore teaches dance), take some of the pills that everyone hands around in this era and try to figure out, since their murder plot is now impossible, what to do on a lovely summer day by the docks:

Then, proving that when you're sailing the wind always blows from behind you, they found Terry Riley's day-long Orfeo at 99.5 on the FM dial. They'd studied Orfeo in mime class and now it was part of their muscle and nerve. As Orpheus descended into a hell that mushroomed from the size of a pea to the size of a planet, the Alexandrians metamorphosed into as credible a tribe of souls in torment as any since the days of Jacopo Peri. Throughout the afternoon little audiences collected and dispersed to flood the sidewalk with libations of adult attention. Expressively they surpassed themselves, both one by one and all together, and though they couldn't have held out till the apotheosis (at 9.30) without a stiff psychochemical wind in their sails, what they had danced was authentic and very much their own. When they left the Battery that night they felt better than they'd felt all summer long. In a sense they had been exorcised.

Rich, skilled artistry, a fictional minimalist masterpiece that resonates with a 1970s BAM-style New York, vast performances casually invoked in the midst of chaos, sinister boredom, a drugged left turn away from the everyday – a paragraph that has always startled and amazed me: and one that sums up the beauties and horrors of the artistic life, especially in a center like New York, London, Paris: where all things are possible, but, of course, have their consequences....