patrick's shame in the shadows

andy p, key to me, delta, washington state —

the patrick situation needs an update, at 7:47 – last week i walked by the store at 5:10am, as i always do, down california avenue, near the university of chicago, past the store, where he is setting up the fluff and stuff for the open at 5:30am. i passed by, sent a hello to myself, felt like he was probably in but it would just be time, it would take time, when i get to university of chicago for the phd program in history — post-1945 american capitalism — and i crossed california ave, across the four lanes, below the lit street lamposts — the flowers of a darkened desert, dying — my ass, my gait, my aesthetic, my sensibility, all on display for him, every morning, twice a morning — 5:15am and 7 — as i strut — it's what i do: strut, i strut for him, i remind him of me and i remind him of him and me, my performance, and he can only be uncertain that it is only for him, my truth is inaccessible — he can never be entirely sure, the humiliation of doubt, of his own thought — that he has the thought, in the shame of doubt — he would have to doubt: am i making this affair up? — and, so i crossed the street, turned, and headed to the local 24/7 convenience store for a cup of coffee which emerged from the 70s at a mere 50 cents. i will always be by my side, by myself really, alone but connected by stolen words and pilfered ideas — there i was on return, back, under the lamps, toward the store, counter out, for me, to breathe and sigh and glance and give him the face he deserves every morning: concerned meditation on an issue. this is what i am: concerned in mediation on an issue. he does not know the issue — but he knows that the issue is not accessible, he knows that he cannot know, what he knows is this alienation and separation from me — as i then passed by the store, to put it quickly:

: )

there he was, turned away from me and the street, back to the universe, boy in the corner, having done a shameful deed, punished, open to the glare of muffled stares of absence, tortured by his truth to reveal himself. i stopped — he was in hoodie, jacket, and all — and there i was, i paused, he had returned for the moment. he was too ashamed to face me. it was a generous letter — or, rather, an envelope, a rebus without signified rather than 20/20 with vista.

here are the relevant emails that i sent to my psychoanalyst, in proper order:

* email one *

i hope you are enjoying your away time, sorry to intrude, and i look forward to seeing you on wednesday.

there was a small event.

so, it has been 12 months since the hospitalization, the self-ban, and i have only passed him once on the street, at perpendicular, i was looking down, saw him from the side, was listening to music, and he looked anxious, trying to avoid, we didn't speak, this was way back in march, i think.

the past 12 months have been my walking by the store at 5:30AM with his bike outside, in front of the store, across california avenue, both sides, well lit with lamps, and then to the mcdonald's for coffee, then repeat in reverse. i am noticeable. there are streetlamp lights and starbucks lights. there is my gait. there is my clothing. i am distinguished looking. and there is absolutely no one else around at 5:30am. i sometimes repeat the trip at 7:30 if it's one of his days (he is reliable on monday and tuesday, usually thursday, and the weekends are a bit of a toss-up, what with sunday x and half). this has been our ritual together going on for a year.

so yesterday, i walked by the store at 5:30am. noticed his bike was not there. didn't figure much. it was raining hard. figured he wasn't at the store. passed the store, crossed california avenue, went to mcdonalds, got my coffee.

on my way back i usually cross california avenue (inbound and outbound) toward the front of the store and then turn left toward my street. as i got across the street and to the starbucks storefront, i noticed him, back to me, against the brick of the wall, outside on the sidewalk, between the starbucks storefront and the cleaners storefront, next door. still, face up, hoodie on, black starbucks pants, leather jacket, face and front of his body completely facing the wall, back to the sidewalk and street, still and silent, no smoke, no music. against the wall, visibly away.

i'm not quite sure what i did when i recognized him — i did not say anything — i may have paused in my step but i think it's probable that i just walked by.

i spent an hour trying to figure out why, if he spotted me, he was turned around with his back toward me hiding, when he could just pop into the store or around the corner or cross the street or anything. i also began to doubt that it was him. it was his frame, his clothes, his height, and there would be nobody else out there but him. the mystery was that his bike was absent. but it was raining, if he had taken his bike to work his pants would have been soaked, so he either would have had to bring an extra pair (unlikely) or he walked with an umbrella. also maybe bike locked elsewhere.

posed. still and quiet. back to the street, up against he wall, head up, face away.

about an hour in i came to: "michael, i'm too ashamed to face you." it may not be shame — though it probably is — it might be fear — though i think i'm not menacing, and he has seen me seemingly normal several times a week for a year now -- but in any case, "michael, i can't face you." it was a pose. it was him. it was courageous, it was vulnerable, and it was literary. three things trevor doesn't have.

i have wracked myself the last day (can't sleep) about whether i have made this all up, but if you had witnessed the scene, at 5:30am, with this guy — who else would it be? no one around — facing away from me, completely still, hoodie, black pants, leather jacket, but no bike. it was a pose. it's hard not to read that as a message — of some sort — and i think "michael, i'm too ashamed to face you" is probably close to it.

i think he decided to be present in the absence of his bike.

i have now been sick. i threw up (just water, but i did gag on it) and have been unable to sleep despite benadryl, unisom, and klonopin. i am taking all my other meds. i thought perhaps — in this radical self-doubt — that i had perhaps hallucinated the entire thing, but i've been down, if anything, not racy, and i later took a haldol and the event seemed all the more real and certain.

i will wait 72 hours. i will respond tuesday morning (he will be working). when i spent my quiet mornings with him, 5:30am to 8:00am last year, i brought a lunch pale to the starbucks (their food is expensive and i don't eat that stuff anymore) and i would sit at the bar with my pale, with carrots, and nuts, and a banana, and a protein bar and eat with him while he worked. i still have the lunch pale but i don't use it anymore. my idea is to pack a breakfast for him (raspberries, if i can get the money out of my mother, and protein bar, and nuts, and carrots). i'll put it in my beat up tote bag from montreal and sling it over the handle bars of his bike when i walk by on tuesday morning. unlikely to be stolen, he will get it and should remember. hopefully, he'll refill the bag with his gift and leave it on his handle bars for me to pick up, and we'll go from there.

in any case, packed lunch is not aggressive, it is kind and caring, and it is a memento. if this entire scene is a massive error on my part, then he might recognize the breakfast as mine, roll his eyes, and watch his back a bit.

it all strikes me as quite sad, and i felt a real loss after i passed by his shame. not too much (but just enough) — i think it was too much, for me. it was the formality (yet intimacy) of my letter that probably was excruciating. the fact that i didn't mention his sexuality — it must have been deafening.

i have always found vulnerability to be sexy. but i also think shame is a turn on for me. someone else's shame, to identify with.

i am hopeful, and i would like to add the dedication to him to the book. it would read:

For Jonathan Williams, and the hearse he rode out on

For Patrick Conley, and the bicycle he rode in on

it would only come to this if it came to asking his permission (and getting the correct last name — though i might have guessed that right too) —

the book — "male junior's penis" — finally passed content evaluation. they are now wasting 3 weeks with Editorial Assessment which is an "assessment" of the first 1,700 words of my text, presumably to advertise their paid services for the full manuscript. i won't have any use for any of that, so it will be another 3 weeks of waiting but then design. i've also been moved to a new representative — from emma to tyson — and she got right back to me about some issue so i am hoping to have a better experience with her. anyway, i'm counting on april.

i'm sure my father feels too ashamed to face me too. my psychic said as much, as did my mom at one point. there is no george there, none. he is funny, smart, handsome, and fun. i would hazard to say that george possessed none of those qualities. and, given his experiences with his job, patrick is probably kind too.

i will not go into the store until i am invited by the manager.

trevor called. he sent me an email with the subject line: "the electra complex." there are so many problems.

the identified patient,

andy

* email two *

Respect the gesture with time. Next Saturday. Sent from my iPhone

* email three *

i've been taking the haldol. i now for some reason think that dan (who should be in LA by now) will sabotage this. i forwarded him (and only him) that email. i seem to have something unresolved there. dan has never done anything bad to me in my entire life.

i think things could work out with patrick. i will carry the haldol with me. it is a mostly sad feeling, i'm not sure why. i feel very strongly that i may be losing something or that i will lose something.

i can't remember how i felt about trevor, i seem to recall that i was overboard with him. but this has been going on with this kid for a yr without any contact and evidently on the other side, too. i guess i'm naive about closet cases, i presume you would have more run-ins with that type. if this can work out, my mother will be so happy. then the molly problem will be quickly resolved.

i talked with pete and lisa and leanne and trevor in the last days but i didn't mention it to any of them. i will have dan.

i will be slow, and i will not go in the store.

andy

* email four *

i slept 7-8 hours last night so that should be in check. no coffee after 12 today.

i walked by at 5:15am and there he was for me in the window with his lady dainty hands. i will try to hold off till saturday. i have decided to pass by without cigarette — i am always, always smoking in proximity to him — and i thought that cease and desist might be code to be decoded.

of course, it is quite possible that none of this happened at all. dan did not get back to me yet. i was pleased that you didn't explicitly recommend haldol, though i've been taking it, with no change in any thoughts, sort of imperceptible in its effects, just 1 or 2 a day.

if this is the case, then i could only blow it either if i had a meltdown (and that possibly even wouldn't be a deal-breaker because he's already witnessed it before and presumably understood it); or i somehow offend or upset him, quickly.

i think the saturday (maybe thursday) breakfast pale concept is a good one. it requires return, but it doesn't expect too much (this was in my horoscope).

if this is the case, i think we could go back and forth with the tote bag for quite some time, perhaps into the spring. i thought i'd take phone snapshots of my morning walk pov from the apt past the starbucks across the street down commonwealth to the mcdonalds and back. then i'd print the photos and drop them in the tote bag in a clip with the index card, "my walk" or maybe "just saying hi." but that would be a gift down the line.

there is a part of me that does not want to face him and i realize "michael, i don't know how to face you" — while probably accurate from his perspective, i think i got that right — is also probably accurate from my perspective. i think for me it mostly has to do with the passing of time, that this has gone on for so long, so quietly, so masochistically, so stubbornly, for so long. that we both equally knew, if this is the case, for so long, with this silent ritual. it does remind me of the scene in "four weddings and a funeral" (i mentioned this movie to you once, i think you would like it, british), with i think it's juliette binoche who— to give it away — finally acknowledges to her friend (of a kind of tribal grouping) that he has been her man for so long. it's excruciating and beautiful. it's the throbbing vein in her forehead. i always identified with the character, even when i first saw it in high school. but i think there are a lot of us out there.

if this is the case, optimally i'd like to get back in the shop and spend my mornings with him. but i vow to only do so if i get the ok from the manager (who may have switched, i don't know).

i think part of what is so admirable about this on my part is that i did self-ban — and i said in the letter that i would leave the store "for the sake of your comfort," the manager had referred to his "discomfort" — i self-banned and then i did it. through this entire ritual for a year i never broke my word. he must find that honorable.

i wrote michael, reni's husband, he had sent me a short story that he wrote which i did like, partly because it involved references to welfare bureaucrats. if this is the case, i should like him to meet patrick, i think that would close things a bit, all around there. trevor says he and his gf will be in boston in march for a conference at harvard. so i am sure to see him, hopefully alone, i think that will be the case. i look forward to it. he seems to be interested in someone named sugarman (or something) at princeton, trying to get her on his defense committee at bgsp.

the only real paranoia surrounds dan. but he can't really take patrick away from me, and most of the other stuff doesn't matter so much. dan is gay — he basically said it to me — and i referred him to grindr to start. i think he has always made the decision to be straight and i think his problems with women (e.g. broken engagement) may not actually be about his ambivalent heterosexuality. i asked him if "something is missing" when he is with a woman but he doesn't have any conscious sense of castration (like i did).

i have worried that dan was interested in me, but i don't think so, too sibling between us. also, if he wanted me, he would have stayed in boston rather than moved to LA. and he has encouraged me to date — tindr — and so i don't think that is the issue between us. he was very supportive of bu.

i am not worried about the sexual side of things with patrick. i'm sure he's fucked his girlfriend up the ass many a time — and i will ask, if this is the case, that we take it slow, on all fronts. i'm mostly interested in his chest. but it's obviously not about sex, for either of us. it's about the company of men. and i think it's mostly because i got him exactly right.

andy

also: i'll probably be writing a lot this week. i know you won't be able to respond, that is fine.

also: i will get my tax refund by the end of february. i have decided to forgo the new furniture (which was a ridiculous idea) and i'll split my refund with my mother and your bill. but end of february.

* email five *

It's no caffeine after 10 and I'll meditate and shower before bed. Sent from my iPhone

* email six *

i slept 6 hrs, which i think is ok.

i am doubting myself but i talked to kate about it and we decided that i had to make my gesture anyway — whether it was one way or the other — because it seems likely to me. i have to do the plan, and it is benign enough so nothing changes if i don't receive the tote bag in return, except my future.

i wanted to wait until saturday but i think it is going to snow. so i will wait till next monday or tuesday.

i'm off to walk by the store to get my coffee. i feel a bit uncomfortable and on guard, but nothing major. definitely not high.

i went up from 900 to 1200 lithium last night — because i am out of 450s — but i should get those today and will go down to 900 tonight. do you think there is any danger in doing 1200?

*email seven *

he wasn't working today, his schedule must have changed due to the new semester.

i really can't wait any longer — it will be 4 days tomorrow morning — and so i will do the packed breakfast in the morning if he is there. i made cut-up yellow peppers, cut-up radishes, a whole wheat roll, a protein bar, a box of raspberries, and a packet of nuts. they are in the fridge for tomorrow at 5am.

it is excruciating and i think 4 days is enough.

it is up to the stars. i am sure it was him. i guess it must have seemed weird to hear that i would try to play this gift-off exchange into the spring, that is not feasible or reasonable. if he is smart enough, he will return my gift with a starbucks gift card. and then i will go in. i will ask him how he as been doing. i will ask him if he is gay. i will ask him if he is interested in me. then i will get us free tickets from berklee to the science museum, omni, and the planetarium. i think it will work out.

i didn't have coffee after 10 today, but i do not feel tired, and i've already taken my meds. i went back down to 900 lithium after i discovered a 300. i have taken the haldol periodically, seems imperceptible.

i start school tomorrow. i teach at 2 for 2 hours. everything is ready for classes. i feel exhausted and ate too much bread today. i'm a little apprehensive about what it would be like to hang out with him, but i suppose i don't after worry about that until i get some form of confirmation.

it is sad these nights. it's very sad right now.

* email eight *

i should get the book back next week from editorial assessment and then we go to the design phase. this should put the proofs at early/mid february and i've asked dave if he'll be able to turn around the image placement within 2 weeks. second round of proofs should be available early/mid march and i foresee that the book will be ready in april, as i have hoped.

i'm pretty sure that it was patrick. he was also in the window for me on monday. although it all seems rather extraordinary and unlikely, when i think through it, it seems really quite reasonable, the proper development. i should not freak him out with the breakfast pale — benign — and then i will simply wait for the response. i will eventually have to get in the store, but i realize that it is down the line. it is also possible that this entire thing is made up, but this to me seems like the unlikely scenario. the likely scenario is the unlikely, and the unlikely scenario is probably the likely scenario. seems to me there is a famous philosophical adage about this issue, though i can't remember it at the moment.

i'll see you at 930. the breakfast is precious, though i wish i had a better pale for it. this one is from the kids section of j.crew. i have a small le sportsac one but i think it would scare him off.

i think i was right about this from the beginning and i didn't really give up, i just respected the boundaries of the pact.

that manager may be gone, there was some talk that she would take a job at a higher-paying store.

i slept about 4 hours last night, which is not great, but i've been taking the haldol — though it seems to make no difference, as i've said — and i don't feel hyper or high. i feel a little anxious, a little wound-up, a little distracted, and a little resigned. i do, like i said, have a sense of loss here, and perhaps will have an even greater sense of loss if this doesn't work out. i will be able to recognize that nothing has changed, but i seem to be on the precipice of a good year — book, bu, possible unlikely promotion, patrick — that i would like to start with a major success.

i also have the sense that i miss him. i think i always missed him, immediately, and then since. but i also miss him now. he does seem really distant.

dan didn't respond much to my email forward, he asked me "how are you?" — i guess he wouldn't want to say anything.

if he is there this morning (which is 50/50) i will have my music/phone conversation waving the bag around and then leave the bag on the handle bars and go for my coffee. this all seems sad in a gay way, like it feels very much a gay experience. i have not really had one of those, where i felt aligned with a specifically gay experience (even in its own singularity) but a specifically gay experience nonetheless that binds me to that community. i feel like a lot of gay people would understand — however which way it works — and it feels common and communal. i wonder if he has a sense of that. perhaps he has more of a sense of that feeling than me. i was never really alienated. but he must have felt that way his whole life. i can't imagine that, i told my family i was gay when i was 17. he must be 28 and possibly older. it would make me angry about the situation, but it all seems so sad. like the world looks dark, nighttime, with a few flowers hanging around, surviving.

my mother and i are getting along well. there are money problems, she is anxious she is going to lose her condo, which i think is unlikely, but when i get my tax refund i will help (i should be able to give her $3000 which makes up for virtually nothing) — we are getting along very well, doesn't seem to be much tension, and i think we are really enjoying each other's company i went over there yesterday to help her move a broken desk out of her little room. i was grumpy with her a week ago, but i didn't lay into her, i just mostly remained silent. like i said, if patrick works out i think molly will work out. i think part of the molly situation is that she feels bad for me, or feels like i'm a failure, and looks at me as a failure, and that is excruciating. i lost so much when i was in the hospital. she stopped calling me "chicks" after that. it was never the same. i think patrick would be success — it would raise me to the level of the dignity of das ding — and so this would help.

ok, that's all. i will see you at 9:30.

andy

* email nine *

he wasn't working this morning. there's a slight possibility that he would come in at 7 — i'll try again then — but very unlikely. i guess thursday will be the day, which had been the initial plan. i am doubting myself, when i walked by i couldn't really make out a post where he would have been standing shaded, though i know that i was but 2-3 feet away from him. maybe he had kept the starbucks floodlights off before opening. anyway, i have to do this, it is a small gesture, and if it is not requited then i will know the stand. i do remember staring at him closely, and i think i must have stopped walking in order to do so. he would know that i saw him.

i'll see you at 9:30

* email ten *

i think he is gay, i think it was him, i think i had the whole thing right. but when i thought about it on the way home i realized that the guy is just a total mess. he has a gf, he's 28, it's just a mess. i think he made the move — but it is sort of high school and in a way i think it is a bit menacing, in retrospect. or creepy. there is a way in which it is brave, but he should have just written me a letter if he was interested. so i won't respond. i'll think of him fondly as i walk by. i'll be at the other starbucks, with chris, and see if i can chat him up a bit, nothing major. i'm mostly happy.

andy p

* email eleven *

i told the group therapy about it last night but it didn't go that well. i think i was in a bad mood because i haven't been smoking for a bit. the goal is to be smoke-free by the time the book comes in april.

he wasn't in the store this morning. he hasn't been there this week. maybe that was his goodbye. i tried to look online about whether a stable mostly baseline manic depressive can have hallucinations but i didn't really find any information relevant to that. i was about 3-4 feet from the body i saw. i think it is now possible that i hallucinated the body. maybe that happened. if i did in fact see a body that was in fact physically present, then i think it was probably him. it certainly wasn't shadows or anything. either i hallucinated it completely or it was him. i'm not sure how likely it would be that i am in a state such that i would hallucinate the body, but maybe that really is possible, i don't know. as for the decoding of the gesture — if was such — i also realize that my reading is suspect, or at least minority, and there are a variety of possibilities of what a gesture like that might have meant. it did take me a full hour to come to "i don't know how to face you." it's not far from plausible, but there are other possibilities there.

in any case, i will be unable to decide. but i won't do anything. i have good reason to think that he is gay, i have good reason to think that he was interested in me, but i have very little go on — really, very little — about the kind of person he is, what he would be like to be around, how he would treat me, whether i would like him — it seems (or has seemed) silly to have fixated on him so intensely. in any case, i have kept up my masochistic pact with him and he broke it (possibly) like i had done before, and both times it was a mistake. we have a nice little constrained ritual with each other, quietly, and i guess i will leave it at that. i do feel strongly about him but he's 28, with gf, gay, interested in me, i am interested in him, and we both have problems, i think his more severe than mine. i will try to slowly let go and return to our ritual, if he's still at the store.

like i had said, it all feels rather sad and gay, and it does have the effect of binding me to my homosexuality more intimately i have had, for a while, the fantasy of telling him, "it is hard being gay." and i would like to say this to him but perhaps he is well aware of it. i now feel strongly that it is hard being gay and that this shared difficulty should be a source of bond and community, though my sense is that generally it is not.

i slept incredibly well last night. 9:00-5-30, no sleeping meds.

russ in the group last night said that he could really identify with the — "did that really happen? what was that?" — and we together agreed that what is best to do is simply sit with it.

andy pink

the philosophy class went pretty well yesterday and i seemed to have a lot of energy for the class, not too much, but enough to stay standing and lecture for the full period.

* email twelve *

i realize now — as you implied — that i should have just said hello. but in the moment i thought he was hiding from me — which it certainly looked like — i just didn't put it together quickly enough, though i knew as i was walking away that it was him. the whole thing was so startling — it was out of nowhere, i never would have guessed it, really — but i definitely should have just said hello and asked him if he wanted to go out sometime. he is back at the store — without bike — but i saw him today. he must feel awful. i will rectify it and — in the least — put him at ease as equal. i can't really create a mess with a letter he'll read it, either he will respond or not. i think it happened, after talking to pete today he thought my reading (i can't face you, the situation) is probably right, though he also said that such was a "generous reading" that he liked. i'll write the letter — the expected will be a non response but there is the possibility that if i do the letter right that he might respond.

* email thirteen *

i drafted the letter, it's below. i will wait a few days, see how i feel. i think the letter is disarming and normal enough, and i think it has the tone of of communique to a casual acquaintance. but i'll wait a few days.

if the event happened as i saw it — and more and more it is difficult for me to see it otherwise, i am not sure why this is, this change — i think he would feel quite awful and ashamed — perhaps with personal repercussions — if i didn't respond. obviously the motivation is selfish on my part, but there is that other element present. i don't think this can create a mess. at most, silence and life go on for both of us, mostly unscathed. or perhaps at least, it acknowledges the mess, and that it really in fact is no big deal, in the end. i can't imagine that the letter would scare him, it might just be flat-out wrong and then a bit embarrassing for me. of course, he would be operating forever on the assumption that i thought such was the case, but if he doesn't much care about me i think he won't much care about that.

my greatest worry is that he has forgotten all about the original incident and me. i find this unlikely because i am visible on the street every morning. also, it was the type of incident that would not be forgotten, it would stay with him, even if only as a kind of sad mark of me as a man. also, i saw one of his co-workers — who i tried to thrust my okc profile on — at the movies a couple of weeks ago and she noticed me. i'll see how i feel in a few days, but i sort of think i have to do it — and i would justify it generally as it is good to take risks (which has been my training since infancy).

andy pink

* email fourteen *

i will try not to write until tuesday, it's ok if you ignore the messages, it's just helpful to write and have the fantasy that someone reads it. i'm taking 1200 lithium and a daily haldol.

the letter is too intimate. any letter would be too intimate. clarity is too intimate. what he sent me was an envelope with no letter. it really wasn't a rebus, it was an empty envelope. i decoded it, but any message probably wasn't intentional on his part. what may have been intentional on his end was simply: there is a message. no content, only form. to send him that letter is like trying to make out with him without ever talking to him. i have no relationship with him. we just have — maybe — a mutual interest in each other which was interrupted by my going crazy and then banning myself from the store. any sort of "message" (clarity) is too intimate. he just offered a figure. and i should just offer a figure. an envelope -- no letter. my job is to tell him that i received his envelope and that i return the envelope. letter, later.

slinging the tote bag on his bike is not really a rebus — there's no language to it, it is precisely without clarity other than as: message, but no content. and that is very noncommittal and also safe if he has no interest in me, if the event never happened, then my rebus will not be visible as either a letter or an envelope. he will think: oh someone found a tote bag near my bike and slung it on the handle bars. if i'm not on his mind, my message is not only without a letter but it is also without an envelope. it simply is not.

the letter is just obscenely intimate — that was the problem with the apology as well. the only course of action — if i can to do it — is to send an envelope which will only even be received as an envelope if i am already on his mind. my gesture is otherwise completely anonymous and simply not as such, i haven't seen him in a year (except for last week). it's very safe to send the rebus because if he isn't expecting an envelope (let alone a letter) then the envelope will not only be unintelligible as coded — it simply won't exist.

i think this course of action is much safer, all the way around. he doesn't want a letter, he wants an envelope — and if he doesn't want the envelope he won't even see it. his bike has disappeared so the tote bag plan may be in possible jeopardy, but i don't think there's anything to lose with a rebus that won't be recognized as such unless he actually sent me the rebus. it's very safe — invisible if unexpected and visible if expected.

more so, the tote bag (like his pose) doesn't offer any content, doesn't demand anything, doesn't offer anything, other than: envelope. i'm not trying to send any message other than "message." there may have been nothing to decode in his gesture, and then there will be nothing to decode in my "message" if he doesn't bother to expect it. very safe, noncommittal, and not to upset him in any way unless he wants — and therefore sees — the envelope.

i think that's why i said i could imagine going back and forth with the tote bag for weeks — and this would be a slow foreplay and dance rather than the letter which is so violating of him and his privacy. when you're at a club, you don't run up to the person or talk to them, you just find yourself close to them while dancing and then maybe both of you turn toward each other, formal rather than content rich (which is why some people don't like bars).

there should be no content, no message. it should simply be: i got the message of the message, which is blank other than the message that it is a message. i really think i had the right strategy at the get-go; this idea of clarity is like having sex with him without saying hi. it's so violently intimate — precisely because of its clarity. a set of figures — back and forth, over time — is foreplay and dance. my letter is like a request for a wedding ring.

i will wait. i just think that if there is something there — if something happened — that after a non-response on my part it would be dead. and part of me likes the idea of taking the risk — like for the sake of being the risk-taker — though i am also aware of your point about the mess. but i think i ultimately i do not agree with the argument against the risk for the sake of avoiding the mess — that i should avoid the potential mess because of the potential mess. i think in a case like this you do it — messy and all; warhol: "sex is so messy." i've been benign for a year, i can't imagine he would be scared — he wasn't for the massive come on that morning, it was only until i made a couple of comments that were clearly psychotic that he got angry.

i guess i feel like there is no real world consequence for this risk — at best, at likely, he misses the envelope — simply doesn't see it as such — and everything sort of proceeds as it always has, and perhaps there will be more closure on my end like: he was never really interested in me and he isn't really gay.

the key is precisely the opposite of clarity. clarity, later. now, envelope -- which will easily be passed over if he hasn't delivered one to me.

i'll let you know how i feel on tuesday, and i will take 3mg of haldol before i make a decision.

i'm seeing spotlight tomorrow with dave and i'll give you my review on wednesday, that will be something else to talk about, it must tire you.

* email fifteen *

i talked with trevor and he said look for a pattern or a repetition. if he has a positive transference with me he will feel free to repeat — whether consciously or not. i repeated, once and then the apology. otherwise, i will keep my fantasy, and life proceeds with a bit more thrill than usual.

dave and i went to spotlight yesterday. the movie is devastating. it was difficult to clear the theater. i broke down about midway.

i have the st eliz doctors tomorrow and i will request all the same meds: 900 lithium, 400 lamictal, and 5 abilify. i think it has been working for me really well. i slept well last night.

one thing is, that i am angry at him that he raised his voice at me. i would like to tell him that, but i won't.

i emailed michael with the litany of text but i haven't heard back from him. dave has stayed at mcleans and newton-wellesley. his 63 year-old psychiatrist is transitioning to a woman and this has been hard for him.

andy

* email sixteen *

the problem is that they don't make a 150 er. i see that i can take 300 er every other day with the 900. i guess i'd like to hear what specifically i'm doing better at on 1050 or 1200 as opposed to 900. my subjective sense is 900, but i also value your opinion.

spotlight very much upset me. but my favorite line was the lawyer, when he said: "i never married. what i do is too important."

he was there for me in the morning at the window. i spit on the ground. he will now have to feel uncomfortable.

dave was adamant that i not send the letter. i didn't send the letter. i'll just very slowly let it go.

andy

i should have an ok cupid date with an unlikely later this week.

i read the bergman quote to the philosophy classes yesterday. it's stunningly well put, but he gets it wrong, with the wrong metaphor (i used duchamp's metaphor and it makes the same point — but inverted — and is the right point.) a student asked me: why insects? i had no clue but i gestured toward perfect machinery. if what generally separates man from all other beings on the globe is that we have an articulated language system and that we commit genocide with some regularity, it's hard not to embrace deconstruction's focus on language as the site of the massive dysfunction. "cancer monkey brain" — just more unfortunate words.

i also looked up the monkey brain and it said that the big difference with humans is our capacity for pattern recognition — a student in fact asked about that in one of the classes, i was happy to hear — taking the metaphor seriously — and so i said our frontal cortex enabled us to destroy singularity and reduce the otherwise incomparable to identity/difference and the ease of exchange. this is of course seen as an advance — especially when the kids are wont to point out that "cheetahs just go up to other cheetahs and eat them." i don't even bother. we read irma's injection and it's difficult to get the kids to the see the import of a wish to be free of responsibility. we had read some nietzsche and i pointed out that he too wanted to be beyond good and evil (doer, deed, obligation, debt, crime, punishment, and so on). the response is invariably: "if we could do anything we wanted without external restraint from a third party, we would all kill each other." no one is interested in the word of the pact because -- no surprise — no one bothers to trust. but why bother trusting when you can just rely on a third party to ensure order and retribution? i suppose it's also that the law is not seen as manipulative whereas the pact is viewed as predatory on some level. in any event, with duchamp, it is no doubt that we are unable to see the museum. which is a defect of the human eye, i would say, and not quite the cancerous growth under the pate.

the spit was a delightful gesture. that pact is definitely sealed and will from now on be fun for me.

andy

you had asked me a couple of years ago, "then, where does culture come from?" the import of that query can only be that culture doesn't work. it's an advance even to ask that question (which is at the center of my field). but there is no answer there. one student asked as much (in a bit of a different way), and i said that the museum and the bathroom had always been there. that's basically as far as heidegger will go.

i wish you had a chance to see me in class sometime — it can be riveting to students a bit — but i know you get some of me (in a different tone) in session. after class, two of my male students sort of circled around me outside the bldg wile i was smoking but they didn't say anything or ask anything. they sort of hovered and stared, for a good two minutes. if i were at a different school i would be a superstar, no doubt. I'm very marginal at school. the gay class was awful.

* email seventeen *

a while ago i looked up koestler but couldn't find a reference.

they're not going to give me 900 er and 150 regular release, i've asked before. i will ask for 1050 regular release, and i'll adjust the dose as i think i may see fit.

i also made reference in class to derealization and depersonalization — as i cursorily understand it from wiki — in reference to duchamp and i had a student who said that she had that problem regularly. i wasn't really equipped to respond.

i also had a student during break ask me if i had ever had an hallucination. i wasn't really sure how to respond to that — i certainly didn't want to say no — so i said that i had an interest in the question, and he went on to describe some mundane hallucinations that his brother described from acid trips. people are so boring.

andy

there was a new yorker article a while back about the return of the study of hallucinogens for illness — i think it had to do with coping with mortality for terminally ill patients. of course i didn't bother to read the article but found it annoying just at the level of the page.

i also wanted to say that i appreciate that you let me email you. it is really helpful to me. this has been a difficult time. the therapy has evidently been quite successful on a number of fronts, and trevor was happy to hear that our negative transference was mostly on hiatus. i still get upset if you make reference to a word that i don't recognize — it bothers me to the point that i actively refuse to ask, not out of embarrassment so much as out of frustration with technique — but overall i feel quite positively about you and our relationship and value what we do. withholding from patrick reminds me a bit of how you withhold from me. there is something about withholding that acknowledges the situation — that there is a situation — without any further recourse to thematization.

one thing that is certainly being withheld: student loans from chicago. it is pathetic that the boy doesn't realize that you don't need to pay them back. i have $175,000 for undergrad and grad and i've never made a payment in ten years. they did away with the debtor's prisons in the united states — except for child support and alimony, contingent on state — though i don't recommend a load of staffords and pells in saudi arabia — they still operate debtor's prisons. student loans (federal) don't go on your credit report and if you don't own a car, boat, or house — they can only squeeze water from a rock if there is a rock. perhaps i'll let him in on the secret someday. i have credit cards and just took a loan out from myself from my 403b. i would spend it all on him. otherwise, i make $42/yr.

*

it is surely overwhelming for my doctor. as i have no relationship with patrick — know nothing about him except precisely his graudate work at california university in biochem — i found him on linkedin and discovered that he is third year — because of this — i will have to destroy him. i will make plans for destruction and then i will carry them out.

andy pink