O Anguished Pen!
This was found in one of thirty-seven brown boxes that arrived Thursday from a storage locker in Iowa City. It’s a typed “Dear Jane” letter, dated September 1, 1994, in which I quote Plutarch, John Donne, and Bonnie Raitt; in which I suggest that my breakup is more painful than the loss of a young child; in which I melodramatically inventory the many mementos of my first love. It goes unnoted in the letter that these mementos had been burned the night before—not simply thrown away, but heaped into a pile in the parking lot of my apartment building and set afire. There was even a teddy bear, and the fraternity boys partying downstairs from me began to chant “Burn, Teddy, burn!” For the next month, charred bits of love letters followed me up and down the street, in the wind. That was one irony. That I have saved this letter for more than thirteen years—
Dear W—,
Today is a big day for me. I’ve done something I’ve never done before: I’ve thrown out something you’ve given me. OK, I admit I don’t still have the silk boxers you gave me (for Valentine’s Day?) or even the Notre Dame cap. They, like a lot of other things, fell apart. But today marks the first time I have ever thrown away anything that you have written, that you have sent me, that has your name on it, that relates to you, or that in any way reminds me of you or of us. No big deal, right? It was just a birthday card. So I mustered up the courage to toss everything else, too: a whole box filled with all of the letters you had written me over the last three-and-some years (too many to count, but I noticed that some were addressed to Brendan, Brendan Wolfe, Brendan Martin, Brendan Martin Wolfe, Brendan M. Wolfe, BMW; one was even addressed to Endan Bray and had Xs and Os on the back). Other things that went were the photograph of you (along with its shiny gold-colored frame) I used to keep on my desk, the one you actually took of yourself at B—’s party so long ago; and a Polaroid of “The Wonderful” and “The Bully” flanking D— that I swiped from the Summer Vacation Program. Also, the ticket we got for open container October 2, 1992. (It doesn’t mention how all we wanted to do was use your bathroom.) “Campanile Me!” UNI Homecoming ’92 button. A book of matches—Halftime Sports Bar—with “555-5813 Call me! W—” written inside. A letter you wrote me in a bowling alley on the back of a Hepatitis B fact sheet. And a strange dialogue scribbled on the torn reverse-side of a card advertising Dixie beer at the Wheelroom Bar: “Brendan is a babe but he doesn’t pay enough attention to me.” “HE SPOILS YOU 24 hrs a day.” “Charles’ twin is giving me looks.” “DO YOU WANT ME TO KILL HIM? I WILL . . .” “No, just throw BIG Bones @ him.”
These are some of the things I threw away today.
It continues, as you might imagine it would, in a fit of pompous and condescending self-regard. Q: I heard you used drop caps. Is that true? A: Yes. Q: Did you actually, you know, mail this? A: Yes. Q: Would it work best read aloud while drinking a bottle of champagne? A: That is perhaps the only way it works.
Because I was pissed at you; it was infinitely dramatic; it was irrevocable; I didn’t know what else to do; I had to do something. It was, finally, an act. Assign to it whatever metaphor you wish: I’m closing the door on a part of my life; I’m sweeping under the rug; I’m cleaning house; a ritual cleansing, maybe, with a bitter death followed by a miraculous rebirth. I’m sure I don’t know what any of it means, except that this blue metal box of letters which I’ve kept snuggled in a corner for so long only serves to remind me of memories that are gone. I am gone and you are gone. I am in you and you are in me and that is gone, too. All that remains (and I’m becoming increasingly aware of how unintelligible this is) is who we are now. And now we are no longer friends . . .
Even at this moment, in writing about what was essentially an act of impulse and emotion, I am afraid to spill too much of myself onto the paper. With my pen I can’t maneuver or retreat, I can’t backspace. So I type because I need to be in control. You will read this and then you will be forced to react to it (or cleverly not react to it). I will have won or you will have won. That’s not friendship. It’s chess. And you have every right to tell me ‘I told you so.’ It was you, after all, who suggested that ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends should not stay friends. It wasn’t a workable arrangement, you said, and then you sent me the glossy magazine cut-out article to prove it. Of course, it was also you who left it up to me. You wrote me that if I chose to keep our friendship, I would have it all, babe, and that you would always be there for me. (That letter was typed, too, if I remember correctly.) Well—and forgive me for feeling a little bitter here—I did not get it all. I got a few drunk calls and a thanks-but to every invitation I extended. (I just wanted to see you. And I wanted to see you sober. I couldn’t give a shit if you claim to tell the truth when you’re drunk. You were drunk that night in October when you asked me why I hadn’t proposed to you yet. Three days later you started dating someone else.) I got a lovely story about your bedroom name-dropping (thank God I hadn’t given up Leinenkugel’s yet) and a one-day-late birthday card with next to no message in it. We were naïve, I guess, to think that we could simply choose to be friends. The world doesn’t spin that way. Opportunities gone are gone forever.
Like your letters.
And everything they remind me of. Which will lead you to think that I am afraid to be reminded of you or of us. That it would take more courage on my part to face these reminders and to come to grips with them. Plutarch said as much in consoling his wife upon the death of their daughter. He criticized the woman who “avoided and shuddered at every reminder of her [dead] son.” “In general,” he wrote, “nature avoids everything that causes distress. But in the case of our child, in the degree that she proved to us a thing most lovable to fondle and look at and hear, so the memory of her must abide with us and become part of us, and it will bring us a greater quantity and variety of joy than of sorrow.” I’ll buy what you have to say, Plutarch, but only because I’m guessing your daughter never left you and the Mrs. for another set of parents; I’m assuming she was too young to name-drop in bed. And besides, memories of you, W—, are everywhere I turn. The songs I listen to, I once listened to thinking of you. The pictures I draw, I once drew for you. The poems I read, I once read with only you in mind. I have a silent conversation with you nearly every day, as I’m walking to class or going to work. I confront you sometimes, am pissed at you, but mainly, I just tell you about myself: who I am today and what’s important to me. What I’m afraid of or what I’m proud of. I remember a time not so long ago when things that happened to me weren’t real until I could tell you about them. You were the force that actualized me; without you, my life wasn’t possible. This is a powerful (at times destructive) spell to be under. Who can be prepared?
It’s been three months, maybe longer, since I’ve seen you and now I fully expect to not see you again. That’s the way I want it. A friendship where no priority is set on “being there” isn’t worth having. Our friendship is founded only on memories, and that isn’t good enough. I miss the way things once were for us. B— is falling in love right now; I can see it in her eyes. She can’t see straight and believe me, it has nothing to do with tequila. But R— recently broke up with M— and for the first time, he understands what it means to have your heart broken. His engine’s blown. He says that he’s accepted it but he’s also full of shit and down on himself. He’s stuck in the mud and going nowhere fast. And now he’s afraid, the same way I was. I told him that it’s part of the circle dance where everything in love and in life comes around. You fill yourself up and then everything spills out and you are empty again. They say that writing is like that: you have to wait until you have filled yourself up and then you are ready to write, and you write until you are completely empty. Only then are you ready to be full again. Only then—when the circle is complete—can you never go back; you must go forward. Well, that’s what this letter is. I’m finally ready to empty myself, finally ready to be full again. Think of it as my final “fuck you” and my final “I love you.” Don’t think that I won’t miss you. When you act as if it’s such a good thing that I’m not friends with L— anymore, you insult the friendship that she and I once had. We were best friends and now we aren’t friends at all. I miss her the same way that I miss you. Remember that.
It seems strange that all of this simply comes out of throwing a few letters in the trash. But it scared me shitless to do it and I wonder if I will ever live to regret it. I remember the poem, though; do you? “Thy firmness makes my circle just, / And makes me end, where I begun.”
I hope things go well for you in the future, W—.
I really do wish you the best.
Ouch. Who knew I was actually that person? Well, someone knew. And maybe this can count as a kind of apology.
IMAGE: Cereal Box series #27 by Gary Michael Dault
This is one in an occasional series documenting unlikely discoveries made while unpacking thirty-seven boxes of books and papers.
"It goes unnoted in the letter that these mementos had been burned the night before—not simply thrown away, but heaped into a pile in the parking lot of my apartment building and set afire."
Hmmm. I think I knew that guy once.
Ahh, the smell of burning love letters at dusk. Smells like poetry, man.
Posted by: Melissa | January 24, 2008 at 11:00 AM