I was sad and surprised to discover that my favorite therapist, from over 30 years ago, dide in 2020. It turns out she was quite a bit older than I thought, at 26 years my senior. In our time I had every reason to assume she was closer to my age than that. Her comments about cunnilingus and the way she looked at me when I talked about led my selfishly-presumptive self to think she wanted something more from me than these talky-talk therapy sitdowns. Maybe she did, maybe not. It doesn’t matter now and it never really did.
It was she who introduced me to the folly of love. SHe asked what I thought of my job. I said I loved it. So she drilled down on that to a level where it became clear I was actually pretty insecure about the work and the company, and there was plenty not to like about it. I didn’t love it at all but in saying I did it furthered a lie. Life is a baset of lies from which we pluck delusions daily, hourly, with each passing moment. In truth, my greatest successes and breakthroughs in life have been the result of a lie I told, either incidentally or accidentally. In truth I am a horrible liar but in the world of words lying is the most valuable currency.
I looked up Susan in 2019, imagining a reunion of sorts. I would think she still remembered me but I do flatter myself in this way. COvid came and any thoughts I had of reconnecting were zapped. With no cause of death given I have to consider the possibility that Covid is what got her, in May of 2020, the same month another older friend of mine got it. I think she would have been 78 by then.
THis missed connection reminds me of the time I went to Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. THe place is so vast and filled with American history it would take a full month just to begin to even understand the scope. I admired the Kennedy memorial and some other finds but all in all I felt lost. It was just too much.
So imagine my dismay when I learned, years later, that my grade school English teacher, one of the most influential teachers I ever had, was buried right there at Arlington, with her military husband. I would have loved to visit her site just to be sure they spelled her name right. It was a commonly misspelled name.
…
On the subway today I tried to resume connections with the darkly beautiful woman I’ve been seeing most mornings. I had to make extra effort, because the train arrived just as I did, so I boarded at the front when she and I only ever cross paths in the very last car. So I made my way from the front to the back by swithcing cars at every stop, reaching the last car just one stop before 57th and 7th Avenue, where she exits the train each day.
She was not there. I don’t remember now if Friday is one of her regular days on that train. I know the weekends are so tomorrow will be another possibility to look at each other and say nothing.