Dear Mr. You (4 page)

What are you going to do about it

I said, “Do? What do you mean, ‘do’? I’ve done everything I can. What he wrote isn’t even an evaluation,” and M. said

Yes it is. That’s what he thinks of you, and he’s the teacher so what are you going to do about it

I said, “But I feel like I was trying so hard already,” and he said

It doesn’t matter what you felt, what are you going to do

The last was a statement and not a question that slapped me so hard I couldn’t look in his face. I sat staring at my feet. Whose side are you on, I asked, and he said yours, but you have to understand that he is the teacher. This is his evaluation of you. It’s up to you to change his opinion.

The shift where I went from resenting him to my awakening that wow, this person is so correct was swift. I realized yes, this is a naked reality about myself that I have to address even if part of me is still cranky. It was a relief to see that maybe someone’s dislike of me wasn’t intractable, and to own up to the fact that a person who dislikes me isn’t automatically to be dismissed, because:
sometimes I am deeply unlikable.

Our very next class together, I went in with a different set of priorities and not wearing a backless unitard. I was actively defenseless as a choice.

•  •  •

When my father was at Officer Candidate School he was taken before the officers for a review. It was standard. The soldiers listened while every fellow before them was taken down for an infraction they’d committed and each man would respond. My dad started to notice sameness in tone with each testimony. Commanding officer would say, you did blah de blah, would you like to offer your explanation, and private whoever would say yes, sir, I realize what I did, but this is why and so on. After the eleventh or twelfth exchange, my dad said he realized that regardless of the excuse, they all came across as defensive and it weakened them. He felt inspired suddenly as he stepped before the Lt. Colonel, who asked if he’d like to offer an explanation for his misdeed. My dad said

No, sir, I would not

The already orderly room went silent. The Lt. Colonel looked up at my father and said, “What do you mean by that, Private?” My dad said

I offer no excuses, sir. I take responsibility and it won’t happen again.

•  •  •

A few weeks into my new approach, I asked you a question after class. Truthfully I didn’t have a question, I just wanted to connect. Anyway, your head tilted as you leaned in to listen. An adjustment of your eyebrows felt the tiniest bit artificial. You were arranging your face to come across as open and interested. I looked down, embarrassed that we were actually communicating; it felt sparked. I was meeting you, finally.

Me:
Sorry, could I ask you a quick question?
(I don’t really have a question. Hi.)

You:
Sure, how can I help?
(This is my interested face. I’m having trouble with the eyebrows.)

Me:
So, when we freeze in the space after you clap your hands, are we supposed to be aware of anyone else?
(Honestly I’m so grateful that you said “How can I help” that I may cry.)

You:
It’s more about the freeze than what follows. Take a scan of yourself to see exactly where you are, which is—

Me:
Right! Right. Sorry.
(Shit! Shit. Sorry.)

You:
For what?

Me:
I didn’t mean to interrupt, sorry.
(PLEASE DON’T RE-HATE ME!)

You:
Well you’re posing a good question, actually.
(I see that you are trying and I appreciate the effort.)

Me:
Oh, good.
(Your eyebrows are doing that welcoming thing again. Would it be awful if I hugged you?)

You:
But it speaks to a future exercise. For now stay focused on your own instrument.
(I’m glad we’re connecting but I have another class now. Why are you hugging yourself?)

Me:
Great, I get it now.
(Your eyes are really sparkly. But like Santa. I’m not being inappropriate.)

You:
Good work today.
(Good work today.)

Me:
Thank you so much.
(I love you so much. Not to be gross, just thanks.)

After that day your face softened. At the end of the semester I was doing an improvisation with H. and you lit up, burst out laughing.
^IV
I’d accomplished something bigger than comedy, and it proved that I needed to change. The person who deserves the credit for that laugh is unequivocally you. Letting someone you don’t really like surprise you is evolved, and that would have been impossible if you didn’t have the humility I wasn’t giving you credit for. I was so caught up in your being wrong about me that I hadn’t honestly taken you in. It’s so transparent, how willing we are to dismiss the intelligence of someone who rejects us, as though that renders them incapable of sound judgment.

The last time I saw you, we were backstage after a play I was
doing. You were so generous and that made me feel like a million bucks. It would have been so sad if I’d spent all those years and never reintroduced myself; I would have missed out on all of your special wisdom, not to mention the thrill of the view up there on the high road.

Thank you for being open to another more workable draft of me. It affected me profoundly. I still can’t juggle. I mean to say that I can’t juggle in your way, as certain metaphorical methods I am actually acing on a daily basis, but biscuits or beanbags would be a negative. I confess that during the writing of this piece I snuck into my son’s room and took the juggling sacks off of his shelf. I gave it a shot. I thought you might like to hear that it wasn’t as bad as I thought at first, but then very swiftly it was maybe even worse than I thought. It doesn’t seem to be in the cards. You’d be happy to know that I’m actually working on a certain kind of neutrality. I know, shocking, but I see the value in it now.

I
. (When I was a sophomore, my friend K. would be the non-juggler in his class. I knew we were soul mates when I saw his frozen, near-transcendent look of despair as he stared at those juggling balls on the ground, his suffering so acute that he almost glowed, like one of those laminated holy cards, a crown of beanbags on his head.)

II
. We were in groups of four, and J. was the afterlife guide who took me away after I died while giving birth to E., who gained strength while searching for his father’s love. T. played the father who died from anguish after my body was carried away, but we ended our silent improv with E. and I holding hands to symbolize our reunion after death. It went extremely well, better than our “Act of passion” silent improv, in which I played the statue symbolizing beauty that E. couldn’t tolerate not fully possessing as his own, and subsequently destroyed.

III
. Orgy was so mild. I think a teacher walked in on it and we actually sent a representative to apologize on behalf of the class. No wait, the teacher was driving the car. Van. It was the back of a minivan. There was another incident, at J. and C.’s house, well, never mind.

IV
. We were minions who earned a wage by living under the ball gowns of rich women and holding up the fabric of their skirts so they wouldn’t trip while they danced.

Did you sew it? I’m just trying to imagine where you got it. There was no such thing as Amazon yet and I’d never seen one, except on Tarzan.

Your loincloth. Did you use fabric from an old couch? You didn’t have a couch. Maybe you liberated a square of fabric from your tepee or stitched together some burlap bags that once held hydroponic fertilizer.

You wore that cloth on your loins every day so maybe there was even a spare? You were a fruitarian, eating nothing but fruit and nuts (though apparently beer was also a fruit?); a van illegally parked on the beach (not beside it, on it) was your home; and you needed no shirt, shoes, nothing. You and your friend Gary drove to the border at dawn to get avocados and figs for the co-op where I worked also and then you went to the beach if you had no one to rolf. You were a rolfer, too, massaging those lucky people while wearing nothing or your loincloth. Okay, maybe a piece of jewelry
was also on your body. A conch-shell necklace, but that was it. You and Gary both had gorgeous, ocean-soaked hair that was longer than mine. Gary had a mane of chestnut that might have made him rich if he’d opened a Seven Stations of the Cross theme park, but your hair was its own Disneyland. It glowed in the dark from salt water and sun. That hair gave you the vibe of being both switched on and overcooked at the same time. You were the only men I’ve ever seen who could wear your hair in a bun with a flower and not seem sissy. You had soul patches and tans, period. Diving in the surf might happen five times a day, and how could you lie down at the tide and feel sand rushing everywhere if you were wearing clothes? When you took me to that nude beach up the coast, taking off your loincloth seemed brazen. A dog could walk away with your entire wardrobe in its mouth. Ripping it off was a breeze though, and you threw yourself in the water leaving me in awe of how little there was between you and the world. It took hardly anything to be not just happy, but filled with a kind of alien joy.

You took anyone’s idea of modern life and set it on fire decades before anyone dreamed up Burning Man. You didn’t need to rent an RV with Wi-Fi and stock up at Whole Foods to drive somewhere and let the madman into your third eye. You’d found it and let it all in and out again and had it going on. Even your name, which you said had become you after you’d dropped acid and were sitting on a massive rock by the cliffs. When you opened your eyes, everything including you was blue. Everything except your loincloth, which, for the summer I knew you, was a light brown man wrap that made you and Gary look like Malibu Jesus dolls and kept you from being arrested for indecent exposure by more or less covering your genitalia. You and Gary would come into the co-op first thing
in the morning with Minnie Riperton pouring out of your van. The two of you would pelt me with flowers while I sat in the back of the stockroom bagging and weighing organic nuts, rennet-free cheese, and bizarre dried sea vegetables. Back then only the hard-core who came to our store even knew about dried kelp. In the eighties only true hippies bought spirulina in a bag and snorted it, or however they took it once I’d bagged and labeled it probably incorrectly, and priced it, most definitely incorrectly. Some days, joining me at the scale was a sweet and sullen transgender boy named Luxe who wasn’t much better than I was. We got in trouble for throwing a block of Gouda up at the ceiling fan to see if it would come down in chunks, so they separated us. They had one of us bag while the other stocked dairy, which meant standing in the refrigerator and replenishing all the yogurt and kefir and freezing our asses off. I found the scale confusing and was never good at math, so I’d spend hours getting yelled at by that girl named Jacque who was a higher-up. I heard you used to date her, which I had a hard time picturing. Jacque dressed in those macramé tops that she made and tie-dyed, and she sewed her own maxi pads with inspiring words inked on in beet juice to make her connect to her yoni. I don’t know if you were into this also but Jacque drank her pee, which (once she blew in my face lightly then asked me, hey does my breath smell like urine?) was brave in a way, but she was hard to admire because she admonished me daily for being inept. She said my mistakes made her feel confused and out of touch. Freshly punished, I’d go back to my station and try to get the plankton or ground matcha out from under my fingernails, wishing I didn’t have to work two jobs, or that one of them didn’t have to be this one which sometimes paid me in avocados. She clearly still had a thing for you because she
hated me not only for my mistakes but also for your chilling with me while I unwittingly butchered all the price tags. You came over one day when she’d been particularly harsh and said

Hey, come on, she can’t fire you. If you were fired all the men who work here would protest

At first I didn’t know how to talk to you because you were so calm and genuine. Your voice was deep and slow. When I talked you would sometimes just stare at my mouth. After I’d been there a while you said

When I met you I thought, God, this girl must spend hours in front of the mirror watching her mouth

To make enough money to live, I took a bus away from beach life and worked at a coffee shop. The first morning that I was entrusted with opening the shop, I locked all the customers out on the street. I’d somehow barricaded myself inside the shop and couldn’t open the door. The undercaffeinated patrons were outside knocking on the glass while I kept trying the key and combination over and over. I put my face in my hands when the customers began to get twitchy. “I’m so sorry,” I mouthed to them through the glass, “I’m open to suggestions from any of you?” One woman cupped her hands around her mouth and pressed them on the glass, shouting “SECOND LOCK. THERE IS A SECOND LATCH. LOOK UP,” but after turning it several times with no clicking sound I told them through tears to please just go away. To my horror the manager showed up and shouted
commands at me until the door finally opened and then she banished me behind the counter to grind beans, which I enjoyed because the sound of the grinder disallowed conversation. While my beans were grinding that morning I leaned on the machine and felt the vibrations through my arm like a little massage. Staring into the parking lot, I squinted when I saw a familiar broken-down van barreling around with windows open and loud music leaking out. I started to pace, not knowing where to hide as the van pulled into a spot and the doors flew open. A cloud of smoke rolled forth followed by you and Gary walking toward my fancy coffee shop in your loincloths. You had no shoes on and even though none of us wore shoes at the health food store (earth to health department) I was wearing shoes then and I had on a sensible sundress. Seeing you outside the context of the health food store I was struck by the fact that you were essentially nude. I could not have you in the coffee shop where I was barely still working. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings or make you not like me but I was pretty sure that my boss would not want you near the pastry counter with your pubes visible and flying free. I froze. I couldn’t move for a moment because there was and still is something I was not and remain not skilled at voicing and that is the phrase
NOW IS NOT THE TIME CAN WE DO THIS LATER. PLEASE.