folding

A goodbye near the George Washington Bridge.

Someone told me once that soul mates come along to us all the time. These people are not just the typical way that that idea gets used. You know that idea: bells ringing, twirling in fields with Julie Andrews singing, and Disney birds exploding around heads due to the powerful pull of romance and love. (Wait, maybe that discloses more about me than anybody else's idea of that concept of soul mate.) But soul mates can be other things to us entirely. Sometimes they come along because they are in our lives to push us (sometimes hard) onto our more intended path.  People come along that we connect to strongly, but their time in our lives is short, their exit is painful, and their influence is long lasting.

My friend Rodger was one of those for me. He walked into my solo show in Truth or Consequences, NM because he had stopped for the night on his way to Texas, and the hotel owner told him about the opening. And so into the gallery walks the tallest man I've have ever met - and beautiful to boot. And as I was to learn over the next week, a man who was also sophisticated, southern, brilliant, charming, arrogant, kind, generous, and in pain.

And then there is who he was to the public. It's interesting that I have friends who are working and wandering their way into being well known, and others who very much are awarded and well known and connected in art, poetry, and other places. Rodger was an author. I have his NPR interview on my laptop. He started the Gay Men's Heath Crisis call center at the start of the AIDS crisis in the 80s. His work has changed the face of health care not only for people living with HIV and dying from AIDS, but for people dying from other diseases and for their care givers as well.  I didn't know this about him when he walked into my opening even though I had read his name in several books and had had my hands on his guide for care givers earlier in my life. But my friend who owned the gallery did. She had known him when she lived in NYC. And their connection was instant. I'm glad that he stayed because of her.  I got to know him because of her.
 
I talked to my dad the week I was in T or C. He knew who Rodger was because, as it turns out, he was on the season of a reality show - the name currently escapes me - where they follow teams of runners on these really difficult and dangerous runs in amazing places all over the world. Rodger's season had won an Emmy.  My dad thought he was a cool guy just from TV.

I found myself intimidated by him and in awe of the fact he was interested in me and in my work. This was Dec. 2008. I'm not the same person now that I was then. Confidence was not something that I had much of, so I did a lot of listening. I know things about the AIDS crisis now that I try and share with my students when we talk about 80s and 90s art. Those conversations changed my understanding and way of thinking in huge ways. They brought new levels of compassion and a new way of understanding of what happened with the AIDS crisis in my home town (small and southern but still touched by this in big ways) and how to process my middle school experience of it.

And then there are just those little moments that mean more than anyone's reputation or status in the world - those moments that just made him my friend. The emails and FB exchanges (I have yet to unfriend him, delete his email, or erase his number from my phone.) On his visit to Tucson, he greeted my by putting his big hands on my cheeks, bent down and kissing me on the forehead, and said "Hey Sugar, it's good to see you." That visit he also gave  me a copy of Larry Kramer's "The Trouble with Today's Gays" with an essay at the end that he wrote. It was signed. And as he handed it to me, he gave me that big smile and said, "Now. Where's your book, bitch?"

That visit would be the last time I would see him.

And then there was that phone call six months after meeting him saying that he had taken his own life in an isolated spot in the Elephant Butte State Park outside of T or C. At first we didn't know what he had done. But then we learned that he had driven his big black jeep up to an area where people target shoot, had fired a few practice rounds to blend in to the expected, pinned an note on his shirt apologizing for the mess and trauma that he would cause the person who found him, and then he shot himself.

The grief that comes after a suicide is different than any other grief.  It just is. It is profound. It is devastating. It is angry. It is cunning, baffling, and powerful to borrow that phrase. And only other folks who have lost people to suicide really understand. I'm grateful my friends and to the SOS group here in Tucson for helping me wander through this. Especially when there were only two other people in my life who actually knew Rodger.  I grieved with people I only met once. A year later at his memorial service in NYC, I smiled as his best friend dropped his box of ashes on the ground and kicked it. She said, "Now if anyone else wants to cuss at him, here's your chance. Oh and I guess if you have nice things to say, you can do that too." It was utterly fitting.

I tell you all of this to share with you what happened to me after. It is hard for me to admit this in a public form, but here I go. I have an eating disorder that I've struggled with my entire life. Food addiction and the issues that come with that are real and every bit as life stunting and difficult as other addictions. And my way of coping with Rodger's death, and, if I'm honest, grief over a lot of other losses that I chose to stuff and ignore until I could no longer hold it in, was to binge eat and to write and make artwork. Two things came out of that - the first is the pitiful and incomprehisible demoralization that comes with being an addict who has hit bottom, and the second is a poetry manuscript and set of drawings.  The first sent me to a 12 step program that has utterly changed my life for the better and continues to do so. I learned that recovery is possible! The second influenced the work that I made after it for years both visually and written.

And now that body of work is finally going off to find a publisher. It's strange to see this grieving and angsty work after having done so much work to move past it. I had to have this loss to get my butt into the 12 step rooms. I had to have the 12 step rooms to be able to grow and change beyond the sad, angry person that I was five years ago. And it would seem that I had to have Rodger, the 12 steps, and the life I have built since work on me before I was ready to release this work to the life it may have away from my head, my laptop, and the originals in my studio.

So I want to share a little bit from that manuscript with you.

The manuscript is called reciprocity failure. It's dedicated to Rodger McFarlane.
_________________________________________________________________

you were there; i heard it

in a radio interview

i heard it

in your laugh

                        in a kitchen

                        next to beets

                        i saw it in your smile

“oh, he knows

he’s  a consummate

asshole”

                        in the waiting

                        rooms

                        you were there too

dropping pennies

inhaling smoke

from the wall

chewing ice and

bending straws

consequentially

breadcrumbs

echoing circular

a truth

  

                           a drawing

                                                     in the dirt

                                                                        near tire tracks

                                 that aren’t yours

                                 but could be.

 _______________________________________________________________

my exhale

becomes your inhale

then

someone else’s

becoming

together

by serendipity

and

a privilege

and

after

and then

an act

          of forceful

                            choice

                                       bringing chance

                                                                       to its knees

                                                   and mute

                                          and no sleep

                                 and porches

                            in four states

             how many rows

        of gutted

     virgin

  candles,

genuflections,

acts of contrition

to the center

of my

pretend ok

___________________________________________________________

And so . . .
Here comes my book, bitch.

A little more about Rodger if you are curious:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodger_McFarlane
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2052190/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7u4U6i84OA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07TFlV18kZU
And please watch the documentary Outrage if you haven't. It's streamable on Netflix.