Originally mailed on April 4, 1995
I have been trying to write you a happy letter for days, and I just can't do it. Somebody called me "mopey" the other day, and I thought, "Damn it, I'm not mopey, I'm a cheerful person," and I was going to prove it by writing a super-upbeat letter to you, but the truth is, I am mopey these days, and you may wonder why. "Harriet," I bet you're thinking, "things were going so well. Did you get a bad grade on your paper about MTF transsexuals? Did you get a bad haircut? Did you print seven thousand flyers on the wrong color at work?"
The answers: No, Yes, and Yes. I got a very good grade on my paper. The teacher called me "courageous" and said it was an education just having me in her classroom. For a minute I wondered what kind of education she was looking for, but it's probably just my vanity that made me think she was about to ask me out. Of course she wouldn't do that, because I had just gotten a terrible haircut. I wanted to look butch, so I went for a super-short kind of thing, buzzed to the skin on the sides and standing up stiff on top. Except my hair doesn't stand up stiff, even after I put half a bottle of Super-Hold Ultra Hair Cement on it. It sort of lays there poking out in all directions. And the sides being almost shaved makes my head look narrow at the temples and my cheeks look extra round. It's hard to describe; let's just say I finally understand why they call Marines "jarheads."
You probably don't even need the details about the 7000 flyers I printed on lilac instead of lavender paper. The customer didn't mind (much), since they're basically just slightly different shades of light purple, but Pete about blew a gasket. "You're supposed to read the color on the ream, Harriet, and make sure what it says matches the order form. You opened fourteen reams of lilac paper, Harriet! FOURTEEN REAMS! Did you check the label on a single one of them? DO YOU NEED GLASSES, HARRIET? CAN YOU READ, HARRIET?" I never knew the veins in a person's forehead could bulge that far out and not pop. Let's hear it for venous elasticity, or I'd have been booked for manslaughter sure.
But everybody has a bad day at work once in a while. I admit I've been distracted lately, but if it hadn't been me fucking up it would have been one of the counter girls, writing an order down wrong, or Sheldon, who recently printed an entire order with Side 2 upside-down. And Pete's a screamer, maybe from being around loud presses all the time. Being reamed (little printer pun, there) by Pete is no big deal. And the bad haircut is no big deal, either. It's not like I had my head rebuilt or something permanent like that. It'll grow. I'm not moping about my hair or about my job. I'm moping about Esther.
This is what happened: You may recall that Esther wanted me to stop drinking for awhile to prove to her that I'm not a alcoholic, right? Well, I felt like there was no way I could do that, I think because I felt rebellious. I hate people telling me what to do, and I couldn't stop drinking after Esther asked me to because then it would be like I was doing it at her command, which my pride would not allow. At the same time, though, I thought Esther had some of the same feelings for me that I had for her, and I wanted her to let her guard down so we could check it out. Also, she did kind of get me thinking about the whole drinking thing, and while I say again that I think our culture has become way too sensitive about addictions, I did kind of start to wonder what would happen if I didn't drink for a little while.
I talked the whole thing over with Splash, and she didn't think it could hurt me to stop drinking for a few weeks. She said, "Look, Har, if you're not an alcoholic and you don't drink for awhile, it won't bother you and it won't hurt you. But if you do have a drinking problem, you might find that out if you tried to go without." She also suggested that, if I was defensive about Esther's urging me to stop drinking, I could try it for a little while without telling Esther. Just try it for myself, without having to worry that Esther was watching me and thinking, "A-ha! I told you so!" if it turned out to be hard. Splash said she'd help me if I wanted her to. So I decided I'd stop drinking for four weeks and see what happened.
Well, at first it wasn't as hard as I thought it might be. I had to remember not to drink, but I didn't have to fight not to drink - I think I'd gotten in the habit of ordering beer with pizza and wine with dinner, for instance, and I practically had to tattoo "Order a Coke, Harriet," on the back of my hand. It's not that I would be sitting in a restaurant, for instance, thirsty for a glass of wine, having thought about it all day at work. The press going whump-a-whump-a-whump-a in the background while I dreamed about the little buzz I'd get from sipping half a glass of Chianti while I spun angel hair pasta around my fork. It was more like the server saying, "What would you like to drink?" was the doctor's little hammer and "What's the house red?" was my leg jerking up to kick him in the shin. "I mean, I'll have a Coke, please."
I was relieved to think that drinking might be just a habit with me and not a compulsion, and I thought Esther would be, too, when I told her about it, but I wanted to give it a little time, not go rushing to her too soon. I was afraid she'd be scornful, say, "You haven't had a drink in two weeks and it's been easy? What does that prove?" I was afraid my drinking was just an excuse, and that if I went to her and said, "I did it, Esther, I stopped drinking," she'd come up with some other test for me or some new reason why we couldn't get romantic. I wanted to wait to tell Esther until I had a real accomplishment, the whole 30 days she'd asked for. Meanwhile I just avoided the subject and tried to spend time with her without pressuring her. I wanted her to get comfortable with me, not be afraid I was going to ask yet again for things she wasn't ready to give, and I wanted to surprise her, too, at the end of my 30 days, "Hey, Esther, you've spent the past month with the New Harriet. Whaddaya think?" I wanted her to think the New Harriet was easy to be with.
Well, ready for the crushing blow? Last week I called Esther, oh, Wednesday afternoon or so, and asked her to have dinner with me on Friday. She said she was busy. I said, "Well, I'm free Saturday night, how about then?" And she said, "Sorry, I have plans."
"Sunday brunch?"
"No, that's not a good time."
"Well, how about I cook dinner for you after work one night next week?"
"I'm pretty busy these days, Harriet."
I said, "When can we get together, then?"
She said, "I don't know, I'll call you."
I speed-dialed Splash as soon as we'd hung up. "Reality check, Splash. A woman you've been spending time with every week for nearly four months is too busy to see you this weekend and all next week, and when you try to pin her down on an alternate time she says 'I don't know. I'll call you.' What's going on?" Splash said, "Are you reading one of those lesbian quiz books that are supposed to stimulate deep conversation by asking what you'd do in various situations?" I said, "No, I just talked to Esther." Splash said, "Oh, in that case it means she's busy and she'll call you." I said, "No, really." Splash said, "Mental health check, Harriet. If a friend tells you it sounds like the woman you've been pining for since the New Year has just blown you off, will you run right out to Quality Dairy and buy a six pack to drown your sorrow?" I said, "No." Splash said, "Wine coolers? Boone's Farm Apple Berry? Zima Clear Malt Beverage?" I said, "No, Splash, I will not fall off the wagon if you tell me that in your opinion, based on your extensive personal research into lesbian dating mores, Esther has just given me the big heave-ho."
Splash said, "In that case, I think she's blowing you off, sweetheart."
"AARGH!" I said. "That's what I thought!" I'd have torn my hair if I'd had any left. After I'd finished banging the phone on the table really hard for awhile, Splash offered to help me out: "Would you rather I: A) came over to comfort you, bringing Coke, chocolate, and Star Trek: The Next Generation videocassettes; B) kidnapped you to the multiplex to see an action flick; C) contacted my spies and gathered intelligence from the GossipNet to find out what's going on with Esther; D) left you alone in your sorrow." I picked A and C, and later that evening, just as the big pulsing pink alien entity and the big pulsing blue alien entity were twining tendrils in an ecstasy of heterosexual reunion above the ruins of Farpoint Station, the phone rang. One of Splash's Avenger pals had gotten the whole story from a friend of hers who works with a lesbian who lives with - it's painful to say it - the woman Esther's been seeing since weekend before last.
First, I'll tell you what Esther admitted to when I called and confronted - er, asked her about it. Yes, she's seeing this woman named Tammy, and she "feels a lot of energy" between them and needs to "move with the passion to see where it takes her." Her "focus needs to be on Tammy now," but she hopes I'll "still have room for her in my heart, as a friend," when she has room in her life for me again.
Man, I ranted, let me tell you. "I ironed my shirts for her, I gelled my hair for her, I stopped drinking for her, and she just keeps saying she has to really get to know me and believe she can trust me before she'll get sexual with me. Four months! Four months she strings me along with just a few kisses here and there, preaching restraint. And then she goes home with some woman she meets at the bar and gives her whole life over to exploring the energy between them!" I wanted to do a lot worse than bang the phone on the table, let me tell you. I wanted to tear things off the wall and throw them through the window. I was pacing my apartment hitting my head with my fists I hurt so bad.
Listen: it's not just that Esther is seeing someone else, and doesn't have time for me anymore. No, what I hear through Splash's apparently highly efficient [though questionably reliable] GossipNet is that Esther met this woman at the bar a couple of Fridays ago and has been with her daily ever since, even though - and this is what grinds me - the woman was drunk - yes, D-R-U-N-K DRUNK - the night they met and is apparently renowned for hilarious hi-jinks like showing up still in yesterday's clothes at her housemate's workplace and asking for a ride home because, too wobbly with drink to get the front door unlocked, she had gone to sleep in the back of the housemate's pickup the night before and had finally awakened in the parking lot when the sun beating down on the truck cap became unbearable.
More ranting to Splash: "Apparently the problem wasn't that I drank too much, but that I didn't drink enough! I shouldn't have been getting sober, I should have been increasing my tolerance for hard liquor!" Splash tried to calm me down, reminding me that everyone has been through something similar, like the woman who tells you she just isn't interested in commitment and then moves in with someone else a week later. And Splash reminded me that I had claimed I was trying Life Without Alcohol because I wanted to learn about myself, not because it was the key to Esther's bedroom. And Splash said that Esther obviously had some unresolved issues, like a compulsive attraction to drinkers, and that, just like anybody else trying to get healthy, she might be prone to backsliding now and again. "I bet it's very painful for her, Harriet. She probably knows this affair is a bad idea, but she didn't have the strength to avoid it and she may not have the strength to end it for awhile. It's OK to be angry, but don't let your anger keep you from being a friend to Esther when she needs you."
Splash is so fucking rational. She stayed calm while I ranted and she held me for a long time when I finally broke down crying, and she stayed with me all night long when the crying degenerated into a bone-deep desire to get rotten stinking drunk, and she called in sick to work for me the next morning, put me in a hot bath, and headed out for bagels and a new supply of videos. All day long she fed me cups of coffee and put new tapes in the VCR, and I sat there in sweatpants with Speedball on my lap purring and watched Trek, and every time the tape ended I cried while I waited for Splash to put a new one in. I'd had this neat linear progression about how my life was going to be: I was going to stop drinking for 30 days, reveal my success to Esther, take her to bed, stay sober another month or so to reassure her, and then go back to normal. I'd have Esther, and I'd have a half-carafe of good white wine with my seafood. Now I know I'm never going to have Esther, and I may never get that half-carafe, either.
Better stop before I get you all depressed, too. Don't worry about me. But do write to me if you feel like it.
Love,
© Copyright 1994-1999 Su Penn. Design by David Dierauer.
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