dimension to the other—and back again if necessary, for she was so kind, so delicate, that she wouldn't have wanted to hurt me or make things awkward. American frankness, courdy refinement, Italian playfulness all came together in this marvelous woman, who also had something soldierly about her. As a gay man I wouldn't have dared to say that, but a straight guy at the office said, "Good old Christa, she's a regular guy," and this description stuck in my mind. She'd help me into my coat, she'd lend me ten bucks the day before payday, and in her unveiled eyes, her strong jaw, her upright posture and general "transparence," as well as in her complete lack of humid, ensnaring coquetry, I felt an absence of everything I hated about women, the deviousness, the emotional blackmail, the musky, layered mystery. At this time I read Gauguin's Tahitian journals, Noa-Noa, in which he said that in the Pacific he learned to love women again since the Polynesians were fiiendly, brown, naked, embraceable creatures unlike European women with their stays, their virtue, odors and schemes, and for a moment I convinced myself things might be just
The Farewell Symphony
that simple. I, too, might love my Viking, my trooper, my giant blonde Tahitian.
And I was tired of men, as tired of their bulky, brisding bodies as I was weary of the despair they inspired in me. When I showed friends the novel I had written about Sean, I read it to them out loud to instruct them, through the coloration of my voice, as to exacdy how they were to respond, but despite all my coaching they still found so much suffering lugubrious and exasperating. I needed to propagate the golden legend of my love in order to turn sentimental defeat into spiritual victory. I needed to demonstrate to other people that in the gay world in which men danced an allemande left and right with interchangeable partners I had chosen one man around whom to revolve in an endless do-si-do of devotion.
"But he's maddening, this character of yours," Jamie said, knowing the character was based on me. "He has no pride. It's sickening!"
I said, "But what of the medieval knight who kept one eye shut the rest of his life after he'd seen his lady for the last time? Isn't there something beautiful about that?"
"Beautiful?! A jerk."
"Or what of this Colombian poet I heard of," I persisted, "who was in love with a lesbian and had a sex change just to please her."
"Andr
"And she rejected him because he was just one more ugly dyke. But the gesture—"
"Loser. Grotesque loser Anyway, there are so many other people in the world."
No, there aren't, I thought. The true lover is monotheistic.
In this remnant of a life I have left, I thought, I might as well fmd comfort with Christa. One long spring we spent together, shopping for food and cooking together, reading and reminiscing and listening to re-recordings of old Italian cafe songs from the turn of the century ("It was raining and I was crying," Christa translated). That spring was cold and bleak and raining but we were happy together inside her studio with the vast skylight sloping on an angle, wet gingko leaves pressed to the glass. I thought to myself that she was more beautiful than Sean, that if she were a man she'd be the handsomest man I'd ever known. Women liked me more than men did; at least the women I attracted were a cut above even those men who thought they were too good for me. I wavered between
saying women had lower standards or insisting they were more interested in character and charm than in beauty and might.
Christa's whole interest in me seemed to be to make me feel good about myself, which she accomplished without resorting to flattery. We'd lie naked in bed, she tall and lean and adorned in nothing but a big summer hat heavy with cloth cabbage roses. She'd make a mushroom risotto when the skylight would dim and Sunday night would depress us with the thought of a return to work Monday morning. We played at being depressed
The Farewell Symphony
that simple. I, too, might love my Viking, my trooper, my giant blonde Tahitian.
And I was tired of men, as tired of their bulky, brisding bodies as I was weary of the despair they inspired in me. When I showed friends the novel I had written about Sean, I read it to them out loud to instruct them, through the coloration of my voice, as to exacdy how they were to respond, but despite all my coaching they still found so much suffering lugubrious and exasperating. I needed to propagate the golden legend of my love in order to turn sentimental defeat into spiritual victory. I needed to demonstrate to other people that in the gay world in which men danced an allemande left and right with interchangeable partners I had chosen one man around whom to revolve in an endless do-si-do of devotion.
"But he's maddening, this character of yours," Jamie said, knowing the character was based on me. "He has no pride. It's sickening!"
I said, "But what of the medieval knight who kept one eye shut the rest of his life after he'd seen his lady for the last time? Isn't there something beautiful about that?"
"Beautiful?! A jerk."
"Or what of this Colombian poet I heard of," I persisted, "who was in love with a lesbian and had a sex change just to please her."
"Andr
"And she rejected him because he was just one more ugly dyke. But the gesture—"
"Loser. Grotesque loser Anyway, there are so many other people in the world."
No, there aren't, I thought. The true lover is monotheistic.
In this remnant of a life I have left, I thought, I might as well fmd comfort with Christa. One long spring we spent together, shopping for food and cooking together, reading and reminiscing and listening to re-recordings of old Italian cafe songs from the turn of the century ("It was raining and I was crying," Christa translated). That spring was cold and bleak and raining but we were happy together inside her studio with the vast skylight sloping on an angle, wet gingko leaves pressed to the glass. I thought to myself that she was more beautiful than Sean, that if she were a man she'd be the handsomest man I'd ever known. Women liked me more than men did; at least the women I attracted were a cut above even those men who thought they were too good for me. I wavered between
saying women had lower standards or insisting they were more interested in character and charm than in beauty and might.
Christa's whole interest in me seemed to be to make me feel good about myself, which she accomplished without resorting to flattery. We'd lie naked in bed, she tall and lean and adorned in nothing but a big summer hat heavy with cloth cabbage roses. She'd make a mushroom risotto when the skylight would dim and Sunday night would depress us with the thought of a return to work Monday morning. We played at being depressed
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