Swann’s Way: The Best Love Letter I Ever Got

I found a note today in an old folder. It’s a scrap of note-paper torn out of a notebook. It was passed to me in class. Not grade school or high school or college. But grad school. Passing notes in class. In regards to the note: The spelling is 1. not the point at all so if you get distracted by it you’re missing the point and 2. what makes it so great. I didn’t even know I kept it, and it’s been … 15 years since I looked at it or something bizarre like that – but I know it by heart.

It is perfection. It’s profound and insightful and generous. I feel lucky to have gotten such a love letter, especially as an ADULT. And we weren’t even in love, but this shit is intimate, man. I forget sometimes … that openness like this is possible.

I was in grad school. It was a 3-year program and it was extremely intense. It was an acting program, so you get to know people extremely quickly and on a deeper more personal level than you do with other people. You know, you see people cry, you see them get angry, you see them work on their shit, and you all do it together, and you all do it in front of each other. It’s like living in a lunatic asylum. And I speak from experience!

I met Wade on the very first day of classes. I had moved to New York a week before from Chicago. We all were in a state of disorientation. We all had come from all over the place. My first class was a dance class at the Alvin Ailey Dance Studio uptown (those studios are incredible.) I barely knew the subway system, but I had a class downtown later that afternoon, and so Wade and I – whom I didn’t even know – took the subway back together. Wade came from Texas and he was wearing a Stetson hat. Just so you get the picture. Plus big chunky silver-turquoise rings like Dean Stockwell in Tracks. He was gorgeous. Or I thought he was. Like a young Jack Nicholson. Or a young Christian Slater. By the time we dis-embarked at 18th Street, we were friends. He said, “Hey, there’s this cool movie poster place on 18th Street, wanna go check it out?” I said sure, so we went and sat at the counter and asked to see movie posters for John Garfield movies and James Dean movies and they would bring them out to us. It was this weird random adventure and I think I remember it so well just because everything was new that day. I had left this very social life back in Chicago, with friends and boyfriends and jobs and acting gigs and I knew no one in New York, but here I was, looking at Godfather posters with this person I didn’t know the day before. It felt like a good omen.

I made other friends on that first week (friends who are still friends today) but Wade was my first. We were fast friends throughout the entire intense 3-year program. And like I said, you get to know people really well and really intensely in an acting program. Better than you know your own family. So you’d be like, “Oh, yeah, so-and-so has real rage issues” or “So-and-so has a block with her anger” or “He canNOT deal with sexuality…” It’s BRUTAL. But people are revealed in acting classes. That’s the gig. I was used to it, I had been an actress for most of my life at that point.

Wade was so talented (the most talented guy in our class, in my opinion: fearless), and as a person he was honest, deep, and full of surprises. He could say a thing and it would knock you flat. And if he LIKED you, like he liked me, his insights were always welcome. I remember getting upset once and saying, “I feel like something’s wrong with me,” and he said, “Oh, no, Sheila don’t do that, that’s way too easy.” Never ever forgotten that OR his perspective that self-loathing was “easy”. He was right. (If he disliked you, he could be brutal. He hated phonies. He hated super-serious people who didn’t have senses of humor.) He saw EVERYTHING. You’d say, “Hey, Wade, what’s up” and he’d say “What’s wrong.” It got to be annoying, but that was who he was. Intense and honest all the time.)

Wade, Polaroid by yours truly

Me camping it up on the subway at 2 in the morning, photo by Wade

Wade and I hooked up on occasion (duh) but it never messed up our friendship. It was SCHOOL, remember, so people were having romances all around us, and then breaking up HORRIBLY and publicly – because we all were with each other all the time – but then they couldn’t get away from each other because they were still in classes together. It was high school all over again. But we didn’t get caught up in that. We were friends. Platonic intimate male-female friendship. Rare. He came and stayed with me and my roommate for a couple of months when he was between apartments, and we would curl up in bed together and just go to sleep. Silently. We were ADULTS and it was like we were having an innocent pajama party. I don’t know how we managed this but we did, and I’ve always been grateful for it because Wade kept me sane during that totally insane program.

Onto the note which brought forth this flood of memories:

One day, in between classes, we were out in the yard at The New School, and he was making me laugh. (Hands down, one of the funniest people I’ve ever met.) But then he said, in his Texas accent, “Why do you cover your mouth when you laugh?” He would do that. He would jujitsu a conversation like that. Sometimes I’d be like, “Oh for God’s SAKE.” And this time, I was in a “For God’s SAKE” mood because he jujitsu-ed me and I resented it. I was mid-laugh and you make an OBSERVATION to me about the WAY I laugh??

I said, “Do I?”
“You do. Every time I make you laugh, up goes the hand to cover your mouth.”
“I really don’t think there’s any deep dark secret there, Wade.”
“I’m not SAYING there’s a deep dark secret, I’m just ASKING why you might do that?”
“Does everything have to have a reason? So I cover my mouth, big whup.”
“Did someone make fun of your mouth or something?”
“NO.”
“Then what?”
“WHAT what?”
“Just watch next time you start laughing, and notice how you put your hand over your mouth.”
“Why are you making such a big deal about this?” (I mean, it went on like this.)

Then he said something that made me laugh again, and boom, up went my hand, and I realized it, and got FURIOUS and self-conscious and he practically fell off the bench laughing. I hated him desperately!! A side product of all of this is that this one conversation (and the note) stopped me – for all time – from covering up my mouth when I laughed. He wasn’t saying it was a bad thing, he was just asking WHY. And I didn’t have an answer.

As we walked back into class after that exchange, I found myself thinking: Why DO you cover your mouth, Sheila? (You see? Wade was GOOD, he got into your HEAD.) I said to Wade, suddenly, as we walked to the elevator, “Maybe it’s because I had braces for three years when I was a kid? Some kids have braces for a year and a half, I had them for three. I got them off when I was 16. I hated those braces so much, I thought it would never end.” Wade, Stetson hat shading his face, didn’t say anything. We got in the elevator and rode up to class, not speaking.

We sat down in our Theatre History class. Class started. Wade still didn’t speak. He was bent over his notebook writing something. I wasn’t even paying attention to him. I was listening to the professor. Then Wade passed me this note.

It was his delayed response to my braces comment. Start at the bottom and work your way up.

That explains a whole whole lot.
You have beautiful teeth. It’s muscle memory.
You may have been an ugly duckling
Your now a swann
Swann’s are beautiful and mean.

I think it’s the “Swann’s are beautiful and mean” that is the best part of it. “Mean”?? That’s pure Wade. That’s his unique twist and outlook. I could analyze why this was so profound to me – and why “mean” is the best part – but that would wreck it. The second I read the note, I remember feeling this flush go over me like; “This is PERFECT. This is the best note I have ever gotten in my whole life.”

It wasn’t the compliment although the compliment made me feel good. It was that he saw me and took the time to let me know, in no uncertain terms, I see you. And dammit, he was RIGHT that there was a reason I compulsively covered my mouth when I was laughing. And he wanted me to be free of that, and just laugh, with no worries, nothing between me and my own joy.

I read that note again today, and remembered feeling seen. Feeling beautiful.

Feeling mean.