Diary Friday

Sometimes when I type in “Diary Friday”, I feel like I’m Mr. Rogers. “And now, boys and girls, it’s time to go to the land of Make-Believe …” “And now, boys and girls, it’s Diary Friday!!”

Today’s entry is the tale of a weekend in Nov. 1995, my first year of graduate school. I was a bit of a raw-nerve throughout my first year in school. School was brand-new, I hadn’t been in a school situation for years, I had left my home and my friends in Chicago, I was so homesick! I also had a big crush on a guy in my class – and I literally cannot even remember what was so attractive to me about him. I suppose it was just that I needed the distraction of a “crush”. But I re-read this entry and was completely shocked that I had actually shed a tear over this person.

How insane!

I was really homesick. I had left someone behind in Chicago, someone I really loved. I couldn’t get over him. I never ever say his name – I just refer to him as “he” or “him”, underlining the words. “And then he came to mind…” I wanted to be back in Chicago.

Names have been changed. Of course.

November 19, 1995

Friday. Last [acting] workshop with Vivien [Nathan]. Bought her roses. After: Decided to go for a drink. Autumn.

Me, Emily, Christine, Leslie, Matthew – confusion of where to go. I was irritated at everyone’s lack of decisiveness. Matthew said to me, grinning: “Maybe you should tell them how you feel.” Laughter.

Walk to Art Bar. Matthew carried Christine on his back. I was — something was disturbed in me. Loneliness? I don’t know. Something was wrong.

In Art Bar. Darkness. Candles. Guys in suits with sexy-looking martinis. Emily, looking at the line of martinis at the bar, exclaimed: “The olives look like belly buttons!” Beautiful!

Matthew and Leslie talking. Exclusively. Christine, Emily, and I talk. I overhear snippets from Matthew and Leslie:

Matthew: “I’ve experienced a lot of rejection over my life. Like ‘That guy’s too intense.’ ”

“I find myself doing these self-abandoning things.”

“There have been times in my life when … I’ve been suicidal …”

He had said earlier: “I would never want to be a kid again. No, wait. I’d like to be the kid I could have been.”

He and Leslie were talking of relationships. It was a deep and close conversation. He told Leslie that the last girl he dated was a “runway model”. I wanted to leap out of a window when I heard that. Then: “And ever since her …I haven’t even felt like kissing anyone …”

As this went on I will admit my feelings: Jealousy. Hurt. Fear. (I invested too much in nothing. I made it all up. He never felt like kissing me.) And slowly, sitting there, I knew my feelings were drifting away from Matthew, towards myself, and towards him. [Ed: I’m not sure, but I do believe that the “him” mentioned here is not Matthew – but the guy I left behind in Chicago.] And then I knew I would have to leave the Art Bar. My sadness ballooned out in just one second to 100 times its original size.

Leslie went to the bathroom. Matthew looked at me. We smiled. A small superficial conversation occurred. I said something seriously. He laughed. I didn’t like it.

I said, “You know, you laugh a lot when I say serious things to you.”

I blindsided him. Unfair.

He was awkward. “No …I was just …” Then he stopped – fumbling. I make him feel awkward, uncomfortable. He said, “I’m sorry.”

I had to leave. I left my money, kissed my new friends, Matthew standing, I moved past him. “Sheila — you leaving?” Kind — yet confused.

“Yeah. I’m taking off. Are you going to E’s class tomorrow?”

“Class? What class?” Panic.

“Calm down. Her sensory class.” I was impatient with him.

“Oh. No way! I get enough sensory work as it is.”

“Okay. Whatever.”

He leaned over and kissed me. Awkward.

I said, “Have a nice weekend.”

“You too, Sheila.” He has such a kindness. That’s the word-clue I get.

I got the hell out of there, just in time. I was going to lose it. Publicly.

Then I got lost. Hopelessly. The fucking West Village. There was the World Trade Center. Glittering. When I see the World Trade Center, I know which direction I am facing. But when I lose sight of it, I lose my way. [Ed: That line kills me. Jesus.]

I wandered, out of breath. I had this bruised feeling in my chest area. Wind knocked out of me. I was seriously talking to myself, trying to calm down.

So much has nothing to do with Matthew. I am just susceptible now. …. I am vulnerable. I am still hurt. I miss him.

Finally. The subway…Thoughts of him … How much I miss him. How unnatural and unfair it feels to not be in his life.

Home. It felt like I was running there before the wall of water rising up behind me engulfed everything. Just get me home.

It was 9:30. I began making calls. I felt afraid. Needed to diffuse the intensity a bit. Calling Christine. Good talk.

Matthew apparently said to Christine, after I left: “Did Sheila seem in kind of a funk to you?”

“Yeah, I guess she did.”

“I hope she’s all right. I’ll call her tomorrow.”

Brendan and Maria helped.

“Of course!” said Maria. “Of course you would be hurt by him talking this way to another girl! You should be kinder to yourself.”

Had a horrible night sleepwise.

Jim, Jackie, and George [Ed: friends from Chicago] called me from Moody’s [Ed: This was one of our favorite night-time spots in Chicago – we would go there after rehearsals – it was a dark Hobbit-like pub – with big dark wooden tables, big dark benches, fires roaring in the fireplace – Moody’s was our place] — bless them — but they called at 12:45 a.m. I was fast asleep.

Jackie exclaimed, remembering: “Oh, the time change!”

After I hung up with them, I lay in bed, WIDE AWAKE as though jazzed on caffeine. Got up, read Interview, drank water.

Woke early. I had E’s class to get to, at 10 am. Sat at New World Coffee, drinking coffee, writing, feeling calmer, more myself. I felt still inside, again. No more of the chaos and noise of the night before. I knew, let me just say, that — something would happen in class. I knew the magnitude of my — whatever — my loneliness, my sadness, my anger, my loss — whatever — I knew it was waiting to come out during class. All I wanted to do really was to turn it inwards, give it free rein, crawl into bed, and let it fucking have me for two days. Self-destructive shit.

But I fought this. I kept it contained until class. Take this pain and turn it into art, Sheila. That’s the only way to get through this.

Breakfast with Christine.

Class: Toasty warm room at school. Grey carpet — grey sky — Lights off. I realized as I lay down for relaxation that I had been holding on for this, waiting. Hang on, Sheila, hang on. Almost time for class. Almost time for class.

Lay down with an immense and happy sigh. I was working on Chekhov. Sophie in Uncle Vanya.

When I left class, my eyes were almost stuck-shut from tears. It was definitely a day of breakthrough. I worked on Sophie’s monologue to Elena about her unrequited love for the Doctor – and at one point – the floodgates opened. It was a faucet – a faucet I had been holding back from turning on, ever since I left the Art Bar. I do not want to be sad anymore. So I waited for class to turn that faucet on – and when class was over I turned the faucet off. The flow of emotion was still behind it; I just closed the valve.

It was kind of amazing. There is a way to survive this. Anything I feel, anything I go through, needs to be put into my work.

Christine and I went to the Lincoln Center Library after class, on a search for sheet music. Found some German Christmas carols. Xeroxed “Stille Nacht” for Matthew. He had been looking for it. I was still bruised in the lung area about him. Found “Lo, How a Rose Ere Blooming”. It made me think of being a little girl. Grandpa and his violin, Katy playing piano, harmonizing voices, my family.

I was so wiped out. Pale, drawn, wan. Went home. My poor face. I looked old. Shadowed. Lived-in.

When I got home, I called Matthew to tell him not to go on a wild goose chase for “Stille Nacht”. I had it. Long story, but Matthew has moved, and hasn’t got a new phone number yet, he retains his phone at his old apartment, where he still picks up messages from time to time. So I called, not expecting him to pick up – In fact, the only reason I called was that I assumed he would not be there. He was there, though, and picked up, after three rings.

“Matthew? I totally didn’t expect you to answer!”

“Well, actually–wow–it’s kind of weird that I did–”

I told him then, leaping right into my reason for calling, about “Silent Night”. I was all-business. He was immensely grateful. I saved him a couple hours of hassle. “Thank you so much…” he said.

I was all calm. Realistic. Voice of reason. “So you can see if it’s right for you, the key and everything…”

Business out of the way, I wanted to quick-quick close it down: “Okay, bye! See you on Monday!” That’s what I felt like doing – I didn’t feel like being vulnerable to him, or to let him know that I liked him, and that I wished he had been talking to ME in that intimate way last night, not Leslie.

So I wanted to get off the phone as quickly as possible – but he wouldn’t let me. He said, “So ….. how are you?” He never asks a question like that expecting a normal answer. He really means How are you? And I heard — unspoken — beneath his words — the reference to my prickly behavior the night before.

Later he said: “Yeah, I asked because … only because last night you seemed … ” Left unfinished.

I didn’t address it directly. I did not bring him into it. I’m not ready. Obviously. I can see that now. I am not ready to be in love with anybody else just now. I am still in love with someone else. So – it’s not important to me to have some big “I like you, do you like me” conversation just yet.

What I realized I wanted, which wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t been there to answer the phone, was that I wanted to open up to him, and become friends – I wanted him to know me in a deeper way. I wanted to talk to him about me. He has some ideas about who I am – and I wanted him to know that I’m not just this one thing. Please! If you’re going to care about me at all, please try to see all of me … Don’t laugh me off. Don’t laugh when I try to be serious.

We talked for an hour. I talked. Sympathetic silence on the other end…I told him what had happened to me at the Art Bar and how I got lost in the Village afterwards. How I got upset. How I made phone calls.

I left my feelings for Matthew out of my story, somehow, and I also didn’t talk about him. The man I left behind. I didn’t say, “God – I can’t STAND not seeing him, not hearing from him – it’s eating me up inside!!” I don’t know how I managed to tell the Art Bar tale without divulging all of that, but I did. I told him about Chicago, what Chicago was about for me. How — the me I am now did not exist before Chicago. Matthew listened, he was learning my landscape. I have to be brave enough to show him my landscape … It’s not HIS fault that he doesn’t know me yet. And, of course, he was so wonderful. Kind, insightful, a good listener. We talked about happiness. How hard it is to trust it, get used to it…

During the Chicago section, re: friends — he said, “You seem to be surrounding yourself with those kind of people now.”

“I know what to look for now.”

He laughed. Which pushed a button in me. I said, “You laugh. But I’m serious.”

He hastened — clearly he remembered the exchange of the night before — eager to explain it to me. “That laugh, Sheila … I don’t know quite why I do that … I’m not laughing at you … Sometimes I think it’s a cynical laugh –” He told me about his family, and how they laugh at painful events — they laugh like “I can’t believe we got through that.” “So I think that’s part of it. But with you – it’s more of a recognition thing. Do you know what I’m saying? You say stuff so often that I recognize, and that’s where that laughter comes from.”

His words were honest, brave, self-reflective. And just what I needed to hear.

All in all, it was a great talk. I wasn’t just the well-adjusted always-cool-and-calm confidante I have become to him. I was me. Lying on my couch. I told him about what happened in E’s class. Told him everything. I told him about waiting to turn the faucet on until I was in class.

“So, Sheila–” (he said, pouncing) “You — went to E’s class — with all of this stuff going on — and you chose to work on something that would directly deal with all this stuff?”

“Yes.” It made sense to me, but it blew him away. He could not believe it. “Sheila! Do you realize how courageous that is? How brave you are?”

What? Suddenly I felt like crying all over again. I didn’t think it was brave at all! He kept going: “To know yourself that well — to be able to orchestrate a catharsis like you did today — I think it’s incredible.”

I hadn’t seen it that way at all. It had seemed totally logical to me, choosing to work on Sophie – it was the only way I wanted to deal with my emotions. It was the only way I wanted to deal with my feelings for the man I left behind. But Matthew thought it was an amazing and brave application of our work. Maybe it was. I liked his admiration. It was unexpected. It was needed. The whole talk — out of the blue — helped me gain a bit of perspective. I never would have called, either, if I thought he would be there. I only called because I knew for certain a machine would pick up.

So. It was … what’s that word … “manna” for my troubled soul. This friendship, at least, is not in my head.

He called me glamorous again. He thinks I’m glamorous, which is so hysterical to me.

I’ll tell him something I feel insecure about, or whatever, and he will exclaim, disbelievingly, “But, Sheila, you’re so glamorous!”

This cracks me up. I said, “Yeah, me in a T-shirt and jeans and hi-tops!”

He said, “It has nothing to do with that. Your glamorous-ness comes from your dignity.”

Hm. Layers peeling away. So interesting to see how you are seen.

I thought about what he said, and I said, “Too much dignity.”

And you know what? He got it. It was a pretty oblique statement but he heard what I was saying. He heard what was going on underneath. Kudos … I do not just want to be a dignified good-listener, someone who is always there for others, always has her shit together. I’m human, dammit. I fall apart too. Too much dignity, sometimes. He repeated it. “Too much, huh? … Yeah, I can see that.”

The bruised feeling left a little bit, through the talk. A connection was made. A deeper level reached. Which is what, in actuality, I was yearning for all along. Not romance – I’m still in love with someone else – but a connection. I hadn’t realized. It helped. He helped. I told him so.

For some reason, the blip of the Art Bar changed me, left me off at a different place. I didn’t hang up with him and think, “Oh, good, back to where we were … things are normal again…” The time at the Art Bar had illuminated to myself the depth of my loneliness — how close to the surface he is for me, as much as I don’t deal with it, but it’s there. He is always ready to swarm back into my heart if I let him. The past is not the past. He follows me around everywhere.

I was not into the dynamic that had developed with Matthew. Where I was always the calm girl, the one who listened to him, the “good friend”. After our phone conversation, I could not have cared less whether or not he had a crush on me.

And then Saturday night.

Despite my exhaustion (I still felt like crawling into bed and not emerging for the whole weekend) I went out with Ted. His friend Adam (high school friend – who is a clown. I mean, a Ringling Bros. clown) had a birthday party.

It was a drizzly night. Met Ted at Paola’s – Adam’s girlfriend’s apartment by Carnegie Hall. She is Italian, thick accent, black velvet top, beautiful woman — casually making mounds of incredible food. She has that European self-possession and sexuality, etc. I kind of fell in love with her. Sexy, in velvet, carrying food to the table.

I walked there from 59th — through the drizzle — all the NY icons in my face — Radio City — Carnegie Hall — Russian Tea Room — lines to get into Planet Hollywood of all places.

Adam: so sweet, demonstrative, child-like, funny. He commented on my “Vamp” nail polish immediately, and gave me a kiss. People arriving.

A group of us went ice skating at Wollman Rink nearby. Ted had brought his ice skates in a blue and green plaid skate-case. We walked there together through the light drizzle.

Ice skating! I haven’t ice skated since I was 13 or 14, I believe. With Meredith. At Potter’s Pond, near my house.

The rink was crowded with Hispanic teenagers, who were all done up — It was like Ocean Skate — the teenage mating dance — insane whizzing skaters — reckless — fabulous — loud pounding rap music — crowds, chaos, stimulus — outside – New York — Central Park at night.

I joined the throngs – in my bright blue skates — Nervous! I leapt in, joining the whizzing throngs — would they run me down?

Ted and I skated together, holding hands. He took a spill once, and so I had to fall as well. We crashed to the ice in unison. I got confident pretty quick. Kept my balance.

My friend Ted and I: holding hands, drizzle coming down, skating on a frozen rink, under the black city sky, MUSIC — surrounded by crazy Hispanic teenagers, lots of mating going on, guys peacocked by, skating like maniacs, strutting their stuff for the giggling black-lipsticked girls.

Ted and I skated around, talking about [Lee] Strasberg. I really wanted to talk about Lee. Why is he such a dirty word at the Actors Studio – he helped form the damn thing!! Why is he so unmentionable? It seems unfair. Discussion, as we skated, of acting teachers, and how their methods of teaching come out of the kinds of actors they were. Meisner, Stella — their versions of “the Method” served the kinds of actors they were.

Talk talk talk, as we circled the crowded ice, drizzle spotting our glasses, the words flowing, freely, happily.

I was so glad I went – even though I had been so tired. It was really wonderful. I was glad I wasn’t home curled up in bed, nursing my wounds.

Then all of us skaters went back to the party, with our aching ankles. We felt fabulous. It was raining harder now. The bedraggled disheveled group headed back to the apartment, where Paola was waiting — beautiful, serene, sexy — cooking — the perfect hostess. Lots of people arriving. Gifts piling up.

Adam juggled (literally) everything in the room.

Ted and I only knew each other, so we drank wine, ate Italian pizza and delicious stuffed zucchini, sat in a corner and talked about music and da capo and arias and David Hobson and Ted’s music workshop — maybe done at my school — his friendship with Adam, me and men, what I felt I had discovered during the day — My question to Ted: How do you casually be interested in someone? How do you not care how it turns out? I can’t seem to do it.

Then — cheesecake. Phenomenal tiramisu made by Paola. There was a little white-haired girl at the party, so CUTE. A big man (her father) had a laugh so much like Bobby’s laugh (the laugh you never would expect to come out of Bobby) that Ted and I gasped at the sound, and Ted’s eyes filled up with tears. Wild! Both of us got a vivid sense of Bobby, in the same moment, hearing that man’s laugh.

Gift-opening. Adam, clearly, is such a wonderful person. He was openly surprised and happy with every gift. He balanced each one on his nose, after opening it.

After the dessert – I became aware of another sensation creeping in. How to describe it…

It was past midnight, and — it was a sensation I haven’t had in a long time. It’s very specific. It was late. Way past my bedtime. I had had a very long and draining day, with a lot of things accomplished, and I couldn’t wait to go home and go to sleep, but (and here’s the key): I wasn’t in any kind of panicked rush to get home, like I usually am, as in: “Oh my God, I have to get up in 5 hours!” or “I have ten things to do tomorrow!”

I had not ONE thing to do the next day, except read Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus. I didn’t have to set my alarm. This is the ultimate in decadence and luxuriousness these days. (Appropriate for a glamour-girl like me.)

And I was happy, in a way, to put it off a little bit, put off the pleasure of getting into bed and SLEEPING IN.

I was sleepy on the subway. Stopped at the 24 hour store to buy some coffee for the morning. Then I went to sleep. Oh, the sleep. Woke up at 10:15. Unbelievably decadent. Made coffee. Sat around with Bren and Maria. Grey skies outside. Sammy the cat is having trouble adjusting. Sat on my bed, reading, writing, talked to Liz and Brett.

Then — took a long run. Hooray for Sheila. I haven’t taken a run in months. Chilly day. Grey. Crispy leaves. Grey streets, grey skies. B52’s on the walkman. Ran north.

I ran up to see the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Ran down 110th, waiting for my first glimpse. I saw what I thought was it – and it was smaller than I pictured — Maybe it was just the rectory — but then, as I ran further, the full magnitude of the cathedral was revealed to me. It literally took my breath away. The SCOPE! It is so TALL. It dominates the sky. Not to mention 5 city blocks.

I ran around the cathedral. Stopped to gape and gawk and gasp. The rose window — the DOORS! — the steps – the stone-carved angels jutting out along the roof – perpendicular to the ground – it is all so massive and beautiful and vibrant — lots of people – It was totally awe-inspiring.

I ran for about 45 minutes. I got all the toxins out. I surprised myself. My own sense of self-preservation still surprises me. Taking a run was the best thing I could have done. I ran down Amsterdam — down West End — back up beautiful quaint Riverside Drive — The drive was deserted, huge wind to fight against — up– up — up — I was drenched in sweat.

The B52s tape reminded me of days gone by. Chicago. Golden Boy. Running on Lake Michigan. Playing pool with Jack. In between his fits of becoming a dinosaur, for my benefit. All of those images resurfacing … through the music.

Came home. Read Dr. Faustus. Painted my toenails with my new “Vamp” polish.