Dyck's cabins, July
Sunday. Frank, dressed in his favorite light blues and looking exceptionally
good, dropped Dave here and stopped, with reluctance, to talk. A few restrained
sentences from him, desperate replies from me. And then Homer, all unintelligent
friendliness, stopped to say goodbye and Frank escaped into the raspberries,
was gone in a moment, waving - "If you have a day off, be sure to call
me" with complete impersonality.
Monday, July 26
Frank came tonight, in his baggy, strong work clothes and small beautifully
made leather boots, his face sharp, hair curled all over his head. He sat
on the table leaning his head against the sharp edge of the open window,
swinging one foot from the knee and bracing the other against a chair rung.
Hands loose but strong on his knees. In contrast was George with his red
face and the roll of fat around his chin, lethargic and tedious, slumped
in the chair. "I don't try to think into the future. Things change
too fast, things happen to you." "You have at least fifty percent
control over what happens to you" I said, thinking of Frank. And Frank,
getting up to leave, with no excuses, stopping at the door, said "Will
is like a flame. It keeps burning faster."
I had felt as though there was a substance, thin threads, connecting
my outline crosslegged on the bed to his on the table - points connecting
like a shadow stretched taut but elastic. I wanted to hold him. I felt myself
and still feel myself glowing toward him. He is honest and tough and strong.
I want his type of honesty and his warmth, meaningfulness, sharp lingering
flavor. If he ever marries I will feel cheated of something I have a primary
emotional claim to; and yet my relief that we are still real to each other,
and my many-sided attraction to him, content me now. Almost.
Tuesday August 3
Frank was here on Saturday night, lay on the ground beside me as we watched
the sky darken; after Valery had gone inside, leaving her empty tea cup
with ours, we were self-consciously close physically and gropingly close
intellectually. I was aware of his compact body, as I always am, and I wanted
to move toward him. But "loved I not honour more" and unsureness
prevent it. I wonder if my vulnerability to Frank is nothing more than the
impetus of memory toward return - or is it the fatal, cyclical, romantic
impetus of personal chemistry? Will I long for Frank as an impossible ideal
relationship which was safely, mercifully, impossible?
September 10, Friday afternoon
Sue, bent over a row of strawberries, said "Life is so full. It
keeps getting fuller."
Reading Borstal Boy in bed, thinking of the luxury of an O Henry
chocolate bar and drinking coffee from my green stoneware cup. There is
just enough light on the top bunk to read comfortably, the hotplate is glowing
in red concentric circles, the flowers in the milk bottle reflect the reds
and oranges of the painting above them, and the Van Gogh Road with Cypresses
is reflected in the mirror above my row of books.
Beyond this fullness is the independent fullness of other good things
- Susy herself, selfish, curious, garrulous and intent on every molecule
that reaches her. The Schumann A Minor Concerto on our static riddled
old radio. The sun sometimes clear and wide open, sometimes a closed flat
pink disk seen through the smoke, just off center in a tall photograph of
the fence posts disappearing down Boundary Road. The faces of the Hindus
on our broccoli crew, especially of Suarn smiling; of the old man Shif,
long beaked face and emaciated body, the white beard curled under and the
new bluejeans almost flat on his body; Jornel smoking his decrepit cigarette
delicately, through his ragged hand; Farmir squatting on the waggon with
the red sun wild beside his wild face. The unbelievable two-colored shiny
green of each dandelion leaf in the space behind my door. The flat valley
seen from the road just east of Mt Lehman, with evergreen and mountains
rimming it sharply. Fields of brussels sprouts rising in swells all around,
in a fused mosaic of greens and blues, and the pairs of white butterflies
darting across them. The sweat and exhileration of being pushed to what
seems the limit of physical effort topping sprouts. The airport lights scattered
and changing in many colors. Elizabeth Ksinan like an arrogant Italian pageboy,
swarthy, slight and strong, dark-eyed. Susy dancing in edge-of-the-beat
tautness, her luxurious skin and sensuous body. Nights of hard rain, or
red moons, or stars, or the satellite moving graciously and confidently
from south to north. "Escaping from metaphysical bombardment into physical
bombardment" by sleeping outside and staring at the constellations
for a long time.
Then Friday night. Frank came and said goodnight. "I have a feeling
I may never see you again." The sadness, all evening, of the distance
between us. ("Tell me - why are you so sad" on Wednesday night,
and my blurted answer, "Loneliness. The old universal." "I
don't know anything. Sometimes it is like a cry in me," he said; "We
can talk, but always I feel this undercurrent of loneliness. My older friends
tell me that when I have blood ties with a child or a woman the sharpness
will go away. But I don't think so.") The surprise of his remark as
I ran around the corner to get his tea: "The back of your neck isn't
very tanned," and my lighthearted answer covering my joy at the knowledge
that he desired me. Sudden embrace by the steps, reluctance becoming abandon,
long long kisses and the sweetness of his arms and shoulders, the side of
his face again. We were cold, and went back to my cabin, stared at each
other, both reached for the light cord at the same time, and lay under the
quilt with the hotplate on next to our heads, naked, committed to recklessness,
happy and confidential. "I'm glad it was you." Near dawn I ran
outside to the toilet and came back, naked, into his arms to say goodbye.
"The human body is a beautiful thing. And skin." I was bursting
with joy because I had given myself to Frank at last and because of his
wonder at being made a lover for the first time. The light was red on the
outlines of my body, and we held each other in a vacillation between passion
and incredulity. How beautiful he is.
Sunday night we had each other for the first time, again and again, slowly
and joyfully, with all our motions slowed and tightened to almost a dance,
lovemaking smoothed off by the force of how much we loved each other. Even
remembering, my stomach tightens.
Tuesday night, his knock and the reflex-quick happiness at seeing each
other.
September 13
Last night his knock woke me from a quilt-wrapped sleep over my Spanish
book. There he is on the doorstep in his green work clothes, with night
around him in the doorway; smiling, with a bag of grapes to split with Susy.
"We have always been at home with ourselves, with each other,"
I said and felt his nod rather than saw it. "It doesn't happen with
very many." "I don't expect it to ever happen again," he
said. "Isn't that a bit bleak?" "The gods aren't generous
twice." Today the thought of never-twice, for me and for him, is not
softened by his presence; and life without him - what seems years of trying
to return to what he is and what I have with him - has a very sharp edge.
There is no malice, no distrust, in this love relationship with Frank.
I am twenty now, and he is twenty-five, but we meet with the same wonder
and tenderness we had when we were sixteen and twenty-one. He is stronger,
and I am freer, only good has happened. Can there be no return? Is there
anything that isn't hollow without Frank?
My sensitivity has grown in the last month: I think of Grandmother being
old, I think of Mother becoming old, I think of the never-twices I will
always long for, and I'm afraid. I see the shaking of the poplar tree above
the cabin roof (turning gold) and I'm frightened. The sudden realization
of far distant past, of "thought's the slave of life and life time's
fool" (all from reading about the persistance of the Old Spanish y
in the modern hay!) frightens me. The thought of Frank changed, me
changed, and of all the time and good beautiful things and painful things
that we won't be able to tell each other about, frightens me.
I am happy that we've slept together these two weeks; it is a debt paid,
a declaration for the present, something definite to look back on.
"But in spite of my butchered reputation, you do know that this
with you isn't light, for me? That is very important to me." He was
quiet so long that I touched his face to question him. "Just stay in
my arms for a while."
After a while we lay on our backs together and ate all the grapes in
the bag. I spit my seeds onto the floor beside the bed and he swallowed
his. We were giddy. Then he talked about the children he'll have, the tall
sons. "What are you laughing at, my tall sons?" "And my daughter's
pretty legs." "She will have pretty legs, I'm sure she will, she
is sure to," he said very seriously. I cried. He gave me his hanky.
I soon stopped, but the giddiness was gone and we were forced to think of
Saturday.
He laughs wonderfully, at me and at himself, quietly and warmly, with
his face and his body focused into the laugh. His body - strongly muscled
but rounded-off, shoulders and arms, sinewy forearms, delicate hipbone,
soft genitals, rounded-square buttocks, soft warm skin. I take an inventory.
He lit a match to find his t-shirt, and his face and bare chest, with
his hands around the match, are a picture I'll remember. With it I'll remember
his picture of me lying in bed watching him dress.
Thursday September 16
This morning was bright, very cold, and very windy. Mount Baker is covered
with fresh snow and it, with the other mountains, glistens as it never has
all summer. This afternoon while I was driving tractor on the broccoli field,
a long trail of smoke came from Harrison Lake, between the mountains, and
spread west toward the coast shutting off the sun and giving the light an
odd yellow look.
Last night the moon was frozen in a hoary pale sky and it was so cold
that when I ran out to the toilet naked I was chilled through. Frank warmed
me quickly by wrapping me around in his arms. When we were hungry we ate
the two bananas he brought. We talked about the different levels of our
life, and of the one level of fear and uncertainty that few speak of and
how many? experience. His sensitivity is painful; his uncertainty, agony.
He needs a "point of life" as I do not need one yet. He is tortured
even physically by his own purposelessness. Yet he is strong, serene, uncompromising,
unwilling to pick up a cheap "point" that would give him peace.
"I don't think I'll ever need one that badly." His pain isolates
him even from me. I understand the horror of questions swirled in echos
through the mind at night and the need to escape the smothering confusion
of words into the explosion of mind into infinite starry space. I understand
the stabbing need for a reason. But I cannot invent one for him, nor can
I create peace in that last level of his mind as I do in others.
frank's letters after the summer of 1965
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