Monday, February 28, 2011

The Beginning of the End of Hero Worship

Over time, my admiration of Conspiracy eroded. Not in a big rush, like a landslide. In a tiny, persistent trickle that eventually wore a groove in the rock.

Circumstantially, the worst possible thing happened to us: Conspiracy went from being an active, working man with places to go and things to do to being a man who was home all the damned time.

When we first began seeing each other, Conspiracy worked at the New Haven Needle Exchange Program, a first-of-its-kind city initiative that helped prevent AIDS. Run from a mobile van, it supplied drug addicts with clean hypodermic needles and took away their potentially infected ones.

It was a job that Conspiracy was absolutely suited for.

On the one hand, he got to stand up to power as an outspoken advocate for the city's IV-drug users and prostitutes. He rubbed elbows and butted heads with the mayor, the chief of police and various Yale functionaries.

On the other hand, Conspiracy got to make an actual, face-to-face difference in the lives of people society had bypassed. Conspiracy was loved for it. There were many occasions when one of the working girls or street people would greet Conspiracy warmly as the two of us walked down the street.

It was a great gig that ended prematurely.

Conspiracy's back went out. He had two herniated discs in his back and pain in his sciatic nerve. He could barely walk, eventually developing a slight limp.

Instead of going to work everyday, he went out on disability. He spent a lot of time in bed. And in pain.

As a 20-year old, I knew what it felt like to scrape my knee, to be back-handed by an angry parent, to have little aches. But I knew nothing of the kind of pain that would make a man lie in bed and be a cranky, unbearable drag.

Not that I didn't try to suppress those uncharitable, unkind, callous thoughts. I liked to think of myself as a good person, a kind person, an almost-but-not-quite nice person. Certainly not a selfish bitch who looked down on her (much older) man because he was suddenly no longer any fun.

But that was the truth of it.

He was now home all the time. And his company wasn't the greatest.

Conspiracy, who had started out as a slightly heroic figure, was starting to lose his luster.

I was now able to see things that were there all the time that I'd never been able to see before.

For instance, he was always full of plans and dreams and creative ideas that he described with great passion and enthusiasm ... but that he never actually did anything about.

The day I realized that was like a punch between the eyes.

I stared at him, surprised. "You're a procrastinator," I blurted out.

My dad was a procrastinator. I was a procrastinator.

But it was genuine news to me that Conspiracy had such faults.

Conspiracy Diaries Part 13 of 25 (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25)
Conspiracy Lessons Learned 1-4 (1 2 3 4)


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Thursday, February 24, 2011

Learning to Speak Freely

The summer after my junior year, about nine months into my relationship with Conspiracy, I stayed in New Haven instead of going home to Detroit. The most life-affirming thing I did that summer was travel to New York City for a weekend workshop with Silky Voice, my first real acting teacher.

Silky Voice taught Yale's beginning acting class, which I took sophomore year. She was a tiny woman who simultaneously terrified and electrified me. She told me that I was a neurotic mess who needed therapy. She suggested that I start taking yoga, because my unnaturally high tension level was getting in the way of true emotional expression. She assigned me great scene-study roles, based on emotional depth, not skin color.

A year later, she was the person I turned to for advice. When I was angry or sad or under stress, my throat would physically constrict to the point that I couldn't speak. Did she know of anything I could do?

It turned out that in a matter of weeks, she was holding a voice workshop in New York City called, "Finding Your True Voice." I signed up, and with Conspiracy's blessing, spent a weekend in the big city, with real actors, in a real acting studio.

The class involved a lot of deep breathing, body work, vocal exercises and deeply personal monologues. Silky Voice was still every bit as terrifying and electrifying as I remembered. She admonished me to "avoid the continual sobbing" that had marked my first year of acting. She made a cutting comment about me living with an old man. In response to some Conspiracy-inspired comment I made, she cackled, "Ha ha! She's paranoid!"

During one exercise, my breath caught and my chest constricted and I began to cry. Silky Voice used me as an example: "You see that? That's early childhood, like maybe seven or eight."

At another point, she turned to the group and said, "You see how strong she is? She has the capacity to play heroines like Joan of Arc, and her strength scares her out of her mind."

She was right. Me, strong? Me, heroic? I had no idea what she was seeing. I felt sad, lost, powerless, frail, pathetic and out of control.

But on the final day of the workshop, a breakthrough.

A moment where my true voice came ringing out, crystal clear, no constriction, no muffling. Even more startling, in that instant, my vision became noticeably sharper.

It was a moment that changed my life.

I returned to Conspiracy drained, energized, relaxed and empowered, all at the same time.

That night, we made love, and it was different.

The difference was me. Normally, I react quite loudly to passionate events ... but this time, I was quiet. Not a deliberate choice, and not that I was faking before. Just that I didn't feel the need to cry out.

Conspiracy was confused, and he made a biting comment about not liking whatever "they" had done to me in New York.

But I knew that what had happened in New York was right. It was my first whiff of independence at a time when I didn't yet realize that I was completely under his control.


Conspiracy Diaries Part 12 of 25 (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25)
Conspiracy Lessons Learned 1-4 (1 2 3 4)


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Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Mr. Right and his Silver Jeep

The first year with Conspiracy, I accepted our strange relationship without ever really realizing that it was strange. And because of my devotion, I missed out on the best-looking guy who ever expressed interest in me.

His name was Sincere.

I met him quite by accident in the library. A girlfriend and I were sitting at a table, and she was idly gossiping that the brother of a world-famous half-Nigerian, half-British soul/jazz singer was rumored to live in New Haven. A good-looking brown-skinned guy I'd never seen before was sitting at the same table, a chair or two away. He listened quietly for a while, then stunned my friend by announcing that the rumors were true ... and that he was, indeed, the mysterious half-brother of the Smooth Operator herself.

Although he looked nothing like his stunningly beautiful sister, my first thought was, "Your dad sure is making one heck of a contribution to the gene pool, because you are strikingly handsome."

He was a senior. The reason I'd never seen him before was that he had just transferred to Yale from Vassar. After graduation, he planned to go to law school.

Turns out I knew his mother. She worked at Wawa as a checkout clerk, the same convenience store where I met Number Two. Once, when I went in sick as a dog to buy Nyquil, she yelled at me for not covering my mouth when I coughed. Sincere looked a lot like his mother, but that extra Nigerian spice from his dad was the source of his stunning good looks.

Somehow, we got to talking. And somehow he asked me out.

I don't remember where we went or what we did. Only that we must have gone somewhere. Because I remember sitting in the brand-new, silver Jeep his sister had bought for him. It was my first time riding in the kind of vehicle that would later come to be known as an SUV.

And I spent the whole damn time talking about Conspiracy. I don't think I even realized that Sincere was interested in me and that the two of us were on a date, albeit a very casual one.

When I got out of the car, there was an air of finality about it. I don't know if I ever saw him again, but I definitely know we never hung out again.

At the time, it was a very simple, happenstance occurrence. It didn't rattle my world or shake my soul. My date with Sincere was not something I talked about or even thought about ... back then.

It's only been recently, as I've thought about my dating history, that Sincere has come back to haunt me in a very big way. Because he was the kind of guy I should have been dating, the kind of guy I should have married.

But I couldn't, because I was entangled with a man old enough and crazy enough to be my father. And, unfortunately, I missed Mr. Right in his silver Jeep, because I only had eyes for my crazy old man.

For a few more months, at least.

Conspiracy Diaries Part 11 of 25 (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25)
Conspiracy Lessons Learned 1-4 (1 2 3 4)


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