Phillips Head, Stripped

"You have to touch me. On the inside part. And you have to call me my name." -- Beloved, p. 137

It was a surprisingly cool day. Normally, I do not get much fresh air on this back end of the building which faces the Schuykill, and it is pleasant, the need not to scurry after my life long concomitant triggers with animal waste and feline maintenance. Cats. Spend how many ten spots on trinkets for them and they prefer to practice their hunting skills with our Homindaen accouterments: the ear plugs for the Apple, a device whose touchpad interface still has not merited the need to fetishize its convenience, or my endless supply of plastic cigarettes.

This is scant consolation for my frayed relations with the Jamesians, and I bitterly rue my gushing ease of familiarity with Louise. I almost hate her for my flawed ease of intimacy with crippled strangers. I had a major disruption on the list years ago, before Louise lurked on it, (or so I assume, as she would have been very young and perhaps still an undergraduate) when Carrol Cox wrote a controversial article for HJR about the list serv itself. Marcia was still easily conversant with me back then, and explained to me that Carrol Cox flustered a number of her colleagues, not just me. I thought Dr. Cox made a stab in my direction, however. Feeling slighted, I unsubscribed in a huff. Returned later, tail quietly between my legs.

I cannot unsubscribe and re-subscribe as the whim seizes me, but I no longer feel welcomed, encouraged, supported, and this friction began when Louise approached me, unwittingly creating the cripple to cripple affinity, and now I’m pissed off. I liked being the underdog with these scholars, liked the hope that I could one day submit an article, and join their conversation, only to be called upon to be a mentor and good lieutenant for a girl of nascent naiveté who was impacted by the force of my writing. I cannot remember what led to my opening up with her.

Initially, I thanked her for her praise and left it at that. Much like more successful authors, I have enough experience to be wary of admirers (my obsessive clinging to the memory of Jerry McGuire being a case in point). If I thought anything else about it, I speculated incorrectly that Louise was a graduate student who knew nothing about the furious chip on my shoulder. I forgot about it. She approached me again, followed me to LiveJournal, where I have yet to wrap up my account. I made a fatal mistake at that point in the extent of my interaction, allowed her to telephone, posted something facile to the list serv which upset Greg who in turn upset me, post openly about all this, and cannot glue that fellowship over a singular and esoteric appreciation back together.

As a virtual community, small straw that it is to cling to, the list was my haven away from disability and civic strife, and I am pissed. Really, but being pissed doesn’t grant absolution, nor make Greg and I easy again. I had the right to decouple myself from the girl. I have been in a precarious state of living for a long time. More than likely my emotional state will continue to rock under duress. Louise has a federal job, and whatever security goes with that. I have the nightmare of recycled indigence, and whatever her fragility, she has not sustained my abuse. I no longer have the strength or psychic space to carry other disabled people due to my ability to survive hell, and in the same vein, Dr. Ian has the right to cut me loose, for whatever perceived breach. It was a small thing that mattered to me though, belonging and contributing to those appreciative of Jamesian mastery. I’m left at a loss, growling of little consolation.

I will bookmark the idea to one day expand on my displeasure with Toni Morrison's masterpiece. It is still important to be responsible towards the aesthetic dissonances we harbor.