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Poetry slam
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Sept. 28, 1999 |
While I was away at graduate school, my husband had an affair with a
woman in
her mid-40s. While, on one level, this is a comfort to me, since I now
have proof that he won't find me unattractive when I am middle-aged, on
another level, I want to kill him. They broke up a couple of months
before I
found out about it, and I never would have known about it at all if I
hadn't
found the condoms and the 144 e-mails she sent him (which I found by
accident! I wasn't snooping!). The e-mails were full of passionate love
poetry to him and nasty comments about me. She gave him lots of cards,
too,
and presents. (I threw the plants off the balcony.) But they broke up, and
he wants to stay with me. Should I just get over it, and be glad she
wasn't a buxom teeny-bopper who wrote good poetry? Can't Turn the Page Dear Can't, I don't know how you "just get over it," like you'd just get
over a scraped knee, but you sound as if you're inclined to keep him
around, so that's the right thing to do. Much depends on the quality of his
remorse. You might encourage this by hanging the worst of her love
poems around the house for a day or two, perhaps enlarged for
readability. Let him look at her words in the clear light of day. It'll give
you both something to laugh at. Probably the affair was only a sort of bad
poem, a forgivable offense, but bad poets do tend to make a habit of it,
and you want to nip that sucker right here and now. You need to heal this
breach and redeem this marriage. You have to get back to what drew you
together in the first place. Your husband behaved badly and you're entitled
to be aloof and wounded for months, years if you choose, but it won't
help anything. You have a fine sense of humor, obviously, and that's
good, because you're in an absurd situation. You need to push this small
dark cloud out of your mind and seduce this man and be passionate with
him. Discussion can accomplish only so much, and then a wife and
husband need to cling to each other naked in the dark and be silent in the
presence of the essential mystery. His body and your body are as one, so
you have vowed, and in this awesome intimacy, cruelty and betrayal don't
count for much. His affair with the poet was a thin impersonation of
something real between you and him. Find that and hold onto it. Mr. Blue Garrison Keillor's column appears every Tuesday in Salon Books.
Feeling blue about your prose? In the doldrums over your last date? Ask Mr. Blue. Dear Mr. Blue, My best friend is dating my ex-boyfriend. He was my first love and very hard to get over, and even though I am in a wonderful relationship with another man, and I am trying to be mature about this, it still bothers me. Am I psycho? Aren't there rules about these things? I feel betrayed. It doesn't help that she tiptoes around me all the time, either. What should I do? Chicago Dear Chicago, The rules got rewritten, I guess. But if you ask me, you don't need to be psycho to be bothered by cheesy behavior, and I say forget about being mature: If you feel bad, go ahead and feel bad. But do not under any circumstances let them know that you feel bad. Not in the slightest. Be cool. Keep the feeling of betrayal strictly to yourself and let it dissipate on its own, and if the sight of them exacerbates your misery, put them out of your sight. Revise your Top 10 Friends and slip her back to No. 3 or 4 for a while. And be happy with Mr. New. Dear Mr. Blue, Many years ago I was with a woman I loved very much. Though she and I still cared very much for each other, she ended the relationship. I was hurt, but I moved on. We remained close over the years, and recently we have been spending much time together. I love her and would be more than willing to enter a closer relationship with her; she feels we are too different in temperament. Which is true. Nonetheless, we rarely get on each other's nerves and are great friends and companions. Is there a way I could make her see that what we share makes our differences insignificant? Is it healthy to remain in such a close friendship, knowing it will probably never be what I wish it would? Happy but Hoping Dear H.b.H., I assume you've told her recently how you feel and evidently she has sidestepped your advance. Don't push. Don't try to make her see things your way. You can't argue your way into her heart. Let it be as she wishes. She is probably right. Not getting on each other's nerves is hardly the same as being passionately in love, and she wants more than your companionship, and as her friend, you have to go along with that. No, there is nothing unhealthy about keeping the close friendship, but if it's painful for you, then let the friendship take a vacation for a few months and see how you feel then. Dear Mr. Blue. My 30-year-old daughter is a development exec in Hollywood who just lost her job with a typical Hollywood maniac boss. She's burned out on the exec track and wants to turn to screenwriting. The subtext seems to be that she needs someone to support her while she returns to school and learns the craft. I want to be a good supportive father, but I'm somewhat cynical about the plan, not to mention distressed at the potential financial ramifications. Thoughts? Advice? Good Old Dad Dear G.O.D., If your daughter was a movie exec, she should have collected a few shekels, maybe even some herds of sheep and cattle, with which to pay her rent and keep her in bran muffins while she segues into the screenwriting gig. And even better, she should have picked up a few hunches about how to write a script and, more important, how to sell it. So rather than go to the University of Screenwriting Craft, she should park herself in a bare room with a laptop on her beautiful knees and make art. If she doesn't have the shekels, then she is not allowed to burn out quite yet. You should be a good supportive father and explain that her childhood expired a few years ago. She should get a job and spend her spare time in the bare room and when she's 32 and fabulously successful, she'll thank you. Dear Mr. Blue, The only thing I want to be in life is a writer. And yet I studied teaching and got my license. I am now working as a teacher and am extremely miserable, like the mother of 20 children who need a set of parents each. This job makes me question my existence. I feel like killing myself. I hate it. What job can I get that will use my writing skills that doesn't involve teaching? And tell me: What kind of psychological problem ever led me to think of becoming a teacher? Need Help! Dear Need, Look at what you wrote to me a week ago, and if you still feel that way, quit your teaching job right now. Just walk into the principal's office and do it. Don't wait until you find something else. Leave the classroom just as soon as is gracefully possible. Then find another job. It probably won't be a writing job and may be just something to subsist on. But get a job that you can hold on to for at least six months or a year, while you scope out something better. You've encountered a defeat, but it's nothing final, nothing so disastrous, just an understandable miscalculation, and once you get out of this hellish situation, you'll start to feel better.
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