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Mugtoe
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Just found this letter while un-packing. I never sent it when I wrote it. So I added a note on the back and sent it off today.
Dear Coi,
It’s Friday evening, and I wanted to take a moment and write you a quick note. It’s more than halfway through January, and we are just now getting our first significant and sustained snowfall of the winter. And it is keeping at it for the moment, which is nice. For the last few weeks we’ve had bitter cold and blustery winds, as in -11F or so most nights. I like cold weather, but that’s a bit much even for me. We should get at least eight inches of snow before the night’s out. I know that’s not much for folks closer to the Lakes or, like you, up in the mountains, but it makes for a much different landscape here after the flinty ground and leaden skies of a few days back.
I’ve been stressed as hell, and I’ve been taking it out on Matt, I think. The IRS is after me for about $15K I owe them in taxes – I got off my payment plan in November – and I don’t exactly know how I’m going to get current with them the way things are going. I could always vow to make more money at work, as I work for commission, but that business is such a roller coaster that I can’t depend on my performance being up to par with any degree of consistency. It’s like trying to sell widgets that change their minds in the middle of a given transaction. If I weren’t bald, I’d pull my hair out. As it is I chew my nails pretty well.
I finished War and Peace and went on to read Thomas DiLorenzo’s The Real Lincoln. DiLorenzo contends that Lincoln waged an unnecessary war to consolidate Federal power and implement Whig/Republican economic policy over the heads of the sovereign states. Up to the time of the Civil War the right of secession was taken for granted by most Americans as a last defense against just what Lincoln succeeded in doing. He writes tendentiously, but it’s an interesting read nonetheless.
When I finished that book I read a book Dad sent me titled Big Bend, which is co-written by J.O. Langford and Fred Gipson (of Old Yeller fame). Langford homesteaded three sections of land in the Big Bend of the Rio Grande in 1909 before it was a national park, and he remained there with his wife and two young daughters, and their dog Tex, for four or five years, until the revolution in Mexico caused raiding bandits to make life on the river untenable. They left for El Paso and didn’t return for almost fourteen years. In the interim one of their daughters had grown up and gone on to teach school and the other daughter had died in a swimming accident while still a young girl, and they added two sons to the family. They returned to the Big Bend around 1927 and remained there until 1942. I’m not sure what happened to them after that.
I absolutely loved that book. It was only 153 pages long and very plainly written, but I wanted a few hundred more pages of it when I was done. I mentioned that to Dad over the phone, and he said he would mail me a few books in a day or so. In the meantime I picked up one of my Will Durant books out of that 14-volume set on the history of Western Civilization. It was The Age of Napoleon, which I had begun last summer in Texas but put down after less than one hundred pages. I started getting interested in it today just when the package from Dad arrived. I got a Wallace Stegner book titled Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs and a book by John Graves, a favorite author of mine, titled Hard Scrabble, which as far as I can tell is just a book about life and his observations living on four hundred acres of limestone hill country in Texas. I dove right in to that one on the way home from work, and I already know I’ll enjoy that book.
I’m still enjoying it now on Sunday. I’m sitting here at my desk listening to Robin Trower while Matt naps in the other room and tries to get over his sinus infection. I’ve been craving Trower for some reason lately, though there’s nothing particular about his music. I may just be feeling nostalgic. I’ve been really homesick lately much of the time and stressed about money and the other garden variety difficulties I have, and listening to music I enjoyed in my teens and early twenties likely induces some sort of euphoric recall in me as a form of escape. In any case, the music is good, so it could be worse.
I imagine the playoffs have already started today. I’ve paid minimal attention to football this year, though it’s fun living a few blocks from the Metrodome in a town with this much fan support for the local team. They’ve been erratic this year, but I like Culpepper, the quarterback, and Moss, even if he is a notoriety-seeking showboat with no discretion. I think Philly vs Atlanta and Pittsburgh vs the Pats today. I think it’d be fun to have a purely Pennsylvania Super Bowl, and I guess we’ll know what it’s going to be before I get this letter in the mail. It’s 2:15 p.m., and I haven’t checked the scores yet.
I’m sorry I haven’t written more to you. It’s not like I’m averse to writing. I have two friends in prison in Texas who I’ve known for years as well. I also have two pen-pals, one each in Indiana and Kentucky, who are also locked up. I got them off the internet, just because I enjoyed writing back and forth to Josh and Bill in Texas. Bill was my best friend in high school. I dated his sister when I was fourteen, and his mom rented a room from my mother for a short time when I was a teenager. I met Josh in a rehab in Abilene, Texas back in ’96. He got locked up shortly after he left treatment, and I’ve been writing to him for the last seven years or so. He may make parole this year sometime. I just started writing to Bill a short time ago. I only knew he’d been sent to prison for a long, long time, and I had no idea how to reach him for a while.
How long do you think you’re currently looking at for a sentence realistically? I can’t imagine what I would do, honestly. I guess I’d have to adopt a completely different mindset and just shut a fair amount of my thinking out in order to adjust myself to circumstance. But that’s just idle speculation. My own problems, however, seem pretty insignificant when cast in that light. And I suppose that even in your shoes things could be much worse. It’s all a matter of degree to some extent.
I just noticed online that Johnny Carson died today of lung disease. I’d not thought of him in years. He was a fixture of our world for such a very long time and in such a substantial way, at least as far as TV personalities go. But I rarely pay any attention to television anymore, and I haven’t in years and years. I reckon that has a good deal to do with it.
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9 March 2005
Today I have changed my schedule somewhat. I checked my email, messageboards, the weather and whatnot, and then I disconnected from the net and decided I won’t reconnect until the end of the day. I also blocked Matt from my IM lists. I could remove him altogether from them, but I’m not willing to do that. The idea that I should have no contact at all with him after being together six years is a little harsh on my Wah at the moment. And I think it’s also unnecessary so far. My fever has broken a bit, and I feel more positive than I’ve felt in a while.
It’s almost 8:30 a.m., and I’ve been up about an hour’n a half. I’m on cup number three, and I haven’t had any tobacco at all yet; though I may have a dip after this cup. As soon as I’m done in here I’ll go outside and prepare a row and plant cabbages and Brussels sprouts and get a row ready for potatoes. That should be the extent of my agri-business for the day, though not of my outdoor activities.
We need to erect more block’n board shelves to accommodate all our books. I have yet to unpack the ones I brought back from up north, and there are sixteen boxes or so of those. Every closet is also packed with books in this house, and all the available wall space is taken up by bookshelves. I would almost rather have a twin-sized bed, so that my room could accommodate more shelving for books. I’m not likely to be sharing my bed here with anyone anytime soon. We literally have thousands and thousands of books here in this house. If I didn’t love them all so much it would be oppressive. Even that attachment itself is a bit ponderous on my spirits from time to time – as all attachments are at some point.
There is so much clutter about in this room, so many loose documents and opened boxes and dust and tracked-in dirt from the garden and dog hair. It’s a bit overwhelming, and it accumulates more quickly than I can make disposition of it. Perhaps that is because I rarely take the time to do just that, but rather spend a good deal of that time online and fixated on that same problem I’ve chewed on for months and months now – really two years or more, to be honest.
So is some of this about simply letting go of all that internal conflict and ceasing to chew on that nub of a bone? Is there an ordering of life in order?
There is a certain amount of liberation that comes with simple personal management and the following of an easy discipline. It will take a little time to get that in process for me, if I want to make it an easy discipline to follow. And it will take the will to follow it and the inclination to want it. I’ve made but a bare beginning on that. I just unpacked two boxes that were mostly scraps of paper and old correspondence and notes to myself and other flotsam of the last few years I’ve carried around unsorted in these boxes. I have two filing cabinets here, short ones, and I will sort some of this stuff before I head outside. In spite of it being a beautiful day, I don’t feel so damned unproductive sitting here in my study, as long as I’m doing something and not spinning my wheels in that rut of what being online has come to mean to me.
Many of these scraps of paper just have phone numbers or things I wanted to remember written on them. Many of them also have scribbled notes from Matt with little X’s and O’s affixed. That being said, this process is such a positive step that I’m not feeling maudlin about sifting through that. Order out of chaos is a favorite theme in my life and a principle reason I enjoy life on the farm.
Now I have all these piles of correspondence on my floor sorted according to the people and circumstances of each. I’m hoping the dog won’t sit down in the midst of them and scatter all the work I did before I have a chance to file it all away.
It’s 10:52 a.m., and I just got off the phone with Becka in Henrietta, Texas. She and her brother were old high school friends at Irving High, and she figures in one of my stories (Hot Whiskey). She’s a grandmother now, has lost most of her hair and is living in Henrietta still. Her brother Bill, my best friend in freshman year, is serving a 75-year sentence in Huntsville, and I write to him weekly. She’s getting over the flu and seemed sober and talkative.
“The English, it must be owned, are rather a foul-mouthed nation.” William Hazlitt (1778 – 1830) in “On Criticism”
I just ran across a letter I wrote to Matt last year when I was living here on the farm. I never mailed it for some reason.
Sweetheart,
I fear sometimes that I may lose you, because I can’t leave you alone. And then I fear that leaving you alone will leave me without you altogether. You tolerate so much from me every day. You measure out your kindness and affection just enough to keep me wanting more always.
I miss the times when you needed me. I remember how strong I used to feel when I could do things for you and give you support. I never felt so worthwhile in my life than I did then. It was you who made me feel special. I was never better as me than when I was putting all of me into us.
I want so badly lately to press my face into your belly and feel your arms around me. I never felt so complete as when you lay on top of me in perfect silence with your head on my shoulder. I never felt so wanted in my life.
All of the phone calls, the talk, my whining and petty jealousies and my fears are meaningless compared to the joy you give me every day. Nobody can take that away from me. I couldn’t stop loving you if I tried.
I ache for you every day.
Frank
OXOX
That may be a load of sick, co-dependent crap, but it gives me a warm fuzzy at the moment. I’ll save it and file it away for future reference.
This morning’s listening in reverse order:
Built To Spill – Keep It Like A Secret
Elliott Smith – Super 8
Elliott Smith – Elliott Smith
Dad is making eggplant campanata (sp?) for lunch, and I will head outside now with Sarah and at least stake out a row for the cabbage and Brussels sprouts before time to eat.
He just came in to inform me that we’re having Zatarain’s dirty rice instead, as he didn’t like the look of the eggplants. I’m heading outside to do at least something before lunchtime.
I logged back on after eating to check messages and post this morning’s stuff. That’s not quite what I wanted to do, but I’ll live with it. I’m finding that being online may be as big a problem as any relational stuff I deal with.
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So I got a letter from Hennepin County today saying that they are charging me with DWI for my arrest on 5 August 2004. It's a gross misdemeanor. That, and about $15K in IRS debt is my legacy for six years with Matt. He left me for another guy - he still won't call him his boyfriend - and I gave him my apartment and signed a six-month lease in my name.
Why did I give him my apartment? He said it would be petty and mean to make him find another place for all his furniture, but what does he call leaving me for another guy? He said it wasn't about Dave, but about him being unhappy. Okay, so he met Dave online a few weeks before, and then met him at a bar the week before he said he wanted to break up. I guess that's just a happy coincidence to his unhappiness. It doesn't really matter, I guess. It's done anyway. But why did I just split? There's nothing for me here. I can't work. I can't get around. I have no money. I'm just wasting my time and keeping Dad company. And I'm letting Dad pay the $250/month I owe the IRS. Real esteem-builders there. And Matt is going out to eat every night with Dave and telling me he's already bored with him and going out to lunch with another guy on Thursday. He also says that he's really happy with his life now and doing so much better and feeling healthier and losing weight and not smoking as many cigarettes and not smoking pot at all.
I keep telling him I'm glad he's happy, and that I wish he'd keep an open mind about us in the distant future. Why the hell do I do that? Why the hell do I want anything to do with him? And if Dave's not his boyfriend, why does he want me to keep it a secret that he's having lunch with Steve on Thursday? And why is he even telling me this stuff?
And I keep telling him that I miss him, that I'm lost without him, that I don't know how to act or what to do or what to think. And he and Dave are sleeping in my apartment while Matt thinks of who else he'd like to have sex with and marveling over how much fun he's having now that he's single. They're flying together somewhere soon; Dave gave him a ticket for Valentine's Day with his frequent flyer miles. How sweet. Why did I give him my apartment? Why did I leave when he was the one who wanted out? Why did I quit my job and leave town a week after he told me he wanted to break up? Why didn't I just tell him to give me his key and get out? Hell, it would've been cheaper for Dad to loan me the money to get me by til I found better work than it was to pay to have me down here and all the attendant expense that that involves.
My job would've ended soon enough, but perhaps not. Brian, my boss, was sad to see me go, but not sad to lose the extra expense of keeping me. The big placement I made in January fell out, because the restaurant changed hands and the new owners let him go on his second day in order to bring their own team in. But I'd been further in debt to Brian before and pulled it out nicely. And I could've gotten another job. I wasn't lookin for that one when he recruited me for it, anyway.
Matt's mad at a guy we both befriended a while back and both chat with online and on the phone still. This guy called Matt and laid into him about leaving me and how nice he thinks I am and how Matt should just admit that he's in love with Dave - he really belabored that point, apparently. Matt was pissed at him and won't talk to him anymore. I'm wonderin why the hell the guy did it, and did he think he was doin me a favor by sayin that shit or what. But that's between Matt and the friend and Dave, because apparently this guy is also talkin shit about Dave to people they both know and Dave is really pissed about it. Great. At least that's one good reason for me to be away from Minneapolis.
There are other reasons - great reasons. I can do anything I like here and not answer to anyone for it. I can work or not work any time I want. I can stay up as late and sleep as late as I want. I can grow just about anything I want, other'n pot, and not have to justify it to Dad. I can hang out with my Dad all the time and do whatever we like and cut up and watch movies and read books and write letters - or just write, period - and nobody is hangin around to tell me what to do or when to get up or where to go or anything like that. For keeping him company, driving him around and working on the farm, Dad will fork over the $250 every month for the IRS bill, the $30 (as of this month) for the Ranch rent, and whatever I need in the way of pocket money for carryin around. He got me a dog, though it was officially his dog, and she keeps me company and thinks I'm the best guy on earth. She's never more than a few feet away and watches everything I do and loves me just as messed up as I am.
So why do I still want Matt, and why do I miss him so much? And why do I hang out online so much when the weather is nice and there's so much cool stuff for me to do? I couldn't stand him most of the last six months we were together. He was a lump. He didn't want to have sex. He didn't want to work more hours and help with the bills. He never talked to me about what was bothering him or told me how he honestly felt. He was just doing time until he found something he thought was more interesting. He was always bored, because he's about the most boring person I've ever been with most of the time. I called him Princess when I was resenting him for all that. And I worshipped him, or the idea I had of him.
You shouldn't put people on pedestals. Those things are slippery and the air is thin up there. And when they fall, what are you left with?
I guess I do hope he's happy. Hell, I couldn't really say I loved him and not mean that, at the very least. The rest is just hurt pride and resentment and wounded feelings, and I volunteered for all that shit.
I have cabbage and brussel sprouts to plant tomorrow, and the tiller ain't workin worth a damn. I have seed potatoes as well that Dad will cut up and sprinkle sulphur on and have ready to go in the ground in a day or two. The belts for the tiller won't be here til about the 14th. So I'll have to find some other way to get the ground ready for em. Nothin wrong with usin a rake and some sweat and just dealin with the work involved. It's a restorative.
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