I made yearly collages of printed photos and Xeroxed them, from 1998 through 2007, when digital cameras and online sharing took over.
I'd not unpacked my photos for the three years I was at HouseMate's, except to sort old family photos.
I just unpacked the collages this past weekend.
I've been staring especially at the collage, below, for 2001, one of the most eventful years of my life.
After twelve years at the art college library, I quit that job and started proofreading for the children's book publisher;
I invited friends and family to meet me in London for my fortieth birthday tea party in March;
bink & I walked Camino, July-August; came home, and the September 11 attacks happened. . .
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... And the relationship between me and Oliver ended.
For some three years prior, he'd been my married lover, and before that, my Classics professor. (I'd gone back to the U when I was thirty-one.)
In the collage is a photo of Oliver and me––the only one, him being nervous about our relationship being revealed. (Also, phone-cameras not yet existing.)
It was taken when bink & I returned from Camino--that's her and Maura's wire-haired fox terrier Joop sitting at my feet.
For some three years prior, he'd been my married lover, and before that, my Classics professor. (I'd gone back to the U when I was thirty-one.)
In the collage is a photo of Oliver and me––the only one, him being nervous about our relationship being revealed. (Also, phone-cameras not yet existing.)
It was taken when bink & I returned from Camino--that's her and Maura's wire-haired fox terrier Joop sitting at my feet.
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Neither of us gets credit for ending the affair.
It had started hot, and it ended cold, deader than a campfire after a night of rain.
That was twenty-one years ago, and I haven't seen him since. I'm glad that he retired to his home in England, so there's no chance I will.
At first, all complexities aside, the affair with Oliver was exciting, life giving. It was fueled by the work we'd done together when I was his student. The work itself was like dense oak.
After the first year, however, the affair had burned up the fuel of love and work, and it was consuming whatever secondary fuel was around, like a starving body burns up its own muscle, then its organs.
It went on for a couple more years––a desperate, yet boring, obsession. Boring! And sticky. Thinking back on it smells like wet ash.
The photo collages show me doing things, going places, laughing, but those are almost black-hole years in my life, and I believe the same is true for him.
And for his family, his wife and young children?
I never knew directly, but I was an invisible body exerting a gravitational pull on the other bodies.
A lie is a strain on a system, a drain, even if unnoticed.
It's not hard to imagine the damage I did.
The year after the affair ended––twenty years ago this winter solstice––my mother killed herself.
So, that was my late thirties and early forties, sucked right up.
Side effect, though--a little light that escaped the suck:
I never, ever scoff at anyone's addiction to or obsession with anything.
That shit is real.
Fire consumes, and gravity pulls.
I wish I could have learned that in some less destructive way.
It had started hot, and it ended cold, deader than a campfire after a night of rain.
That was twenty-one years ago, and I haven't seen him since. I'm glad that he retired to his home in England, so there's no chance I will.
At first, all complexities aside, the affair with Oliver was exciting, life giving. It was fueled by the work we'd done together when I was his student. The work itself was like dense oak.
After the first year, however, the affair had burned up the fuel of love and work, and it was consuming whatever secondary fuel was around, like a starving body burns up its own muscle, then its organs.
It went on for a couple more years––a desperate, yet boring, obsession. Boring! And sticky. Thinking back on it smells like wet ash.
The photo collages show me doing things, going places, laughing, but those are almost black-hole years in my life, and I believe the same is true for him.
And for his family, his wife and young children?
I never knew directly, but I was an invisible body exerting a gravitational pull on the other bodies.
A lie is a strain on a system, a drain, even if unnoticed.
It's not hard to imagine the damage I did.
The year after the affair ended––twenty years ago this winter solstice––my mother killed herself.
So, that was my late thirties and early forties, sucked right up.
Side effect, though--a little light that escaped the suck:
I never, ever scoff at anyone's addiction to or obsession with anything.
That shit is real.
Fire consumes, and gravity pulls.
I wish I could have learned that in some less destructive way.
No easy lessons in this so called life! We go out there into it and do stuff and recover somehow...gobsmacked.
ReplyDeleteI love your life- brave and doing! No sitting around out of fear or laziness- nope! Just get out there and do the things! We get one chance...You will never be Miss San
Francisco except for here and now- rock it, sister!
So sad about your mother...
ReplyDeleteYou always look back and think couldn't I have learnt that lesson in a simpler easier way?
ReplyDeletethe collages (to me) as so much more interesting that instagram picking your 12 whatever. i've made several collages -- my most interesting one and one that i still have is from high school and is all about the Beatles.
ReplyDeletei've been in your position -- with a married person and it in the end was horrible as neither you nor their partner ever really had them. it's something that i'm not proud of but it happened.
and to have had two losses within a year is truly overwhelming.
and the last sentence is so true. as well as what gz wrote above.
k
Geeze. Fresca, what a post to fall into. I jumped over from another blog to tell you that I OK'd your comment from my spam folder to comments and it just disappeared. Gone. Cannot find it. However, that does not compare to this post.
ReplyDeleteI've been there, too. I bet a good many of us have. Yes, before the day of phone cameras, and so no photos, no evidence for Mrs. Whoever's lawyer to happen upon. Good it ended,
and so sorry I cannot unscrew our blogger messup.
LINDA SUE: Gobsmacked, too right! The young are dumb. But how would we get wiser if we didn't do stuff?
ReplyDeleteThank you for saying you love my life--that was nice to hear. Me too, actually, usually... but I do not love these near-dead years:
Low tide for San Francisco & those affected!
And thanks for your sympathy about my mother--yes, sad.
GZ: Right! Like, couldn't I have just read Anna Karenina or something? Seems like doesn't work that way, exactly.
KIRSTEN: I made a door-sized collage of horses around the time you were making one of the Beatles!
"in the end was horrible" Ugh, yes. I'm sorry you had to experience that too---but I appreciate you sharing it.
I know it's hardly unique, but it's not something people have talked to me about much---with all the changes in mores, it's still quite taboo.
(I mean, the young are proponents of polyamory, and that might not be a bad idea, if it could be done... But I don't know... Anyway, that's consensual.)
JOANNE: Hello! I don't know why I can't comment and you can't log into my blog!!! Weird!
At least you can jump over from Linda Sue's, it seems like--I'm on her blog roll.
Nice to see you--and thank you, too, for writing that you shared my experience. So many people are not lifelong monogamous, they must have partners outside their marriages... And yet it's not that common that people talk about their affairs--at least, not to me.