Friday, January 23, 2009

I've thought a lot about our last conversation during the past few days, and wanted to understand what I was feeling more clearly before writing this letter. The force with which you needed to slam the door in my face about an idle and somewhat trivial question that I can't even remember now told me a lot about how threatening you find me. And you always have, you know? Despite all the jovial "good old boy" bluster, you keep me at arms length. I've tried to be your friend for 20 years, holding back nothing, answering any question you had about sexuality, finances, history, anything. Prying real information from you about anything other than 19th century science, on the other hand, is like pulling teeth.

I think the problem is that somehow you just don't trust human beings as a class, and probably never have. Remember when I wanted to show you how floppy disks work? You freaked when I pulled back the sleeve of one of your floppies and touched it to show it was the same flexible mylar you find in cassette tapes. Remember when we were walking to John Calhoun's house and I wanted to talk about Susan's problems and with a wave of the hand you dismissed me derisively, saying only that you didn't want to "play psychiatrist"? And how when John asked you how Darwin's work had helped mankind you said, "Well, it has taught us to respect our fellow mammals, for one thing" — at which point I had to remind you that ancient Egyptians worshipped house cats? Remember when you bought your synthesizer? You panicked and demanded I send you some appendix to their reference manual. I told you that you'd never read it because it had nothing to do with your problem, but you wouldn't listen. So I sent it to you and, of course, you never read it. Remember when I wanted to write music for your show for no other purpose than to hear something I'd written performed on stage? You accused me of secretly wanting to steal a financial stake in your business and shut me down. Remember when I wanted to build an advanced website for you? You said I could never be trusted with such a sensitive task and went with a piece of crapware. So Rhoda got the beautiful website instead of you. (To be fair, though, she deserved it more than you because she had already given me a treasure trove of sketches with no strings attached.)

I can't ascribe your phobic distrust to any trauma you seem to have suffered. Some people are just like that. It's okay. But I don't think I can afford to try to be close to you anymore. It feels like I'm beating my head against a wall. I'm constantly being dismissed and put down. For years I've tried to see this as just "boys verbally jousting" and tried to respond in kind, but you just never stop. Even when you respond to something I've written, you have to say it with resentment and condescension, as when you said wrote something like, "I have to admit it was worth reading your essays." Do you even realize you speak this way to other people? Would you ever talk that way to Gould or sketches from Rhoda anyway, so there's no need for you to visit me. To put this as simply as I possibly can, Richard, you're not my friend. I doubt you're friends with any of the people left in your life. You don't seem to need any.

And this is fine. I'm not asking you to change. You've never taken personal growth seriously — the monograph of Paul's I asked you to read made no sense to you, and when you visited a discussion group I ran your contribution was to yawn and start looking at some vacation photos. At this point I know from experience that emotional development is just not in your "DNA" (you can substitute your own metaphor here). I've learned from my own mistakes with you that I'm not perfect either, which has been very useful. I make utterly unfair assumptions about my friends' intentions too, taking offense well before any is offered. I'm a prickly porcupine just like you are. But at least I'm open to the possibility of friendship and don't oppose it on principles which are never stated.

So you can continue to send me new drafts you're having trouble with, and if you need to share a funny story about Rhoda that only I would understand, please do. It's always fun to share porn trivia, publishing scuttlebutt, silly limericks, complaints about the museum, and all the other nonsense we share a weakness for. But I won't be calling you for a very long time. And at least now you'll know why, unlike what happened two years ago when I simply couldn't bear to hear your voice for a year for fear that your knee-jerk bullying would drive me into yet another towering rage.