Thursday, September 26, 1985

Hi Tony,

Thanks for your letter. I remember writing to you a few years ago about a difficult moment you had running a talk group, but this is the first time you've written back (the other letter required no response).

As you might expect, I've gone through some changes since Paul's death. Just to confirm the obvious, I felt very deeply that it was the end of an era, and had a hard time imagining what I could possibly do with the remaining 30-odd years of my life.

One of the changes that has turned out to be a pleasant surprise is that I now feel a need to be closer to other Center people. In fact I feel that I have a lot to give, that I'm trusted and respected, and that people are very open to my leadership. Focusing on Paul for the last ten years blurred much of that.

But at the same time I feel a need to take my selectivity much more seriously, and not to legitimize just anything that comes along. This is why I'm sort of turned off right now by the conventional ways people exploit our high "bump rate". I bump into lots of Paul's students who like to chit chat, but few of them ever seem to have anything serious to say to me.

Here's an example of the distaste I'm feeling that relates to you specifically. A few days after Paul died you spotted me on the street and said, "Hi Dean!" It seemed in that moment to be an example of what Rick Shupper used to call "opportunistic intimacy", as if the hidden motivation was "I can feel enthusiasm for Dean when I bump into him, but it doesn't last so I'd better make the most of it when it happens."

If people are so interested in me why don't they ever call me up? Why don't they at least write? They feel good about saying "Hi Dean" on the street, but often it means nothing more than "I'm bored and there's Dean. Maybe I can pick his brain or get the latest scuttlebutt." Well, the latest scuttlebutt was that Paul died an unhappy and sick man, and if it didn't mean anything to people nothing I said was going to change it.

That's how I was feeling when I heard you call out to me. So I said "Hi Tony" back in a low-pitched and flat kind of voice and kept walking. After all, you hadn't said, "Wait a minute, I've got something to say" or "When can we get together and talk?" You said, "Hi Dean!" as if the ball was in my court. I'm learning how to dodge serves like that.

Remember that this example has little to do with you personally, that I'm reacting the same way to everybody from the Center, so please don't get huffy about it. It's just an example of my needing more personal input now from people who will actually lift a finger to be in my life and not settle for grabbing "bumps" and milking them for all their worth. No one will replace Paul, but no one's sticking that in their face as a standard to live up to either. What I put into my relationship with Paul would be enough for any three other people. If I have to go on another 30 years, I might as well put it to good use.

Another pleasant surprise I've experienced is how patient (vigilant is more correct) I can be with people who are so undeveloped as to be practically without identity. Bob is a good example, but I'm also good with Rob, who can get very superior, and a few other people who look up to me. I think it really has to do with the fact that I'm not worried about Paul anymore, that nothing that happens to me or anyone else can hurt him now. I'm more laid back, more tolerant without being permissive.

I don't know if you can imagine this, but there were times when someone would be talking to me and the thought would flash into my mind, "But what does this have to do with helping Paul?" I got so used to it that irritation and lack of interest just became automatic parts of my reactions to being around other people, especially people who had no sense of how much work there is to be done, how much trouble the world is in.

In a way, Paul's death has numbed me to all that. I feel sedated. I feel as if nothing really matters anymore. I told Nick that we could feel grateful that Paul hadn't had to experience nuclear war. This inner peace is not a depressive cover-up. I'm not torn or upset. I don't cry myself to sleep. I don't feel pressured to be violent or consider suicide. I just feel as if somebody's let me out of a tiny room because the lights went out.

I suspect that Nick and I really have no idea how much we put into maintaining Paul's mental health. As the years go by, this will be clearer to us, but I am just starting to see that one of the reasons I had so little patience with Center people is because so much of my patience and devotion was spent on Paul. I rented a car for the first time last week and drove around, and the best thing about it was that I didn't have to worry about Paul worrying about me.

I told Nick — who on a day to day basis was far more involved with Paul than anyone — that one of the rewards of giving so much to someone like that is that when they're gone a tremendous weight is lifted and you see how much you now have to give to others. It sounds selfish to think that way, but when the blackness threatens you have to acknowledge any light you can find. People who gave nothing to Paul have nothing now; people who gave everything they had now have a new world to share with others.

I wrote recently in my diary, "My distaste for and distrust of men may have been an unplanned side effect of my heroic loyalty to Paul. I would have killed for Paul. Now that I don't have to be prepared to kill, will I find it easier to feel warmth toward men?" It may even have had something to do with my having been an utter failure when it came to feeling sexually attracted to men. (I'm still very attracted to feminine women, but can't find any who can think, so that's kind of a dead issue.)

In broad terms, I've had three bad periods in my life. In 1964 I was rejected by a friend named Karl and went into a tailspin for two years until I met Paul. In 1975 I went into a much worse tailspin because I was rejected by Bill and broke up with Paul. In 1985 I'm dealing with Paul's death. It's hard, especially the first month, but it doesn't have the same sense of tragic loss or permanent injury. Paul and I were on very good terms for the last few years. We were at peace with one another. He had done as much with life as he possibly could. In Millay's terms he was "just bones and jewels on that day." I feel that he is still alive inside me, that he still loves me — which is quite different from how I felt about Karl and Bill.

My years with Paul, though difficult and full of unresolved questions still, were good ones. To the very end we were close, despite all the problems. Our relationship was a tool with which we reached for the highest meanings and values of our lives. The Saturday before he died I got the chance to tell him how utterly central polarity was in my being, that everything in my life that was important to me was only important through my relationship with him.

The last few months he said goodbye to everything, like the little girl in the Mark Twain's story about Missouri he liked to tell, and he cried a lot. He was afraid to die, because he thought he was going to be exiled to some other plane of existence. But he didn't go anywhere. He's still alive then. 1909 to 1985 is his time, forever, and I can see him right now making trouble, going his own way, helping people, shocking people, damning history, and crafting a system that would go beyond what anyone he would ever meet would ever fully comprehend.

I usually don't mess with the decor of the Center (partly because I feel it's a feminine function) but I wanted to put up a quote of Paul's that I always felt was the most eloquent statement of his idealism. I also wanted it to be from Nick and me, to symbolize the special responsibility we'd shared. I haven't heard any reactions to it, have you? I'd like to know what people think.

I still feel that the Center is 90% a social club for 90% of the people 90% of the time. It's why I come down less and less. Of course, it can be a clubhouse occasionally for those who need conventional support at specific phases in their development, but most of us need much more significant channels of communication. I certainly don't trust the habitual way some of the old-timers get off on lecturing to the new people in the same pedantic way year after year. Some of them seem to think that applying push-button insights to impress people makes them big-shots. I'd thought that's what we were against. And watching Carl play talk show host is much more than I can stomach.

Reviving the Journal in 1983 was an attempt to establish an alternate channel of communication to the open talk groups (roman circuses) and private counseling (boring). It hasn't contributed much yet, but maybe we'll just have to let it quietly take root and see what comes of it as the years roll by. I'm not feeling pressured to make anything more of it than what it is, and am satisfied primarily to enjoy the hobby of putting it together on my home computer. (Incidentally, I still think the 5-page essay you wrote a year ago and had a closed group on would make a fine contribution. Let me know if I can have your permission to reprint it sometime.)

Now, to respond to your letter: all I heard from Nick was that Jurgen said that at first you were alright but that you were becoming "freaked out" about Paul's death. It didn't sound serious (ie. dangerous), and my letter was simply my way of saying, "I'm kind of freaked out too, and it certainly wouldn't hurt to talk about it." We're both pretty far along the road to independence, and I don't think such an experience would degenerate into commiseration. I really just want to know what you're thinking. Talking to people has helped me get through this. I really do see how much worse it could have been if there wasn't a community of students who at least recognized at some level what the man had accomplished.

I'm "alright" now too, and like you feel numb but no longer helpless. Actually I only had one moment of helplessness, if you can call it that. The evening Paul died I was exhausted and freaked out, but still proud of how well I'd handled my responsibilities to Paul and to Nick. I decided I should be at the Center in case people gathered and were upset. Part of me wanted to help them the way I'd just helped Nick — by being strong and sane — but a deeper instinctual part really wanted to be at a wake. I wanted to bow my head in a room full of weeping people and feel that it was out of my hands, that the grief wasn't on my shoulders, wasn't my responsibility, that death comes to all and is nobody's fault.

Carl was counseling somebody, so I waited outside. I knew that Kim had told him what had happened, but at 7:30 he locked up the Center, waved at me and just walked down the street! I opened the Center, turned on the lights and left the door open. Nobody came, and for an hour I stared at the walls and went crazy, wondering why I couldn't cry yet. When I finally gave in to not wanting to be alone and invited Larry, Kim and Jurgen to come down, I found out that Paul's death meant little or nothing to them. They had said goodbye to him years before. It wasn't what I needed to face at that moment.

Bob came down because he saw the lights on, and was as solicitous as ever, but this time it wasn't annoying. In fact it was just what I needed. When I finally realized that the others were just humoring me, he and I went to my place to talk. It was very comforting. As a result, we've spent some time together in the last month, eating at restaurants, talking walks, and talking on the phone. (Doug was helpful that day, too, but he's very weak and the contact has not continued.)

It taught me and Nick how different our relationship with Paul was from that of his students. It's easy to see their neglect as cruelty, of course, but it isn't. Do you remember the story Paul used to tell about a child seeing a hunter kill a rabbit and having no way to get beyond thinking that the hunter was a cruel man? To the child the rabbit is a pet; to the hunter the rabbit is food. Nothing has much of an identity apart from how it relates to other things.

To Nick and me, Paul was someone who needed us, who relied every day on what we had to give, on whom we took every opportunity to lavish attention and generosity. To his students, Paul was somebody to go to for help, somebody who would never expose you to his own distress, the one man you could safely need who would never need you. To the extent that he could no longer help, he literally no longer existed for them. Some of them actually felt relieved when he died, because it laid to rest forever any temptation to take on a larger role in his life.

But the day Paul died I felt him come alive in me. Having seen these people from his perspective for so many years, I find it natural to expect to have the same kind of relationship with them. Paul and I are like the doctor in a Tennessee Williams play who is praised for his love of humanity. "I hate humanity," he replies. "I only care about people I can help."

Nick has a newfound place in my life because he's letting me help him. To whatever extent you were to become open to my influence, I'd care about you. But anyone I can't work creatively with (and that includes most of them, since they were his students, not mine) can die tomorrow and make room for the next generation as far as I'm concerned. I'm not sentimental when it comes to history. I've got a job to do.

I like Bob because he allows me to dominate him without compulsively fighting me in the name of "creative challenge" the way Carl does. Bob doesn't have the insights of a Carl, but insights without submission are about as useful as the Encyclopedia Britannica. And he learns from me. (He's such a blank slate he doesn't even know what many of the words I use mean.) In our own way, I'm counseling him.

Sometimes Bob is so naive it's funny. A few days after Paul died we were having dinner and I said, "I always wanted to be the first to go. It would be so nice not to be here right now." Before I could elaborate what I meant (I wasn't sure myself), he said, "You're bigger than that!" "Bigger than what?" I said. "We weren't put here to think about suicide!" "Bob," I said, "if I said we sure could use some rain, would you think I was about to withdraw my life savings to hire a fleet of cloud seeders?"

It always amazes me when you have to talk to grown adults as if they were children. I'm encouraging him not to try to "save souls" (especially mine!) until he knows what he's talking about and who he's talking to.

I guess the trouble with me is that I'm too damned smart. Most of the feminines can think more deeply, but not faster, than me. So I'm always one step ahead of them. I think I'm the only one who can beat Carl in an argument, for instance. Though I've given up years ago any thought that this is a constructive way to "challenge" him, he occasionally needs to be put in his place (or at least driven out of mine). Still, I always feel badly afterwards, as if I've again bailed him out of a jam that he needs to learn how to avoid all by himself sooner or later.

I like your insight about how bad it is for you to take responsibility. I've had some bad moments recently when, writing in my diary, I couldn't come up with satisfactory formulations. My analogous tendency is to think I should understand people more. The truth is that I'm not very involved with Center people, and my explanations for the things about them I dislike tend to degenerate into hateful indictments. For me, it shouldn't matter why somebody is a shit. If I can't care about somebody, I shouldn't care about them.

One way of saying this is that my indifference is incomplete. I withdraw well, since — for example in the case of Carl — I know how to get away from people I don't like. But it's harder for me to stop thinking about them. It's like John's problem with hating me. He'd like to stop — he knows it's not good for him — but every time he thinks about me the hatred rushes back stronger than ever. (In earlier times, men thought these onslaughts were due to the supernatural powers of their enemy.)

I'm also glad you're using Paul's ideas about objectivity and subjectivity. Some of the lazier minds at the Center (ie. Doug) have spread a rumor that Paul discounted this work. It makes them feel great to think that at least there's one damned monograph they don't have to be conversant with. But truth is where you find it, as my selection of quotes on the first page of each Journal tries to show, and I've found much truth in Paul's image of balanced and unbalanced types. It's perfectly clear, for instance, that at least on a day-to-day reality level I get along much better with objectives (Larry, Doug, you) than subjectives (John, Carl, Jurgen). On the other hand, getting-along-with is not the same as needing, which is one reason why you and I never manage to mean as much to one other as we imagine we should.

As you know, I feel very frustrated whenever I deal with you in person. We have always admired one another (a common trait among objectives), but have always been uncomfortable too. Whenever I'm talking to you, I see your intensity tearing you apart and it gives me the willies. And I'm sure my "anxiety" about it sets you back too. It's what they call a negative feedback loop. Maybe we'll get more out of one another right now from sending these letters. Let me know what you think.

One of the things about you I like is your ability to stand up to, and even distance yourself from, Jurgen. You stay objective about his problems, even though sometimes in the past you've given in to temptation and "defended him from his accusers". You kicked in $50 a month for Paul (only you and Doug wanted to help, it turned out) even though Jurgen disapproved, and I admire you for that. Your family relationship with him (I don't use the term "lover" anymore) is perceived by Center people as being very different from, say, David and Mark's marriage of convenience. Naturally, much of it is "just being roommates", but at least you don't hide behind each other. Randy, who's been helping me drive Paul's papers over to the warehouse on 17th street, can't have lunch with me on the weekends because Larry Peters might want to do something!

Because of my newly felt need to communicate with other students of Paul, I may soon start my own closed group. I don't know if I ever told you, but the last involvement with the Center which meant anything to me was your Monday night "topic preparation" group. (That's why I asked to join the group you ran last year.) I've tried to put the same clarity of communication into my contributions to the Journal, but I'm not very developed as a writer yet, nor have I gotten as much analytical feedback (ie. something more than praise) from those pieces as I would from a group. We'll see.

One last thing. You say that Paul's death has been a major event in the lives of us all. I thought it would be, but I was wrong. But it's important for me not to hate, and I have to find solace in the fact that these people, who cared nothing for him as a person, are using his insights to start a new world. It's the only kind of monument he would have wanted.