The Correspondence Artist (23 page)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wrote this message shortly after the last time we saw each other. And four days later, I wrote this one:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I did attach the poem. Here it is:

 

 

Yesterday we left for good. We climbed
Into a great fish, and took our seats behind
Its fat, red heart. Through the fish's skin the sea

 

Looked green. We watched the telephone poles skip by,
And the wires stretch out like muscles along the air.
We are trying to derive our emotions now from bare

 

Cold places. I believe that you were right
About our lot. We will always be too late
For something – fumbling for our tickets, sick

 

At heart, and getting stranded on some dock.
Looking at each other. Feeling lost,
And calling home. “Mama. Tell my sisters,

 

Ljuda and Olja, that there's no way out.”
There's no way out of here. You know that, don't
You? Damn it! We wanted so badly to arrive

 

In time. Now look at us: caught in this grave
And hostile, slanted light. “As for the future,
It doesn't belong to us either. I am sure

 

That in a few decades we shall be cruelly labeled
As products of the past millennium.” They told
Us so. Oh, we really thought we were “someone.”

 

We spent the whole night talking of things to come.

I cried a little during the writing of this section, but I was crying for Marcos, because he was afraid of dying, and also because Sandro broke up with Joplin.

I
t's coming to the end and so I allowed myself a chronological glitch. Sometimes when I knit things, I like to leave in a mistake or two, because it seems to make the project more personal. In case you didn't notice: I only taught the paramour the expression “morning wood” last March, which was after the purloined e-mail and the catastrophe, whichever version you choose.

For the most part, I've stuck with the actual chronology. I suspended a little the timing of the climax to allow for maximum flexibility, but naturally I've changed and added all kinds of details. This is a work of fiction. That was the point.

I've been composing in my head the cover letter I'll send with this manuscript when I mail it to the paramour. I want to make it as tender as possible. I realize I'm probably driving a nail into the coffin of our love affair. Still, I would like to be my lover's friend forever or something like that. I think that's really the most optimistic version of the 60-83 scenario.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course it's hard for me to read this e-mail now and not reflect on my relationship with Binh. It would be dramatic and excessive to call this a “sick and exhausted love that expresses itself sometimes through violence.” Even though everything began with that scene of Coca-Cola and tumult, the truth is that Binh and I are both very gentle people. You may remember that I told Tzipi that my aggression was generally of the passive variety. I think you could say the same of Binh.

But of course I also think about that postcolonial allegory. It's not uncomplicated that I'm American and he's Vietnamese.
I thought about visiting him in Hanoi. I think I mentioned, I was reading some guidebooks as research. But I ended up feeling that trip would just be too hard for me. It's that white liberal guilt.

Once I told Binh that I thought maybe it was good that in certain respects – like gender – he held the privileged position, while in others – like nation – I did. I'm not sure who held the privilege in age.

 

 

 

Last summer Binh flew down to Antarctica. Because there was no wireless or BlackBerry reception, we were out of contact for several days. He'd gone down there to collaborate with his friend DJ Spooky. Spooky was sampling the sound of the icebergs melting. Binh was going to help him shoot the digital images. Obviously, Spooky wanted to make a statement about global warming. In the YouTube teaser he made for this project before going down there, Spooky mentions that the Greeks made up the idea of Antarctica. They had formulated the idea of the Arctic from the constellation of Arktos (the bear), and figured there must be a corresponding ant-Arktos on the other end of the world. Spooky says, “They never actually went there, it was just a guess.”

This is interesting because Simone wrote Algren that “on the moon” letter from the Arctic Circle, when she traveled to the north of Sweden with Jean Paul Sartre.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look, this message was from very early in the correspondence. I picked it out because it says something about conceptual art. Although Binh is a conceptual artist, of course, the paramour is not somebody you would refer to in these terms. After I sent this e-mail, I was speaking to my friend Raul, who in fact
is
a conceptual artist, and I told him this same story of the guy with the camera on the street. I had found this a very touching encounter. But Raul informed me that this is the oldest trick in the book. Guys who do this, he explained, are generally pickpockets. They get you all close like this, and you're busy smiling for the camera, and they reach into your bag and take your wallet. That was disappointing. The good news is, the guy didn't actually get anything. None of my cash or cards was missing. I came out of the encounter entirely unscathed. And if Raul
hadn't told me I'd been had, I would have gone on thinking that that guy might have treasured that photograph of us together for years, and it would have looked like I was the love of his life.

I wish he hadn't told me.

 

 

 

Speaking of the deceptive use of photography, this is the actual, uncropped photo from my early correspondence with Binh:

That's my hand, of course. I already told you that I'm the one who's been sending digital images as attachments all this time. So it should really come as no surprise that I, not Binh, was the one to proffer my heart on a plate. Interpret that as you will – but it's evident that there was again a bit of wishful thinking in attributing the gesture to my lover. Fiction affords the convenient possibility of switching things around. You could also ask yourself what it means that I insisted that Binh was an artist of genius, considering that I actually shot that uncanny still of my lazy eye with the antiquated little webcam. And I didn't even show you the one I took of my vulva. It's very poetic.

The titles of Tzipi's novels were also culled from my own unpublished manuscripts.