in a while I used to shave between my eyebrows — I’d inevitably use dirty razors and give myself a rash. There it was, between your pages. I cannot believe you wrote about my eyebrow rash, Adam. Or the time during one of our parties when Wade walked into the kitchen with an enormous zit on his chin, moving me to quip: “Who’s your friend?” It got, needless to say, a huge laugh, from Wade as much as anyone, and I never gave it a second thought. Until I read the same line, delivered in almost precisely the same context, meant to demonstrate to your readers what a mean-spirited asshole the guy could be.
It’s like seeing pictures of yourself that you didn’t even know anyone was taking — candid camera — a whole album of worst-moment closed-circuit stills. There you are taking a dump. There you are saying precisely the wrong thing at the wrong time. There you are stepping on someone’s puppy while scratching your crotch.
So I get you now, is what I’m saying. I understand how you do it — I know what kind of food someone like you is scrounging for when it comes to the character of Kirsten.
1) She used to like to eat in the bathtub. She’d bring apples in there with her. Milkshakes. Bowls of cereal. Even stuff that could get soggy — I think she liked the challenge of it. Toast and peanut butter; crackers. Once I heard the long plop of a banana fallen from its peel.
2) Sometimes, when she was overcome by the holy spirit, I recognized the expression on her face from her orgasms.
3) She would also, sometimes, when we were sitting together chastely side by side at worship, wrap her entire hand around my index finger. We’d just sit like that. My finger totally encased in the warmth and darkness of her palm.
(This was probably the sexiest time of my life.
“I’m not faking this,” I remember pleading with her near the end of everything. “You and I.”
“You and I are not what matters,” she said. Her eyes had begun to puddle up. Her chin was vibrating as if at any moment it would lose cohesion. I could see that pretty soon the conversation would be over; she would begin to flop and gasp. “You and I are nothing.”
This was where we parted company, theologically speaking.)
4) Whenever someone asked her to do something social, go shopping or out to dinner — even people she liked — it made her feel flustered for the rest of the day.
5) I think she liked prayer meetings so much because they let her have the experience of community without having to actually interact with anyone. Together we’d all raise our hands in the air, palms forward — as if to say, “Over here, Lord” or “Stop it, Lord” — together we’d cry, together we’d call on Jesus. It was powerful stuff. But you never had to have a conversation. You could just roll your eyes back into your head and let the spirit overtake you.
6) She liked it when I cooked, even though the only thing I ever did was fry steak and boil pasta.
7) Whenever she spoke with her mother on the phone, she always ended up screaming, and a lot of the time, after she hung up, didn’t seem aware that she had done this. She seemed refreshed, edified. Like she had just come back from a run or stepped out of the shower.
8) There was a radio program on the oldies station called The Disco Diner, which played old Wolfman Jack broadcasts. She listened to it every Saturday while she did the dishes. She liked the Bee Gees, because she could sing in the exact same key as them. She actually referred to this habit as one of her “vices.”
Kirsten didn’t realize that Wolfman Jack had died back in ’95 and the broadcasts were repeats. When I mentioned this one Saturday during the program, she stopped what she was doing, turned from the sink, and I thought she would come after me with the meat fork she’d been cleaning.
08/09/09, 12:46 a.m.
So it only seems fair to confess that immediately after writing that last email to you I went looking for Kirsten on Facebook and there she was, flanked by children and still — miracle of miracles — sporting her Bettie Page bangs. I clicked on her name and started writing her a message without even thinking about it. I wrote: Kirsten,