Profiled by F. Scott Fitzgerald

How did he know?

I’d have never read F. Scott Fitzgerald of my own volition. Too white. Too male. Too traditional. But I took a comparative literature course during my three uneventful semesters at Case Western Reserve University that covered the big hits by F. Scott and Hemingway. Having paid for this abuse I decided to just suck it up and see what I could get out of the experience.

Turned out I was right about Hemingway. He really was wayyyy too white, too male, and entirely too pleased with himself. His stories, his characters, his whole way of seeing the world bordered on caricature. You disagree? That’s nice. I bet you’ve got a novel to write.

But I was taken by surprise by F. Scott’s writing. The man could turn a phrase and while many of his characters came off as oddly mannered and not quite fully formed, there was something about his work that was incredibly engaging. I didn’t find “The Great Gatsby” to be all that, but “Tender is the Night” was haunting and embracing. That’s where I encountered one line that stopped me mid-page:

“a wild submergence of soul, a dipping of all colors into an obscuring dye”

I felt as if somehow this dead man knew me. He saw my life-long pattern of dipping my colors into the obscuring dye of someone else’s values, dreams, interests, and actions. Not just boyfriends but I certainly remade myself in each relationship to fit his interests. How did this long-gone writer know about this wild submergence of my soul in countless vain attempts to gain what I didn’t know I could only give myself?

My best friend from the fourth grade until the summer after high school graduation often talked about her dream to live in an isolated cabin in the wilderness. Did I even pause to think of what I dreamt of for myself? Well, I was never going to admit to my completely whacked-out idea of moving to New York City and becoming a famous artist, so mostly I went along with her fully thought-out ideas of living off the land and being close to nature. Then when I was 18 I made my move to live in the nearest big city with a man I didn’t know very well at all.

There I underwent my first full submergence as I schooled myself in drinking and shooting pool. That’s what that man did and what the hell else was I going to do in a city where I knew no one?

From there I moved on to living with a junkie who, ironically enough, kept me off the needle. But otherwise, I simply let myself slip under the surface of the ways and means of living for drugs. I had no dreams, no ambitions, no plans, no direction. I lived for the next high and did what I could to keep my partner alive. Turns out I wasn’t very good at either of those endeavors.

Coming to after nearly two decades of not exactly better living through chemicals I almost immediately hooked up with my soulmate, the man I was going to grow old with. He was heavily into Zen meditation so naturally, I joined the zendo where he practiced.

He also often talked about going back to college. College had never figured in any of my hazy daydreams of some fame-filled future. Then one evening when he brought up the subject again I told him I’d decided that I was going to college. It may have been his dream but I was the one who took the actions and was accepted into Cleveland State University. He scoffed that with open admissions CSU accepted everyone.

One of the things I was told early in my recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction was that I’d stopped maturing emotionally when I started using substances. I may have been about to celebrate my 36th birthday, but I was still basically a 15-year-old when it came to relationships.

I was so sure this man was The One that I held on through years of verbal abuse and belittlement. Scoffing. Name-calling. Ridicule.

Am I any better now?

Sometimes. I’ve been through several iterations of that submergence dance over the years. I’ve been the wild (wannabe) rockstar groupie, the drag king, the arm candy, and the Acela corridor regular on Amtrak.

At some point in that whirlwind, I took a break. I just stopped dating. And in that year I felt like a houseplant that had been sitting on a windowsill for decades that got set out into the backyard where it was drenched in sunlight for the first time ever. I branched out in every direction. I traveled to Europe solo twice. Neil and I went out to the other coast together and took the Coast Starlight from LA to San Fran. I went to sex parties solo and had a great time.

Maybe it’s as simple as having finally developed my own colors. I don’t need to submerge myself in someone else’s life. It never worked out that great anyway, to be honest. Even if a partner thought he wanted me to immerse myself in his way of living, he quickly — or slowly — came to realize that the price I demanded was too high.

I’d submerge myself all right, but you’d damned well better be prepared to have me appended to you for life. I will suck every bit of attention and love and care that I can. I never realized my true nature: I was an emotional vampire. I needed every partner to give me something they didn’t have. Something that only I had to give myself. Unconditional love and acceptance as well as eternal reassurance of eternal devotion. You can see the problem.

Then I met AleXander

Do I dip my colors into his obscuring dye? Coupla things here. One, AleXander doesn’t really have an obscuring dye. Sure he’s opinionated AF and has strong ideas about everything including creativity and love and living and sex. But he doesn’t do this thing that earlier partners did. There was an expectation that I’d be completely into whatever they were and I was 100% ok with that. It took me decades to develop my own friendships independent of my partner.

Between him not expecting me to dive headfirst into everything he loves and me not being particularly interested in doing that, it’s been easy to put the kibosh on that old submergence crap. I will say, however, that his deep knowledge of and love for independent and global cinema has opened some wonderful doors (may I recommend “Black Cat, White Cat” by Emir Kusturica or just about anything by Aki Kaurismaki?).

So thank you, F. Scott, you old scoundrel, you! Until I read that sentence, I had no vocabulary for what I kept doing while expecting different results.

This is why we read.

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