So I have come back to my very disconnected abode on Reeves Drive, the wrong side of Wilshire in Beverly Hills, hoping to connect with memory before it goes. I have lost all taste for travel, having maxed out in Brugge, whose cobblestones hurt my feet even through sneakers, and whose citizenry failed to touch my spirit. I had stopped having close contact with the people there, even as they seemed to have no idea of where they were, either. The charming little boats that moved through the charming little canals ran out of charm before they reached the charming little docks, and I realized that mostly it was built on tourism that had no charming little reality. That was enhanced by my having received a call from my bank while on the village tour, so small that there were not that many corners to turn before coming on yet another cathedral, all of them so close to one another that it had to be hard to feel anything even for God, if He/She happened to be there. More treaties than souls, it seemed to me, but then I was really low energy, exacerbated by my having received the call from my bank telling me someone had raided my account without even knowing me, which felt not unlike being raped by a dildo, I think, having happily never having been raped by a dildo. Just truly impersonal, I believe I mean to say. The edge of the insult softened by a genuinely handsome, kind and genteel gentleman (I tried to make that genteelman but the computer corrected me) leaving the tour to come after me as I had dropped out to take the call to ask if I had taken out the great amount, which I hadn’t, and if my bank hadn’t been so assiduous, I would have been close to wiped out. I think I loved him, the handsome man who came after me to inquire if I was all right, as I dreamed about him that night and am sorry I don’t have a contact for him even though he lived in Cornwall or someplace like that where I have never been but would have liked to go visit in spite of being maxed out on travel and not a woman who likes to break up marriages though I am curious to know if I still could. Nor do i want to go to India, one of whose prettiest citizens, if citizens they actually consider themselves, was a member of the just graduated group from Columbia I picked up in Brugge who invited me to come visit..
I understand from this really how sort of elderly I have become, because once I would have been on the next plane.
It is already clear that the Gwen who was is the Gwen who is No More, as I don’t want to do anything anymore but write the memoir, a word I dislike as it sounds pretentious and throw-up nauseous, But I have found the right title for it, after a long struggle. Also I have begun to feel sad at having lost Don all those years ago, as details of his death have visioned up in my memory that I had previously managed to suppress and displace, covering with adventure and visits to Gore Vidal and the like, when my primary interest was living my life, instead of remembering it.
I guess this is intensified by my having had a really wondrous lunch with Robert yesterday, filled with charm and anecdotes about his playing tennis with the son of my once greatest and closest friend Suzanne Turman, who also went too soon. Robert is gigantic— tall, muscular, with a great head of still dark hair, and enormous everything. It again made me miss Don, and realize how handsome he must have been, and how lucky I was to have him, what an interesting duo we must have been, the ambitious, productive and prolific writer, and the fine looking, caring and gently funny fellow from the Bronx, who managed to survive and surmount his history, and would have probably become King of the Village if he had had more ruthless and self-serving bones, with the matching postures. Interesting that I had managed to emerge seemingly unscathed from all these early wounds until now. Maybe that is why I have been allowed to live this long.
Well, off to lunch with my doctor who I really love, as he is surprisingly funny on the q.t., having gone to a funeral a couple of weeks ago that he told me about and said he had to go up onstage after the service and look in the coffin to make sure they had been talking about the right person.
