TRACY WOULD'VE BEEN A PRETTY GIRL
to touch, to hold, to kiss, to take to bed
she would've been
Her pale, perfect skin,
her Tudor court face
her strong, fleshy legs
drove me into ecstasies of despair.
See, she'd talk with me
as tho I were a human
instead of her savagely crippled employer
make fun of and thereby accept my fears
of being lifted
going places
making decisions
talking
being alive.
She'd count in German before lifting me
"Ein, zwei, drei..."
"FEHR!" I'd scream
tugged by her athletic arms
from the everlasting gravity.
She would take me to the woods on campus
where we'd attend to the doings of the squirrels and jays.
she majored in biology at UC Berkeley
"Uck! Berkeley?" she pronounced it
and knew all those trees and animals
their common names, their science names.
We'd listen to the redwoods growing
feel the blueness of the sky
and say nothing.
She took me to The City once
San Francisco
with her boyfriend and another couple.
Lust crackled in the air of the BART train
between those twentyish people.
She grabbed my wheelchair to keep it from tipping
While I feigned non-lust, which was hard.
I inspected the billboards in the stations
imagined cold bay water
crashing thru the ceiling of the car.
We surfaced at the Embarcadero station
in an elevator with a polished black metal ceiling.
Four sets of jostling shoulders
me, stretched out on my nearly horizontal wheelchair,
surprisingly calm and vertical.
The elevator door slid open
instant City
Screaming seagulls riding the cold, stiff winds.
Coit Tower perched on a scraggly pile of dirt
piers, KPIX-TV, apartment buildings
designed by children's books illustrators
bright colors in geometric surprise shapes.
The other couple left Tracy, her boyfriend and me
in a hilly park named for a saint.
What did the boyfriend think?
That he had been dragged along
in Tracy's act of charity?
That I was in his way?
I'm always in somebody's way, I thought, the sun in my eyes.
Maybe I just got in Tracy's way
as she glided thru crowds of lives
and she couldn't leave me lying there
dried out bubble gum stuck on the underneath of existence.
So with her gentle, fearless heart
she took me on
she took me in
into her life
a cosmos of laughter, german, biology, cats.
I thrived in her garden
and wanted more
than a friend with a boyfriend.
The boyfriend fell asleep at the end of the day
on a bench in the BART station.
I felt too silly and uncomfortable to sleep.
Red letters on the electronic sign flashed
RICHMOND RICHMOND RICHMOND
O boy!
Our train, bound for the gloomy oil refinery city,
would stop in Berkeley.
I sang
I took the last train to Richmond myself,
it was a time I remember oh so well.
"What did you say?" she asked in concern.
After a couple of years, she left for Germany
to study biology, improve her German.
I wrote letters to her
five, six pages long
every month for eight months.
She wrote me once
small, precise handwriting with w/'s and Ha!'s.
I couldn't believe she was writing me so infrequently
I cooked up alibis for her
she must be busy, sick, distracted.
The following year
I became sick with kidney stone pain
pain that dug its teeth into my right side
twisted it and ground it from the inside out.
That summer of crackers, tomato soup and codeine
I stayed in bed, crying MOMMY! when it got bad.
One dull afternoon
she suddenly appeared outside my window
red and blue striped shirt, jeans
leaning forward, sticking her tongue out at me.
"Tracy!"
She entered and kissed me.
She worked for me again
got me up and took me outside for free
I was so broke.
Although she hated movies
she said she'd take me to one
if I could stay up in my wheelchair for two hours.
What inducement!
My heart pounded tropical rhythms
as we watched "Never Cry Wolf,"
I survived and she almost liked the movie.
She took me out every Sunday
until I didn't feel sick anymore.
She made plans to leave again
after less than a year
to Germany again
this time to work.
"She's been offered a job at the Max Planck Institute,"
I bragged about her.
Terrified at losing her
I wrote her a letter she never received
I screwed up her address
so I had to tell her in person.
"Tracy, I love you."
"I know."
She smiled.
Five years of intermittent visits
sudden, thrilling, brief
no letters, two phone calls
while she studied for a Ph.D. at Arizona State
married a German
a big, sullen, blond man
who watched sports on TV and ignored her questions
until, pissed, she divorced him
even threatened to deport him.
The last time I saw her
she was in town to see the Mapplethorpe exhibit
she visited me accompanied by her roommate
a bushy haired woman named Sunshine.
The three of us eating Chinese food
Tracy called herself a fag hag
saying she liked pictures of gay men fucking
"Will you be my fag hag?" I asked, desperate.
A year passed,
a year in which I got my first
maybe only
book published
a year in which I mailed it to her
heard nothing
renewed her gift subscription to Whole Earth
heard nothing
sent her a birthday card
that I wrote in clamping a felt tip pen in my teeth
heard nothing
sent her a book published to honor Judy Greenwood
another disabled writer she had worked for
along with a letter explaining how Judy had died
heard nothing
Heard nothing
Was it my fault?
Was I too possessive?
Did my lust become too obvious?
But the guilt isn't big enough to patch over the rage
at her indifference
a coldness that burned
Bitch! Phony! Liar!
I roar like a third rate Lear
howling into a wind machine
drops from the sprinklers
soaking my polyester robe
making the dye in my glued-on beard run.
I pound the insides of my mind
with words, such puny fists
and nobody hears or gives a damn
least of all her.
Here, in her absence,
I feel the chill of a dead universe
curse myself for ever believing
that I could be loved,
that I could have her.
But the worst of it is
if she materialized right now
by me and my computer,
I would kill this poem
and tell her how much I love her.
Copyright © May, 1991 Mark O'Brien <marko@well.com>. All Rights Reserved.