further along (more history)

Time—years—passed, during which a pattern repeated itself, at varying intervals. We, LL and I, would begin to find the other approachable, then be drawn, as moths etc. into points of disputation, and end with someone, usually LL, because she would come down to my studio to talk things over, walking out. Then radio silence would descend like the proverbial pall, for an indeterminate, but usually lengthy, span. A great deal of characteristic narrative may be found at blogs composed, usually in a spirit of protest, during the period following the earlier narrative below and preceding and overlapping with the narrative attempted here. They have already been mentioned: suinolopxilef, squeasy, and privypage. The latter may be reached from the first, and the first pretty much has a Google page to itself, unsurprisingly.

I will take up the story at what remains for me a pivotal scene.

Nuit Blanche, a one-night all-night Toronto arts festival, had been the night before. She had dropped by to wish me good night as she was leaving for the festivities with friends. I would have loved to have tagged along, but knew it was pointless and it would likely have been offensive to ask. She was with three women, two young, and what I remember as an opulently appointed overweight man of indeterminate age. The other woman, LL’s age and friend from university, had shown herself as a congenially sexual woman, successfully so, and had flirted with me in our palmy early days; so I imagined her and LL to be, or hoping to be, collaborators in sexual adventure, particularly on such a night.

So the next day when LL greeted me cheerfully from the second-floor balcony, ready, it seemed, to take part in high-spirited banter, I fired back with jealous irony; quite possibly, I don’t recall, jealous anger. She, shocked and enraged, turned and left the nascent conversation; never ever to return. What I lost in that characteristically stupid moment I will most likely never even be able to guess; but it could easily, if I had been less irritable, ended congenially, and everything would not have been ruined. Forever. Even, perhaps, I might never have come down with cancer; because what follows, so congenial to cancer, would not have occurred.

That Winter she lived elsewhere. As she intended, I never found out where, but for the neighborhood. In late Spring I realized she was back, living in one of the recently vacated apartments, but still no word was spoken, in greeting or need.

For myself, it was my winter of deep misery. When LL disappeared I felt doubly abandoned, doubly alone.

Here it becomes necessary to backtrack; to speak of my father, his last years, and his end. And I imagine it best to devote a separate post to him.