The Great Divide

Written on 1/5/09

Throughout my history of becoming involved with inappropriate men, I have relied on attraction and affection—mistaken for love—and little else, to bridge each and every very obvious gap between us. Maybe this will be enough, I  have thought. Because "love" is always enough. And of course, in the end it is never enough. The differences between us are always too great and too many. And suddenly they are very present. And destructive. Like a geographical fault.

I know this all too well. And still, I can’t stop myself from becoming involved with inappropriate men. I like them. Men whose lifestyles and sometimes, even personalities just don’t suit me. Because, Maybe this time "love" will be enough. Over the years, of all the inappropriate men I became involved with, Matt was perhaps the first. And when I think back, I sort of think I liked him the best.

Matt was ridiculously tall and lean, with long hair and slender fingers. This is a look I am particularly fond of. I met Matt in art class the year I switched from Catholic school to Public school, and right away I was attracted to him. In addition to Art, Matt and I had English and also Cooking together. And as fate would have it, we both wound up in the same Cooking group.

Matt and I had almost nothing in common. He studied nothing but fatalities for Mortal Kombat, listened to punk rock and liked to Skate. But while these were not particular interests I shared with Matt, I admired the hell out of them and they were pretty much the exact things that without fail always attracted me to any member of the opposite sex. Also, Matt liked to draw and aspired to be a famous graffiti artist. And he always did the dishes for me whenever it was my turn to do them for our group in Cooking class.

One day, the Cooking teacher, Mrs. Peterson, looked over at us from her usual spot, perched on the edge of her seat surveying the class from behind her desk. Right away she noticed that Matt was doing the dishes when it was my day to be group dishwasher. We had been cooking omelettes, with green bell peppers and onions.

“Don’t worry,” Matt whispered as Mrs. Peterson approached. “I’ve got it.”

“What do you mean?” I whispered back through the smirk that had formed on my face.

He meant, I’m on top of it. I will stop this before it even starts, and I liked this about Matt. He was always on top of things.

Matt scraped a piece of cooked bell pepper from inside the pan he was about to wash and tossed it out onto the classroom floor. It landed directly in Mrs. Peterson’s path.

The story went around school for weeks. Months, even. “Did you hear? Mrs. Peterson slipped on a pepper! She fell and broke her butt!” But only Matt and I knew exactly where that pepper had come from.

In Art class, Matt liked to steal tubes of oil paint from the supply room. “What are your favorite colors?” he would ask. Then later in English class he would present me with one tube of every color I had mentioned. By the end of the semester, I had a collection that would be the envy of any artist.

Ironically, this generous and appreciated habit is the very thing that would tear us apart.

At the end of the semester, each of us in Mrs. Cataldi’s eighth grade English class was asked to choose a famous historical figure and then write and present an autobiography as that person. This was the big assignment she gave to her eighth grade English class every year, and everyone looked forward to it. Because you got to come to class dressed as the person you chose.

I chose Elizabeth I. My mother had sewed me a beautiful blue Elizabethan dress with bell sleeves and white lace at the cuffs and collar, and a gold rope sash that was knotted at the waist.

Matt chose JFK, and presented his report as JFK after he had been shot—wearing one of his father’s business suits and bandages soaked in fake blood wrapped around his head.

After his presentation, Matt took the empty seat next to me. Then he began to turn toward me and stare. He was subtle at first, but the staring soon became very obvious.

Finally, Matt began to slide his desk closer to mine, until both desktops were touching. Then he leaned over until his lips were inches away from my ear. “You look pretty today,” he said. “I like your dress.”

It was sort of hard to take him seriously with the bloody gauze bandages still wrapped around his head.

Mrs. Cataldi shot us the evil eye and Matt slid his desk back to the original position. He sat silently staring at his hands. I know this because I watched him, trying to guess what he might be thinking. I just sort of felt like this was the turning point. Like we had both always pretty much known we liked each other but neither of us would admit it.

Then Matt turned back to face me again. “Can I wear it?” he asked.

I was blindsided by this question. I knew he was talking about my dress. No, he could not wear the dress. But still, I asked him.

“Wear what?

Matt sat up taller. His demeanor had changed. Now he appeared cool and indifferent in an effort to erase his earlier comment. “The dress,” he said. “Can I wear your dress? Like, to LOVE Park later.”

LOVE Park is a plaza in Center City, Philadelphia, nicknamed after Robert Indiana’s LOVE sculpture, which sits smack in the center of the plaza. It was widely known that Matt and all of his friends went to skateboard there every day after school. In fact, during this period of time, the park itself had gained an international reputation as a skateboarding spot.

I was furious.

Not really because Matt wanted to skateboard in my dress. Typically, this would have been one of the things I would have laughed about and supported—if it had been any other dress. But this was different because this was an Elizabethan dress. My mother had made that dress by hand. It was beautiful and I loved it. And no, Matt could not wear it.

But more than anything, I was furious because Matt hadn’t asked me out as I’d hoped he would. Instead, he wanted to wear my dress. Fail.

What had happened between “You look pretty today” and Matt’s current question? What had changed? More than furious, I was entirely confused.

So naturally, I glared at Matt and hissed, calling him an asshole. Again, fail.

The next day in Art class, things between Matt and I seemed off. After class was over I went into the supply closet to return some charcoal I had been using and Matt slipped in after me. “Hi,” he said. 

It felt awkward.

Matt began choosing tubes of oil paint and pocketing them. Then, with his head down, studying a tube of orange paint, he asked me if I wanted any.

“OK,” I said, thinking that maybe this would serve as some kind of peace offering. I figured I would smile and take the paint from him during English like always, and everything from the day before would be instantly, magically erased. Just like that.

“What colors?” Matt asked.

So I told him, Cadmium Orange, Cobalt Blue and Viridian.

In English class I sat in the aisle next to Matt, one desk behind him. So I saw him take three tubes of paint from his pocket and lay them in the tiny trough inside his desk. Then I saw him reach into the other pocket and pull out an Ex-acto knife. Carefully, he made a small incision along the side of each of the paint tubes. Then he set them back in the trough with the incisions facing up. I saw all of this as he was doing it.

“Hey,” Matt said, leaning back toward me as I was getting up to leave after class. “Don’t you want your paint?”

I don’t know why I did it. It wasn’t like I didn’t know what was coming—what punishment I was about to receive. I think there was just some part of me, deep down, that wanted to pretend I hadn’t seen what I had—because if I hadn’t seen it, then maybe it hadn’t happened. Maybe there was nothing wrong with those three tubes of paint. And I wanted to believe that Matt would never do anything mean to me.

I cupped my hand and lowered it to thigh level, where Matt could easily and secretly hand me the paint tubes.

Instantly, I regretted this decision.

I regretted it not only because my hand was now full of oozing paint. But now I knew the truth. I knew that I was wrong, and that Matt had no problem at all doing something mean to me when it suited him.

Many years later, after an especially difficult breakup with another inappropriate man whom I had little more than an attraction in common with, I thought back to Matt. Because he was the first of all of the men who I had been deeply attracted to and shared a mutual affection with, but just weren’t right for me.

I went through this difficult breakup and betrayal as an adult and it made me think back to that first time someone I had trusted betrayed me.

And then I realized that there was a pattern there. I had always blamed the men. Because they were always the ones who wouldn’t just let “love” be enough. Always, they would let something seemingly small come between us and tear us apart. Like a bad reaction to a stupid question, and a few tubes of paint.

But what I had always failed to see throughout my twenties is that there had been huge gaps between each of these men and I. Gaps that could never be filled. Not even with “love”. And this, ultimately, was mostly my fault. I was setting myself up for failure by neglecting to see it in the first place.

Maybe this realization is enough, I thought. Maybe seeing it for myself was all it would take to stop the pattern. Maybe next time things would be different. This was my hope.

Maybe next time I would find the right person to cross the great divide with.