CoDA Files: Sherman Alexie, Excretion, & Secrets

I recently attended a reading by Native American author Sherman Alexie and not only enjoyed the three stories he read from his new collection, Blasphemy, but delighted in his hilarious self-revelations.  At one point, he asked us if we'd ever shit ourselves in public.  "Hold up your hands," he said, and everyone clenched in their seats.  "Liars!" he scolded, and we laughed, and he proceeded to relay his sordid shitting history, sharing with us how once he'd just left a hotel only to realize shortly afterwards that he had to relieve himself--but he couldn't return to the hotel because his OCD wouldn't allow him to go back into a building he'd just left--so he wound up pooping in his pants.  At some point, after sharing several such stories with the audience, he told us that if we want to write, we have to be able to stand in front of an audience and talk about this stuff.  He reiterated what all of my writing teachers have instructed.

Write what scares you.  Write what pains you.  Write your darkness, your demons, your ghosts.  Write your insides out.  Write blood, sweat, tears.  Write into the scars until they're festering wounds; write through the infection until the very words that tore you open turn to a salve.  Write what you have been told to keep silent; write what you have been told to keep out.

I am an apt pupil.  I dig.  I rush toward my shame with a knife and a warm glass of milk, ready to put it to bed.

But I'm constantly wary.

You must understand that the secrets we tell reveal more than just themselves.  Sherman Alexie has OCD.  Sherman Alexie occasionally accidentally shits his pants.  Those who think these are his most shameful secrets are fooling themselves.  And those who cannot admit that they too have a disorder or have on occasion experienced a loose sphincter are even worse off.

I have told you my father molested me.  Some of you have been molested too, but you do not share your secret because you believe it is a darkness you must hold inside of you, that it is yours to hide.  My father's hands on my body was not my secret to keep--it was his.  And I shared it.

Sharing someone else's secrets is not nearly as hard as sharing your own.

I have shared my own secrets with you, too.   I have told you how I paged through loved ones' diaries, how I betrayed my brother, how I hurt my sister, how I feel about my mother.  I have even told you the happy secrets, which ironically can be more difficult to share than the sad ones.

But you should know, because I have warned you in the past, and because it is a universal truth, that what I have told you, no matter how serious or shameful or vulnerable, is only a piece of what I own.

I am codependent.  You know this because I have told you, but you still don't really know what it is for me.  You think, perhaps, in general terms, it is low self esteem or fear or mistrust.  You estimate it has something to do with denial, with control, with insecurity.  Yes.  But it is better conveyed in detail.

Have you ever found yourself standing over a toilet bowl full of the yellow proof of your girlfriend's frequent middle-of-the-night trips to pee, with an eyedropper in one hand and a plastic cotinine test cassette you ordered behind her back in the other hand, and held your breath as you waited for a line to appear or not appear in the spot that would tell you whether she had lied to you yet again about smoking?   If when the results showed she'd been telling the truth--that she hadn't smoked or chewed nicotine gum in several days--and you felt ashamed for ordering the test, smuggling it into the bathroom, and testing your girlfriend's piss, you may understand what it is to be codependent.  But you'd understand it better if you also felt simultaneously or momentarily afterwards a discordant swell of confusion, frustration, and relief.  Confusion because your girlfriend was not lying to you, which meant she wasn't always a Liar, that she wasn't a demon or an angel but simply, complicatedly, human, a member of the gray space between good and evil.  She wasn't this or that; she was this and that.  And you found that fact frustrating and almost inconceivable because you were used to seeing people in one of two shades only.  She was forcing you to acknowledge a truth that made you uncomfortable.

Confusion, frustration, relief.  Your relief came from the very source of your discomfort--the truth.  She was telling you the truth, so you could breathe easy and stop trying to control the world, if only for a minute.

You might know codependency even better if weeks after you tested her urine and found she was telling the truth, you tested it again after she'd told you she'd been chewing nicotine gum, only to find, of course, that it tested positive.  You did the test not because you didn't believe she was using the gum, but because enough time had passed that the demon of doubt had crept in to tell you that the first test may have been a false negative.  After all, the instructions called for a clean sample, not stuff that had already hit the bowl.  This second test helped to restore your flailing faith in the first test, the one that you'd allowed to be your higher power that day--the test that you decided knew reality better than you did.

Months later, after your breakup, you stumble across the leftover tests in your closet and feel compelled to tell her what you did.  She forgives you--easily--and though you're glad, you worry because you have something else you have to share with her that makes you somehow even more ashamed.  The night before you shared with her about the tests, you invited her over for the first time in months, and you were nervous and excited, worried about your recovery but hopeful too, and while you were hugging, your hand brushed her front pocket, felt a hard rectangle beneath the denim.

It only took the tactile suggestion of a lighter for you to betray her.  Your mouth dried to a thick wool, your heart stuttered.  But you couldn't let her know.  You smiled.  You raised one eyebrow intentionally, like a skirt sliding up a thigh, dressed your voice in something a little more comfortable, and whispered a scantily-clad question of an accusation.  "Are you packing?"

She laughed.

You held your breath.

"My car keys," she responded, her eyes glowing fiercely with her love, everything about her soft and shining, oblivious to your puppetry.

You tell her twenty-four hours later, and it's almost impossible to type the words because to you this isn't a trifling misstep; it's evidence of how easily you can slide back into the past, how readily you will let your demon press your buttons so you can manipulate the people you love to assuage your fears.  To you, this is proof of how broken you are, and you tell her she deserves better, because you love her and she does deserve better, not because you want to manipulate her but because you're terrified she will leave your crazy ass and you think it might be better if she goes now rather than confesses to you months down the road that you are too much to handle.

So.

If you know how to work strings...

If you have good intentions but fall prey to dark deeds...

If letting someone love you feels like a pinwheeling tumble over the world's tallest waterfall...

You know that sharing about how you accidentally shit your pants is just a drop in the bucket.

Open Letter #7, to my fundamentalist Christian aunt

This is what I know about you: you are a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a mother of two, a divorcée, a doctor, a teacher, a globe trotter, a breast cancer survivor.  You are also a self-proclaimed Christian.  You, of course, already know all that, but I'm making it clear because so much of what is known often goes unspoken, and when that happens, we tend to make assumptions.  Or at least, I make assumptions.  I made one recently, in fact, when I assumed you understood the nature of our relationship; I realized my mistake when I was surprised by your virtual friend-request.  I don't know why I've never been as straightforward with you as I'm going to be right now, though I've been forthright with you in conversations about other issues unrelated to our relationship as aunt and niece.  Perhaps I worried my words would fall on deaf ears and a heart so closed to understanding the truth that not even Moses could get through. 

We've certainly shared words before.  There was that time we had the heated debate about logging and owls, when you lamented the economic effects on families who depended on logging jobs that would be lost to preserve a forest full of endangered birds, and I said that the preservation of those owls' lives would mean the survival of our species because nature is our bedrock and we're all connected and that the loggers could log elsewhere or change vocations, and you wound up angry because you thought I cared more about animals than people and I wound up angry because I thought you had understood that God trusts us to care for the animals and the earth that sustains us.  

And there was that one time when something like ten family members were crammed into an 8-passenger SUV and someone (you?) said something about abortion, and I challenged your view of what it means to be human, and the car got so crowded with words and clenched muscles that I thought the doors would pop off.

Occasionally you and I exchange emails and text messages.  We even share a phone conversation every now and then.  And I guess I never knew what we were playing at with these interactions.  I suppose I was hoping we could be close because I know that despite what I'm about to share with you you're a good person.  And maybe you were hoping too that despite who I am we could be close.  But I'm tired of pretending for the family.  I'm tired of hiding from Grandma that her son molested her granddaughter, that he was not the father she thought he was.  I'm tired of not speaking up when someone in the family says something bigoted.  There are so many beam-filled eyes in the family, it's a wonder anyone can see anything at all. 

So I'll share with you now some fundamental truths about our relationship.

One: You and I are not close nor, without a miracle, will we ever be.

And two: This has everything to do with Jesus, God, and Love.  

To my understanding, you believe Jesus was the son of God and that he died for our sins; I believe he was the son of God too (in that I believe we are all God-incarnated), but I don't care if he came from Immaculate Conception or a one night stand or a rape or a fairytale, and I don't believe he died for our sins. I agree with you on this point: he was a prophet sent to teach the world about the true nature of love.  

Jesus preached the most sacred commandments--to love that which created us and to love each other (for we are all God's children).  He did not ask us to "tolerate" each other.  He did not say "force your beliefs on each other."  He did not decree "give some people rights and deny those same rights to others."

You presume that the Bible, which was neither written by Jesus nor by God, has all the answers in it.  You presume that the numerous interpretations of the language in which the book was originally written have been uncorrupted by what is lost in translation and by human beings and their own imperfections and biases.  You presume either to know that God did not create queer people or to assume that God did create queer people but damned their love in the same breath.  You presume to know what it means to be queer when God has made you a straight woman.  You presume to know God's design.

I'm gay and not even I have the audacity to pretend to know why I feel the way I feel about women.  I have ideas, but I don't state them as fact because I'm not God and I don't know.  What I do know is that it doesn't make sense for a god to create so much variation in sexual and romantic orientation and simultaneously demand that all people, no matter the way their hearts and bodies were designed, love and have sex exactly the same way.  And I don't see God stepping out of the heavens to correct the gay penguins or stop other homosexual animals from bonding.  Maybe they missed your memo about how God works.

I don't know why I'm gay, but I assume God made me this way for a reason--maybe to teach other people that love is boundless.  But the point is I don't need to know why, and I refuse to presume the Truth.  I know what's more important than knowing; I know what love feels like, what it is and what it is not.

For instance, I know it is not an act of love when you ask my straight sister about her romantic life but abstain from asking me.  I know it is not an act of love to tell another person, either overtly or covertly, that her love is a perversion.  I know it is dishonest, disrespectful, and unloving to misappropriate another person's love as "sin" just because you don't understand God's plan (or because you think you understand it).

I will not accept your friend request on Facebook because I anticipate reading posts about a god that has been whittled down to a force that gets squeamish at the notion of two people that have similar looking body folds loving each other; I can't stomach the presumption, hypocrisy, and judgment.  I will, however, continue to read your emails and email you back.  I will continue to talk to you on the phone.  I will even carry on playing board games with you and the rest of the family (some to whom this letter should be addressed as well) during our gatherings, and I will be as kind (but honest, yet) as I can in the moment.  I will continue doing these things because I know God is good and because I hold the hope that one day you will stop presuming you know how the Great Mystery works and start loving your fellow queer human beings the way Christ intended so that we can actually have a relationship based on something far more profound than tolerance.  Maybe God's waiting for you, too.

Open Letter #6, to the woman I love

I picture you walking through the rain, the bill of your cap pulled out far over your eyes, October's gold leaves carpeting the streets and sidewalks on which you tread, every step blurred by rain and royal colors and the fact that you left your glasses at home.

Last night I slept with the hat you used to wear to work every day, the one you let me keep when we broke up.  I snugged it into the space between my right arm and my body and would have turned to wrap the whole of me around it if not for a certain insistent cat curling into the curve where my left side tapers into my hip.  I wish I had kept your favorite sleep shirt too.

The other day, driving home, I suddenly needed you, and I thought I might do something crazy like find your car and fill it with millions of plastic googly eyes, the kind kids affix to puppet socks, the kind that make you laugh, small ones and big ones, with pupils of every color, all those plastic circles jiggling invisible grins, I'd pour them all in so when you opened your door, it'd be like one never-ending wink from me to you.  I thought I might go to the bank and ask for a hundred dollars in newly minted pennies, crack every roll on the lip of the driveway we sort of planned together before I moved out, spill the coins into a giant, shining heart, under which I'd place a note put together with notebook paper, glue, and cut out letters of the alphabet gleaned from advertisements from The Plum.  The note would say only this: Joey the Fish.  And you would remember our first weeks together and all our elaborate inside jokes and how easy it was.  I thought I might buy you a dozen sunflowers like the first flower I ever gave you, but multiplied, and leave them in odd places around the outskirts of your house so that you might not notice them at first but then you'd go to take out the recycling and meet a yellow-petaled head thrust between the can's blue lips like the happiest, strangest straw you ever saw, and later you'd find one glowing serenely in the washing machine like the promise of fresh socks and a new day.

It's the first time it's rained in months, with exception to one early morning a few weeks ago where it rained for a few minutes and nearly nobody noticed because it happened before most alarms had brought the day to anyone's attention.  The sky hasn't looked this forlorn since we were together, since the days of sad pizza and wet eyes and words heavy and tired as so many old pennies.  

You asked me if you were to ask me to marry you if I'd say yes.  But you'd been drinking.  And you'd been smoking.  You said it was always me, that I'd always been the one.  And I said no.  But I moved in with you because I loved you, because I knew you could get free of your garbage if you wanted to, because I believed you would.

But you weren't ready yet, and I got sick.  When you'd leave the house in the morning, I'd go through your laundry and sniff your clothes for the scent of smoke.  I'd thrust my hands into your pockets, my fingers seeking the plastic oblong shape of a lighter.  I'd go to the fridge and count your beers.  I'd check the recycling bin outside for empties.  When I didn't see any, I'd dig.  And when I'd find something, or even if I didn't--maybe especially if I didn't--I'd grab the key to the shed and look there, just in case.  Once I found a couple of cigarette butts beneath the shed.  Once I found some beneath the bush by the back porch, and there was that one time I found the old cottage cheese container hidden beneath the hood of the grill and filled with smoked cigarettes and the same gray sludge I imagined coated the delicate tissue of your lungs.

I'd wade through the bins in your closet, searching for secrets, searching for hidden cartridges for the electronic cigarette I hated so much.  In the kitchen, I'd grab your box of nicotine gum and spill the blister packs onto the counter by the sink and silently count, spending the rest of the day sick to my stomach because you were using more and more, because you were using, and I was still there, despite myself.  Sometimes the impulse was so strong, I'd poke through your backpack when you were in the bathroom or working in the yard.  I'd find cigarette stubs and lighters, an abundance of nicotine gum, lozenges, a whole pack of smokes.  What my hands found depended on what phase you were in.  

I couldn't sleep.  I was guilty.  I'd never been guiltier.  Because I was reading your text messages, too.  I was reading tiny snippets of truth that roiled in my stomach and made me feel wicked and foolish.  I burned like your cigarettes, like your cheeks after a few beers.  I hated myself for not having the strength to stop hoping all your lies would one day fall away from your lips like ash, all used up.  I wanted to stop resenting you.  I wanted you to stop resenting me for wishing you would drop your addictions.  I wanted you to keep your promise to me.  You'd said if cigarettes were my "hill to die on,"you'd quit, but all four seasons came and went, and I was still counting.

Gradually, the numbers took over my life.  I'd count how many times you'd go out and return with beer on your breath.  I'd count the seconds between when you'd locked the door in the morning and when you'd started up the car and when the gravel in the road had stopped crunching so I could get out of bed and tally gum pieces and bottles.  Eventually, the numbers got inside me.  I lost weight excavating your life.  Eight pounds total, and you'd comment on it, and I'd blame it on work stress, and almost everyone I knew half-believed I was anorexic, but I had a fever that was burning through me.  My heart ticked like a cabbie's meter so I could hardly keep up with my thoughts or my own breathing and was left to count the beats at night while you were sound asleep.  I called my sister and told her the number of chances you had left, which was one, and I asked her to promise to remind me of this figure if I ever called her in the future to tell her I was going to give you one more chance.

Finally, I counted the number of times you said we would go to couple's therapy, and I subtracted the number of times we'd gone from the number of times we'd promised to make an appointment and came up with a number that matched the number of notches I no longer needed in my belt.  And when, on our final night as a couple, we searched for a counselor together online and your conditions mounted and my patience waned, and somewhere in there the arguments about all the other things we couldn't reconcile came up, I gave up.  I didn't even have to call my sister because I knew we'd hit zero, and there was nothing left to count.

I moved out.  You wrote me to tell me you loved me, to apologize.  I didn't count the tears that fell as I read, and that was how I knew I was already getting better.  I started going back to Codependents Anonymous, and I promised myself I'd do the program right this time, for the first time in my five years as a self-avowed codependent.  I joined a step study group.  I told my friends and family I would not date for a whole year, that I would devote twelve months to myself and my recovery.

You and I tried to be friends.  Thirty days of separation, we'd agreed in an email, but when we met a month after the breakup, you gave me a list that left me sick with counting all over again:

number of alcoholic drinks and milligrams of nicotine in your life: zero

number of spiritual tattoos you'd acquired: one

number of times you'd jumped out of a plane since I'd last seen you: one

number of new, healthy people in your life: L, with L representing Lots

number of activities you'd tried that I'd always wanted to do with you: U, for Unknown but greater than zero

number of smiles on your face that I wished I had seen more often when we were together: I, for I can't remember because I was caught on the next two items in the list

number of times you said you missed me: zero

number of hugs you gave me: two, one at the start of our meeting, one at the end, both chaste

We planned to meet up again, but I had to cancel because I'd begun counting the days until I'd see you again, and all my hours were shadows next to the sun of getting to see you.  I wanted so badly to have you back in my life.  But I was angry, too.  I had been counting so long, and in the end, it had all amounted to nothing, and here you were, not even aware of the numbers, and your whole life was filling up.  Why had you waited until the space beside you in bed was empty?  I tried to count the number of times I'd told you your addiction bothered me, hurt me, was a deal breaker, but I lost track and the numbers prickled my skin.  I told you I couldn't talk to you anymore, that I needed space.

And after some fits and starts, you gave it to me.  Five weeks of silence between us.  The most we'd ever not talked in the approximate year and a half we'd known each other.  I focused on my own problems, and I went out with my friends, and I settled into a contentment I had not known when we were together.  I no longer had to worry about you or about us.  But I missed you, and soon the counting began again, but it was different this time. 

I began counting the number of times you'd watched a movie with me that I knew you hated but that I loved.  I counted the times you'd said something so beautiful to me that I'd ached at the words.  I counted your hands in my hair, your laughter in my ears.  I counted our quiet afternoons, our Sunday morning breakfasts and cups of coffee, our kisses, the way you looked at me whenever I wore a dress.  I counted the things we hadn't done together that you were now capable of doing.  I counted the days ahead of me, the weeks, months, and years.  I counted trips not yet taken, children not yet birthed, places not yet lived in.  I factored you into them.  

And then you wrote me an email, and I wrote you back, despite my concern, and our emails multiplied with our apologies and forgivenesses, and I felt X possibilities shooting up from the seeds of these new beginnings, and of course now I want to reach for you like a flower reaches for the sun, but I believe in promises, and I've had much practice counting, so I will live on meetings, and gold leaves, and emails while I endure the next few seasons without you, and I will sleep in a half-empty bed, one cat cinched to my left side, one hat snugged against my right, with countless thoughts of loving you warming me through the night.

Open Letter #5, to My Sixth Grade Teacher

You had short, curly hair that I remember as being a blondish gray, but the color never struck me so much as the overall effect, like you had bows for hair, and perhaps it was the subliminal notion that you were a gift that had me so taken with you.  It was your smile, too, because it was genuine and somehow classy, small but bright, like a 1940's Madge Evans smile.  And your steady blue eyes, delicately framed by your glasses, were a promise.  You were probably in your late 30's, and I didn't know how I felt about you, but I knew I liked you.

It's funny because even though I was eleven, old enough to actively make and retain memories, I don't remember much about that year, about what you taught us, I mean.  I can't even remember the easier things, like the way you held a pencil or a piece of chalk, or the way you greeted the class.  And I can hardly remember your voice, that fine auditory wave that guided me through so many lessons that year.  But I remember how you let me do a project on tadpoles, how proud I felt in front of the class as I encouraged everyone to come to the front of the room and take a look into the plastic container full of flickering, legless amphibians.  I spoke eagerly of the transformation they'd be going through, of the massive changes their tiny bodies would undergo in such a short time.  I stole glances at you the whole time, and there you were always, calmly smiling at me.

You thought I was gifted.  You told me I had a way with words, that I was special.  I loved you for thinking this, for telling me so matter-of-factly, for telling my mom and stepdad, neither of whom had ever told me I was special in any way.  You asked my parents for permission to have me tested, and I agreed, though when I asked what would happen if I passed, I was told I would be put with a group of students who were also advanced, and we would do more challenging work in another classroom, and that didn't sound good to me.  But I wanted to be special, so I took the test.  It was an IQ test, and I excelled with the language-related tasks but was stymied when it came to the left-brained problems presented.  In the end, I fell just a few points under the mark, and I was relieved.  We still had quite a good deal of the school year left to go.

You had a sort of honors club wherein high achievers in the class would get to take field trips with you.  I don't think they would allow this kind of thing today, but I absolutely loved it.  I remember how a small group of us went to your red brick townhouse in West Chester, the exclusive nature of it.  How you let me play with the antique phone on the wall, how the wooden floors squeaked and shone and reminded me of Christmas, how I realized you lived alone, how the feeling part of me that didn't yet have the knowledge or words for the feeling I felt for you wondered if you were like me.  You bought us pizza, and we all drank soda and ate and talked.  Sometimes you'd take us other places.  I remember the trip to the courthouse.  I don't think you knew what case was going to be happening that day because it was a rape case.  I remember the solemnity of that wooden-benched room, how still and quiet you were, how the rest of us sat close to you, quiet as mice, not saying how we felt, not knowing how to say it.

After sixth grade, I rarely saw you, but I made it a point to visit you when I graduated high school.  I found you in a hallway of the new middle school building, and you seemed tired out from all the newness, and I thought of your townhouse and the wood floors and I wondered if the florescent lights we were standing under had anything to do with the change, and I wanted something from you, too, but I didn't know what, and you wished me luck, and I left you, knowing finally, as I walked away, what it was I wanted.

I sent you a letter when I was a freshman in college, and to my surprise you wrote back.  I still have the letter, written on notebook paper, and am looking at it now.  Your handwriting is lacy, but not as fine and gauzy as a grandmother's.  It reminds me of the way you sat at your desk, your careful posture, the look you got on your face when you were grading at the front of the room while the class was hunched over their books, quietly reading.  You begin by saying what a nice surprise it is to hear from me, and you write about the snowy weather and "treacherous" driving and how teaching at the middle school compares to teaching at the elementary school.  There is whiteout beneath the whole of the word "elementary," and I wonder if you misspelled it the way I misspell cemetery because the second e sounds like an a.

You wrote the first half of the letter in red pen on March 4, 2003 and the rest of the letter in pencil on March 6th. Here, you tell me that college was one of the greatest times of your life, and in response to my having divulged my choice to major in creative writing, you proclaim, "Good for you!" And reading it now, I still feel your pride in me and in your job.  You go on to say that you read my letter to the class, I'm guessing to inspire them, and that "they were delighted that you bought a gecko."  I can't remember if I told you in my letter that I bought that gecko with my girlfriend, but I bet I kept that hidden from you; I can't imagine you would have read that part to a class of sixth graders.  You end your letter with this: "Take care and write soon, Love, Miss _____."

I don't think I ever wrote you back, and I have your letter but not your address because I lost the envelope.  You've retired, I know, because I've looked for you since graduating college and then graduate school, and I wonder if at some point I'll look beyond the dead-end results on Facebook so I can write you again, so I can give you this letter, so I can tell you that I loved you, too, and so I can freely admit that I don't know who you are but I know what you did for me and how you treated me; I want to tell you that you were one of the only sources of adult love in my life when I was eleven and that your smile and your belief in me were what kept me going when everything at home led me to believe I would never be enough. 

I guess I'm thinking about you a lot today because I'm an instructor now, and I teach reading and writing, as you did, but to college students, and today in the library a former student of mine caught me browsing through magazines in the stacks and told me how much I meant to him, how much my encouragement and disciplined manner helped him to become a better student.  And this came from a guy who did not pass my class.  But he'd worked hard, and I'd loved his spirit.  I'd pushed him because I'd wanted to see him go beyond himself; I'd wanted him to know he was capable, not just as a student or writer, but as a person.  So today, he told me he is taking the class again this term and doing well, and he looked proud, and I almost hugged him, but our eyes said enough, and he thanked me and told me he hoped to see me around.

And we probably will see each other around, at least until he graduates, and then who knows how long it'll be, or if I'll ever hear from him again, but I won't need to because I'll have today's conversation in the library, and I'll have your letter, and I'll know that I can be good to people because you were good to me, because you showed me what I was capable of, and you believed in me.  I'll never forget the love you gave me, Miss _____.  Keep smiling.