Dear Sir…
I am glad that the image of (me as) Scarlett has been invoked, standing at the door to the church in her crinoline, rustling and flapping and shouting and crying in that screechy but assertive and intense way of hers. It is suitably ridiculous, especially if we factor in you and your bride (or groom), walking past me in your wedding finest, embarrassed and annoyed as hell at the pathetic spectacle I’m making.
I know you’ll never give me such a platform for such unreasonable behaviour. And I am far too reasonable and demure to take the stage without a definite cue.
The thought of it though, is enough to make me feel decidedly mortified, even just imagining myself in such a role.
Our correspondance has really cheered me up but also stirred up some memories and aspects of myself I’d been keeping under wraps, or trying to. It is not every day I get to speak so frankly with someone who I know will understand everything I say. OK it is pretty well never. My understanding of friendship tends to be in terms of a conversation, and you give very good conversation indeed.
I am not like those ‘two fat ladies’ who write slash fic, imagining themselves endowed with great cocks to fuck the male characters in their fantasies. I am just a girl that would like to be ‘one of the boys’ and be party to that secret world, the one I’ve read about in Whitman and Isherwood and Foucault and Simpson. But I know deep down I am still an alien and I won’t ever gain full access to that planet. Sometimes I wonder if it actually exists at all.
So, rather than standing forever at the church door, getting more and more frustrated with my alien status, and feeling the unreasonable urge to flail my arms around and bury my fists in a man’s unyielding and unforgiving chest. Because it’s not FAIR.
I am going to get back in my spaceship and see what is going on on my own planet for a while. I know it will be mundane and possibly dusty and lonely at times but it is real. And it is probably where I belong. I don’t need to say goodbye to you because I will be bound to pop back and visit. Once you try space travel it is difficult to give up on altogether.
I haven’t met you in real life. But ‘real life’ these days is all a bit indistinguishable from the virtual. I do hope you consider me to be your friend. I certainly see you as a friend. I will keep in touch but I am going to stop tugging on your coat tails. You may not find it irritating but I find it undignified somehow at some level.
Thank you for your conversation. I still am surprised I got to talk like this again, after all those years. It means a lot to me. I feel sad but I think I am doing the right thing. I am, in spite of my lack of awe for reality, a realist at heart.
Take care. Please carry on being a semiotician. If Halperin has to be Foucault then you are my Roland Barthes and we need you now more than ever before.
Eleanor x
Quiet Riot Girl 