"Racism is better in the open, preferable to hiding poison in the sugar" so was told Flea by his Funkadelic friend Michael CLIP Payne. I'm reading Flea's wild autobiography. There is so much to say about that, but I'll save that for my Goodreads review. I read this passage, and then re-read it. I was reminded of my mother's feminist book club, and our neighbor Trudy Taylor, (as a 10 year old, I always thought I'd marry David Taylor - he was one of my best childhood friends). They were the only black family on the block, and one of less than a handful living in Sudbury circa 1975. I remember standing in our kitchen, asking her how anyone could be racist. I was brought in a household with an open-to-all policy. Many kinds of people came through those doors, sang to the record player, yelled at the football game, made chili in the kitchen, smoked and drank Schlitz or Miller High Life beer. Trudy looked at me, and said, "I'd rather see it, that the person reveal it to me than try to hide it behind politeness." In answer to my quizzical expression, she said, "You want to see what's coming for you." About four years ago, I had a friend and her daughter visit me on the Cape. After I picked them up at the ferry in Provincetown, we stopped at grocery to pick up some groceries. The P-Town Stop & Shop has a number of our Jamaican population working there. As we checked out, she and the clerk talked about double twists that she had done to her daughter's hair. Later in the car, she touched my arm and said "Thank you for showing me where the black people are." Again, that quizzical expression from me prompted her to explain, "We need to know where to go if the shit hits the fan". These words, from Trudy, and my friend, seared into my brain because I haven't experienced that ever, that I may need to flee for my life.
I'm deleting pictures of Eric off my phone, off my computer. What surprised me was how violent it was. He didn't use any of the words associated with racism, it was his brutal attitude, his shouting and refusal to stop once I began bawling and screaming for him to SHUT UP! In fact, my response seemed to fuel the fire. I'd been involved with a latent racist for the past year. Maybe that was the reason I was hesitant to introduce him to anyone or even talk about him or even write this entry. I didn't know what awfulness was buried inside him, but if I'm honest, I was suspicious, even confronting him before we started dating in earnest after he questioned my comments on the history and treatment of America's first nations people. "How do you know that?" How do you know? Were you there?" I thought, he's pretty sheltered. I can help with that.
Let me go back. We met while my mother was in hospice. He builds telescopes, an electrical engineer genius. Quirky, a Trekkie, wild laugh and game for adventure. Our meeting is a great story. He liked me. He flew out to see me several times and was loving, kind and generous. He would often send incredibly beautiful samples of his astro-photography. We fell into love and started a long distance relationship. We wanted to be together. I thought about that conversation and realized that old thing we tell ourselves "everything happens for a reason." I was in a relationship with someone who really wanted to be with me. Wasn't doing the pull you close push you away thing that I had experienced most of my life. As we grew to know each other and spend more time together, there were cracks that erupted into arguments, ranging from gun control to immigration. Hot topics you might say. These were followed by intense conversations where common ground and understanding was found. There were many things we agreed on, once we got past the inane statements, spoken without thinking.
Do you just dismiss a person that you care about or do you try to show them a different way of thinking, about cultures and ideas? I committed to this route because I believed that I could be the example. I thought when two people love each other, you decide to grow together. What I was dealing with, however, was a person who had limited awareness because of his traumatic childhood, his major lapses in education and lack of exposure to art and history and literature. There are many good things about him. I just didn't believe half of the shit that came out of his mouth as something he actually believed, that was in his heart, but a way to avoid the conversation, to steer it back to something he was comfortable with. He often agreed with that reasoning. We're trained as teachers to teach empathy and that also means to embody that principle as well. After these long, exhausting conversations, I would think, "Ok, we're getting somewhere".
In May, after the protests had started, that all exploded in a truly horrible conversation during which we were planning a summer trip. In hindsight, I realized that I had been diminishing my true self, avoiding the egg shells so that these conversations wouldn't start because they took so much out of me. I often felt that while we made two steps forward, nothing was moving forward in a meaningful way. By "anything" I am not referring to a relationship, I'm talking about the questions I started having about this person and why I was spending so much of my mental energy and light life force willing him to be better. His is a sad tragic story, how someone becomes a shallow thinking willfully ignorant person, but that dark energy that revealed itself left a traumatic imprint on me.
It's not only the revelation of his opinions, but the emotionally violent way they spewed out. It's the first time I told a lover to **$*#&$(@!!! and hung up the phone. He texted me "If you don't want my opinion, don't ask for it". I wanted to write "I didn't ask for your opinion you fuck ass." But I didn't want to text fight. I didn't want anything to do with him. Blocked and erased immediately. Listen, I'm not questioning why I let this person into my life. He was in my life and there were some good times. I'm not responsible for him, but I can't help being scarred by that final conversation. That ultimate reveal of the true nature of a person who you've cared for and no longer can tolerate in your sphere. I'm not upset that Eric is no longer in my life. In fact, I'm relieved. What I'm truly hurt by is that someone would sacrifice love to embrace a morally warped and willfully ignorant ideology, and speak with such violent energy. That he is so closed off from humanity and therefore, closed off from true emotion. Yes, yes, I know that the human condition has both a dark side and the light side, I get that. Can you really influence anybody once the environment imprint has been cemented? I don't know. Flea writes "The racist talk bummed me out and I couldn't pretend it was okay. It's so hard when you know someone is sweet and beautiful inside, but they can't outrun the demons and ignorance of their upbringing."
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