L'Histoire de Bertrand

 Did I love him for so many years BECAUSE I misunderstood him?

Herbert Lom and Peter Sellers, New York Times

Or did I understand one part of him then and another part of him now?

Bertrand, Bertrand.  Sigh.  I give your name it's French pronunciation.  But is my accent that of Gigi or Inspector Clouseau? 

Lately a memory of our time in high school has been entering my consciousness sans bidding.  In part that's because our 50th is coming up in September.  Oh, Bertrand won't be there.  Oh no.  He is far too grand.  [Hmmm...that's an interesting phrase, "far too grand."  I'll wager it's from some movie, as so much of my discourse is.] And in part because it offers me a new understanding of who he has always been, the part of him I didn't see -- the typical, member of the American professional class, married no kids.

The memory is of a Saturday night when I got to chill with his "boys" and him, watching him clean some weed in a shoe box.  I remember being around all those guys and feeling like a guy myself, in spite of the fact that I was overly aware of my big boobs underneath what I remember as a heavy sweater. (Do I have this memory mixed up with the senior year Christmas caroling memory?)  I remember being happy and accepted with my identity, albeit invisible.  But what has occurred to me is the other aspect of that memory -- how highly heterosexual, butch, and professional class these guys were.  NOT the faeries.  NOT the drama kids.

And that is part of who he is.  And if I am to treat him with love as I am charged to do, I must accept that part of him is real, too. 

So, all those times when he has chosen to use language to shame me?  All part of his hunger for normality.  Ooooh.  As part of my "therapy" let me list a few things.

1. The time he and Mom both used the same language to criticize the sexual display of a dress I was wearing to a New Year's Eve party.  Generally acting that it's okay to criticize me using patronizing language
   
2. The time we were leaving a movie theatre with some friends of his and I was so excited that I immediately started sharing my opinion and he said, loudly enough so that his friends could hear, "you don't always have to share your opinion."
3. The time he told me that at one of his birthday parties, I acted in an extreme way, even for his friends (he told me this after the fact and after a long history of him pretending to be far more radical than he actually is)
4. The time he told me, after the fact, that I'd acted badly when I stayed with his people for a couple of weeks.  OK.  Here is an issue I have not only with Bertrand.  People expect me to know the rules for behavior without fucking telling me what they are!  I did not know that I was supposed to spend time with his family...only years later did he fucking tell me that I was bad.  And probably in response to some critique I made of him.  He has EGGcellent defense mechanisms.
   
5. He has a few times criticized my drug use - he who has in the past gifted me with drugs.  Sigh.
6. He has used the occasion of one of my previous lovers' deaths three fucking times to communicate with me and remind me of my past.  "Did you see this?"  
7. Present by its absence:  any response in the past to my desire to spend time with him outside either of our dwelling places.  I don't need that anymore but I sure did for awhile, while I was still too connected.
   
8. Present by its absence:  any interest in what I taught for 30 years that did not dovetail with his own interests.
   

  But all these behaviors become clear and forgivable when I realize that he has always been haute bourgeois in ways that I am not.  He has conservative, work-focused, perfection-focused values that I do not.  My mother was wild.  She was a tamed pirate, a person raised in a violent country who knew how to shoot and ride then brought to heel by marriage and her culture.  She gave me permission to be wild in ways she approved which were not always approved by society.  I was granted permission to be different from the others.  And though that difference cost me in friendships and self esteem, the understanding that difference was okay allowed and allows me a freedom that Bertrand may not have.  

And Will...ah, Will... because of his brain, I believe, Will was always different.  He grew up physically and mentally different from the rest of his family.  He understood himself as "eccentric" and that's how he understood me as well, perhaps.  Will used to say, "We have this treasure in an earthen vessel," quoting St. Paul.   Will is a wild thing, a different animal than Bertrand.  Will's brain works a bit askew.

Ah... and now let me own my own errors.  I haven't loved Bertrand as a full person.  I never checked in to his fullness.  And I occasionally rhetorically poked him to get a defensive response.  That is very unloving. 

It is my fault that I could not accept and just laugh off his criticisms as thoughts by any person.  Nope.  I took them far too much to heart.  I took them as rejections of who I am, rejections to which I gave validity because I had been so attached for so long. 

From Enduring Mind Counseling

Why haven't I wanted to give Bertrand room to be his full self?  I'm thinking it's because of my "ambivalent attachment style" which has, in the past, resulted in enmeshment with first my mother, then Bertrand, then Will and one or two others.  I struggle with my relationships because for at least fifty years, my boundaries were either brick walls (with most people) or jello (with those whom I "loved").  One of us, I don't know who, once said that the reason we never had sex with each other wasn't the prohibition against incest but the prohibition against masturbation.  We were so close.  We were enmeshed for a long time, or at least I felt enmeshed with him, thinking similar thoughts, laughing at the same things.

I have had trouble letting that go, letting our growing difference be anything other than rejection.  But it isn't.   

Bertrand est Bertrand et je suis moi.