I Hate Her

I hate her, as, I think, no other.

“Why can’t I fuck who I want?” she whines in a statement of purpose or manifesto of craving for validation masquerading as a poem — surely, it’s in lines, and steals some effects from a poem of Waldman’s that was never much more than repetitively and simplistically self-glorifying to begin with, but it never attains anything beyond a statement of that horrible, to me totally distateful, craving.

It’s a rhetorical question, because of course, quite blithely, she does. The answer, though, or one of many answers to such a manifestly selfish question, is that to routinely go marauding through other people’s relationships (this is her pattern, her script; she may as well be a robot) is to rip the social fabric, to do harm (certainly emotionally, and potentially physically) to all the parties involved (Buddha: “First, do no harm.”), and generally to rouse the sinister energies of the universe. It disempowers all. It’s a game of war, not of love. Look, I would say to her, if I felt there would be any value at all in doing so, we’ve all been hurt, tossed around, abandoned. Why do everything in your power to perpetuate that cycle? It will only come hurtling back at you with greater greater greater force, as for example, this deep, deep hatred of mine.

My hate’s not unmixed with compassion. That sounds weird but it’s true. The truth is that I’ve never met anyone who exudes pathos more palpably. And, therefore, I was always kind to her, even though I never felt any liking or affection for her, even though I thought she was a cringeingly awful writer and performer. I don’t think she could deny that I was always kind to her, as kind as I could be without getting sucked in to her whirlpool of endless neediness, that querulous falsetto voice fading away in self-pity. How he could have been drawn in to such a vortex is still a puzzle to me. Such is the nature of weakness, folly, and peccadillo, I guess.

Why, a couple of people have asked me, do you focus your anger on her instead of on him? It’s a valid question. He’s equally culpable, maybe more so, being perfectly well in possession of a delicate but powerful little word: “no.” He also gets the brunt of plenty of anger, believe me. But the fact is that I love him and he is my dear partner, my muse and companion and helpmate still — and I am coming to understand some of his motivations for doing such an awful thing that tests the very limits of my capacity to forgive. We grow, reach, stretch out our arms. Breath fills the bodies. Love! Not pure anymore maybe (my therapist says, “there is no pure love” — and actually she’s right — I say as much in _Swoon_: “We just keep opening up the same old wound.”) but love nonetheless. Take that, rapacious rapacious toxic strumpet!

p.s. May she be buried up to her neck in the metaphorical searing desert of her own making, and may the variegated stones of approbation be hurled at her for eternity.