TWENTY YEARS

 

Photograph by our dear friend Domi Shoemaker, 2014.

The very first emails we sent to each other, exactly twenty years ago. And how we continue the conversation today.

DECEMBER 12, 2003

Gigi: Hi--I'm a member of the Rufus Wainwright message board. In which I go by circusgirl. Anyway, I was in Portland recently on a visit and made it a point to stop by the Froelick to see your exhibit. Wow. I just wanted to say you're quite a talent, in both aesthetic and content. I really enjoyed seeing your pieces in person. They're so lush. When I peeked at the Big Venus on the website I thought it was done in oils. I think my favorite pieces are the Castor and Pollux and the Toilette of Medusa (hope I'm not mis-stating the titles). The Medusa I love for so many reasons. It's so beautiful, but the idea behind it, the significance, just goes in so many layers. If I'm not being unclear. I love the paradoxes--the mythos/mythos, man/woman, good/evil, ugliness/beauty. Very cool. Castor and Pollux I thought was just so pretty and poignant. But I liked them all. Forgive me for sounding silly, but I just left impressed enough to feel the need to call upon you and gush a little.
Hope you get your wish.
GiGi

Stephen: Thanks so much for your e-mail. I love hearing what people have to say about my work. I do my little paintings, all alone at home, and then - bang - they're out there for everyone to see and interpret for themselves. They're so specific to me and my life/experience, but it gives me such pleasure to have people find other storys [sp] there.

All that, and I just saw RW last night, in concert for the first time - and met him after. He was so amazing; I can't get over it. And I'll be seeing him in Seattle on Sunday...!

Thanks again for your thoughtful words.

SteveO

*

DECEMBER 12, 2023

Stephen: If your Aunt Kathy hadn't given you that Rufus Wainwright CD, and if I hadn't stayed up late and accidently seen Rufus performing on David Letterman, and if we hadn't both become fangirls at pretty much exactly the same time and hung out on his message board with all the other fangirls, and if I hadn't said something on there about my upcoming art show, and if you hadn't come to Portland to visit that same Aunt Kathy, and if you hadn't found a way to see my show, and if you'd never had the idea, the compulsion, to send me that "fan letter", that first email, WE WOULDN'T BE HERE TWENTY YEARS LATER. I'll never get over the - impossibility - of us ever finding each other. And the bridge, the final link that made all those ridiculous coincidences add up to anything at all, was your bravery in sending that email.

Gigi: I remember at the wedding you said, "No Kathy, no party." It occurs to me, too, speaking of the ridiculous coincidenceness of it all, that the whole stack of serendipity would have fallen apart had I had the chance to see Strangers on a Train. My trip, with Mom, to see Kathy was pretty much us hanging out at the house, eating, and going over to visit with Heather and family. I loved all of those things but wanted to have just one other experience to take away from the trip. One thing to get out and do. I told Mom and Kathy I'd read about the art show and maybe we could go see it, but they were more interested in staying in. I saw that Strangers on a Train was playing just down the street at Cinema 21, and I thought, great! That can be my thing. I can walk down and see it by myself. I think that had I gotten to see the movie, it would have satisfied my little goal, and I never would have gotten to the gallery, but when I walked down to the theater, it was closed. And then, really, the other bit of serendipity was that I got car sick. We decided to take a drive and get some lunch, and that would have been it, but I in the back seat (and with Kathy driving in her bat-out-of-hell way) was queasy by the time we stopped to eat. Oh! And then we couldn't find parking, I think. Kathy wanted to stop at some place that was like a food court but in a storefront downtown, and she couldn't find a place to park. And I looked, and there was the gallery. I said, how about you drop me here and I have a look at the art show, you find parking, and by the time you come, I should be feeling better. And that's what happened.

Stephen: So, we need to watch Strangers on a Train tonight, don’t we?!

It’s hard to remember how we were, who were at that moment, that instant you hit send to that first email, the instant I began to read that first email. We’ve both told, at various times, the story of how you were stuck in a marriage to someone you didn’t love, that seeing an art show – something different, anything different – was a thing you could take for yourself, just you, something to help you endure the sadness and boredom of a situation you felt there was no way out of.

But who was I when I read that first email? Where was I? I guess, as far as love, the idea of a romantic relationship, I was nowhere. Floating. Comfortably hopeless. Comfortably alone. The way I’d been since about the age of twenty-two, when my only other relationship had ended – a very toxic relationship – and there’d been nothing in between. It’s a long time between twenty-two and forty-five. I didn’t have a chance to learn how to be the half of a couple, to learn how a relationship works; I’m so grateful you’ve always been so patient with me. But I think I was ready, actually. Maybe a year, two years before that email, I’d been in love for the first time in more than twenty years. Untold, unrequited. And when he moved away, I was heartbroken. Such a ridiculous and overused word, but that’s what I felt. But if I hadn’t been broken in that way, I don’t know if I could have been ready to love you, to be loved. Because that love I had felt, that breaking, opened something in me that had been closed for so long. So that’s what I mean when I say I think I was ready.

Gigi: It's interesting that you say that that unrequited crush (does it belittle it to call it a crush?) is what made you ready. Because it was you telling me about that, and letting me read the unsent letter you wrote to him, that I think turned our penpal thing into something crushy for me. The way you wrote about what you felt about him, the lovely words and the ache in it, the story of it. Up until that, I think for me our back and forth was about the excitement of getting to talk about interesting things with an interesting person, the fun of learning about someone (learning about someone like that, penpalling like that, is addicting and one topic leads to another, leads to another, and I so needed that conversation at that time), but the intimacy of your letter to him sparked something for me. Well, your paintings sparked something too, that very first time I saw them, but I wasn't paying attention to that as we chatted...

(You had to know I'd be all for watching Strangers on a Train, of course.)

Stephen: Of course!

And, yeah, it was definitely more than that with him, so maybe crush isn’t the right word.

And maybe neither is your “crushy”? Haha! But, really, I think the openness we were willing to share with each other so quickly – it was some sort of instinct, I think – was what gently walked us toward something beyond being just penpals. And made our eventual twinned admissions of what we certainly did call a “crush” later, at that midpoint in the emails, inevitable. Even though our present life circumstances were so different, we arrived at our inexplicable friendship wearing – just like they say – our hearts on our sleeves. It’s like the machinery of the thing was already set before the first email. But, really, it was all so random. And I know that neither of us had any conscious thought that we were heading toward a romantic relationship, that that was anything either of us even wanted, that things would quickly lead to that. But the crazy miracle of it was that we fit together so well, our peculiarities responding so precisely to the other’s peculiarities. So once we found ourselves in that completely unexpected place, it just had to be what it became. We just had to be what we became.

Gigi: That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? What we became. When you suggested we mark this occasion by sharing the old emails, I cringed because… there’s a way I don’t like who I was back then, so dorky and self-conscious and trying so hard to seem smart and sophisticated. Honestly, my first reaction to your idea was shame because I didn’t want to feel who I was back then. But this exercise isn’t about who we were but who we became—because of each other—and that’s better.

We became better. More tolerant, more willing to compromise, more open. I’ve become more confident because of you, a better person, I’d like to think, because of being with you.

And what have we done in these twenty years since my first dorky, self-conscious, trying-to-seem-smart-and-sophisticated email? Produced two books together, attended art openings and readings, supported each other’s creative careers, performed as a mother-daughter singing duo (as married couples often do), bought a house, beautifully decorated that house (well, mostly you did that), cared for two dogs and one cat, made and shared many friends, laughed, fought, grew, frolicked naked on Bayocean Spit, necked on stage at the Portland Opera, stood together through some very hard times, paid the bills, did our jobs, stuffed our faces and watched movies, wrote emails and more emails.

And here in this, another email, that I’m sending to you before we get together to stuff our faces and watch a movie, I want to say, here’s to the next twenty years of learning and becoming, of emails and regular life.