Audri. That’s who she was to me. Never Audre or Audrey. She was my Audri. At least for a year and a half she was. When she told me of her plans to write about us, I asked only that she remain truthful about me and our relationship. Upon my initial reading of the book, I was furious that she hadn’t. I’m not the monster she portrayed me to be. Nor was I ever. I loved Audri. So very much. She and I were compatible to a fault. We understood each other without words. We shared our poetry, our visions, and our lives. But in telling my story, I’ll do as Lewis Carroll would suggest, begin at the beginning, keep going until I reach the end, and then stop.
She was accurate in the portrayal of our meeting. I remember when Ginger first began to tell me about Audri. I was immediately enamored. Just coming off of electro-shock I’d lost the small shimmer of hope that I’d had before treatments. They call me schizophrenic. Classified as such due to my “break from reality” and “poor emotional responsiveness”. I disagree. Depressed? Probably. When asked, I tell people that prior to the treatments it felt like there was a darkness that covered me like a huge bushel basket. But there was always a small light deep within the bush that seemed to be just out of reach. After electro-shock, the bush remained but the light was gone. Along with my memories. Maybe I did have a break from reality. But all of the best minds do. My relationship with Audri is the best proof I can provide of my emotional responsiveness. The first time I spoke to her on the phone, at Ginger’s insistence, I remember the obsessive desire to meet her. We made a date at Page Three. The exact moment I began to fall? When she noticed my gambling pants. Not many people notice those things.
Our courtship went how she described it in her book as well. It was a quick fall. I wrote her letters that came from the deepest desires of my heart because with her I kept no secrets. She knew I was looking for myself. She knew how it felt to lose Naomi. I sometimes thought her to be quite mad also. Audri made me feel comfortable in leaving my treatments. Talking and spending time with her was the only therapy I felt I needed. On that New Years Eve in 1954, I knew I was going to give myself to Audri. She was my love and if her vague message of “Having rocks in her head” was any implication then I was hers as well. On January 1st of 1955, we made love and so began our life together.
It was wonderful. I split my time between Stamford and New York, my family and Audri. I would rent a room at the YWCA (to avoid her roommate) and we would spend our weekends immersed in each other’s bodies. After the incident with Rhea finding us together on the couch, and subsequently moving out, Audri and I decided to move in together. It was a gradual process because I was scared. I was leaving behind a job and my family for a young love. Maybe that’s why we faulted. Maybe we moved too fast for our relationship to keep up. But those nights we spent observing bars and those mornings scouring streets for people’s trash that we just knew we could fix up…those were the moments when I knew I made the right decision.
I guess you could say the decline in our relationship started with Lynn. She was our siren, the kryptonite of our foundation. I felt I was in the wrong for wanting her. When Audri expressed the same thoughts though, I felt an immense amount of relief. I had written about my desire for Lynn. About the hope that the three of us would be the start of a revolutionary style of living for our community. At first it seemed to go wonderfully, we shared in mental and physical emotions. But Audri always came first to me and I to her. That’s something that Lynn must’ve felt, which is probably why she took all of our money and left. That was something that was hard for both Audri and I to come back from. Audri became withdrawn. Barely speaking. She started therapy and went back to school. It was about this time that I began to realize what was happening.
I had done nothing of importance since coming to New York. On New Year’s Day, my one year anniversary with Audri, I unintentionally put the first nail in the coffin of our relationship. As we lay in bed after a long day of fellowship with our friends, Audri and I wrote our daily thoughts in our notebooks before exchanging them. I don’t remember what was written in hers because I was so focused on the pain in her eyes as she read mine. I had written of our accomplishments in 1955. On Audri’s side was her new job, starting therapy, going back to school and sending out some of her poems. My side was empty. I was holding Audri back. I was nothing next to her. She was so ambitious, so hardworking. All I could do is sometimes cook her dinner or sometimes write her poems. I was a parasite in Audri’s life. And that was something I no longer wanted to be.
When Toni came into our lives I started to feel I was worth something again. It was similar to my feelings for Lynn but these were my own, not shared by Audri. Toni and I spent lots of evenings together. I didn’t like to be alone and Audri was at school until 10pm, four nights out of the week. I had a hard time feeling like I still meant the world to her. Toni made me feel special. When I felt that I was near acting on my impulses with Toni, I approached Audri about the possibility of my having an affair. I remember entering the room with only the hope that she would express some form of jealousy or unhappiness at my request. When I put on my fake face of excitement and joy and asked her bluntly “How would you feel if Toni and I slept together?” contrary to what I desired, she looked almost elated at the fact that I asked. She never gave me a definitive answer just smiled when I told her that I had not yet climbed into bed with Toni. It was then that I knew that our relationship was unofficially on the downfall. Since Audri no longer cared for me, I looked for love elsewhere.
First was Jill. An old friend of Audri’s, Jill let us use her father’s typewriters to type our poems. The big event happened in May. After walking home from Jill’s father’s office to our apartment, Audri went straight to sleep leaving Jill and I up alone. Nothing was supposed to happen. But as Audri rejuvenated ten feet away, I expressed my discontent with my current relationship. It started with Jill comforting me and progressed to…well, Audri was correct in what she heard. I felt terrible about it. But Jill was there. Supportive and reassuring. The next day neither Audri nor myself said anything about it. However, we both knew that she knew. We made love for the last time shortly after that night.
I’m not sure exactly when I fell out of love with Audri but Joan made me feel things that Audri no longer did. At this point the hallucinations had returned and I was trying hard to keep them from Audri. I was barely eating simply because I often times forgot to. I didn’t care much about my appearance anymore. And Joan wanted to be with me regardless of this. Audri and I never officially broke up. It was just an unspoken understanding. I began to spend more time at Joan’s. Sometimes I would look down onto the street and see Audri pacing back and forth in front of the apartment. My heart broke for her but I didn’t know what to do. Every time I was in her vicinity, she cut me down with her words and I just stood there and took it. I knew I was hurting her but I couldn’t stop.
When Joan left me I fell apart. I should’ve known I wasn’t good enough for her. She left behind a swanky , classy apartment and woman just to dally around with a failure of a psychotic who can’t work or even remember a good chunk of her life. It was too good to be true. Out of women to comfort me, I turned to the next best thing…liquor. I drunk myself into a stupor every night to help me forget the shambles that my life was in. I didn’t want to remember anything so I burned everything. Sometimes as I sat in bars, head held in my hands and vision blurred, Audri would come take care of me. After awhile, she stopped. But I couldn’t blame her.
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