Scott Spencer - Endless Love

I’ve been going to Boston a lot in my spare time. It started when I signed up for this course in psycho-drama, which was pretty strange to begin with! Twenty strangers from twenty separate private lives in this old former warehouse near some North End wharf, acting out our deepest feelings. Or trying to, anyhow. For me it combined a longtime interest in theater and in the newer modes of psychotherapy, two fields of study I’ve never had a chance to explore as much as I would have liked to. I must say, at the end of the course I was left with more of an interest in theater than in therapy, but then Ira Woods (the teacher in the psycho-drama course) would say that’s because I shy from the implications of psycho-drama and what it revealed about my “deepest feelings.” Maybe I am running away from myself, but I’ve signed up for two theater courses—one here at Stoughton in theatrical design, which the college is letting me take (without credit) free of charge, and the other in beginning acting, in Boston, taught by this absolute marvelous madman named Rudyard Lewis.

It’s been very good for me to shift my center a little toward Boston. It’s not New York, but at least it’s more of the “real world” than Stoughton and the best thing about Boston is I’ve met a lot of good people and have made myself a few actual, bona fide, dyed-in-the-wool friends. Mostly theater people, which I guess is limited because they’re all pretty crazy, but I’ve met a lot of people from outside the theater too. Everything from an absolutely great and beautiful woman from Senegal who works in a health food store to a fifty-three-year-old corporation lawyer who lives all alone in a fantasy penthouse, reads people’s astrological charts, and knows all there is to know about the Comèdie Française.

I got a terrific reaction on my thesis, by the way, and I’ve always wanted to thank you for that because you did a lot of the work. Some people who’ve read it have been trying to encourage me to have it published, but I think I’ll leave that particular limelight to Ann. I don’t see who’d publish it anyhow, but it certainly is a boost to the old ego to have someone say that it could be.

Ann’s publishing ventures are starting to pick up. The New Yorker bought three stories from her, all in one day. I don’t know when they’ll appear, but whenever it is I probably will decide not to read them. As I said to her recently, I’d like to see her face before I study her masks. At least one publisher has written her and asked if she was working on a novel and he hadn’t even read her stories yet. He’d just heard about them from someone who works at The New Yorker. I’m sure Ann is on her way to success. I wonder how it will affect her. I think when Ann was a proper young New York girl she fully expected the world to beat a path to her doorstep, but college and finding out how her father used the United States Foundling Homes as a source of his own personal enrichment and then marrying such a strange fellow as Hugh and getting saddled with a family, all of it combined to make her forget her girlish dreams. But I have a feeling that success will make Ann young again. She also seems to have a serious relationship in the offing with this guy who sells paper to printers. I was my usual outraged self when she first told me about him, largely because they met through one of those “personal” ads you see in the back of some magazines. It seemed very degrading and dangerous, but strange things have a way of working for Ann. I have to admire her gutsiness—I’d be afraid to even meet someone like that, just a box number and three sentences describing how lonely and eligible he is. But Ann’s used to it. She seems pretty happy with this new guy. They’re planning a trip to Europe—by boat, since the guy is terrified of airplanes. I haven’t met him yet; I figure if he lasts six months, I’ll look him over.

Keith is eternally himself. He’s been as steady as a rock for me this year, always there when I need him. He and I got totally involved in redoing his old farmhouse—with the money from Pap’s insurance, Keith bought the place he’s been renting up till now. I spent ten days on my hands and knees doing nothing but scrubbing the old wooden floorboards. Talk about occupational therapy! By the time I discovered those dark walnut floors were really bright pumpkin pine, my mind was as empty as a cup. Keith’s been such a good brother and a good friend, it’s been great rediscovering him. He’s smart, funny, and wise as an owl, and the most loyal man on earth.

Sammy continues on his march toward the presidency. He’s a freshman at Harvard now and the scourge of the Yard, I’m sure. He is so devastatingly handsome. A Greek Orthodox priest has fallen in love with him! It’s getting a little difficult figuring out just what Sammy believes in at this point. I think he’s getting too educated to believe in Universal Justice; now he talks about a Decent Chance for a Decent Life and it sounds all right but rather politician-y, too. He’s doing super well in school and modeling at Jordan Marsh in his spare time, to the tune of thirty-five dollars an hour! Last week I saw a picture of him in the Boston Globe. He was in a dark corduroy suit and had the preppiest grin this side of Groton. Sammy is the only Butterfield who has to cope with temptation. The rest of us can only be what we are and our choices are not only narrow but tend to be singular. There are no forks in our road, no momentous decisions. But Sammy can do anything. He can be a revolutionary, a liberal Democrat, a preppy, a student, a monk, a heel, and no matter what he does he’ll get applause. I suppose I do envy him, but his life has been such a constant series of choices. I don’t know if I could really stand it. He’s over- optioned, as Ann says.

I’ve had this letter on my desk and in my purse and on the kitchen table and just about everywhere I go for the past week. I don’t know how personal to make it. Knowing you and keeping myself open to experience whatever it is that happens when we’re together has meant, among other things, that everything we say turns out to be intimate. I know that I’ll never stop thinking of you. I’ve tried to but now I don’t even try. You are my past and I’ve come to realize that it’s better to have a frightening, upsetting, largely unhappy past than to have no past at all. But that’s silly, too, isn’t it? Who cannot have a past? Even amnesiacs stare at paintings. If it was only grief I think it would be easier. I wish I could mourn for us simply and cleanly. But knowing that you are locked away, even though you’re not in jail and are back in that good hospital, and knowing it was me calling the Stoughton police that put you there. It’s so complicated and my feelings are so divided against themselves. It’s like finding the black and white markers for your Go set mixed into the same messy pile: by the time you have them sorted, you don’t feel like playing the game.

Do you remember the night we went out to dinner after I spent the day with Susan Henry? I told you about what she said, how I used you to act out all the aggressions I had toward my family. Now with Hugh gone and knowing you lured him into the traffic as he walked around Fifth Avenue with his new girl, I can’t help thinking: in a way I would have wanted to do that, too. It’s very hard sometimes for me not to think of myself as the worst kind of monster. It makes it difficult for me to get close to anyone. Only Keith, because he accepts anything and everything about me. Sometimes I can be in the middle of doing something and I’ll have an image of you being dragged off that morning by the police and I’ll think it should have been me. Just as I was a part of you when we made love, I was a part of you when you caused my family so much harm. When we made love we seduced each other, but when it came time to strike out at my family, I’m afraid it was I who seduced you. I don’t want to hurt you or confuse you by saying this. But maybe knowing my feelings will help you locate your own and maybe that will help you go back into the world again, where I sincerely believe you belong.