I always knew she believed those things that she never said. There were signs. There was a dinner party for twelve at my apartment with H2 (husband #2) in the mid-eighties, and AIDS was just becoming a dinner party topic. The left-wing international set around our table were all talking about the horror of it and the long-term possibility of the annihilation of those we love. You had to have been a thirty-something during that time to understand the enormity of it and the terror and sadness it left in its wake.
We were all getting up to go to the living room, and there was a moment of relative quiet, and my old roommate and best friend said, “Well, the gays are getting what they deserve. It’s their punishment for being gay.”
Silence. Everywhere. Everyone. Silence.
H2 looked over at me as if to ask, “Your friend? Are you going to take care of this?”
I was born in 1953, and as a girl, I had “the disease to please”; that is, I was taught never to be confrontational. I said, “I’m sure you don’t mean that. Freshly squeezed orange juice and chocolates await us all in the living room.” I really don’t know if that is what I said. The truth is, I’m not sure I ever said anything to her about what she said. But I didn’t see her for a number of years after she said it.
History matters. And we had a long history. We were roommates in the ’70s, and there were signs of her bigotry then too, but I ignored them.
Overlooking those details was easy. We shared an apartment in the ’70s and both worked at the United Way of Tri-State, rising to VP status (when women were not VPs) and painting our living room Grecian Rose, which anyone observing from the street would say made it a bordello window-scape. We laughed. We cried. We bought candy at Gimbels on 86th and Lexington and kept it in jars all over the living room. We watched Charlie’s Angels on Thursdays, eating ice cream and commiserating. We had the foundation on which generations of friends sprout.
The years passed.
Then Obama was elected president. My friend and her sister came once a year to stay with me on the Cape, where I summered, and the tension was palpable his last year in office. One night, after she’d had a few, her sister explained to me that Obama was personally buying all the ammunition in the country so that those who wanted guns—who had the right to them—would have no bullets to use.
“Where did you hear that?” I said. “I need to call you on this one. You cannot believe that what you’re saying is true.”
“I heard it on the radio. I don’t remember which program, but I know it’s true.”
It got heated, with my BFF taking her sister’s side, and I went to bed angry and sad and regretful. Regretful, you ask? I was upset about what the harsh words we’d spoken to each other that night might do to the equilibrium of our forty-year friendship.
Over the next years, as Trump came to the forefront, it became harder and harder to resolve the disquiet I felt around her, and I’m sure the same was true for her. To be fair, I’m sure she would say I was too strident in my point of view. Too “loud.” I’ll own that. And I will always try harder to be softer in my debate. But I don’t compare it in my mind to those pretending to be God-believing Catholics who really abhor people of color or the huddled masses yearning to be free… and don’t even start with those who need a leg up from the government.
But it wasn’t just her. Pressure from family prevailed. “Don’t rock the boat by having the conversation at family events,” said everyone except me. To me, it’s like living with a Stepford Wife mentality—there is an elephant in the room that no one was addressing. And the scary part is that the elephant wasn’t just sitting there taking up space like Uncle Fred’s drinking; the elephant was stomping on everything that made the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance my favorite part of the day in elementary school. And I kept waking up in the night (literally) with images of Germany in the ’30s, when everyone was saying the same thing: “No one will let these people come to power.” Well, how did that work out in the end?
And now here we are. Truly a terrifying moment for so many. Social Security on the table. Health care? Don’t even go there. Taking away citizenship even if you were born here. Good God, where are the people who should be standing up in the hallowed halls of the government I thought I loved?
I’m surprised I can still laugh and listen to fabulous stories. I still love movies and television and books and my amazing daughter and her brave, fabulous life. It’s not that I want to stand on a corner only talking about politics and what is happening to our nation. That’s not it at all. But I don’t want to avoid all conversation about what is happening to the country I love so much.
And, truth be told, this is not looking at friends saying we differ on political policy. This isn’t policy. This is adding to the rich on the backs of the poor and nothing else. This is taking away the rights of others so ‘white men’ can continue to control us all, as they did for a long time. This is war. This is a moment of fight, not flight.
So, that’s it. Some of my friends and I are no longer friends, and actually, I think I can live with it. My BFF and I haven’t spoken since Trump was elected president—the first time. And others are not on my call sheet. I’m ignoring them, actually. Since the election, my circle is getting smaller, but tighter, which makes me grateful. I have to do that right now so I don’t explode. I can hope that one day we will all meet again and maybe have our first honest conversation about what we really think about each other. Maybe not. Either way, I know that in this moment, in this country that I care so much about, it is not the time to sit back and be silent.
So here is to circles of collaboration that want the same thing for us all. Equality. Freedom to be ‘me.’ And, caring for others who call this country home.
- Christine Merser
For almost 60 years I have carried the guilt that I never (properly) responded to a neighbor of mine in Sag Harbor who made a disparaging remark to me about someone's ethnicity. Instead I just looked down and muttered something unintelligible. I had thought he was a friend, and I suppose he was, but I allowed that friendship to mute me when I should have rebuffed him. He's dead now, so in a sense, my circle is smaller. But not because I did the right, honorable thing.