For several years in the Seventies, Bob disappeared from public life, which is to say, he stopped going outside. He lived at that time with his girlfriend, Diane, who worked and supported him and I believe he had received a small inheritance after his dad’s passing, which provided grocery and beer money; however, his agoraphobia prevented him from actually leaving his apartment on Lombard Street. This is a letter Bob wrote to Leon Carlin, Kathleen’s dad, with whom he had been friendly since childhood. It’s sweet and pained, describing directly and obliquely, his dilemma.
Dear Leon,
Thanks very much for writing. I may shun corporeal association with my fellow humans these days, but in spite of that, I even welcome association of the epistolary kind. Yours in particular, I might add. Diane was very pleased with your fair words in her behalf, and very deserving of them. She has wonderfully softened my little neurotic ordeal. This is not, however, the result of undiluted saintliness on her part — I know she wouldn’t mind my saying this because saintliness is not a quality to which she in the least aspires; it happens that retreat and isolation are as entirely in keeping with her present need at it is with mine. She, however, is the one who exerts herself to make it work, and for that, I am not only thankful to her but to the gods who organized our earliest acquaintance!
The next thing I have put myself in the position of having to say is that neither you nor Lydia [Leon’s wife, Kathleen’s mother] (Lydia, in particular, since she is the more inclined, I think) should worry about us. Strange to say, we are in a rather decent state financially. Diane brings in money from her part-time job, and I have been helping her with her at-home typing assignments: somehow it all adds up to provide us with more than the bare necessities. Also, I should apologize for having allowed myself to get drunk and then write letters in which I indulge in neurotic maunderings. I have vague memories of some of the histrionic sentences I was guilty of in those letters and I hope you will excuse me — sometimes I remind myself of my mother! (I don’t mean to slight my mother, but it is always bad for a man to remind himself of his mother, you know.)
I am of course flattered that you have begun to mythologize me in your imagination - my supposed ability to disassociate myself from time, and all such as that, impressions which I know I have halfway tried to foster; but you would do much better associating your fantasies of the supernatural with someone like APollonius of Tyana (I know Jesus Christ is out of the question in view of your background) rather than with a silly fool like myself. If I seem to be out of touch with my time, I am sure it is only because I have been unconscionably purblind in the observing of it. Too much metaphysics, not enough nitty-gritty observation, that’s my problem. One can be too superficial; but then one can also be too profound - I use the word ironically: pseudo-profundity can be the most superficial thing of all. I remember that Karl Jaspers said (I think he was criticizing Heidegger), that the closer you come to an intellectual formulation of reality, the farther you most likely go from authentic experience of it. Not that I have come anywhere close to an intellectual formulation of reality, but I have surely spent too much time ploughing that field.
Well, let me shunt the metaphysics aside then and just tell a simple story. Last night my perfect isolation was unexpectedly violated [friends of Bob’s tell me that during this period, he often happily received visitors]. You probably know that previous to this time, Tom C (and paramour) managed to gain acceess, but Tom is so harmless a man, and I don’t mean it is a dig against him, that I can scaresely hold his visits up as anything resembling a violation of howsoever subtle a description. But last night my apartment door was vigorously pounded, I was standing there in the front room with the light on and couldn’t dream of scampering into hiding and ignoring it, and so I opened up. It was Bob Hamlet. Great of body, great of face: in fact, his cheeks wing out in a sort of sun disk from the central features. He is not what you would call obese, just round. I can remember that he was down to within ten or fifteen pounds of my own weight, and I’m not really a hulker, when we used to play handball together; but nevertheless, roiund. He is a partn er in vice, a drinking comrade, who imagines himself the victim of obscure Dionysian urges, which he at once laments and romanticizes. A man, however, of no less round an ample heart than face. He was the one who got me to the hospital when I broke my ankle last year. Not only that, an unstinting stander of drinks: I acknowledge his patronage by calling him the “Duke of Burgundy.” But last night it was difficult. He is a person to be friends with in crowded surroundings; when alone in one’s company, he tends to go on as inexhaustibly as a grandmother recollecting her childhood - always rather grave in his cups, and what he imaghines to be philosophical. He talks about his brothers, his father, his friends, his sister-in-law; and should I ever attempt in my non-aggressive way to switch the track of conversation, his voice predictably rises, and with great unconsciousness, he re-secures his hold upon the reins. And so did many an hour pass. I got very unsatisfactorily drunk.
That’s not much of a story. But perhaps it explains a little bit my recent need of isolation. I am just not much of a fighter. Consequently, I have a tendency to have very unsatisfactory social experiences. I’m a little like Tom; a nodder and a listener - but just out of cowardice and uncompetitiveness, not by choice. (Tom, incidentally, seems to be greatly improving in that regard, unless his behavior with me, one of his own kind, is not examplary.). Well, please forgive me; I can’t seem to lift myself off the psychiatrist’s couch in these letters. I hope my ramblings don’t discourage you from further correspondence, that’s all.
Bob G.
