A Personal Letter to Christian Barter: "Thank you for Something Else"

by Julie R. Enszer
Poem: Something Else
Poet: Christian Barter
Published in: The Singers I Prefer (CavanKerry Press)

Dear Christian,

You must know: the world is big and complex. I'm sure I'm not surprising you here. To cope with such vastness and complexity, I've created a few simple rules for myself. I don't know how many rules there are. Just a few. I suppose, I might number them here. They are primarily about making my life (1) and my writing (2) woman-focused and lesbian-focused. I first and foremost read poetry by women (3). I first buy books by women (4). I make it a priority to devote over eighty percent of my time (5) and energy (6) and creativity (7) to women. The lines are simple. Clear. Well-drawn.

There is room for you, Christian, in my artistic life and I'm happy about that because The Singers I Prefer took my breath away. Really, I was awed and amazed. There are moments that I thought, Wow, I wish I could write a line like that . This is saying a lot, Christian, because I rarely, like less than two percent of the already limited twenty percent, feel that way about the words of a man. I mean that only with respect, Christian, calling you a man, which you are, a man, that is, and I say it with no derision.

Your books, your poems reminded me that while the eighty percent is important and fundamental to my life, I have to hold on to the other twenty percent. Not because my mother told me that men are fifty percent of the world's population. Not because so many have told me that G-d created man and woman as complement (or more crassly “It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.) Not because men are inescapable in daily life. But because I am not a lesbian separatist. Though I fancy myself sometimes taking that moniker, even though these days it is so passé, still, I am not a lesbian separatist. I want to be able to read your book, your poems. Even though you are a man [sic], I am not a separatist. I am happy about that. There is room for you, Christian, in my life, but it's limited. I don't even care if you are comfortable with that.

(Now, I must confess, I can only write such a callous sentence to you, Christian, because I don't know you. We've never met. I only know the words you have written on a page and gathered into a book. Though I feel like I know you, Christian, from that, but I must maintain the distance to say such harsh words. Remember, the world is big and complex; I must have a numbered system for ordering it, for understanding it.)

Here's my problem, Christian, I can now, finally, get down to it. I never write about poets who are not women. I never write about poems that are not written by women. Until you hooked me with Something Else. It was something else, and now here I am writing you this letter.

This is the thing, Christian, I live here in DC. I call people and complain about the weather. It is really very hot in the summer, but as you must know, it isn't really the heat, it's the humidity that bears down on you, greeting you like an unwanted heavy lover every time you step outside of a building. It smells, too, like sweaty feet and underarms, but also like the human body does after it has consumed many odd foods. Christian, you know, I am still the Midwestern girl who believes that every meal consists of meat and potatoes and possibly the vaunted vegetable, corn. Feed me falafel or curry or satay, and I'll still be hungry, and I'll know that my body is going to smell different and that others will smell it too as the humidity bears down on us all in one giant orgy. I call people and complain about the weather, the traffic, the metro; I call people and talk about the politicians I've met, but I suppose everyone does all that. It wasn't those familiar lines that made me break my rule, Christian.

And it wasn't your fever or your poker game or your friend dreaming the feeling of heaven. Christian, it was simply this: my little sister died, killed / in a car wreck, and there are people that I am afraid I won't see again, and, Christian, I thought the first time and each subsequent time I read Something Else for just a minute that you and I were having this conversation on the telephone and that you had written this poem for or about me, even though I don't know you or I can't remember meeting you, and even though I have no memory of whatever it was that I felt after making love with you, a man, because I have never slept with you or any man, but still, Christian, I thought that this was me in the poem, and I was so happy that I cried when in the poem you told me, I don't know if she will ever see/her little sister again except in dreams,/which is somewhere, I guess. I, too, think dreams are somewhere.

I also think rules are really good and important, and I am going to continue following mine. They bring meaning and limits to vastness and complexity, Christian. That is important to me.

Thank you, Christian, for listening, but most of all thank you for this poem, for writing it for me, even though you forgot the dedication, which could have been quite simply,

To Julie

P.S. The number was eight.

 

 

Julie Enszer is a writer and lesbian activist living in Maryland.
She has previously been published in Iris: A Journal About Women,
Room of One's Own, Long Shot, the Web Del Sol Review,
and the Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly. Her work is forthcoming in
Poetica and the Red Mountain Review. For money, she runs a small
anti-nuclear non-profit organization; for love, she quilts and sews and
embroiders and makes hand-made paper. You can learn more
about her work at http://www.JulieREnszer.com.