Remembering Claudia, 1948-December 23,1979

(Note: Some of you may have seen this piece on Facebook, but since not all my Substack friends do FB, I re-post it here in remembrance of a dear friend gone long ago and much too soon.)

Claudia Scott 1948-1979 (l), and me (r) in the early 1970s.

Once I had a good friend who was a poet.  Her name was Claudia.  She killed herself long ago, and we’d already drifted apart somewhat by then.  I was a rushing-out gay guy and she was a lesbian, and back then that meant separate lives.

But for a few years we were close, sharing our lives of separate frustration.  I never really understood the poet thing or the lesbian thing, and she had no interest in 1970s hot gay discos.

We met in college and after graduation shared an apartment.  We tried sex once, but that went nowhere. It was then that we came out to each other.  After a while, she moved away to Chicago – more lesbians there.  I stayed behind in Saint Louis.  Plenty of gay boys in Saint Louis, or so I thought then.

We stayed in touch, but we also lost touch.  I have hundreds of letters we exchanged, mine sent back to me by her lover when she cleared out Claudia’s  house after her suicide.  She even mailed the last card to me, waiting addressed and stamped on Claudia’s desk at the end.  It reached me after the news.  That was unsettling.  None of the letters – not even that posthumous delivery – gave any hint, at least none I detected, of what the end would be.

As with any friends, and for all we shared, there was a lot Claudia didn’t share with me.  She never mentioned thoughts of suicide, even though I did more than once.  Ironic that all these decades later, I’m the one still here, remembering.

I don’t know if her poems are good.  I’m not a good judge; I’m too impatient for poetry. Adrienne Rich wrote a blurb praising them for the slim, memorial Collected Works published after her death: “Claudia Scott’s gift was considerable …”  So maybe they are good.

But a couple of her poems have stayed with me all these years.  One, about the death of Picasso, begins:

Picasso finally is dead

in hundreds of museums

thousands of plastic plaques are finished

pictures beside them

seem to plant themselves more

confidently, solidly against the wall

they have their places now

…

the definitive Picasso exhibition may begin

…

That’s a flinty image of the mundaneness of our end, even of the famous, that slaps me in the face every time I read it.  Maybe it was a clue she planted for those sharp enough to see it.

The second poem isn’t just a clue but an explanation.  It’s titled “For My Niece,” written on the occasion of the baby’s birth – a new family member who Claudia already knew she would hardly know.  The poem begins, “My brother is a Christian man.” It ends, “For your father is a Christian man.”  In between, and between the lines, I read the pain of separation.  It was a hard time to be a family-loving lesbian with a rejecting family.  But she wouldn’t let go.  Later, but not then.

            I will be your eccentric aunt

            not often mentioned, different,

            fundamentally pleased with my life,

            kept to your peripheral vision

            but decidedly, persistently there    

            my own woman

Persistently, perhaps, but not in person.

And then there’s the one I’m in.  Yes, of course, this piece is really all about me, isn’t it?  These memory pieces always are. The title is “All Post Cards Eagerly Accepted,” and it reads:

            through the letter slot

            George Caleb Bingham’s “Raftsmen Playing Cards”

            I know before I turn it over who it’s from

            we spent an afternoon, oh years ago,

            discussing the geometry in pictures, focus

            and perspective as part of the meaning

            “The museum is open again, thank the curator

            I took the afternoon off, went to look

            at pictures, at relationships that have

            been fixed and aren’t going to change

            as soon as I begin to understand.”

            there was one of his letters

            sometime between these two afternoons

            “In each relationship exist points

            of dissolution, like land mines

            we may detect, map and avoid them

            they may be so distant they are

            no threat, simply there.”

            I still don’t agree completely

            but I do remember, draw the inference

            he counts on how well in our long

            friendship I have come to know him

            how developed and accessible

            the idea of him is in my mind

Postcards figured large in the long distance phase of our friendship: this one, turned into a poem; that last one which brought on the tears that hadn’t flowed after the phone call.  I have both in my hand now. But there’s only so much postcards can hold, can convey, no matter “how developed and accessible/the idea of” is in one’s mind.

Postcards figured large in the long distance phase of our friendship.

Claudia's "plastic plaque" was "finished" long ago: December 23, 1979. The last lines of all her poems are written - there will be no more - and mine are numbered, though a few remain unfinished.

One of the last things I wrote her, December 6, 1979, at the end of an angst-filled letter: "… but that will have to wait for another letter – which, with luck, will never get written." It can sound prophetic now, if you're inclined that way.

And the very last thing, December 13, 1979: "It's all better now – or at least a little bit. Merry Christmas. Love, Randy."

And the last thing she wrote me, postmarked December 26, 1979 – that posthumous delivery: "And Happy New Year. Love, Claudia."

That year, saw neither a Merry Christmas nor a Happy New Year, but that was long ago. There have been many Merry and Happy ones since. As I look again at her poems and letters – which take me back, and take me forward too - I'm glad to be reminded that I once had a good friend who was a poet. How I wish she were still there, ready to read the many letters that never got written.

Dear Claudia/Love, Randy