LETTER #46

Diane O, Psychologist and my best friend in college

“I thought you were a bitch,” Diane said the first time I actually remember speaking with her. It was at a party on the UO campus…or a coffee shop—I can conjure up both a memory of standing in the kitchen at a party with her as well one of sitting down at Allan Bros. with a couple of mutual friends. I don’t know which instance was the one where she called me a bitch, but we did spend a lot of time in coffee shops.

We were both in the theatre program and that fall quarter we were in a lighting class together. She was mysterious and quirkily beautiful with a 70s vibe. She’d wear scarves and boots and berets and she strutted more than walked into a room—Fleetwood Mac could have written ‘Rhiannon’ for her. Her smile was perfectly imperfect, the corners of her bright blue eyes would crinkle and this huge grin would spread across her face—her slight underbite making the entire expression all the more adorable as it broke through the general stillness of her face.

I was intimidated by her. She’d always sit right next to me in class. On my left side. I’m deaf in my left ear. I always have been. Apparently, Diane had been whispering jokes to me all term that I never responded to. I just sat there. Stone faced. Listening to the professor. I had no idea that was happening. For me, nothing exists on the left side of me unless I’m looking at it. I need to turn my body and stare someone in the face if they are on my left side in order to hear them. Obviously, she had no idea.

The minute she called me a bitch I was in love and we were inseparable. We’d walk around campus together, my 4’11” frame next to her nearly 6’ tall self—at least from my memory. The fact is everyone is tall to me. Anytime some guy would yell “You should smile more” we doubled down with our resting bitch faces and those boots would click harder on the pavement.

Afternoons were spent snuggling in the bed in her apartment—a power nap before heading out to class again. I’d play guitar and sing her songs I’d learned or recently written. I had a Nikon camera and we’d take black and white photos of each other in hats and tank tops with harsh lighting and wistful expressions.

One Christmas we made shortbread to give to Peter Davis, our favorite professor we were both crushing on. We’d bring Tofu Pate and apples to Stefan’s apartment and the three of us would eat them in his dining room, which consisted of a shipping pallet on the floor. The three of us dressed up as pirates for Halloween—I mostly wanted to do it because I wanted people to call me '“Wench”! I’d laugh every time.

After college we lost touch.

I graduated and moved to Portland and a year later, after she graduated, she moved to the Bay Area. There was a quick moment in time in the mid-1990s when I visited her in her apartment in the Mission District. I don’t remember exactly how we got in touch at that time, I think it was somehow through Stefan. I do remember her funky apartment full of Frida Kahlo and taking more photographs of each other. It was like falling right back into our original friendship and I got to experience some of her new life in the city.

And then we were out of touch again.

I found her online in 2014 when I was going to be in San Francisco performing a piece for ‘Mortified’. She met up with me and my partner at the time, Michael. I was just at the beginning of exploring polyamory. I don’t remember Diane being in a relationship at the time. We all went to dinner with my mom and step-dad after the show. I was looking for a new job at the time and my mom suggested I look into suicide clean up. I have no idea what indicated to my mom that her sensitive and emotional daughter had the constitution to do a job like that. Mom’s argument was that it’s a growing business and it pays well. She’d heard about it on ‘60 Minutes’ recently. Diane, Michael, and I couldn’t stop laughing.

And then we were out of touch again.

In 2018, I sold my house and bought a travel van so I could tour my one-woman show across the country. I named the van Diane in her honor. I decorated her with a hippie vibe and when I travelled, my friend Diane was part of the imagined army of humans traveling with me.

Now that I’ve moved to Northern California, I thought I’d try to find her again. It’s been ten years—just about the time we tend to reconnect.

We’re in our sixties now. Diane doesn’t know that she rode shotgun with me across this country. She doesn’t know that every time I fired up that engine and pointed myself toward the next city, she was there—boots clicking, resting bitch face fully engaged, whispering jokes I might not have heard anyway. That’s the thing about the people who shape us. They don’t always know they’re doing it.

Diane and I have been running into each other in ten-year intervals for four decades now—college, the Mission District, Mortified, and now this letter. Maybe that's just the rhythm of us. And I've been thinking lately that I spent an entire term sitting next to her without hearing a word she said. It seems like it might be time to turn and face her and fully listen—this time more carefully and for longer. I miss her company: mysterious, funny, quirky, and quietly fierce. I wonder what kind of photographs we’d take now.

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Do you have someone in your life you’d like to get back in touch with?

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