A History of Scars

by Laura Lee

  “I don’t know,” I replied, without thinking much about the question.

  “You don’t know?” she said, a frown on her face. I could tell she viewed me differently for my answer, though I meant little by it.

  “How would I know?” I replied. As a rule, I dislike ruling anything out. Even if I thought of myself as straight, even if the situation was entirely theoretical, “never” seemed so extreme. How could I know such a thing?

  I’d had more pressing concerns—the violence swirling around me, the untreated mental and neurodegenerative illnesses of my middle sister and mother, the void left by my father after his departure for Korea. To be honest, I’d often thought of sexual identity politics as a first-world problem.

  My philosophy is and has been simple. I love the person first and foremost. The rest doesn’t matter. The idea of love has always seemed a refuge—something precious, untainted. It is that simple, and it isn’t.

  * * *

  When I think back to my ex-girlfriend’s and my beginnings, I see the damage that can occur when you don’t admit to desire. It was only later, after we broke up, that I had emotional space of my own, to think through what our relationship had meant to me. How it had challenged my ideas of love, and of my identity.

  It began just as I was preparing to leave the city for grad school in rural Indiana. I’d decided to pursue writing against the advice of nearly everyone I knew. Doing so felt less choice than recognition: my life circumstances had long ago set me apart from my peers, even if we shared the privilege of a good education.

  I’d grown up in silence and shame around the strange circumstances of my family life, and I couldn’t reconcile it anymore. I wanted to escape the critical voices around me, who were too practical to assign worth to writing or an MFA. I wanted to escape the money-driven nature of the city. I wanted time and psychic space, to think and work.

  She was a voice of support. As an artist who’d applied to MFAs multiple times, she understood their allure. We were both restless for something new. She wanted a fresh intellectual challenge. She wanted to stand on her own as a climber, separate from her father’s shadow. She saw me first in that light: as a climber.

  She’d already left for Los Angeles by the time I set forth. We surprised ourselves with the discovery of each other.

  * * *

  On her thirtieth birthday, she and I spent the evening outside. We’d nestled our campsite between a river and a beautiful cliff band. We hoped to climb the next day. Rain drizzled on us, but still, we hung out by the fire, ate heat-lamp roast chicken and avocado slices with our fingers. I chilled a bottle of sparkling wine in the river, and we toasted out of matching Sesame Street cups.

  We’d jammed a queen-size air mattress into her orange tent, and we crawled in to wait out the weather. That night, sounds of rain drummed down on us endlessly, but when we woke, snow greeted us. White glitter had frosted the tent, the trees, the crag, the vista. It meant we couldn’t climb, but we didn’t care. We went to natural hot springs and sat steaming, instead, as the cold air bit our faces. It was April in Wyoming. We were just friends then.

  * * *

  On my thirtieth birthday, she and I searched fruitlessly, at the wrong dirt turnout, for natural hot springs in small-town Utah. That night I saw my first shooting star. A birthday gift from the universe, she said. A few days later, we stumbled upon a lamb-eating festival, in a tiny town that once communally owned a hundred thousand head of sheep. The locals recognized us after the first day. They chatted with us kindly, laughed when we mispronounced the names of nearby Mormon-settled towns, helped us understand important details of the lamb-sandwich ordering system, justified the number of lambs they’d decided to roast in the pit that year.

  She and I laughed privately, in turn, at the men who wore pink-and-white-striped aprons and drank Mountain Dew rather than beer as they barbequed. We marveled at the lamb auctioneer and gorged on sourdough fry-bread. We stroked lush sheepskins. We climbed hard each day of the festival, listening to Jeff Buckley as we drove into the crags, and then stuffed ourselves full of lamb to recover. It was July in Mormon country. We weren’t lovers yet.

  * * *

  We spent the summer together, endlessly extending our trip. We meant to write a collaborative proposal for an artist residency, for the following summer—we even sat on tractor tires together under the moon, in a random playground in a random town, taking notes on each other’s ideas.

  In moments when we weren’t working, climbing, or making things, we talked about life and love, writing and art and music, usually in front of a campfire, stars as the backdrop. This was remarkable, to me and to her—that we could share all these things. That hadn’t been either of our experience in the past—the totality of the experience, as she put it.

  The man I’d spent the past decade with and I had decided to part. We’d tested it once before. This time, we both knew the break was final. She had known he and I were on the rocks, and she gave me love advice. You should be with an artist, she told me. It’s how your mind works.

  Given she was one, I took her advice seriously.

  She’d been with the same man for eight years. At times she seemed frustrated with his lack of interest in ideas, his fear of adventure, but those moments faded quickly. I’m basically married, she’d told me cheerfully on a few occasions. Just as she told me frequently, somewhat randomly and seemingly unprompted, I’m straight.

  * * *

  On a rest day, we sat on rocks in a dry streambed, as she made field recordings and sketches, and I jotted down notes for an essay. On a climb day, after we warmed up, she belayed me on a hundred-foot climb, 5.12c, severely overhanging. The rock was conglomerate; misshapen bowling balls and other slippery protrusions stuck out. The route required nearly twenty quickdraws that jangled against each other as I climbed. When she lowered me, I landed twenty or twenty-five feet away from her, due to the angle. The climb was above her pay grade, as she put it, and so I belayed her on a different line. She made a field recording while I climbed, which she later incorporated into a track.

  The day seemed representative of our passions. I’d been climbing for twelve years—it had been a fount of happiness, my first love. I’d loved sports and wilderness since I was a child, had weight-lifted as a teen. Athletics had been my escape. I’d lived solo out of a tent, on the road, for months at a time.

  She, on the other hand, had grown up in Chicago’s rave scene. Her father had foisted climbing upon her ever since she was a child, but until recently, she hadn’t owned it as central to her own identity. She’d DJed in Chicago, Montreal, New York, LA, made electronic music now. As she said wryly, many of her friends were international techno gods. Unlike her, I knew nothing about the DJ scene, but I’d been classically trained in music, rather against my will. Just as with climbing, we spoke variations of the same language.

  * * *

  The first time I felt protective of her was in Wyoming. We were relaxing between climbs—no other people in sight, just orange-streaked limestone. We were discussing whether to pay $2 for entry to the local pool, so we could use the showers. That was when she told me about being laughed at in public swimming pools—how when she was younger, groups of children would point at her and yell things like, “Look, Mom, there’s a boy in the girls’ locker room!”

  She said this with a smile, without bitterness, while saying, lightheartedly, that she still had a phobia of public swimming pools. Had she not told me, I wouldn’t have guessed—she moved through the world without evident self-consciousness.

  I understood it as the accidental cruelty of children. But still. I could imagine the sting. I wished, for the sake of this girl in front of me—whose spirit is beautiful, whose exterior is beautiful—that she could’ve been accepted as she was.

  * * *

  The first time she felt protective of me was when we met up in Utah. I’d just visited my mother in Colorado. I tried to act normal—to suppress my hurt, as I usually did—b
ut I couldn’t. We’d rented and shared a small room for the month, with an attached sitting area, which we used as our home base. The first time we touched, she moved to sit next to me on the floor, our backs pressed against the baseboard. She reached out to hold my hand awkwardly, as I cried.

  * * *

  It was the end of our first trip. We’d been to natural hot springs together before, of course, where the atmosphere was meditative, nearly religious. But the vibe was different in the indoor hot tub of an airport hotel, plastic cups of homemade Manhattans in hand. It felt both trashy—in the way of airport hotels—and also celebratory. Politeness inevitably wears thin on climbing trips, when nearly every minute of every day is spent in each other’s company. Yet on this trip, chemistry had been effortless.

  I took off my shirt and got in first, sat down. As she descended the stairs, I remember being conscious of her body, as well as of her being conscious of mine. As she put it, there was tension. We both felt it, but we didn’t know how to locate it. We both, after all, identified as straight.

  I had the excuse of looking at her tattoos, which drew my eye. Words curved over each hip, and a husky covered nearly her entire upper leg. I was surprised, too, by how delicate she was. Her arms are whip-strong, her demeanor confident. I hadn’t seen her so exposed before. Or, perhaps, I hadn’t truly looked. She told me, too, that she hadn’t fully realized until then how good you are at hiding your body.

  We’d both been conscious of each other’s energies, when we first met, on a shared shift at work. I knew I didn’t want to fuck with you, she told me. You’re intimidating. She associated me with power, too. Yet she also told me that she could tell I was hiding, that I’d been hurt, that my spirit was gentle.

  I felt the same way about her. That though her exterior suited her—the leather jacket, the messy hair, the piercings, the tattoos—it also served to conceal. I assumed she projected a tough exterior as a shield, meant to protect a sensitive spirit. I could read her intelligence, her curiosity, too.

  We both saw through each other’s acts partially because we both did the same thing, in different ways, for different reasons—used the exterior as a way of protecting ourselves. Yet even still, we were both surprised by what lay beneath.

  She and I traveled through so many geographies that it blurred—over a third of the U.S. Somewhere along the way, we fell in love. In looking back, it felt as though we’d been attracted to each other since the moment we met. We just hadn’t admitted it to ourselves. It grew from there.

  * * *

  We parted ways in mid-August. I dropped her off in Chicago’s Union Station; she burst into tears on the train. She flew back to LA, where her bandmate had flown out for an intensive week of recording music with her and her boyfriend.

  She and her boyfriend shared a three-bedroom house in LA, backyard overflowing with avocado, mango, grapefruit, and Meyer lemon trees. They’d poured love and sweat equity into their home, in exchange for cheap rent.

  I had meant to arrive at grad school orientation focused, eager, and ready to write fiction. Instead I spent the entire time filling my notebook with confusion about and longing for her. She wrote lyrics about us, recorded them Laurie Anderson–style.

  You’re in love with her, aren’t you, her boyfriend said, able to see it before she could admit it to him. I’d be less hurt if you left me for a woman. Look, I get it. She’s a climber, she’s an intellectual. She’s all the things I’m not.

  * * *

  She and I existed outside of space—we were always travelers together, rather than rooted solidly. She had someone anchoring her. I felt guilt, then and now.

  As long as it’s not hurting anyone, what’s the problem? she said often, about her openness to various ways of being.

  The problem was, our relationship was hurting someone—her boyfriend, each of us.

  He is, undeniably, a good man. Their house was filled with love. He didn’t deserve to have his life thrown into chaos.

  The situation was a departure, for both of us. Had either of us been male, we wouldn’t have let down our guard, wouldn’t have formed the emotional intimacy that we did. Neither of us had ever cheated on anyone.

  She and I would talk for hours. He knew when we were talking. That period of indecision was torturous. We discussed every option; she wanted to find a compromise, in which we could all be happy. She wanted to love both of us and hurt neither of us—an impossibility.

  I could understand how she could love him and me simultaneously, and I also couldn’t. I couldn’t because she was enough for me, and more. The same seemed true for him. I wanted to be the same for her. I wanted to be enough.

  * * *

  Before we began, she made paintings inspired by us, based on electricity, in which graphite lines snapped and sparkled, shone with energy. The lines are dense and tangled, as our relationship was—many different forces colliding. They’re yours, she told me. I made them for you, about you. I knew what she meant, because I was also making work for, and about, her.

  In the original painting, one line sticks out, like a tuft of hair from her head. It’s in keeping with her belief in imperfection—that it’s what doesn’t fit, what isn’t controlled, that makes a work interesting.

  In real life, the imperfection was clear. I believed in solid foundations, in doing things the right way. It bothered me that we were doing things so wrongly—and yet I couldn’t walk away. With her, falling in love wasn’t a choice. It felt scarily the opposite—a force to which I was powerless. Undeniably there, in a way I hadn’t experienced before, in a way I couldn’t—and can’t—explain.

  Oddly, it had something to do with trust. We could read each other on a level that wouldn’t allow for lies. It had something to do with want, too—with seeing her desire, matched by my own.

  You never know what you might get, if you share what you want, she told me over the phone.

  The experience was new to me: of being asked what I wanted, of it mattering.

  * * *

  When we finally saw each other, there was so much nervousness. She broke up her life with him on faith. When we finally touched each other, there was such confirmation. Our chemistry was undeniable.

  The first time we kissed, I remember pulling back in surprise, turning away and mouthing quietly, Oh, fuck.

  And her saying, nearly at the same time, Yeah, we’re fucked.

  * * *

  Dating her had something to do with allowing myself desire, desire inexplicable, for the sheer sake of it. It flooded us. Everything was new, exciting.

  It’s like we’re teenagers again, she said.

  We brought to bear all the fractures we’d experienced, all our complexities. This was both our strength and our weakness: our differences from each other, our complexities, and the difficulties we’d faced. We recognized in each other something we hadn’t shared with others—the degree to which neither of us had felt accepted as we were.

  I don’t trust women as much as men, she said. Somewhat offended, defensive on behalf of womankind, I asked her what she meant. Women are way more aggressive than men.

  This sentiment horrified me. I was fed up with the surely universal female experience of being objectified and propositioned inappropriately by men. So many, including friends, seemed to see only what they wanted to see—the physical body, the exterior. I’m so sick of men, I told her. I distrusted their intentions.

  She, on the other hand, felt objectified by women. You can’t possibly be straight, she’d been told. She felt women had little interest in her as an individual, yet still wanted to sleep with her based on physical appearance alone. She’d been propositioned by more women than she could recall.

  She’d gotten used to vocally declaring her straightness, due, in large part, to assumptions others made about her sexuality. I’ve had a conflicted relationship with my sexuality, she told me. I could understand why. I could see the damage those assumptions had done. She felt she’d made a conscious decision. T
hat she’d chosen to be straight. She compared it to choosing to go through one door and closing other doors.

  This difference in lived experience fascinated me. Partially because our comparisons made clear that the question of who possesses the Gaze is irrelevant. It’s the Gaze itself, when wielded violently, that can be destructive.

  She told me later that it wasn’t just children in public swimming pools who commented on her appearance. It was teachers at her small school, who yelled at her for being in the girls’ bathroom, who told her she didn’t belong. Those sorts of incidents occurred frequently.

  By violent, I mean, perhaps, that when we vocally define others’ personhoods to them, when we essentialize, we are capable of causing great harm. Telling someone that s/he can’t possibly be straight, or gay, bisexual, or unlabeled, female or male or nonbinary, or any variation, feels no different than my mother telling me, You’re too stupid. Or my father making fun of what he saw as my chubby thighs, or telling me, You’re a girl: you’re too weak. These comments are corrosive.

  * * *

  Throughout our trips, she and I were always just two strangers passing through, too transient to invite real commentary. We often had the luxury of forgetting that the outside world existed. The only gaze that mattered was each other’s.

  In rural gas stations and the like, of course, she attracted plenty of stares. I did, too. Individually, we are both used to it—to being seen as different. Growing up Asian-American in Colorado, I received more comments than I care to recall, issued from close friends and strangers alike. Just as her presence in public spaces had attracted commentary, so, too, had my own.