The Collected Works of Anne Sexton

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Sometimes I feel uncomfortable sharing Sexton's poems. She wrote a lot about sex, altho always sexy love, not just sex. Erotic, that might be the word. She was a then-rare female poet that wrote erotically.

Last winter, I had one of the best social outings of my whole life. My friend Marc came over to see me in Berkeley. I made soup that happened to turn out especially well. You know how it is with soup when you don't follow recipes. With his fist taste, his eyes widened, his beautiful blue eyes, he smiled and said 'the broth is particularly tasty'.   It was.  I have made many batches of the same soup since but never achieved the height of that broth.  Sigh.

Then we walked over to Moe's. When he secretly moved to San Francisco, hiding his move from me while regularly assuring me that he loved me unreservedly, he moved in secret. I was very hurt that he moved in secret. And he wouldn't tell me where he lived for eight months. That hurt me too.  I loved him too much, though, to refuse to see him even though he had hurt me. He had hurt me other times in the past, I had let him know I was hurt and that just pushed him away, typically for very long stretches.  He doesn't seem to see that disenaging is a form of retaliation, an unkindness.  I am supposed to be hurt, say nothing, choke down any treatment he deigns to bestow and if I assert myself and squeak out "But your behavior hurts me" he withdraws more.

So it was a kind of miracle that he came to my home for soup.  In the past, he had flatly refused to come to my home, telling me he was afraid of me, afraid to be alone with me. He once said if I wanted to be alone with him, I should rent the party room in my building. How would he be safer alone in the party room than alone in my living room? And  what exactly did he fear I might do?  I had already known him six years at this point and had not, and still have not, made any sexual passes at him. What did he fear?

Anyway. When he made his secret move to SF, he sold 25 boxes of books to Moe's. They pay more if ou take store credit so he took a huge store credit. I suggested after my soup that we walk over to Moe's and maybe I'd find a book or two to buy, give him the money and he could convert some of that store credit into cash.  I didn't erally want to buy any books. But I did buy two books. The Collected Works of Robert Frost and The Collected Works of Anne Sexton.  He paid with his store credit. He also bought a bunch of books, including ones about mushrooms. Sigh again. I had asked him to go mushrooming with me. He disclosed that day at Moe's that it had been a great year for mushrooms and he described going up north to forage. I asked him "Did you go alone?"  "No", he said, "I took a friend."  A knife in my heart, that friend. Why not go mushrooming with me? What's wrong with me?  I bet her went with Her Holiness. the saintly psychotic who has neve spoken a harsh word to him, the perfect pragon he sometimes has sex with. But me? he is afraid to give me a hug. years went by without a hug. As he left after a miserable sixtieth birthday lunch this past August, I impulsively asked for a hug. I instantly regreted it. His hug was awful. He has hugged me happily, eagerly, in years past. He has aked for hugs in years past.  But this August, on that fateful last day that I will ever see him because he treated my sixtieth birthday like an irritating scheduling detail and not a milestone birthday, he put one hand on each of my arms for a second. Less than a second if that is possible. He did not actually give me a hug. It sure seemed like he was afraid to just give me a hug.