“My friend Pam”

"The Heart of the Matter," McCloud Falls, Mount Shasta, photo by Toni

November 14,2007 8:43 am, Wednesday
“My friend Pam”

Pam Travis was my friend at Antioch. We met in the middle of my first year there, altho she was 2 years ahead of me. We met because me and Marilyn and Peter had all gone to Antioch together from Jamaica High School, we were good friends in Jamaica High School. And Peter’s brother, Stephen, was a 5th year student at Antioch. His girlfriend was Pam Travis, and Stephen introduced Pam to all of us. And somehow instantly Pam and I became best friends. At first I treated her like a queen because she was two years older than me and the girlfriend of Stephen, who was a VIP at Antioch. Stephen clearly treated her as his prize. He didn’t so much introduce her to us as show her off to us. But Pam had zero interest in being anyone’s queen, we became fast friends. And the friendship remains as strong and flourishing as it ever was, which is something of a miracle I think.

And makes Pam my oldest friend, I met her at 17 years old. We were best friends from the ages of 17 to 23, which were the most confused years of my whole life, so it’s hard to want to turn my mind back to that time. I can say we were friends during my first year at out-of-town college, but first year at out-of-town college is awful time. I can say we were friends when I had my work study in Ann Arbor Michigan that year, but that was an awful confused time. I can say we shared an apt. in Manhattan the year I was 19 and going to City College but that was an awful confused year. I can say we shared house-sitting fancy apt. on Riverside Drive the summer I was 20, but that was an awful confused summer. I can say I visited Pam when she was living with her husband and baby in London when I was 23, but it was an awful confused trip to Europe.

We shared so much of the living adventure of life, but all my living adventures of life took place during that awful confused period of my life.

I got off the phone from calling her two nights ago, we had been out of touch, we talked for two hours, there was a lot to catch up on, and when I got into bed I was surprised and interested to notice there was a sweet stream in my mind. It was as if the experience of talking to Pam for two hours so intensely on phone-- altho all our conversation has always been intense, she loves intensity-- left a sweet stream coursing thru my mind. There must be something extremely sweet and extremely wonderful about Pam to have that effect on me. It would be something I would not be conscious of, Pam’s sweetness and wonderfulness, because of the extremely difficult (for me) years in which our friendship took place. And because Pam had always, right from the start, pushed the line that she was the benefee of our friendship and I was the benefactor. She always emphasized so much what I gave her, no attention was paid to what she gave me. It wasn’t till I noticed that sweetness coursing thru my mind two nights ago, that I realized she must have given me quite a lot.

Because she did the identical thing in our friendship phone call two night ago, as she had always done, she had not changed.

I used to like to do all the talking in our friendship in the past, I loved expressing myself, and Pam always gave me full interested attention and loved it. She was interested in everything I said. She may not have had a Jewish New Yorker friend before, who is so revealing, I held back nothing. This time in our phone call I wanted to be the listener, which had never happened before. I wanted Pam to talk, I wanted to hear all about Pam.

And happily she wanted to talk. A lot was happening in her life which thrilled her, she wanted to tell me all about it. But a point came in the conversation after that, when she turned that interested attention on me, and I started to tell her what I had been doing, and I saw that there is something irresistible about Pam’s interested attention. There was just no way I could not get totally excited telling her everything I had been doing. I guess we each have our forte in life, and Pam’s is the quality of her interested attention. There is nothing like it. It is an elixir. You just become thrilled telling her all about you. It is a thrilling experience, it makes you so happy, it is delectable. But I am very glad I resisted it at first and got her to tell me all about her, because I don’t think I could get to know my friend Pam at all, unless I get to hear all about her.

I did read a whole manuscript she wrote soon after I moved to Tucson, and you’d think I would have learned all about her from that. But I didn’t. The manuscript was mainly about her relationship with her girlfriend Linda over a period of years, Pam had become a lesbian. And the Pam I encountered in her book, was the same Pam I had known, I mean the same muted version of her. She was mainly reacting to everything Linda did. Since it was really Pam’s journal, Linda never came alive in her own right. Altho clearly she was the star of the story and Pam was the satellite around her. But all you got to experience was Pam the satellite.

Altho Pam is not and never has been a satellite. So it is the odd experience of a star pretending to be a moon. Which was my experience of Pam too. You knew with every fiber of your being this is a genuine star, and yet all you could experience of her was her muted satellite being. It never frustrated me at the time. The reverse. Who else in this wide world wants only from you that you be a star and shine and shine and shine and dance and enjoy in your light. Pam made me a star and I loved it.

Our conversation two nights ago really did come at the perfect time, because I wanted something totally mutual. I wouldn’t have wanted the old way, Annie shines like a star and Pam makes her shine. I really did want to hear all about Pam, get to have full experience of her. And why our conversation came at exactly the right time, is because 10 years ago Pam got together with Mary. She had fully expected with Mary, to repeat the pattern she had in my friendship with her, and her relationship with Linda. That Mary would be thrilling star and Pam would be the enthralled satellite, and the relationship would be filled with intensity sparks communication drama.

But it wasn’t what Mary wanted at all, and no matter what Pam did she could not get Mary to budge. For starters, after they bought the ranch together in the foothills of Sierra Nevadas (their moms gave them the money) Mary stayed in town working at her job for 3 years, Pam lived at the ranch alone. And then by the time Mary lost her job and moved to the ranch, a pattern had been set. Mary likes to be quiet. And altho Pam obviously likes big talkers, with tons of interaction, she could not get Mary to do it. For Pam, who only wanted her whole life a relationship of intensity and fireworks, she left her husband when that did not happen-- found herself with Mary, who likes to be quiet. And Pam, to her absolute amazement, after it being the last thing she ever wanted, found herself in a relaxing relationship. It’s relaxing to be with Mary.

She is still mad at Mary for supplying the exact opposite of what she thought she wanted, she hasn’t put two and two together yet, that if her home life is so relaxing, then she will have to find her excitement out in the world. Which she has done! What Pam has found out in the world, which she loves, would drive me crazy, just as much as living an intense talking-all-the-time drama fireworks relationship at home would drive me crazy. I am like Mary, I like to be quiet. But Pam has to take the pressure off Mary, because what she found and what she loves, is so intense and dramatic to the max, and so high energy. She has to have peaceful homefront to sustain it.

Apparently some guy decided to teach himself psychology, why people do the things they do. Why they can be exceptionally loving one moment and very violent another. He had grown up watching his cousin take exquisite devoted care of his bedridden mother, and at same time terrible violent riots had broken out in Detroit where he lived, and he wondered why humans can be such extremes. He came up with perceptions theories insights, which he then tried to put into practice, with groups, not only on an individual level but a world-wide level. He would travel around the world where warring tribes were warring, and have them all sit down together, and do his technique and they would be friends again.

This is what captured the interest of my friend Pam. There are probably 98 forms of group therapy which take place in the safety and seclusion of a shrink’s office, and which do not involve traipsing off to Afghanistan week before the war began, to make peace between warring tribes. And you get a good idea of my friend Pam’s adventurous dramatic nature, that this is the one she chose to be practitioner of.

Apparently it began when Pam and Mary met with some of their fellow lesbians in the very rural area they live in, in someone’s living room. It was a meeting and they were working on something. Towards the end Pam said “I have just learned this new role playing thing to solve problems, do you want to try it?” And they said yes, so Pam did it with them and everyone loved it. And they said “let’s have a meeting where we do this thing.” And Pam, who had just started doing this thing, was way too nervous to volunteer to lead it. And to her amazement Mary said “OK I’ll lead it.”

But a week later when it was time to have the meeting Mary refused to lead it, she told Pam she was too scared to do it. So Pam said “OK, I’ll do it for you, but Mary what would you have done if I had not volunteered to take your place?” Mary said “I just would not have shown up.” Which shocked Pam to her pants. But I understood it perfectly, I would have done the same thing in Mary’s shoes. Pam is such a courageous warrior soldier to her boots, she cannot conceive of such cowardice in the face of onslaught.

Before the meeting 8 of the women called each other privately and had a lot to say about a problem which had arisen and finally they called Pam and told her about it. Awk! This is the kind of thing I keep away from with a ten foot pole. I’m willing to put up with a little weirdness when it is thrust in my face and I can’t get away from it, but I walk a mile out of my way to avoid it. The whole world of meshegoss between people. Which, altho sometimes is interesting as gossip, sometimes is just the muck of mishegoss. Tempest in a teapot. If 8 women were involved in it, I would walk as fast as I could in the opposite direction.

But not Pam. She had zest for it. She is a remarkable woman. She actually thought, no problem, it will be an interesting challenge, I will turn this mishegoss mess into pure clear clean water of loving friendship, I will replace it with love. Which of course is not what happened. Pam claims it was because she was way too inexperienced then and she would have handled it all differently now. From my point of view only Jesus or Buddha could handle it and I am not so sure they could succeed.

Before the workshop began, and before they were going to do all the agenda for the workshop, of course Pam brought up the mishegoss mess to try to solve it. Apparently two women were friends, and one woman lent the other woman a book. The woman who had lent the book lives with her husband, who at that time had some illness which made it nearly impossible for him to get out of bed, he couldn’t do anything. When the other woman came to return the book and rang the doorbell, his wife was not there. He really tried to get out of bed and was able to get his shirt on, but he was not able to get his pants on, so he answered the door that way. The other woman was very surprised to see him standing at the door with his penis showing, and she claims he had grin on his face, that he was enjoying her discomfort. So she called up the wife to yell at the wife. The wife was enraged that her friend would not understand her husband was ill, and called him a monster instead. And now the two women hate each other, and the other 8 women are all involved in taking sides. This is the hornet’s nest my friend Pam approached with zest, to replace all this with pure love for one another.

I would have just thought they are all nuts, and I would have been very careful in my dealings with them, just talk about the weather and nothing else.

Of course it all turned into a disaster and most of the group barged out, and the ones who remained hated Pam. But Pam said she didn’t care, because the most extraordinary thing happened while she was in the middle of trying to facilitate this, suddenly she didn’t care what she looked like.

And guess what! I actually understood the experience she was talking about because I had had the same experience. I had terrible travails with Bill during my last years of living on the Lower East Side before I moved to Tucson, during the early years of starting on my own spiritual path. And I forget now which trauma drama I was in the midst of, but I had started my spiritual path, I didn’t want to fight. I don’t remember now what was going on, the nature of the drama, the story of it. I just remember where we were sitting. And even tho my living room was a tiny little room, it feels like I was sitting across from him in a big room, as if there were a whole circle of chairs, but in fact it was just him and me. And whether I had detached from my emotion or had decided to return anger with love, and was just purely loving him, I don’t know what I did, all I know was the effect. Suddenly I didn’t care what I looked like. I knew I was beautiful, and it had nothing to do with what I looked like. I knew I was perfectly beautiful and perfectly loveable and for first time I loved myself, and I was in bliss from that feeling, I loved it so much. The next day when I thought about it, I decided I had been in a state of grace.

So when Pam said “I didn’t care about the disaster because suddenly I didn’t care what I looked like, and it was such a wonderful feeling I knew I loved this thing and would always continue it, because of what it gave me,” I knew exactly what Pam had experienced, and I also knew this thing was her spiritual path.

I said to Pam “it is your spiritual path, it is such a rocky one and such a difficult one I don’t know why anyone would choose it, but you did and you love it.”

And she does love it. It is her whole life now. My friend Pam is flourishing, she opened up like a beautiful rose. She found her path.

It brings her everything she ever wanted in relationship, but you can’t have this in relationship, it would make a relationship go combust. And it brings Pam to loving herself because she said “all I want when I facilitate these groups or participate in them, is for everyone to realize how absolutely beautiful they are, and all I want in the whole world is to love everyone to death.”

And that is a spiritual path, walking into the lion’s jaw and only wanting to love everyone to death.

I have had more than my fill of walking into the lion’s jaw myself, and it has always been something I tried as hard as I could to run away from. I do not approach it with zest, I approach it with dread. But the outcome is the same. And you have to admire a girl who consciously willingly asks for it.

When the conversation was all over I said, “I am happy to hear all this, Pam, this is great. You and I have known each other a long time.” “Yes we have” she said. “And everything turned out great for us.” “We are both flourishing” she said. “Yes we are both flourishing.”

Love, Annie

Post script, I now realize what it was Pam had experienced and I had experienced too, it was the first time in our whole life, we experienced our real self and did not identify with our image. And that is bliss.