Hello friends,
I’m working on a larger piece about André Leon Talley. While it’s not complete, I wanted to share a bit with you. I’d love to hear how it lands with you, if you feel inclined.
Also! If this layout looks different, that’s because it is! I’m here at Substack now instead of MailChimp. It feels cleaner and clearer to me…which was very needed in this January of all Januarys.
As always, thanks for being here.
With love, Elizabeth
In 1994 Hilton Als profiled Talley for The New Yorker. Talley had been the creative director at Vogue for six years. He is at the zenith of his career: charming, brilliant, hilarious. Als' piece is beguiling, funny and sad.
A man who often asked "darling, are you having a moment?" or proclaimed, "this is a moment!", Als allows the reader opportunities to be an ant on the wall as we watch Talley have his. Emerging from a chauffered car dressed in a perfect pin-striped custom suit speaking rapid, impeccable French. Talley on the phone at 6 am "sussing out what might be the next big thing. Fluffing pillows at a photo shoot. But also Talley headed into an all-male naked revue, amused, amusing. Talley sulking and moody in a gay bar. Als' piece is glitteringly prescient. His moments are clues to what will only make sense much later, given who Talley became, what he shared, what he named. But one moment especially, buried in three thousand words, stands out.
Als is dining with Talley and Sandra Bernhard. The year is unclear. Bernhard asks Als how long he has known Talley. Als replies that he fell in love with Talley in Paris.
"There was a silence—...André grew large in his seat. He grew very dark and angry. And then he exclaimed, with great force, “You did not fall in love with me! You were in love with Paris! It was all the fabulous things I showed you in Paris! Lagerfeld’s house! Dior! It wasn’t me! It wasn’t! It was Paris!”
Reading Als’ piece today almost thirty years later, Talley’s deflection feels very much like a trauma response. I’m not to blame! I didn’t do it! It's not me; it's the things, the experiences, the place. I’m not to blame! It’s not my fault, Talley seems to be saying.
One of the most extreme cruelties of child sexual abuse is that children blame themselves. They believe, whether they were told or came to the conclusion themselves, that they have done something wrong. Because why else would this horrible, painful, shaming thing happen to them? They know it is not right and yet there's nothing they can do to stop it. They must be to blame.
It's not my fault.
It’s clear that there had been something between Als and Talley. And while I dread saying it, it's possible that Talley's forceful rebuttal of Als' deeply vulnerable statement put an end to whatever that was or could be. Als could not possibly understood what was behind this rejection. Trauma was not the buzzword that it is today. We were barely talking about PTSD in the mid 1990s, let alone Black boys who had experienced child sexual abuse in the segregated South.
It’s not my fault.
Als describes Talley's outburst as "angry" but to me, it reads frightened. Such is the impact of trauma on relationships. Survivors blame themselves and because the words seem too terrible or too risk to be uttered, no one disagrees. Friendships are silenced. Relationships that could have been are quashed. Denial —here Talley's words again, "it's based on, I guess, a childhood experience. I don't know what it is. I can't relate to that - or I can't think about that now,”— once a fairweather friend, can become, over time un-checked and un-challenged, a live-in companion. The only intimate we allow ourselves.
It’s not my fault.
What’s Catching My Eye:
Libraries. For many of us, not just places to borrow books or seasons of Sex in the City, but communities, third places, homes when perhaps ours isn’t what it should be. Libraries are even places where you can get Covid test kits. Libraries do it all. Which brings me to white men because, damn, they are always RIGHT in the middle, stirring shit. And now they’re at the library! Nowhere is sacred. Intimidating, sowing fear and compromising the safety of others. Do I sound angry? I am angry!
Hunger. I just finished reading Dr Keisha Blain’s book Until I am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America. (Mini blurb here.) A sub-theme might be hunger in America. People are poor and hungry, including Hamer’s family (one daughter dies of chronic malnutrition, the other is hospitalized because of it). 50 years later, little has changed. In North Carolina where I live, we rank 10th highest in child poverty. It’s approximately the same number as it was in 1969 when Hamer was doing her critical work. The story is also the same; the resources are there and yet, they are not used for the people who need it most. Once again the issue is lawmakers. It’s hard to know what to do as an individual but I am a supporter of the work of The Poor People’s Campaign. Also, reading Blain’s book for history and context is another good step.
What’s Ahead:
EMJR1.22. A resolution: no more male fiction writers this year. My frustration with men generally breathing in the world has spilled over into my restlessness with merely average fiction. My friend Bev and I swap books and she handed over a new one. No blurbs on the back, or front. Not by fellow authors, magazine reviewers. Just, an empty shiny jacket. I saw that, opened it up, read a page, closed the book. I returned to the unexpected pearl that is Agatha of Little Neon from which I remembered this line: “The world has had women for such a long time. I did not know how to be patient anymore.” New resolution: no more male fiction writers in 2022. I do.not.know.how to be patient anymore.
Hoping to hear from you. Have you made a hard inter-personal decision in the past few years? To cut off contact with a family member or end a relationship or your marriage? I’d like to hear about it. I’ve heard from so many of you on professional big decisions but not as many on personal decisions. Got one to share? Let me know.