We were roommates for a while in the mid-eighties; she was twenty or twenty-one, was at least four years younger than I was, had studied modern dance at the North Carolina School of the Arts. She had come to NYC hoping to perform and study dance with the Martha Graham Company, or with Merce Cunningham. Alvin Ailey, too, maybe? This aspiration seemed like a stretch to me given her basic physique (she had very, very large breasts in yet another entertainment segment that prizes women who are boyishly thin to the point of emaciation), but hey – what did I know? Not a lot, especially at that stage in my life.
I do remember that her mother had some form of cancer, and had for many years by the time we met; over the next fifteen years, during and after the period in which we were roommates, and then close friends, her mom would have almost every type of cancer known to woman: breast, ovarian, cervical, uterine. I know, ultimately, she succumbed to her long string of illnesses, but that was after we’d fallen out, stopped being friends.
Her name was Kimberley, with an extra ‘e’. She had a series of waitressing and catering jobs, as I recall; we weren’t roommates for long, but Kim was a smart, sweet person. We talked endlessly about life and therapy and men and boyfriends and family stuff. Her mom’s illnesses meant she was often stressed and in tears; we shared many secrets with one another. I have never forgotten that Kim’s first sexual experiences – her first time(s) – were rape, two painful, coercive encounters at the hands of a star football player from her high school, a size-able seventeen or eighteen-year-old white boy who tied her to a tree in the woods, and then to her family’s kitchen table, establishing what would become a pattern of abusive relationships. She told me that she thought, for years afterward, that those experiences were what sex was, that being tied up and raped at fourteen or fifteen with kitchen implements and other objects by this universally admired athlete was normal. She relived these rapes regularly in her dreams, nightmares of her past. Despite this, or because of it, when we met Kimberley was very naïve and unsophisticated about people, men especially, and their motives, and continued to be throughout our relationship.
She never let me forgot how I went ballistic when she ate a grapefruit that belonged to me. It was not that she ate something that was mine (although that didn’t help), it was that the grapefruit was all I had to eat in the house, period, for my breakfast/lunch the following day, and that we lived on the 5th floor of a walk-up, 3 blocks away from a grocery store, 10 blocks away from one that was decent, where, peeling a grapefruit, you wouldn’t find rot inside. It was night, I was tired after spending a day running around NYC, and, as was very often true during this time period, I was broke. My family, unlike hers, wasn’t sending me checks every month, checks that subsidized her entrée into the metropolitan dance scene. We never talked about money, the specifics, I just knew when the checks came in, because she would spend, spend, spend.
She eventually moved out, but we remained friends, although I recognized that the relationship was probably too uneven to be lasting, perhaps. Perhaps. Her mom’s illness – the constant subtext of fear that surrounded that on-going issue, and potential loss – added to her childlike quality, which meant I was often called upon for hugs, advice, and assistance. It made me happy to give her support; I enjoyed feeling like her big sister for although I am an actual big sister in real life, my younger sister has most often treated me like I’m next level nuts so, not very rewarding. Fast forward a decade, when I encouraged Kim to buy an apartment in the co-op building I lived in; she did so, making what would be a life changing investment in herself and her future. I even lived with her again for two or three months in-between the end of my final rental lease and closing on my co-op. And, at least eight years after starting, she finished her degree at Hunter College, a project I told her was also worth the effort in potential opportunities and wages. She in turn hooked me up with my brief but pungent Broadway souvenir selling gig.
A quick search on line tells me (we haven’t spoken in at least 30 years) she continues to work in the souvenir ‘merchandise’ space. Good on you, girlfriend. She had more crushes on more rock stars than, as my dad would say, you could shake a stick at. Not my bailiwick. She owned a pile of tee-shirts and baseball caps in that co-op apartment that reached the ceiling. It was – well, overwhelming to me and very much her. After the 60th rock tee or cap, or key chain – why do you need more exactly? But then, I always was a kill-joy.
She adopted a Rottweiler named Max; when her relationship with her boyfriend at the time turned abusive (shocker!), she left Max behind with the boyfriend. Within months Max, who I had helped train and really loved, was dead at only two or maybe three years old. It still makes me shake my head, wondering how she justified leaving that beautiful animal with that asshole, but, in the end, she was not just childlike, she was a thirty-plus year old child, a magical thinker, with a pattern of running away to North Carolina, to NYC, on the road for a decade or more at least with various rock bands all over the country and world, leaving everything and everyone behind to get by, blow up, or die on their own. It is said that often people freeze emotionally at the age of their abuse, so I recognize with all she’d been through that parts of her were trapped, stuck in her past as we all are to some extent. Still. Don’t leave your babies, including your fur babies, with abusers. He was such a sweet, lovely soul, that Max. So was she, in her way.
Because the universe is so small, about a decade ago I ran into her ex-boyfriend – the abuser and dog killer – at a luncheon I attended at an east side hotel for a friend’s father’s charitable foundation. He was a cater-waiter that day, sharing with me that he was living in Jersey, with his girlfriend or wife and newborn son; at first I didn’t recognize him when he approached me with a tray of drinks. It was one of those weird encounters that happen in life because the universe has a sense of humor. I hope he is well, I hope they’re all well, and I really hope (I didn’t ask) that he is sober now, and a good father to his child. We live in hope.
Kimberley still lives in the apartment I encouraged her to buy. At least, I think she does. May the whole world know peace, and healing.