Tim Kreider - I Wrote This Book Because I Love You: Essays

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Also by Tim Kreider

We Learn Nothing

Twilight of the Assholes

Why Do They Kill Me?

The Pain: When Will It End?

Simon & Schuster

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New York, NY 10020

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Copyright 2018 by Tim Kreider

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

The following selections were previously published in the New York Times : Oof (as I Know What You Think of Me), The Feast of Pain, A Man and His Cat, On Smushing (as On Smushing Bugs), and I Never Went to Iceland (as The Summer That Never Was).

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition February 2018

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Interior design by Lewelin Polanco

Jacket design by David Litman

Jacket photograph by Nina Leen/The Life Picture Collection/Getty Images

ISBN 978-1-4767-3899-4

ISBN 978-1-4767-3902-1 (ebook)

For my sistersadoptive, half, and chosen

One of the greatest gifts you can give anybody is the gift of your honest self.

Fred (Mister) Rogers

Whatever is done out of love always occurs beyond good and evil.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

T IM , our Narrator.

A NNIE , an Invalid .

Z ACH , her scorned Betrothed .

L OU , a Clown.

Z OEY , a Harlot.

H AROLD , a Rascal.

M ISHKA , a Rogue.

L AUREN , an Artist.

L ARS , her Husband .

G EORGE , a Fool.

K ATI J O , a Libertine.

L UCY , Friend and Counselor .

T.J., a Polyamorist .

K EVIN , a faithless Husband.

T HE Q UETZAL , a Cat .

M ARGOT , a Journalist.

S ILVIA B ELL , a learnd Doctor .

R OSALIND , a Youth .

G INA , an Actress .

D IANA , a Clergywoman .

F RIEDRICH , a Philosopher.

Circus Troupe, with Animals, and assorted Students and Bohemians.

S CENE In A MERICA , with an Excursion to M EXICO .

. Note to Mom: do not read.

Although I am scrupulous about sticking to the truth to the best of my recall, and am bad at making things up, this isnt to say that other people featured as characters in these essays wouldnt have different, sometimes conflicting recollections. But almost all of them have read the essays in which they appear and more or less graciously given their approval.

I have in a few cases elided or altered details in order to disguise peoples identities. And Ive changed everybodys names, except for those of public figures like Nietzsche and George.

As always, I had to keep all the best stuff out.

Say, I think if we got married you could ride the circus train to Mexico with me for free, Annie wrote in a P.S. to a postcard to me in 1998. Think about it. The cards front bore a Richard Avedon portrait of William S. Burroughs, whose shriveled visage will always be associated in my memory with my first proposal of marriage.

Annie had run off to join the circus after breaking up with her last boyfriend, who was, among other things, a unicyclist and a juggler. Id driven the getaway car when shed left all of his belongings and everything hed ever given her on his porch with a melodramatically worded note placed atop the pile. Shed answered a cryptic classified ad for a teaching position in the Miami Herald , gone in for an interview, and unexpectedly found herself working for the famous Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, living on a train with roustabouts, clowns, and hippopotami. She was actually employed by the same agency that provides teachers to child actors on movie sets; by law, all U.S. children have to have 180 days of schooling a year, whether theyre starring in a Spy Kids sequel or being publicly flung from one parent to another fifty feet above the ground, and Annies job was to ensure that the children of aerialists got the same education as their earthbound peers. She had complained to me that education wasnt especially valued in the circus; the general attitude was: What do you need with some diploma? Youll always have the trapeze. But she loved her life on board the train, riding the rails from city to city, setting up her portable one-room classroom in the dingy innards of downtown arenas. Id visited her at Baltimores civic center when the circus had come to town, where, to get to her classroom, Id had to sidle between tigers sacked out in their cages like half-ton house cats. It provided her ideal living situation, she explained: Constant change within a framework of structure. Annie had always liked road trips, sleeper cars, hotels and room service; her childhood heroine had been Eloise, the little girl who lived in the Plaza.

I took her proposal less seriously than you might think, and not only because it came in a P.S. I knew a number of people who had believed themselves, at various times, to be engaged to Annie. She was famously once engaged to two men at the same time: our friend Zach, who had a history of moving across the country to begin his new life with Annie only to find himself dumped on arrival, and Poor, Poor Ted, a very sad avant-garde composer. Annie downplays that whole episode as a miscommunication or slight overlap in timing. Zach is philosophical about it now: Annie was more excitable in those days, he sighs. She and I had nearly gotten married once, too, in the Mall of Americas wedding chapel, but this was more in the nature of a caper, and in any case we were foiled by the states buzzkill twenty-four-hour waiting period.

Annie and I knew each other and ourselves too well to delude ourselves that we would do anything other than drive each other insane if we were ever to attempt to date. We were like each others evil twins: we were both adopted, both had mitral valve prolapse, our younger sisters were both named Laurie, and our fathers had both died of cancer when we were in college. Our relationship was partly predicated on unrepentant selfishness; the tacit shtick between us was that neither of us really cared about anyone but ourselves, so around each other we could quit faking and relax. Id once watched with interest as a New York City con artist had tried to exploit Annies sympathy and guilt; it was as though he were dealing three-card monte for the blind. The only thing that reliably made her weep was the poignant theme from the old Incredible Hulk TV show.