In the Flesh

I’ve often been thinking lately about what kind of person Utica would be if he/she/it could manifest him/her/it-self into human flesh form. Like, for instance, would Utica be a clingy girlfriend who needs you more than you need her? Would she always stare at you trying to read and predict your thoughts? If she sensed that you were straying, either mentally or physically, would she try to keep you close to her at all costs? Like, would she go to great lengths to give you the best sex she was capable of giving once a week, and cook you lavish dinners, and give you gifts, and take you on little short trips to the country? And if you scoffed at these things and still wanted to leave, would she fail to get offended like a non-robotic human would, and just keep continuing to pile on the goodies until you finally gave up and realized that you needed her, you could never leave her, the two of you were one flesh and could never be twain, etc.

And if Utica is this girl…is she doing all of this out of love? Or dependency? Because if she is doing it out of love that is one thing, but if she acts this way out of dependency then – as the more responsible one in the relationship - you know there is an expiration date on your relationship.

And let’s say Utica is this girl, and sometimes she flips the tables and makes you feel like the dependent one, even if this feeling of helplessness is as vague a sensation as trying to remember a nonsensical dream from three nights ago (and lasts just as long too). But anyway, she’ll pull back her giving and tell you to go away. Fine! If you don’t want me, she’ll say, just leave! Just like anybody who is mired in a relationship like this would do, you instinctively stop. I’m not going to go anywhere, you think. I need a place to sleep tonight and all of my stuff is in this house and I would rather not pay for a smelly hotel room. I’ll figure things out in the morning. But for a second you realize what being in a relationship with this person means, that in some ways it is simbioitc even though your partner makes you feel like a Greco-Roman God who tames the sea and controls the rising and setting of the sun.

But she has other tricks to keep you on a leash as well. Like, she’ll act domineering and possessive. She’ll have a subtle way of manipulating your emotions to bring you down to her level, to make you feel as imperfect and dependent as she is. Sometimes you’ll catch yourself actually wanting to be her friend, actually wanting acceptance from this little shrew, only to stop yourself. But this girl, this sycophant, this fawning vessel of empty platitudes, has her own reasons for needing you and clinging to you, and what those reasons are you’ll never know – either because you don’t care to know, or because your intellect is so much higher than her’s that you could never understand what she thinks. So it is only and always through manipulation that she is able to get the upper hand, to make you feel a ray of hope that she can offer you something, provide something, some kind of life or happiness or escape from boredom or whatever.

But the longer all of this goes on, the dimmer things continue to look. You know better than her that your final goodbye is approaching. But as far as goodbyes go, your parting ways will be rather anti-climactic. You might just say “see ya” and never look back as you go your separate ways. But in your mind you will be thinking of the Biblical story of the destruction of Sodom and Gamorrah, when Lot and his wife were instructed by God not to look back lest they turn into a pillar of salt. God did not want them to witness what he was doing to the land and the people, because perhaps He felt a sense of godlike guilt from his actions. So it will be a dramatic walking away (for you at least), one fraught with heavy emotion, metaphor and mostly bad memories.

A few years ago when I worked at the ARC, there was a lady that attended the day program that all of a sudden approached me and asked if I would be her boyfriend. I was completely taken aback because 1. I had never seen this woman before and I didn’t know her, and 2. I don’t have easy answers for out-of-the-blue blunt questions like this. I want to believe that she had lived a hard life of rejection and dearth and she had nothing to lose by making herself look so foolish and vulnerable. On the other hand, even in her tactless world of slowness (she was retarded) I expected her to at least have a rudimentary respect for boundaries – i.e., you just don’t go up to young guys and ask them if they want to date you (she was probably in her fifties). I felt trapped because she didn’t really leave me any quick way to let her down easy. She asked me quite succinctly if I wanted to be her boyfriend stating that I was “attractive” and suggesting that we might be compatible (this latter suggestion was offered when I protested, “But we don’t know each other!”). What was even more weird was that she wanted her answer by “tomorrow,” as if we were in elementary school. She probably thought I was going to go home and think long and hard about her proposition, when in fact I watched a porn movie and then fell asleep.

This strange experience would probably have to rank as one of the top 10 weirdest things that has ever happened to me before. My brother has a list like this which involves things such as being bitten on a subway in Boston (a similar run-in with a mentally ill/retarded person), but I don’t think he has ever been asked straight-up by a dumpy, older woman if he would like to be her “boyfriend.” It just goes to show that my brother and I lead very different lives, but the intercoastal thread that unites us might be one of bizarre occurrences.

I don’t know if this woman, my would-be girlfriend, would represent Utica incarnate or not. I like to think everybody’s experience with Utica is unique, that no two people could create a fleshy version of Utica that would look exactly the same, would have all the same contours and curves and vocal inflections. Despite all the things people can agree on when discussing Utica, there is a limit to how much of a consensus can be reached. Utica is essentially what one makes of it.

But rather than creating some Frankensteinian monster out of the most relavant bits and pieces of Utica, all we have to do is look around us to see the city incarnate. Utica manifests itself in each of us, in the faces of everybody. Utica is in the hollow eyes of an elderly widow, and it is in the walrussy mustache of the mailman who brings you your daily mail. Utica is the man who douses your fires, Utica is Tony who bakes your pies, Utica is the pit bull who plays with thee kid. One does not have to go to great lengths to conceive of Utica, because Utica is right here all around us. It doesn’t get any more convenient than that!