"Depth Perception" from New York Moves April 2006

Depth Perception

We are all the sum total of our past experiences. Every relationship leaves its mark on our physical emotional and intellectual lives. Though the love may end, the layers added enhance who we are.

By Michele Zipp

I was changing the sheets and there it was, stained into the pillow where my ex once laid his head — the exact shape of the star tattoo inked just below his neck. I remember the day he got it and spent the night. Soon, we moved in together and his imprint on my life became much more than a mark on my pillow. I had noticed the spot before — so regularly in fact that it didn’t register. After our separation, it just wasn’t something I wanted to look at anymore. So the pillow went into the trash along with many other relics of our relationship. But I know that no matter how many reminders I toss, he will always be a part of my life. “Man has not one and the same life. He has many lives, placed end to end, and that is the cause of his misery,” French writer Chateaubriand once wrote. That quote resonates deeply with me. Relationships are like lives; you begin when you are with someone, and when the courtship ends so does that life. If you’ve heard the words, “You are the love of my life,” it is true, if only perhaps for the life of the time you spend with that person. After beginning my first semester at college, I met a Mid-Western charmer who moved to New York to attend art school. We found we shared a love for the same kind of music and he turned me on to Tori Amos’ first album “Little Earthquakes” at a time in my life when I didn’t even know there were men who listened to such music. In my eyes, he quickly became the most open-minded man I’d ever been with. He read The New York Times and The Village Voice, and knew about everything from the failed Kremlin coup by Russian Communists to who was playing the first Lollapalooza. He made sure I purchased 300 or above thread-count sheets for my bed and taught me about the Egon Schiele scandals as we looked at the artist’s work in the library. I read his worn copy of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road while tangled in my amazingly soft bed sheets as he lay beside me. He was the first romance to expand my intellect in ways beyond my university education. When he moved back home, he suggested I attend the university where he’d enrolled. It was tempting, but I decided that I wanted to stay in New York. Every time I hear the name of the state where he is from, I think of how my life would be totally different had I decided to move there. But my life still bears Mr. Mid-West’s imprint. Thanks to him, an artist, I realized the connection I had with creative minds. And I still check out The Voice to see what bands are playing.

Growing up, my father — a Vietnam veteran and president of his motorcycle group — was a master at maintaining a stone-face look of anger. So, to me, sensitivity was a revolting characteristic in men, until I was seduced by some poetry. The “Ponytail Poet” unabashedly expressed his feelings for me in saccharinely sweet rhymes like “I can’t express the intense feel I possess when I see you in that dress.” He wasn’t Keats, but I loved that there was no guesswork — it was all there, in print and in the puppy-dog look on his face when he spread the petals of roses all over my front porch. Excessive? Yes. But it made me realize that not all men grunt when you kiss them in public, and the good ones aren’t afraid to express their feelings. He cried when I broke up with him, and when he ran into my mother soon after, he dramatically kissed her on the cheek and said, “I thought your daughter was the love of my life.” That life, maybe. With every relationship, we give and take. Even after being burned by the worst excuse of a man out there, we can take something positive away from it. Like from a cheating and controlling boyfriend I once had, I learned to never date a guy who was a wrestler in high school, loves Metallica’s "Black" album, and only let his mother cut his hair. You learn what not to put up with, and gain strength. And in turn, everything bears an imprint, a scar you carry with pride, a layer you add. Only over time have I developed the maturity to see the amazing things I was uncovering about myself. Instead of thinking “if only” I think “because of” — because of the people in my past, I am living a life designed from bittersweet losses and victories, bearing influences and tattoos from another time.

This morning my boyfriend kissed my cheek to wake me up. I felt the slight wetness from his mouth after his lips left my skin. I smiled, my eyes open just enough to see him get out of bed, his curly hair messy and sexy as ever. I rolled over to the spot where his body had been. Laying my head on his pillow in the indent he’d left, I could smell the intoxicating scent of the man I am so in love with. Chateaubriand may have been onto something — too many lives could leave enough imprints to make a person miserable. But this is the best life I’ve known.