Now that I think about it, it could only have happened when I entered eight grade – damn, I forgot I was almost 15 :). This is a classic story in my family!
So, I had to write a short essay-type paper for English class about how I had spent my summer holidays. Like 500 words. Sounds banal and easy enough right? I was best in school at English, having spoken it since I was 3 (I grew up in Romania). In fact, I felt that this assignment was sooo banal and sooooo easy, and ultimately, so beneath me, that I decided to change its terms altogether.
Around this time, I had become majorly, and only somewhat awkwardly, infatuated with Meryl Streep, and in particular with the movie Out of Africa. I must have watched it at least 5 times.
I know I said I wouldn’t go, but I wound up at the Recoleta Cemetery last weekend by complete chance. I really wasn’t going to go visit it. Everyone just talks about its castle style crypts and about Evita’s palace-tomb, so I was already a little sick of it. To be fully honest, I’ve been especially reluctant to visit cemeteries ever since I was caught off guard by the gay cruising scene which had clearly taken over both Père Lachaise and the Abney Park cemeteries. I’m struggling with my thoughts on gay culture integrating famous cemeteries in random sex play – I can see it as a protest against fake morality, and as a form of disrespect to the families of the dead, and as an expression of free loving, albeit a bit creepy. But what I know for sure is that all the horny dudes walking around and checking me out made it difficult for me to concentrate.
So for all these reasons, I wasn’t going to go to the Recoleta Cemetery… but when I realized that the EcoBici office was closed and I wouldn’t be able to get a bike until Monday, I suddenly felt deflated. The heat was really getting to me. I had to choose between going back home and visiting the cemetery, which was literally on the next block. At least this is how my brain processed the choice. It was just too hot to come up with a third thing.
In any case, I decided I’d enjoy a lot more my English class assignment if I simply retold the Out of Africa story in first person, only that it wouldn’t be in the voice of Karen Blixen, celebrated Danish author and main character of Out of Africa; it would be in the voice of an unnamed (1st person narration) male and that most other characters also had switched genders so as to maintain a hetero-normative fabric.
Let’s not dwell here on the obvious irony of how my heightened awareness of who society expected me to appear as was perfectly matched by my complete lack of awareness of who I was. My truth at that moment was Karen’s and I had a story to tell – her/my story, which I wrote down in full detail.
And Mrs Adarov, my English teacher, I thought, would be so proud – I got into it hardcore, I must have written at least 2000 words. I really didn’t hold back. I even included the story of the injury which ultimately leads to Karen’s/my finding out that she/I suffer(s) from syphilis. Not fully understating what syphilis was – you gotta remember I was 14 – I was blunt and deliberate about it: “one morning I fell. When I saw the doctor he told me I had syphilis” were my exact words.
Thoughts and fears of death and dying are everywhere. I didn’t fully acknowledge my own fear of dying until a year or so ago. But then again, I’m ridiculously unaware of myself – some things just don’t improve with age :).
Cemeteries make people uncomfortable for many reasons, but I think it’s basically because they openly display for all to see how ultimately weak we are, and how desperate to live forever – to leave at least a stone with your name on it that says I was here.
But I really think now that my main interest in Out of Africa wasn’t Meryl Streep, or my obsessive identification with Karen Blixen, or my gender fluidity. (Although yeah, ok, that certainly played a part!) Ever since I can remember, I’ve been deeply attracted by the narratives and aesthetics of death, and sadness, melancholia. The way that Meryl played that emotional pain grabbed me and made me wonder about the depths of the soul, in a way in which my family vacation that summer – 2 beautiful weeks of driving around in Transylvania, plus some more time in the northeastern part of the country at a place called Straja, and a couple of weeks at my grandparents’ in the heart of Moldova – all this tranquil time hanging out and voyaging simply couldn’t grab me the same way.
Tombstones are really intimate artifacts – I guess they are a physical representation of how we choose to remember and celebrate a family member or how we chose to be remembered when gone, should anyone remember at all. It feels wrong to show this to the world. It feels like I’m finding out things I shouldn’t know about someone dear, or catch a glimpse by mistake of a loved one in a decrepit, unflattering pose, and I feel guilty, no I feel ashamed I was curious in the first place.
Looking back on it, I wonder what would have happened had I taken my syphilis-ridden homework to school. I'm dying (get it?) to know what Mrs Adarov's reaction would have been. At the time, I was sure I’d get praised for it. And my parents would never usually inquire about my English homework… What I didn’t expect was for everything to go belly-up because one of Mom’s best and oldest friends was visiting from abroad that same week. One of the ways in which Mom and this friend had originally bonded was through a passion for foreign languages. As it happened, Mom’s friend was an English teacher at a Norwegian high school. I honestly never knew (I don’t dare to ask :)) if it was serious concern or Mom just wanted to show off to her friend how well she brought me up and how great my English abilities were. All I know is Mom wanted my homework so her friend would read it and comment on it. I was reluctant, because I knew my parents didn’t appreciate innovative approaches to executing homework. In the end I had to show my work.
Obviously, the homework was labeled wholly inappropriate. I had to rewrite it, only this time the real, happy (and a bit boring) story of my actual holidays, and my work was double-checked. This time by Mom directly, her friend wasn't involved again. What bothered me the most, though, was that in the aftermath, no one even commented on how great my written English was or how far I was willing to go to actually enjoy my school assignments. All everyone could focus on was the syphilis.
This is Part 1 of 3 of the Recoleta Cemetery gallery. This is my confession: I didn’t have a farm in Africa, I couldn’t find Evita’s tomb, but I was here. Also, Argentine boys either have more respect or more creativity than to use the cemetery for frolicking.