![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Phyllis Shakespeare
Sep. 11th, 2025 09:11 amOut of the blue, Phyllis Shakespeare texted me yesterday.
Phyllis Shakespeare is someone who was just incredibly kind to me during the very bleak period of my life when I was living on Long Guyland. (Ganeshopolis, Brian used to term it on account of the concrete elephants decorating the fronts of the houses occupied by New Hyde Park's large Indian contingent.)
Kind and supportive. Phyllis would take me out for restaurant meals, buy me clothes, take me to museums. But more than that, she would reiterate: This is temporary. You are going to get out of this.
I was living at the time with a woman who just absolutely hated me. I felt like Sara Crewe in A Little Princess!
She hated me for a host of complicated reasons that basically came down to the fact that even though I was absolutely destitute, I commanded more attention than she did in her circle of friends.
It was a hard situation.
I was working on not being destitude! I had a plan!
But in the mean time, I had no money, I was constantly late on the rent, there were sometimes still tiny fragments of food on the kitchen counters I washed.
I was grateful to this woman, you understand! She'd offered me a place to jump to when I wanted to leave Ithaca.
And I understood that rent ought to be paid on time, that kitchen counters ought to be clean.
So it was very easy for her opinion of my general worthlessness to become my opinion of my general worthlessness.
Phyllis was one of the few antidotes to my general worthlessness. This is temporary. You are going to get out of this.
Brian was another.
###
After I joined AmeriCorps Vista and moved up to the Hudson Valley, Phyllis & I became Facebook friends.
And then I woke up one morning, and we were not Facebook friends.
Had she blocked me because I'd spouted some thought that was absolutely awful? (Even more awful because I had no idea what that thought might be?) Or had she canceled her FB account?
I had no idea.
And online etiquette is such that I couldn't call her up & ask her.
###
Anyway, this was more than 10 years ago. Ten years in which I clawed my way all the way back into the middle class (with the credit rating to prove it!) I'm still kind of iffy on the kitchen counter front, though.
Hi Patrizia … don’t know if you remember me but I remember you, Phyllis texted.
Of COURSE I remember you, I texted back.
And we spent half an hour texting back & forth.
I hope we get together soon, she kept texting, and since that is unlikely—Long Guyland is a long way from the quaint & scenic Hudson Valley especially for me since I won't drive anywhere near New York City—I had to wonder what on earth had inspired her to reach out to me. A cancer diagnosis? A heart attack? A stroke? She was clearly assembling all the characters for the last scene in the movie, the way Fellini does in the final scene of 8½.
Anyway, I kinda want to do something for Phyllis. Send her something. But what? Flowers seem so... funereal.
Phyllis Shakespeare is someone who was just incredibly kind to me during the very bleak period of my life when I was living on Long Guyland. (Ganeshopolis, Brian used to term it on account of the concrete elephants decorating the fronts of the houses occupied by New Hyde Park's large Indian contingent.)
Kind and supportive. Phyllis would take me out for restaurant meals, buy me clothes, take me to museums. But more than that, she would reiterate: This is temporary. You are going to get out of this.
I was living at the time with a woman who just absolutely hated me. I felt like Sara Crewe in A Little Princess!
She hated me for a host of complicated reasons that basically came down to the fact that even though I was absolutely destitute, I commanded more attention than she did in her circle of friends.
It was a hard situation.
I was working on not being destitude! I had a plan!
But in the mean time, I had no money, I was constantly late on the rent, there were sometimes still tiny fragments of food on the kitchen counters I washed.
I was grateful to this woman, you understand! She'd offered me a place to jump to when I wanted to leave Ithaca.
And I understood that rent ought to be paid on time, that kitchen counters ought to be clean.
So it was very easy for her opinion of my general worthlessness to become my opinion of my general worthlessness.
Phyllis was one of the few antidotes to my general worthlessness. This is temporary. You are going to get out of this.
Brian was another.
###
After I joined AmeriCorps Vista and moved up to the Hudson Valley, Phyllis & I became Facebook friends.
And then I woke up one morning, and we were not Facebook friends.
Had she blocked me because I'd spouted some thought that was absolutely awful? (Even more awful because I had no idea what that thought might be?) Or had she canceled her FB account?
I had no idea.
And online etiquette is such that I couldn't call her up & ask her.
###
Anyway, this was more than 10 years ago. Ten years in which I clawed my way all the way back into the middle class (with the credit rating to prove it!) I'm still kind of iffy on the kitchen counter front, though.
Hi Patrizia … don’t know if you remember me but I remember you, Phyllis texted.
Of COURSE I remember you, I texted back.
And we spent half an hour texting back & forth.
I hope we get together soon, she kept texting, and since that is unlikely—Long Guyland is a long way from the quaint & scenic Hudson Valley especially for me since I won't drive anywhere near New York City—I had to wonder what on earth had inspired her to reach out to me. A cancer diagnosis? A heart attack? A stroke? She was clearly assembling all the characters for the last scene in the movie, the way Fellini does in the final scene of 8½.
Anyway, I kinda want to do something for Phyllis. Send her something. But what? Flowers seem so... funereal.
