9. Karl




I’m fighting back tears in a Vienna restaurant. A guy sitting at the table next to me is sharing tidbits of local history with visiting out-of-towners. He’s telling them about the Soviet soldiers who liberated Vienna in 1945. Thoughts about Karl have been percolating since I arrived in Vienna. We worked together for 8 years in Canada. I may have shared a story or two about him on FB. He’s one of the most influential people on my life. We spent months at a time, often just the two us, living in a tent way up in the north. He was the closest person in my life, and I was in his, but so much was unsaid. I was transferred to Denver. Karl got laid off. The last time we met was in New York. He was staying in a dumpy hotel across from Madison Square Gardens. We washed down a dozen amphetamines with a bottle of whiskey. He told me about being in the same room while Soviet soldiers raped his mother - and then they raped him - during the liberation of Vienna. He also said that he was in love with me. It seemed to slip out. I didn’t know how to respond. I was struggling with my own repressed sexual abuse experience. Karl committed suicide several months later. It’s been 40 years and I still haven’t processed what It all means. Karl was camera shy. This photograph of me and Karl in the Grand Canyon was taken by Ruth Watson in 1981. Dear Nina, thanks for bringing me to Vienna. I love you Karl.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

10. Nina

Image
When contemplating Nina’s reality, constructed from her photographs, I see it’s similar to my own. The particulars are not the same but the general is familiar. Although we've never met, we're connected. She died in 1985. Her only child died in 1993. That's when I found the photo album. Nina, how did you know I would adopt your memories
Read more

6. Thessaloniki

Image
Self-portrait (shadow) with Yogi, Thessaloniki, Greece, 1970   Dear Nina -  This is the most difficult photograph in my family album. When I pressed the shutter release button, w hat I saw  is completely different from what I see now.  I took the photograph a couple of months before this man  sexually abused me. He was my supervisor and my mentor. I was an object of his  desire.  I trusted him. He was grooming me.  F or twenty-five years  I  disconnected from  the photograph, or rather, from the memories  associated with the photograph . In psychotherapy I was able to unravel what happened, and subsequently, revaluate the photograph, and the trauma.    When I joined the ship Catriona was my girlfriend. We were intimate. When I left the ship intimacy was something else. After making the fifty-year anniversary photograph in Oban with Catriona, we drove to her house on the east coast of Scotland. Catriona had the letters I wrote to her from the ship. I did not recognize myself as the auth
Read more