Cathy died ten years ago, though I did not know it until now.
My last message to her – still in my archived texts after 13 years – reads: “Shall we try again?” It went unanswered as had my occasional communications from the early 1990s onward. Did she read them? I hope so, even if her failure to reply indicates that I had fallen away from her thoughts.
We met in the late 1970s, both employed by one of the “de-hospitalization” programs active in Massachusetts at the time. Cathy worked in the daycare/workshop side of the organization. I was a live-in support worker at Crescent Street, one of the group homes. (See Postcard #1: Crescent St./Bob Rhodes)
Cathy was married to a commercially successful photographer. She was beginning to pursue her own photographic projects, challenging her husband’s practice along the way. I’d been taking and printing photographs for a few years and had just started studying for a degree in Documentary Photography.
Cathy left the job, after which she and I began a collaboration that lasted a year or so. We photographed, initially, without restraint. There were portraits of the people in our program - staff and residents. The house and the workshop. But outside people and places too. Friends. Western Massachusetts scenes.
We had cars and cameras. We were young. We drove around town. Like boys. Like Jonathan Richman’s Roadrunner. “In love with Massachusetts when it’s late at night.” Like Americans, hungry dreamers. Baby boomers growing up, heading for the postmodern turn. Fredric Jameson once said that postmodernism was about “how the world dreams itself to be American.” But surely first/too, Americans had to dream themselves to be American.
We were making ourselves, recording ourselves on film, changing lenses, revving our engines, driving past college buildings and cornfields, naively sure of our ideas. Cathy phoned me most mornings. “Be at the Bagel Deli for nine.” We would down coffee, look at our latest contact sheets and prints, and then set off somewhere chosen by Cathy who knew Massachusetts places far better than I did.
Cathy was older and braver. She was bright, beautiful, fierce in her loves and hates, subversive at work, and increasingly subversive in her private life. Soon she announced that she was leaving her husband and she rejected marriage completely. She took a place on Main Street, one of the old office buildings turned into lofty apartments. It had high ceilings, wrought iron fixtures, and large windows overlooking the pavements, shopfronts, and restaurants.
“There’s a speed limit in this state.” “How fast was I going, officer?” So ran the old movie line. Once out of her marriage, Cathy raced through her changes. Not long after she moved down to Main Street, she told me she was gay. I was not surprised. I realized immediately that it had always been there, and we rejoiced together. Moreover, Northampton was the place to come out. You could not be a woman in Northampton without pausing to think about your sexuality.
Yet looking back, I see how intensely Cathy’s rapid-fire acts and decisions moved alongside and inside our photography collaborations. Each change in her life was announced with a vehemence that felt, at times, like a slight provocation, a criticism that I was not keeping up. We grew irritable when together. We competed with one another. Differences became more apparent. Sometimes a discussion – usually about the merits of one of our photographs – erupted into a heated, if coded argument. We appeared to be disagreeing about one thing, a photograph, when really, we were like angry lovers hiding real arguments behind trumped-up ones. Behind each word was a word that went unspoken.
It was not long before Cathy fell in love with Sunny, another local photographer. To say I was happy for her would be true. To say I was jealous, also true. Not only did the affair interrupt our time together, but they were two photographers. Photography had anchored our friendship and made it exclusive, but now the line had snapped.
We saw less of one another. Cathy was working with Sunny, growing in technical confidence, and developing an ambition for commercial success. At the same time, I was retreating from photography as practice. I was reading art history and critical theory – and this had the effect of paralyzing me. I took fewer photographs, spent less time in the darkroom, and more time reading and writing.
Our deteriorating friendship finally came to an end – or at least a very long pause – when we spent a bad-tempered evening in Sheehan’s Café, one of Northampton’s vintage bars. After a few beers and spiked exchanges, I walked out. It was late. Halfway along Main Street on my way home, I heard Cathy’s wooden clogs behind me. She caught up and shoved me hard against one of the plate glass shopfronts, angry that I had exited without saying goodbye. I have no memory of the words between us. I only remember my back hitting the window, her arms on my shoulders as she shouted at me. Despite a train of apologies in the days that followed, I withdrew. I knew she felt terrible, had probably scared herself. But I withdrew.
It was not long before Cathy moved away from Northampton and I did too. She would become one of the first women camera operators hired by a Springfield, Mass. television station, and later worked for ABC News nationally. Beyond that, I knew little of her life. I returned to academia, pursuing History and university teaching.
I saw her one more time – in the early 1980s. We happened to be back in town for a visit and agreed to meet for a drink. We had both recently given up smoking, but we bought a pack of Marlboro Lights and shared it. It was a good evening, slightly tense, but warm between us. Walking home after the drink, there were no footsteps behind me. I remember thinking how much I had missed her. I remember thinking that the friendship was over.
Here is Cathy’s obituary.
Once my friend.
I wish her love, respect, and an old car.
Language is invention and you, Amy, are an inventor. "But surely first/too, Americans had to dream themselves to be American." What an inventive phraseology. How you bring one into a conflict you had, a relationship problem that is all yours only now is ones to solve also.