Patricia Highsmith on Patricia Highsmith
She tried to abort me
drinking turpentine before
I was born he left us
and it changed me
poisoning my mind, my life
always a disappointment
displeasing, distrusting
mother, stepdad at 3
a grey-black spirit of doom
a foreordained unhappiness
a grievous, murderous hatred
I had to learn to live with
when they dragged me away
from my home in big sky Texas
to the gritty streets of New York
lost and scared they sent me
back to Grandma in Fort Worth
I never knew why or when or if
they would come for me
and I hated them for that
when I returned to Manhattan
belonging no place, not there
not Queens, Greenwich Village
I chose Barnard, literature
stylish clothing, affected poses
drinking my way up the ladder
with society girls and gin
whiskey shots in bars
schmoozing the lions for inroads
to the literary life I craved
women and booze and writing
about identity and deception
the fears and furies of secret selves
the subterfuge of the repressed
Graham Green called me
the poet of apprehension
my characters got the revenge
I wanted for myself.
Patricia Highsmith on Her Sexuality
My first job was for a man
writing scripts for comic books
freelancing and living alone
dead broke in Taxco
the Mexicans knew how
to drink cheap all day
I returned to New York
and headed to Yaddo
writer’s colony in the woods
met the man I would not marry
promised him and hurt him
completing my first novel
for a British publisher
and Alfred Hitchcock
adapted it for the screen
I was headed for top rungs
while suffering from cycles
of anorexia and alcoholism
therapy helped my writing
the psychology of the psychopath
I felt I understood
I was a man
who loved women
and mistreated them
enjoyed seducing straights
breaking up couples
the two Pats
the charmer, the offender
battling inside, on the page
my life a novel I made up
lies in interviews
in my diaries fantasies
inventing until the end
I left millions to Yaddo
my literary estate to the Swiss
my heart in a bottle
of whiskey and turpentine.
Virginia Kent Catherwood on Patricia Highsmith
With her I felt strange
unlike what I thought I was
yet loved, I loved her
manly ways in a woman’s body
deep dark warmth I found
another kind of love
my husband used
against me in court
took away my daughter
to protect her
from her own mother’s love.
After we broke up
Pat worried about me
afraid of my reaction
to my story in her novel
based on a pretty stranger
she waited on once
while working the counter
at Bloomingdale’s
and stalked her home
to the rich enclaves
of suburban New Jersey
and fantasized about her
made up a world, a love
a taboo romance
destined to be
a cult classic
a major motion picture.
Pat heard how
the woman killed herself
in her running car
in her closed garage
while Pat was writing
about her, about me
in her novel
Carol.
Ellen Hill on Patricia Highsmith
I don’t know why I loved her
left her, went back to her
so many times she used sex
to make me unhappy she went
from cool green grass underfoot
to shattered glass shards
like the time she got drunk
at a party in London
and fell over the table
her long dark hair
caught fire
and we put it out
and carried on British-style
as if the singe of bitter burn
didn’t smell up the room
the time she hid her pet
snails in a purse, dozens
spilled on the dinner table
sliming starched white cloth.
I was not a homosexual
but I fell for her
stormy kissing biting hardness
always fighting she thought
I was too straight, too organized
too critical and a snob
I expected her to treat me
as a man would and
I was forever after her
to stop drinking, cheating
ruining other people’s lives
when she threatened to leave
I sprawled on our bed
sucked down two martinis
in my silky underthings
let her watch me
swallow barbiturates
she couldn’t leave me
not like that
yet off she went
to some party
out late, waiting for me
to die
in a coma
for days she did not visit
involved in a twisted tryst
on Fire Island and you’d think
I would not forgive her
antipathy, cruelty, selfish
fear I would accuse her
of murder by proxy
once I read her novel
about a man driving his wife
to commit a suicide
mirroring my own
but I still loved her
lived with her in Mexico
England, France, Switzerland
in her black bunker
with lookout slits
a sad drunken recluse
when she was all yellow
skin, bones, bitterness
still writing, still carrying
that little hell in her head
hating what galvanized her
Pat still Pat
always looking
for a fight.
I did not attend her funeral.
Marijane Meaker on Patricia Highsmith
We met cute
in a lesbian bar
in the 1950s
we could be arrested
for the love we made
I was taken with her
gentlemanly manners, good
bones and thick dark hair
her laughter, shared
book talk and gay gossip
I wanted to be her
my books paperback
dime store pulp and Pat
a literary lion, lesbian icon.
Isn’t it wiser to accept
that life has no meaning
is what she said
the earth like the moon
with only her on it
her dark fantasies
keeping her going
all those years
all those books
stories of men who compete
who climb, who con, who kill
for the thrill in her novels
about the American Abroad
an excuse for excess
self-indulgence, hedonism
how she lived herself
from villages in France
to villages in Greece
Venice and Positano
she said our love cured
her wanderlust.
We settled down together
in an artsy community
in the Pennsylvania countryside
fruit trees and a barn, she gardened
cooked dinner and dressed up
in slacks, a crisp white shirt
bright ascot, polished loafers
with a shiny switchblade
from her blazer pocket
she trimmed our indoor plants
and sipped a second martini
while studying the dictionary—
a strange cocktail hour, yes
but we had a sweet life
mostly because of Pat
affectionate, easygoing
didn’t want her mind
cluttered with bad feelings
but she knew
I was besotted
obsessed and afraid
of losing her
I became her
drinking too much
smoking her Gauloises
wearing her jackets
reading her diary
I wrote a literary book
about famous suicides.
Perhaps I don’t like anybody
was how she explained
her characters’ lack
of decency, humanity
her own prejudices
her own shifting identity
her withdrawal, escapes
from love affairs
like ours while above her a window
filled with light blue sky
just out of reach
too small
too far away
to escape through
