Ann Patchett is the Crazy Friend

On Ann Patchett’s Queer (Not Gay) love of Lucy Grealy.

“Maybe I’m the crazy friend,” I text the groupchat after attending two weddings in one weekend.

Seeing my pandemic life choices reflected back at me in the faces of people I talked to at the weddings had made me feel dramatic.

Everyone in the groupchat was offended. 

“I feel erased,” Zoe said, more or less.

”We’re all the crazy friend.”

Allis agreed.

I was horrified.

“Oh my god you guys. Not in THIS friend group! Just with straight friends.”

To suggest that you are the crazy friend in a queer friend group seems presumptuous, arrogant, self-absorbed.

Don’t be rude.

We’re all the crazy friend. 

—

Zoe teaches memoir, so Zoe talks about Lucy Grealy and Ann Patchett’s friendship a lot.

“It’s kind of gay,” they say a lot. “But, in a friendship way.”

I never read On Truth and Beauty (Ann Patchett’s memoir about being friends with Lucy Grealy) though I read Autobiography of a Face (Lucy Grealy’s memoir about being Lucy Grealy) in college.

Right after I read Autobiography of a Face, I read the article by Lucy Grealy’s sister. In it she accuses Ann Patchett of being self-serving, an emotional vampire profiting off the memory of her sister. 

I took this article at face value, mostly because I had never read any Ann Patchett.

So I never read On Truth and Beauty.

—

“Maybe I’ll just never have sex again.” I say one day in the middle of the pandemic.

Zoe cracks up.

“Lucy Grealy used to ask Ann Patchett all the time, “will I ever have sex again?”. Have you read On Truth and Beauty?” Zoe asks. I still haven’t. 

“She used to ask it to the point that Ann Patchett was like, look, you can’t ask me that on days when you’ve already had sex.”

It is comforting to know someone famous, cool, successful, was documentedly needy. Admittedly, besides being cool, Lucy Grealy also ODed, was in pain and felt alone her entire life. But that feels less important.

”Are you saying I’m Lucy Grealy and you’re Ann Patchett?” I demand. Ann Patchett was better at writing (that’s what happens when you live longer).

”Nah dude, we’re all Lucy Grealy and we’re all Ann Patchett,” Zoe says. “We’re all always asking if we’re ever gonna have sex again.”

They’re right. Soon we’re quoting this scene all the time in the groupchat.

It becomes more of an expression of loneliness than a literal question about whether or not any of us will have sex again.

It evokes hope because it’s so crazy: so crazy it makes us think maybe the despair is crazy too.

will I ever have sex again?

well. you had sex 20 minutes ago.

—

Zoe sends the groupchat an article Ann Patchett wrote about her friend, who is also Tom Hanks’ assistant.

We all read the article and grow increasingly worried about Ann Patchett.

Ann Patchett, towards the end of the article, has a vivid hallucination of death and the abyss while on psychedelic mushrooms with her friend. But she does nothing, terrified she will ruin her friend’s transformative experience meant to prepare her for dying of cancer.

“Ann Patchett... is crazy.” I say. 

“Yeah dude,” Zoe says. “You should really read Truth and Beauty.”

—

Here’s what I thought Truth and Beauty would be like: 

In the book “notes on dying“, a nurse practitioner recounts the death of a close friend — Tom, a gay man and addict. He ODed suddenly, no warning. His partner is devastated, but also furious.

In the last six months of his life, Tom was increasingly difficult to be around — stealing, flying into violent rages, screaming for no reason, using lies and manipulation to get what he wanted. Afterwards, Tom‘s partner was torn: grief stricken but also self hating. Why had he let Tom get away with all of that?

At the time, he justified all of Tom’s behavior, his willingness to stick around. Tom needed him. None of it was that bad. And, most shameful: what would he do without Tom?

At the funeral, people came up to Tom’s partner, talking about what a pure soul Tom was, how perfect, how he was too good and true for this world. After a while, minister took Tom’s partner aside, touching his shoulder. 

“It’s important,” the minister said softly, “To remember Tom as he was. All of Tom, as he was.”

Because I had only read Lucy Grealy’s sister’s letter — her anger, her accusations that Ann Patchett had misrepresented her sister — that’s what I thought on truth and beauty would be like. Showing just how crazy Lucy Grealy really was.

Remembering all of Lucy, including the worst parts. 

Remembering Ann Patchett’s love for her, including the worst parts.

All of it. 

I know now that what I pictured the worst parts being like says more about me than it does about Ann Patchett.

—

I don’t read On Truth and Beauty until Zoe sends me their copy in the mail. 

There are parts of the book that are Gay: the parts where Lucy demands Ann validate her loneliness, prove her love. The parts where Ann is endlessly self-sacrificing, does decades of Lucy’s taxes. 

Those parts feel gay in the way that all friendships, deep ones, kind of are. Romantic. A little toxic sometimes. Full of life.

But most of Lucy and Ann’s friendship feels Queer, not Gay: the parts where they are honest with each other, tell the truth. 

Where they witness each other, even the dark parts, and stick around.

Where you can see how their love shapes them and their art, but also where they diverge.

Seeing all of Lucy, all of Ann, doesn’t stop at the resentment, pain, self-sacrifice.

It’s not about one person losing themselves for another.

Lucy Grealy is not the crazy friend.

Because the same feeling that drives Ann Patchett to invite her chronically ill friends to her house is the feeling that drove her to do Lucy‘s taxes, to take a plane to Scotland, to encounter the Grim Reaper while on psychedelic mushrooms and stay quiet to protect her friend.

And it makes me realize that when I say Queer I might just mean “love, real love.
across the human experience.”

That’s what love is: not the gay kind, the queer kind.

Love is when we’re all the crazy friend. 

—