Trish did a portrait of us together, as Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden: The Fall. I’d nude modeled for it in ’07, in her then studio in North Philadelphia. When she told me, in the early Aughts, “You’re the jewel in my crown,” she was already planning this. The studio was not far from Temple, with a view of the Walt Whitman Bridge which was re-created through a window in the piece. In the portrait, I appear baffled, but composed. Trish’s limbs wrap awkwardly around themselves, as though she might actually topple over. It was as startlingly confessional as it could possibly be. It took me several years to understand what the issue was. The Fall was shown at PAFA, in an alumni show, in ’08. One of my books was being taught, hand-over-fist, at Loyola in Chicago, and I lectured there behind it. From time to time, Bill Rosenblum would record me reading my poetry and send me the mp3s. Occasionally, a poet passing through from London or Australia would visit me. Sometimes, Larsen and I could get into some Free School-level drug mischief. Mostly, though, I was on my own, writing. The lovers, Julie, Dell, who entered my life at this juncture, didn’t last very long. Julie Hayes was my student at Temple: a coal-eyed, doll-faced brunette with an excellent head for books, and a potential writer. Her volatility and self-destructiveness reminded me extremely of Heather Mullen. The lead-up was several months of courting. I thought it might be another marriage, but the volatile situation, once the semester ended and we got physical, tanked fast. Julie was a monster of inexperience, rather than experience, as Heather had been. She became too confused to go on. Larsen Spurn had been bemused by her, and by the situation. I invited him to join one of my early tete-a-tetes with Julie at the Drop. After Julie left, he looked at me pointedly and said, “I knew this was gonna happen. I knew it! I knew you’d be the kind of professor who…does what you’re doing, Adam.” Julie lived right across the street; I plead innocence. But Larsen, as usual, was right. Meanwhile, what I had to conquer was the feeling that I had to be heading towards something huge. Too many poets in Philly were arrayed against me; if I didn’t find a way to overpower them, I would (inevitably) be overpowered. This is what most of the defectors from my erstwhile camp banked on. Little Foley, the party line went; he’ll keep working and working, but it will never be enough, because it can’t be. Not with us here: Plunkettville. Most of these people were primarily socialites who took for granted that that’s what poetry was; a context for socialization, fags meeting fags, rather than a serious art-form. “You are who you know” was the dictum, and they tap-danced around ever speaking seriously about poetry itself, or poems. I was always on the edge of being counted out. Temple didn’t help; no one there was particularly interested in my poetry efforts, and the poets on campus actively opposed them. I suffered the indignity of having my books taught hand-over-fist at major universities while being treated as a pedestrian graduate student at Temple. But I never gave up hope and I never thought of quitting. If this was “do or die,” I would do. What The Fall was, as a work of art embodying the highest possible formal, representational standard, gave me strength to persevere, and the sense that no one could tell me I wasn’t a loved person, or that I’d led a loveless life. Trish Webber had delivered the goods, and transmuted exquisite anguish into exquisite art. I was standing with a real family that was really there. I stood on level ground.
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