bye-bye baby or how pretty was my Jewish

In the early Fall of 1976 "M" went off to a teaching gig at the University of Washington. He would be gone for about 3 months returning to New York for Christmas. I stayed on alone and went about my usual business of making art, going out to bars (we had an agreement, sort of a don't ask don't tell situation) and seeing friends. We wrote back and forth of course as I missed him, and assumed that he missed me as well. Our relationship had been through some big bumps in the last few years, and we even split for a time, with him moving to a small apartment, and me staying in our loft. He left me a mushy drunken letter on the kitchen table which I found when I awoke on the morning he left. I wish I still had that mushy note but I don't. Letters went back and forth and it seemed that all was well, but when he came back around Christmas time I knew something was wrong because we did not make love the night he returned. I thought "well he's tired from the long trip" but the fact was he had met someone else and was not in love with me anymore. I couldn't believe it. "How could you not be in love with me anymore? why the fuck didn't you write to me telling me this little fact.? He would be moving out soon after Christmas. So that was that. We spent Christmas Eve together and we both got very drunk. I threw one of his presents at him, personalized stationary which was pretty funny. He loved it. Not really. I screamed at him all night as Tina Turner and Janis Joplin played on the stero, and he screamed right back at me. One great drunken reason he gave for leaving me was "that he was tired of pretty Jewish." What did that mean, was he tired of my being too Jewish or was he tired of me because I was goodlooking ie pretty Jewish and wanted to be with someone who was not "pretty". So was "G" ugly Jewish I wondered. And why would he give up pretty Jewish for ugly Jewish? A few days later I met "G" and I had my answer.

The photo used is of me in Provincetown 1977.