In the crowded room of everyone I know who has recently died and is about to die

The Mistaken Identity Case of Mary, Susy, & Susie

This morning I learned about a woman’s death, someone I knew in the strangest of ways.

In quieter times I would’ve heard of her death in October, the day it happened. Mary was a big deal.

But no, I missed it. It’s a case of “I was in hospice with Peter, so I missed the funeral of Paul.” I can’t keep up with everyone who’s checking out.

I can’t say Mary was my friend, because she took great pains to distance herself from me. I won’t say her real name, not yet.

But we had a secret connection in the later years of her life. Yes, secret.

Mary was a mover and shaker in the arts world; she was instrumental in countless careers. If she was critical of you, whoa— it was tough to survive in her small pond. She closed as many doors as she opened.

Mary was born in 1946. She was always gay, never with a fellow, and careful to not be public about her gay life until the turn of the 21st century. She kept yards away from lesbians who were political, out, and “flagrant,” as my closeted aunt Molly would say. You know, someone such as myself.

In the San Francisco arts scene of the bohemian era, one could have a ripping gay social life, and barely acknowledge the rest of the world. Mary’s generation and inclination built an iron wall that separated their homosexuality from their professional and public reputations — not the Harvey Milk spirit, shall we say.

Along with that discretion, her crowd thought that talking about sexuality was gauche, primitive, and a discredit to our gender.

As you might imagine, Mary wanted nothing to do with my 80’s/90s magazine On Our Backs, and anyone who was a part of it. OOB had all the media she loved: fine art, photography, literature, performance, politics — but it made her stomach turn. Our motto was “Entertainment for the Adventurous Lesbian.” Mother was not amused.

This was an era when I could count on two fingers the number of living women who were out of the closet and active in the show business community. Lily Tomlin was not out. There was no Melissa Etheridge or k.d. Lang. No Ellen. Nobody.

Mary and her coterie would privately diss the then-underground lesbian artists. In her eyes, we weren’t up to snuff, not “quality.”

It was such a small world that I’d eventually hear these things secondhand. In public, Mary didn’t acknowledge our existence, which meant feminist doors in our artists’ community were shut tight.

As years passed, some On Our Backs artists became famous, in spite of Mary’s gatekeeping. It became more awkward for her to act as if we were flies in the punchbowl. Ironically, it was usually gay men, and straight men, who would notice a lesbian artist with promise, and say, “Hey, you’re great, let’s do something!” —The confidence of the unthreatened.

One surprising day, late in my career, Mary published an essay on one of my books. I was an old lady by this point. Her critique was so begrudging in its praise, it was comic. Yet I was amazed she acknowledged me at all! To an outside reader, you’d never know M. was hardcore San Francisco gay. You’d never know we were once neighbors, or that our romantic circles overlapped. She treated me as if she were a mildly curious, disdainful anthropologist from another planet.

But none of that is the secret part.

In 2016, Mary began to write me what became several years’ series of emails. —Not on purpose.

She mistook me for another one of her friends named “Susy.”

The first letter was a casual dinner party invitation, an easy mistake to make.

I wrote back, “Hi Mary, your party sounds so fun, but I think you wrote to me, (Susie Bright), by mistake!”

She apologized; we laughed it off. I didn’t ask how she got my email in the first place. I’ve made the same blooper.

But over the years, Mary wrote me “accidentally” many more times. The letters got more personal. She’d recommend books, talk about meals I (never) shared, vacations I (never) took with her. She was candid and funny. She railed against artists and community bigwigs she detested— and I got to laugh, being on the inside for a change.

The other “Susy” was clearly a longtime friend.

Now, EVERY SINGLE TIME I received one of Mary’s misaddressed notes, I wrote back a cheery message, like, “Oops, wrong Susie, hope you’re well.”

And nearly every time, she replied with an apology.

She never erased my email address, nor did she decide to get to know me. It just stayed the same, the same fuck-up every time.

One day, Mary wrote she was coming to see me, and I replied, “Are you really coming to Santa Cruz? I’d quite like to meet you, after all these years! - Signed, The Other Susie.”

She didn’t answer. But the one-sided letters kept coming.

In 2021, I got this one:

Dear Susy,

“I’m very upset by our talk yesterday. Our friendship has taken a regrettable turn. I am going to take quite some time before we talk again.

— Mary

I wrote back right away:

Mare, I received your serious letter to your friend by accident. I’m so sorry. I’ll delete it. I’m sure you’ll be in touch with your companion.

Mary replied a moment later — and for the first time, spelled my name the way I spell it. She knew it was me.

She asked me to “pardon the inconvenience.”

It was too much. I mean, I’d wondered about her memory loss over the years. But the way she dumped “Susy” — her anger revealed— really got to me. It was more than an inconvenience. I had been reading their lop-sided correspondence for five years. Her missive reminded me of how a silent treatment begins, and what it’s like to be on the outside, again.

I decided to stop acting like it was a cute mistake.

Mary wrote to my address one more time— of course, not to me, but to the other Susy.

She was in a good mood, ebullient. She wanted Susy to read a book called The Friend. She was quite urgent about it. I got the feeling she wouldn’t rest until Susy did what she asked.

I wondered, did Mary and Susy kiss and make up a long time ago, and I missed that chapter?

Or . . .

Did Mary ever send her drop-dead letter to Susy at the correct address? Did Susy receive it?

Maybe Mary rethought her cruel decision, and never delivered her notice after all.

Or, maybe this invitation to share a book about a “friend,” was the first olive branch extended? —Was it the first time Mary had spoken to Susy, in all these years?

I don’t know. I didn’t reply. I was dealing with a real friend dying at the very same time.

I read Mary’s obituary today, and it came as a shock. I haven’t gotten an email from her in a year. I thought of her as so famous, I’m surprised it wasn’t a national story.

I went to find our old emails, and re-read her passionate recommendation of The Friend. I’ve never picked it up, myself. An illustrious book, reviewers say, about “Grief, death, art, and love.”

The author of The Friend, I see, once worked for a famous closeted lesbian writer who sublimated everything. Everything. I wish I had been someone who spoke to Mary, intentionally, about any of it.

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