It hurts but I'm still gonna try.

Sally: She works in his office. She's a paralegal. Her name is Kimberly. He just met her... She's supposed to be his transitional person, she's not supposed to be the one. All this time I've been saying that he didn't want to get married. But, the truth is, he didn't want to marry me. He didn't love me.

Harry: If you could take him back right now, would you?

Sally: No. But why didn't he want to marry me? What's the matter with me?

Harry: Nothing.

Sally: I'm difficult.

Harry: You're challenging.

Sally: I'm too structured, I'm completely closed off.

Harry: But in a good way.

Sally: No, no, no, I drove him away. And I'm gonna be forty.

Harry: When?

Sally: Someday.

Harry: In eight years.

Sally: But it's there. It's just sitting there, like this big dead end. And it's not the same for men. Charlie Chaplin had babies when he was 73.

Harry: Yeah, but he was too old to pick them up.

It’s one of those things that happen to other people. But, this time, it’s happening to me.

My ex is marrying someone else. The girl he dated when we broke up briefly who, he shortly thereafter, dumped to get back together with me and live with me for over a year. This is the same girl who, when he moved back into my house, he told me was ‘boring’ and ‘cookie cutter’ and ‘just not YOU.’

But, after all is said and done, she is the chosen one.

The one with the ring. Who gets to wear the white dress in front of all his family and friends. A potential happy union and certainly a delightful ring selection likely inspired by several trips to the jewelry store with ME. I know a good setting when I see one.

What was my role in all this? Educator? Teacher? Pro bono love advocate?

And what of his friends I cared about---who, in turn, cared about me? I saw it in their faces when they came over to “our” place all those times; I felt it in their sarcasm. Sarcasm can be as cruel as it can be loving. And I grew to love that. They were like family. A family you choose.

God (or Science) only knows.

I don’t want him back. I really don’t. For numerous reasons.

So why does it hurt so much?

Because I learned this thing along the way called unconditional love.

It’s this really cool concept that requires a great deal of life experience, a magnanimous heart, and a shitload of self-delusion.

Problem is, I believed in it. Recently, my very smart and very married friend Chris told me the secret (listen up friends)…he told me that he has the SECRET to long lasting love.

Here’s how it works: you love someone, yes. You have all this initial passion that leads to romantic overtones, overtures, undertones, and nuances. For a couple of years. And then, one day, you wake up, and there’s the real person. And there’s the real you. You and them. In the flesh. And not the romantic version. The flawed one.

What the mature person, oh thee of the truly committed mind and non-adulterous heart, does is: they suck back the relationship Kool Aid. And, in turn, their partner does, too. It’s basically saying: this ain’t perfect, oh hell no, not by a long shot, but you know what, it’s what I got, it’s what we got and it’s OURS. And that, by the very token of its steadfastness and shared experience, is worth something. In fact, it’s worth a lot. So you make not a commitment to another person but, instead, you make a commitment to the thing you both made: an enduring bond. And this time, it’s a bond for life. And, no no no, it is not easy.

But when you commit to the thing rather than the person, in a way it makes it easier. It’s not like you can skip out on your mortgage (actually these days you probably can) or just drop off your car at the dealer because you’re “tired of it,” you’re in it for the whole endurance race. When it looks like crap and needs brakes, tires, a new windshield, you fix it, you don’t just trade it in for something brand new. You endure.

I get that. Or should I say I finally got that. I didn’t know what unconditional love was until I experienced it for myself. And while I didn’t get unconditional love in return, I’m glad I had the ability to give it. It taught me a lot about my own heart. My own endurance. Like anything in life that’s worth doing, your ability to stick with it even when it’s no fun is where it’s at. Akin, in its simplest form, to a road race with hills (not likely in Florida), a 6am spinning class, a boring dinner party with good people, whatever, once it’s over, you’re always glad you showed up. Because, somehow, the sacrifice was all worth it.

I’ve started to think that the longer we live, the more opportunities we have to learn. And the more we learn, the more we grow and change. And are we really supposed to be married once and only once considering how long life is and how much we change?

My step-grandmother died this week at 101. She hung in there with her second husband, 10 years her junior, all these years. If nothing else, choosing a man younger than herself was one area about her choices that resonated with me. Not that I’ve intentionally chosen younger people, it’s just been my path.

I don’t have any definitive answers. No one does. And the person who claims that any relationship is easy—work, friendship, or love---is a moron I’d rather not know.

For the time being, I welcome any input. For those of you I know who have those long term relationships that last and last without any sort of formal title and those of you who do---and the rest of us who wrestle with love on varying terms---I salute you for realizing there is no canned solution. Nor should we look for one. I was married once. I did it for the wrong reasons (we were the right age, our families knew each other, we’d been dating long enough, etc.). And now, even if I have all the right reasons, I still wonder.

No matter what you do, I think my friend Chris has a valid point. It’s not so much about “the one” after a certain point, it’s more about “the thing” you’re doing. I think there’s something pretty honorable in that. And for my wonderful friends who’ve chosen to not get married but to still remain ‘committed,’ they have that special thing, that exterior indefinable solidarity that is so inspiring. You know who you are D. and S. Coupledom, by today’s standards, is a thing apart. It takes either youthful exuberance and fearlessness or infinitely wise and time-tested endurance. Neither is a guarantee for success. But if I had money on one, it’d be the time-tested endurance. I like a challenge. I like knowing what I’m in for, and I can handle the pain if I know it’ll be worth it in the end. Even if that ‘end’ means I only did it for the experience. And I’d like to think that you get to a point in life where experience, unto itself, is what brings the most richness and purpose. Regardless of the outcome.

Bullying: It's nothing new.

The ringleader was a fat girl named Wendy Woyt. Back in 1982, fat girls were few and far between. Wendy was neither popular nor despised. Boys didn’t like her. And she didn’t care what girls thought. She was mean, she was brash and she didn’t give a shit about much. She was one of those girls in fifth grade with absolutely nothing to lose.

The notes got passed in Mrs. Cooper’s class. So many tiny, folded notes. Day in and day out. The notes. Mrs. Cooper is a fat old bitch. I think Tom Harrison is sooooo cute. Want to come sleepover my house Friday? So many kids with so much energy and no supervision. I was younger than everyone and only ten years old while my classmates were all eleven by a long shot. Mrs. Cooper was tenured and oblivious to everything in that little room. We saw her rinse her dentures in a cup like on those Dentu-crème commercials. She returned our tests and essays all wrinkled from moisture and stained with coffee rings. She was like the living dead and gray in every possible way. Head to toe ashen with false teeth, silver, dried-out hair, and endless chalk dust on the ass of her dark polyester, pilled pants. Devoid of all signs of life at the prospect of being around us, much less teaching us, Mrs. Cooper should really have been permanently at home knitting, watching soap operas and sipping brandy by the fire. Instead, she was our teacher, responsible for a secretly potent room of children on the verge of adolescence, with the powerful surge of hormones and crushes on classmates lurking beneath every chord in a Pat Benatar song.

I remember riding the chairlift with Joe Bailey after school, chewing grape bubblegum, in the late afternoon light and the bitter cold. Joe Bailey was a seventh-grader. He had no business being with me at all. But his eyes were so blue. And grape bubblegum, after all, is just like non-fermented wine for a ten year old. I was intoxicated by Joe Bailey. And, at the same time, I was madly in love with his younger brother, Danny, who was with me in Mrs. Cooper’s class. But Danny liked Jean Beanlenn. Jean Bean as we all knew her. And who could blame him? Jean Bean was my friend but she was probably the most adorable, cutest, prettiest girl in the world. Well, at least in our class. She had those dimples, the cute retainer, the crinkly eyes when she smiled. I was no Jean Bean. I was cute to boys who were older. Younger boys didn’t see the cuteness in me apparently.

Boys like Joe Bailey on the chairlift did, though. I’ll never forget when he leaned over to kiss me. My lips were practically frozen. I was frozen. I jerked in reaction to his gesture, faced forward quickly and adjusted my skis as if nothing had happened. I went on chewing my grape bubblegum, looked the other way. No one said anything. We reached our destination, put our skis up high, shimmied our butts to the edge of the chair and dismounted the lift, each of us skiing off in separate directions. I never sat with Joe Bailey on a chairlift again. Years later, in high school, he told me he always had a crush on me. I feigned ignorance but we both knew we recalled the grape bubblegum, frozen lip, chairlift incident. It went without saying. Our smiles at “such a long time ago” said it all.

The afternoon droned on. “Put another dime in the jukebox baby,” Wendy sang under her breath and winked at me. I knew from her wink that I was dead meat. The notes were passed. Notes I was usually in on. But not this time. These were notes passed deliberately by my desk. Hand to hand. Little yellow notes on lined paper. Notes I was certainly meant to be aware of but not part of. Then the cupped mouth whispers and mean smirks from Susan Derney to Tammy Mccullouch and then between my beloved Jean Bean and Candie Miller who were my friends damnit, and I knew they were all suddenly  in cahoots with the big fat girl. They all looked at me, all of them in on this big secret, all thrilled at the idea. This big plan. But why? To this day, I don’t know. I couldn’t explain it if I tried. It happened once and it never happened again. At least not like this.

Mrs. Cooper sipped her hours-old coffee. Slowly removed her oversized bifocals and cleaned them, deliberately, calculatingly, watching the big clock above the door, one lens she rubbed with the cloth, then the other. We all watched her. Watched and waited. “Alright class, time for recess.” We had no bell in our school. It was too small a school for things as fancy as bells. We all got up, grabbed our parkas and headed out into the winter cold. Sudden freedom made the outdoors perfect no matter what the weather. The sun was shining brightly on the snow, crystals like sugar, something I will always love. I looked for Jean Bean and Candie but didn’t see them. I went to the monkey bars near the swings and grabbed onto the painted black iron to hang upside down. Years of gymnastics made me quite comfortable with hanging upside down by my feet, and the cold metal refreshed me as my Jordache™ jeans fell towards my knees exposing my bare skin to the biting wind.

Suddenly there was something big, puffy and red, like a down pillow suffocating me and making me lose my grip, and before I knew it, my legs gave way and I fell to the ground. When I looked up, there was Wendy, laughing at me. I got up as fast as I could and began to run back inside the school but she caught me. She dragged me back and that’s when I saw all of them. So many of them. My friends. My best friends. And even a few girls from class who I barely knew at all. Girls nobody even liked. Girls who weren’t invited to our sleepovers. Girls who were just glad it wasn’t them. What the fuck was this, my ten year old brain wondered. This can’t be good. They were the hunters and I was the kill.

“Get her! Kick her!” Wendy screamed as she wound up her fist and punched me in the stomach as hard as she could. I doubled over in shock and pain and then I felt them passing me, one to the other, tossing me like a ball in a circle, kicking me, slapping me, shoving me. No one punched me like Wendy did, though. No one else had the gaul to hit me quite like that. Also, no one was quite as big and fat as she was. They lacked the heft and girth required to deliver a beating of Wendy Woyt’s caliber.

Somehow, after what felt like forever, recess ended. We all lined up to head back in, single file, to our respective rooms. I stood in line, frozen, not crying, not feeling much of anything. I didn’t say a word. I kept it all in. I was relieved it was over. Then somebody shoved me from behind. They shoved me right into Danny Bailey. Joe’s younger brother. The boy I really liked. Eyes just as blue. Hair just as dark. As cute as a boy should ever be. As cute as any boy had any right to be. He had the first Atari of anyone I knew. He was good at sports. He was funny and everybody liked him. He was perfect. Perfect in every way.

Before I could utter, “Danny, I’m sorry,” he turned and wound up his bright green ski glove and punched me in the face.

Later, at home, my little brother asked, “What happened to your eye Jess?”

“Nothing Richard!” I hissed, “I fell at recess.”

“Fell on what?”

“Just fell.”

“Looks like somebody punched you,” he said.

“It does? Why?”

“You don’t fall on your face, dummy. You’d catch yourself first.”

“What do you mean?”

“So who hit you?”

“Danny Bailey.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know why. But promise me, swear the most excellent swear that you won’t tell Mom.”

“I won’t tell Mom.”

“Promise me, Richard.”

“OK.”

Upstairs, as I was looking at the bruise, the redness, the unmistakable injury I was wondering how I was going to explain this.  Then I heard the car door slam. Mom was home. Shit. Shit. Shit. I was ten and I was terrified. Terrified of my entire day. Nothing made sense anymore. I felt like a failure in every way.

I stayed up there as long as I could, until she called me for dinner, on my bed with a Judy Blume book and my cat, Chube. Chube was a made-up name. Chubert. Originally Sophie. I was always making up names. It was so dark outside. Looming sadness hung in my little room, so out of place with my cheerful green carpeting. I felt a million miles away from ordinary and all I wanted was that: ordinary. It was like the very moment I realized that I was different somehow, different from other people. And not the sort of different that meant I was special. Just that I wasn’t like everyone else. But all I wanted was to be like everyone else. Pretty and cute like Jean Bean and Candie. Quiet and unobtrusive like the dorky wannabe girls in class. Or, hell, even callous and brave and fuck you like fat Wendy. It would be better than this. Better than this.

“Jessie!” I heard my mom call. Shit. Fuck. Shit and fuck. Goddamnit! I swore like a banshee when I was ten. I really did. I had swearing thoughts. I wrote dirty stories inspired by the Sidney Sheldon and Erica Jong books I snuck from my parents’ bookcase and secretly read. I knew more about sex than I should have, in a cerebral way that relied heavily on imagination. And no, my imagination was not demure and shy. In fact, it was rather accurate as I later discovered. I can’t imagine growing up with the Internet. What a shame that must be.

“Jessie! Please come down here!” But before I could hop up from my cozy bed, I heard her ascend the wooden staircase. And then I saw her in the doorway of my room. And I saw her seeing me. She came to me and sat on the bed, touching my face and looking at my black eye.

“Richie said Danny Bailey hit you. Is this true?”

“Oh my god! I can’t believe he---“ and then I saw my little brother in the doorway of my room, waiting there to see what our mom was going to do.

“I can’t believe you told her!” I shouted at him. “You promised!”

He didn’t say anything.

 Later that night, after dinner, my mom called Mrs. Bailey.

The next day, in art class, Danny came over to me and said he was sorry. He really looked like he meant it. All I could imagine was Mrs. Bailey whipping his ass somehow. Or, at the very least, taking away his Atari for an extended period of time.

Love, a masterpiece

People have loved me. Some have loved me no matter what I did to them----to the point of pathetic desperation---and in my younger years, they suffered my cruel and subsequent abuse, neglect, or betrayal of them for being so foolish. Others, (wait is it plural)? okay if I’m honest, only one person, has loved me totally as I was, as I am. That was years ago. Once in all my years. I can hold out hope for it to happen again. Or I can face what is most likely.

Everybody else has loved the idea of me rather than the real version. A few months in, after the first blush of infatuation has faded away to its inevitable pale reality, they start the changing me process. Be more this. Do more that. Will you stop wearing that. Please be less whatever. And I’d try my hardest to conform. I’d mold, bend, twist, contort, whatever it took to be this vision of me they wanted. A version of me that I never truly was and had no intention of ever being for any length of time.

Later on, I’d wonder what I did wrong. The answer? Nothing. It was just that they’d look at me from the very beginning and make their assumptions. They placed all their ideals onto me as if I were a blank canvas of their dreams. No. I was just a girl, with a history, with a rich, intricate, tapestried past. A girl that could not be undone or purified, just a person that had to be accepted, as I was, good or bad. But I rarely was. They’d just be captivated by big blue eyes, a girlish laugh, a certainly studied and a well-crafted wit---as perfected over countless encounters on airplanes, bars from coast to coast, at intimate cocktail parties and on the anonymous commuter rail while reading---- the physicality of long leg bones, broad shoulders, or an enamored preoccupation with whatever animal thing that binds people to each other in the early stages, pheromones, expectations, desires, things we were taught as children, but ultimately the eventual nothingness that seems like everything worthwhile you cannot explain. I’ve done it myself. Felt drawn to a height that seems familiar, to the protective, masculine, earning-potential assigned calculatingly to a pair of hands, an eye color that promised not only strong sexual prowess but unearthly-strong offspring, the please let me touch it shape of a back or thigh, a vulnerable yet steady collarbone, a shoulder width that spoke of wingspan and more protection, a strong neck, full lips, an arched eyebrow, all of it so much like fashion in season, like fleeting beauty that must be possessed if not controlled, owned, and then discarded at will when next season’s alluring new attributes reveal their soon-to-be coveted faces, bodies, voices, movement and thrill. Ever-changing. Ever-adapting.

How long does it take to get to the root? A year? Two? A lifetime? Never?

The older I get, the more I believe we never really know someone. And maybe all those characteristics we toss upon another like a Jackson Pollock painting, created with intention and abandon in one fell swoop, we paint a picture of the love we want. It is all a creation in our mind. That person will always, always, always and forever never be that thing we create so thoroughly with our own imagination. Never in a million years. Perhaps if we accept our imagination in conjunction with who they are we can strike a balance and love that person for life. Reality is too big a burden to bear. And when the construct of fantasy comes crashing down, the burden is worse. No one, in their true iteration, is ever exciting enough, dynamic enough, or beautiful enough, to be that one we love with our whole hearts. We love our own shrouded version of them, the one we’ve created. That’s who we love. That’s who we choose. The rest we ignore. And the blinders stay on as long as we can see through our rose-colored glasses, staring at our own inventions, happily.

Stepping back, if the bubble bursts, if the imagination fails us one day, we see only that real person that flawed human being, in all their rawness, in their ugliness and beauty, in all their insecurities and strengths. So much reality can be a downer. And it’s so much easier to go and replace it like a new car. Get rid of that old thing that is reliable and paid for. Go put yourself in debt with a shiny new thing, all fresh, pure, and dripping with all the paint you blast upon it. Your next masterpiece. Your showstopper. Until the paint dries and time passes. And it needs maintenance. And upkeep. And your time.

I promise to change. For you. But I won’t. It’s an empty promise. One none of us should ever declare. Never promise to change unless you are truly flawed. And in that case, promise yourself. And shut up about it. Don’t change for another person. It will never work. Nor should you ever expect change from anyone either. Love is being able to see the imagination and the reality in one view. And collect that thought in your mind and balance it. The imagination keeps things exciting. The reality keeps a thing real. You can’t have a love that lasts without both.

At least that’s how I see it. My imagination has made many of my relationships last and last and last. For too long, perhaps. You stare at your masterpiece even as it fades, crumbles, and falls apart. Because it is priceless. It is yours.

What a thing to create. What a thing to destroy.

Churchiness. I tried.

Some of you will be shocked by this but I went to church last Sunday. When you live in Florida, it happens. Like if you live in Vegas long enough, you’ll eventually gamble. There are just so many churches here. And so much Bible thumping in these parts. And, inevitably, you meet people, God forbid, who you actually like….who, well….thump. So since I can’t beat ‘em, might as well join ‘em. So I put on a dress, some earrings, and some slightly sassy strappy sandals although I refused to take off my Buddha thumb ring (which I always wear) and joined my friend for this, as it turned out, rather ceremonious event. Followed by too-strong peach bellinis and perfectly made Spanish omelettes at White Wolf Café, a rather laid-back establishment in contrast. That was the best part of the day. But, later on, I wondered, was it the relief from the intensity that made it so lovely? I felt relieved to be...me again. And to discuss it all without fear of godly retribution.

As we arrived at the daunting parking lot in the mid-morning heat, Jessica, my darling, your mind is ever-open, and even as it closes without warning, you will, please promise, my love, pry it back open for further exploration. Indeed, nodding vehemently. Will do. Of course. So when we arrived at our, heavenly father please, truly colossal (holy shit dear Lord) destination, I could scarcely hold back the running commentary in my head. Wow, even during an economy like this one, God sure is a fat king isn’t he? But it’s not really God, it’s his followers. They’re quite pleasantly plump are they not? Certainly the Great Creator must have an equally impressive sea-faring vessel on which to take the masses out (en masse) for proper wining, dining, and sunset cruising? Oh no, not likely. Let’s keep the money inside the building, folks. Where we can see it. Tight. And well lit.

The thing that struck me most, though, was the band. That’s correct: the band. The band.

I grew up attending, rather sporadically, a tiny church in a tiny Colonial building in a tiny town in New Hampshire. It was ripe with old dudes and uptight broads in heavy, draping cloaks and dusty, well-worn robes, rich with a tired old Sunday school cirriculum taught by a slew of volunteer teachers that introduced us to the wrong-doings of King Solomon and made us never forget that unmistakable musty, churchy smell. I hated church in every way. But it was quaint, if nothing else. Something that my parents attempted, if meekly, to impart upon us kids, that they, ultimately, did not believe in and took us as far from as possible. It was, after all, too unbelievable. Even for them, the former hippies who thought maybe there was something greater after all. And so now, here today in the summer of our Lord 2010, in a massive construct of worship, I find myself mildly nauseated and heavily amused, simultaneously. But I adore, all the same, the friend who brought me here.

How odd, I think, to love a friend, yet to snub a religion.

I assess the band. Expertly played no doubt, with all the lyrics to their sad Biblical songs displayed grandly in beautifully legible, computer-generated fonts blasted onto the walls from every angle, a dizzying light show of just-off-Broadway proportions in muted peach, electric blue, sultry green, taunt the devil red.

Overwhelmed by the grandiosity of wealth, generated so effortlessly by fear, I marvel. And despise. (Yes, I judge the fear as much as I understand it). We are born alone. We die alone. The End. The middle parts with all the pain and suffering, oh sure, we can mask it all with an opiate we agree to call God, but, really, people, really, the only thing that gets us though is LOVE and an agreement to be honorable and true to ourselves. And to get the fuck out of bed each and every day even when we feel like dying or disappearing. The God thing is such an opiate for the masses. Oh dear Nietzsche. Oh dear Nietzsche. Are you laughing down on me?

Thing is, after all this grandiosity, and witnessing of average folks with their arms waving high (are they serious? Are they really that convinced?) I like the pastor and his message. It has simplicity and he delivers it with humor and ease. He mentions philosophers, intellectuals, his own experiences. I start to feel scared. I hate this shit. If I wasn’t stronger, I could become one of them. But I won’t. I’m too broad in my scope of thinking to ever narrow it down to this.

I’m still glad I went. Because what this guy says sticks with me for a day or two. I could find that at a lecture or a conversation with a smart, open friend. Just not as often. I can see why people attend church every week. Because most people are vapid and unconcerned. As for myself, all I can focus on this week is football season. Damn the Bengals! Yet there’s so much more to me than that. I just can’t compartmentalize it into some epic, stadium seating building of people with a lightshow, a band, and a good talker. Hell no.

But still. The mind stays open. The heart stays flung aside for all to see. I refuse to close off. Become bitter. Not feel. Not be pure in my actions and broad-thinking in my assessments of what happened. There are so many sides to every story.

You may be surprised I went to church last Sunday. But it’s better than saying no and not knowing. It’s not for me. But it’s interesting as an add-on to everything else. How can I judge something I’ve never experienced? And, after all is said and done, who am I to judge anything for anyone else but myself?

"Stay in the shallow end, sweetie. It's safer."

I saw 'Jaws' when I was way too young. Swimming pool drains still scare me. But I don't think the statement 'stay in the shallow end' applies only to swimming pool safety. I think it applies to keeping it light, not being too 'deep' in the emotional end of the pool either. Smeared mascara from crying is not pretty, dear. And as Annette Bening's character in 'American Beauty' said so well 'You must maintain an image of success at all times.'

And if not success, then certainly an image of perky shallowness.

I'll buy that. To a degree. Needless drama is, well, needless. And sometimes keeping it light is keeping the peace. And isn't peace supposed to be a good thing?

The other night I was out with a friend in Winter Park. Oddly, the street was having electrical outages and so our choices were few and our favorite spot simply had no power at all and was closed for business. So we were indoors with emergency lighting which was, as it turned out, pretty flattering, and limited food options (cheese plate). My friend is statuesque (she's actually a model) with great bone structure and the sort of long, thick enviable blonde hair that looks like it belongs in a shampoo commercial. A group of older men bought us a round of drinks which was actually gracious rather than cheesey and we were appreciative. But then the skanks arrived. In multitudes. And I don't mean South Beach skank which is just gorgeous without modesty. I mean true skank: makeup covering up the bad bone structure, makeup that one day won't be able to obscure the boring inside. Skirts so short you can almost see it. And the point of it all is that hey, you're thinking about it. I don't want to think about your underwear or what's in your underwear. I want to enjoy my cheeseplate and my friend, thank you. Please keep your Sherwood Andersonian grotesqueness to yourself, please. What has happened to our culture? Why has being so vaccuous become so, appallingly, normal? Or has it always been this way?

If I went out dressed like these girls, I'd feel like...like....a drag queen on steroids. I'd feel....absolutely ridiculous. I'd laugh at myself in the mirror for hours. These are Halloween monsters out in the middle of summer. I don't get it. What I do get is that it's somehow become very alright to be this tacky. We've made it alright with our abundance of 'Jersey Shore' and "Bad Girls of Miami' and 'The Real Housewives of Atlanta' or whatever. And it's just freaking terrible. I don't know how this representation of intermingling among the sexes is supposed to further anyone's potential or create anything real.

Oh but wait---my bad---"stay in the shallow end, sweetie. It's safer."  Right. I forgot.

The shocking dumbing down I witness every day on one hand amuses me. On the other, I'm undeniably depressed. Sure, I can numb out with fashion and make a case for 'creative expression' because I do believe fashion is creative. No, it's not solving problems on any grand scale but it's self respect, style dignity, an attempt to project beauty, and that has to be worth something. But this other stuff, this 'I'm for sale' attitude is just, I don't know, gross.

So what do I end up doing at one point in the weekend? You guessed it. I go in the deep end. I ask too many questions. I don't wear a low cut top and keep it light. I wonder about the future, about the fate of society, about BP (will it ever stop?), about this endless crap war we're in (remember? we're in a war!) about how crazy it is that every retail store is on sale all the time because the economy is still terrible (yes, it is!) and how one day both of my cats that I love so much are going to die, and that one day everyone I love is going to die, and that's just super super sucky. Mascara smear-worthy sucky.

I'll try my hardest to stay in this shallow end. But I get curious. About the creepy drain. And about the deeper waters. I like the challenge and the fear. I'd rather face it than putter around with these boring a--clowns. Square peg meets round hole. Again. Maybe it's time to accept that some of us just don't fit in with the rest of them. Maybe it's better to separate from that trashy pack. As lonely, and oh cry me a river, as 'deep' as it ever is.

Even when we're with another, another like ourselves, someone who gets our jokes and gets who we are, and accepts us, we're always alone. The shallow thinkers don't think that way. It must be so much easier to be a Halloween monster out in summer who, even when they finally fix the power and the lights come back on, is even scarier to look at it because they look like a plastic drag queen doll. And it's like a strange alternate universe that I just don't belong in. Yet this shallowness is drowning me. What it lacks in depth it reaches so far and wide.

'Loneliness. It's a place that I know well. It's the distance between us and the space inside ourselves.' ~Annie Lennox

Running for My Life

What if the ocean rises 20 feet

and we never feel winter again

What will we learn when too many of us die

when bank accounts mean nothing

and money falls out of our pockets

like soil crumbling

when Darwin's laws apply to us

when the biggest man takes for himself
when will and power are the real strength

when chest-beating, fierce nostril-flaring

unhinged survival

is king?

What if we lose the lost?

The lost are the only truly found

(I count myself here)

We who can't fathom the so-called

power, the bloated, balding white

men in suits, the graying

bespectacled men hiding

their flaccid cocks,

their once buoyant,

malleable balls.

Buying power like so much cheap white bread,

the cheap kind you can mash in your fingers

that curves magically into one neat ball,

one little beige nugget of no nutrition, no

sustenance, nothing.

Weakness wearing a power suit, unzip it,

unzip it my friend, unzip the limp

beige lump, watch it fall,

unglorious.

I am jealous of my cat's superior knowledge

that survivial has always been his m.o.

batter the mouse, hunt the squirrel, be on guard

and then say fuck it all,

sleep hard,

sleep like death, who cares.

But I care, me of the bigger brain,

the bigger agenda, another epic-billion-dollars

for a war we can't win, a war we will never

win, a war we started not to win

but to prove a point,

a war for a bloated, flaccid-cocked

bunch of fuckheads with oil

clogging their ears.

Oil they should boil in, oil they should drown in

while sitting in their big, fat WalMart buying

sport utility vehicles.

What will we learn.

What will we take away when all's lost and all's taken?

A slug from the wonderful drug,

another double pour next to someone

who drowns out all the noise, who buries their

fears in cigarette smoke and whiskey and drive-thru

Arby's and sad sex.

Another one bites down hard.

What if the breath in is the last, if the couple of wilted

dollars he throws down are good for nothing.

What then.

Can we know, can any of us predict the mayhem,

who of us will be worthy of Darwin's label?

How fit, how strong, how powerful

will any of us be.

Take down the bloated men in their suits,

hiding their soft, pale

bellies full

of expensive, aged beef, and

aged, luscious grapes and swallowed

secrets,

the tongue a gate to darkness,

to fall into, be eaten,

consumed in the awful machine.

I'm lost but not that lost yet.

Don't look for me.

You won't find me in the windpipe, in the esophagus,

in the oddly curved disease

of a body.

I'm not there.

I'm not there.

Running for my life, running for

your life, too, fuck it all, I sleep

like death, hard,

waiting for the slow creep of

ocean, for the melting yawn

of what's next.

Interests. And Dividends? (for Boulette de Viande)

In between the cleavage and the sports is a fairly substantial financial section. I’m not talking about the layout of a newspaper. I’m talking about the layout of a Barnes & Noble bookstore. Sounds about right, I guess. And that was actually just fine with me until I saw the category marker: “Men’s Interests.” 

Men’s Interests.

Yet there I was, scouring Forbes, Inc., Worth (too pricey at $16.95 despite charming art direction inside), Harvard Business Review. Me, in my cute coral wedges, my expertly highlighted blondey-blondishness, perched between Playboy and Esquire but reading the money stuff.  Men’s interests? I like Bradley Cooper, I even tolerate Megan Fox (not a fan of so much unnecessary plastic surgery) but I really like strategy and business. So why were these just “men’s interests”? Why wasn’t there, simply, a “Business & Finance” category marker?

And what were so-called “Women’s Interests” anyway? Just what you’d expect. An entire wall of vacuous magazines inspiring one to look-younger, have-more-orgasms, bigger-bouncier-hair, keep-a-perfect-house, be-a-style-maven, entertain-like-royalty, and enjoy budget-conscious-luxuries, ad nauseum.

Don’t get me wrong. Those are my interests. To a degree. And yes, to be honest, of course I have read Playboy “for the articles” fascinated by the keen airbrushing and wondering if I might exact the same perfection later on with a combination of candlelight, skimpy lingerie and a bit of alcohol.

I have never claimed to be a feminist. But I’m not not one either. And yet, the longer I exist in this culture we’ve constructed, the more confused I am. Marilyn Monroe said it well “I don’t mind living in a man’s world so long as I can be a woman in it.”  Agreed. But what does it mean to be a woman in a world that’s no longer just a man’s world but a world comprised of women competing not only with men but, perhaps even more fiercely, with other women?

I am currently working for myself. Translation: I am a (feast or famine) freelance integrated marketer and writer. A lot of the times a writer. Right now I’m writing what could be a very important article that I’m pretty excited. It might prove to be very lucrative if it falls into the right hands. And I’m writing this article for free. Yes, pro bono. Thing is, I’m not independently wealthy. I’m not living on savings. Hell no. Any semblance of savings I’ve ever had were squandered way back during my fun times layoff in 2008. I’m just a girl getting by and actually having a lot of fun seeing what happens next. It’s not exactly the dream I had in my head ten years ago of being a super-successful independent writer with a baby in tow and a home office full of cool furniture and hardcover books signed by important writers. But it’s pretty close. I do have a home office. It’s just filled with my father’s paintings and my old iMac and it needs a coat of fresh (beautiful, exquisite, inspired by a California vineyard) paint.

The girlie girl in me is about to go get a pedicure. And boy do I look it. I’m wearing a pair of Joe’s Jeans I got at Anthropologie, a LOFT animal-print cardigan, a David Yurman bracelet, a Tag Heuer watch, a little (Preppy as hell) shrimp ring gifted to me by mom. I will most likely enjoy a chilled glass of chardonnay while some sweet Vietnamese women pamper my tootsies. Oh I look the part alright. But I am not the part. I am only the part….in part.

The rest of me is a a sailor-swearing, beer-drinking tomboy in cutoffs and flipflops, hair up, no makeup, writing my weird thoughts down, daydreaming about the screenplay in my head, reading as many books, articles, or Seth Godin’s blogs as I can get my hands on, soaking up, drinking in, inhaling just about everything worthwhile I can learn in one day, intrigued by how things work, how people think, what matters most about an individual and collective sense of accomplishment. And it isn’t money. But, absolutely, without question, money is part of it. Of course it is. 

And I’m very interested in money. In finances. In Amercia’s biggest companies. In the global economy. In investment trends. In corporate culture. In entrepreneurial spirit. In making things happen. And watching all the little gears of the machine move and make progress. That interests me. A lot.

So when I go to Barnes & Noble for a cup of coffee and to buy some magazines to inspire me to write an article (I always do this, other writers are like a starting gun at the beginning of an important race, or an “Adda girl!” or, sometimes, a firm kick in the derriere that I desperately need but can’t deliver to myself (I’m not that flexible). So when I’m there in my little outfit, in my color coordinated, blondified, accessoried persona, sure, I could be the one immersed in InStyle one minute (usually for long, boring plane flights more than anything), but I might also be reading about what Yvon Chouinard thinks about older women, the ones who’ve raised families and managed home budgets and have some life experience who are, in Chouinard’s opinion: “the most underutilized demographic in American culture,” I pause. And I look around. In between the ample, airbrushed and fantastic tits and the sporty athletic balls are women just like me: reading, learning, and deeply fasincated with so-called “Men’s Interests.” 

Wake up Barnes & Noble. I might have to dump you for Borders or, better yet, Amazon.

the art of the mind

What’s in here, stashed away in the cranium housed in this neatly contained bubble of a head flutters a thousand heartbeats. The ones hammering away in my chest cavity are purely survival, fight or flight, and augmented in tempo, poeticized in cadence, and then strummed into miserable cacophony by my reptilian brain. The truest heartbeats, the beautiful, lyrical Yo La Tengo ones, those guys are pounding like drums and sex and birth up in my mind. Sounding out guitar chords, ensuring a different sort of cord is tied to my heart and your heart and somebody else’s heart out there, wherever that is, whoever they are, that somebody somewhere who should be tied to me, who isn’t yet, but will be.

This is the art of the mind, the rhythm of imagination, our collective possibility, entranced, enraptured and captured. Jailed, more accurately. Like the moment of awakening from a welcome intrusion of a deep, vivid, and sensual dream; within that moment the dream unceremoniously dies. But as you felt it slip away into nothingness, you are stuck with the notion that it was there, and how can this so tangibly, wonderfully, transformingly real thing you just experienced in so extraordinary a fashion vanish as quickly as the realization came?

What’s in my mind, in my heartbeating head, flowing forth from my civilized brain together with its primitive responses creates unspeakable beauty. Unspeakable is the operative word. I’m mute in this art. Amid all the sound and energy and aliveness, I am locked up. We are in this cell together, all beats and rhythms and harmonies intermingled with nothing but chatter and traffic and lo and behold, responsibility and taxes and unfairly high cell phone bills and busted washing machines.

But when I consider it as one measurable unit of beauty, after all, isn’t beauty the strange cousin of ugly? The symmetry that aligns the same shared features, reigns in proportion topped off with something, just one small thing, that’s slightly askew. Beauty is always so close to ugly, so strangely, compellingly imperfect amid its copious perfection. The most beautiful things are always just a bit off. It’s that one off tone key that rings true, that lends hope to the hopeless, that binds us, that fuses the cord of hearts, that writes the chords of loss and longing, that propels us together and then impossibly apart into our own inner worlds. More complete than when we first looked, less sure than when we ventured out to test it. All the more curious, if we dare, and, at once, prying at our heads to pull the truths out.

It is all so unspeakable, this language we utter in ordinary life. Our language isn’t for truly communicating, it’s for relaying information, basic, static, this is broken, this needs fixing, this needs calculating, my hair needs cutting, please put the seat down, turn off the lights, pay the dentist, vaccinate the cat information. It’s within the elusive dream, in the prison-like constructs and confines of our minds, that we are the most free. 

Don’t talk. There’s nothing you can say that will be enough. Just feel it here, feel the beating sensation, let it drive you, move you, inspire you. And spend the rest of your life trying, clawing, digging, screaming unheard screams, to share who you are, the you you think you know, the you you’ve made up for everyone to look at and hear, smell, taste, and touch, that earthly you who is now and has always been holed up in the prison of your heartbeating head.

 Just try to let them know. Because they’ll never know. Because not even you know. This is the challenge. This is the sadness. And the everything art.

Commitment: Leave my squirrel alone

I said before that honesty was such an ugly word. Or, wait, Billy Joel did. Whatever, I agreed. Except I don’t. Honesty is necessary. But it’s also hard to take at times.

Still we all pretty much accept and need honesty in our lives. Billy knows it, too: everyone is so untrue. But fine, as ugly as it is, we accept this honesty business.

I found an uglier word, though: commit.

This word sends chills up and down my boyfriend’s spine. Tingling sensations of the that-hurts-please-stop variety. And, invariably, academy-award-winning, cringe-worthy facial contortions result as well.

Commit?

Who me?

Good question.

After all, what does one commit or commit to most often? Here’s a partial list:

Commit a crime (go to jail).

Commit treason (piss off the government, are you serious?)

Commit to the lord (you pedophile you).

Be committed to an asylum (your family wants your money).

Commit suicide (stupid idea, the drama is short-lived and there’s no coming back).

Commit to quit (don’t be a quitter).

Commit MySQL (leave my squirrel alone!)

Commitment to another person means what exactly?

It sounds like a downright criminal act. A surrendering of will. A weakening of spirit. A deadening of soul. A senseless offense against one’s own autonomy.

Freedom is something we fight for, passionately. And freedom, increasingly, is the one thing we have left. So why then, why oh why, would we ever want to let that go?

If you can commit yourself to nothing else, commit yourself to understanding freedom.

Commit. Such an ugly word. So why is it such a beautiful thing?

how she learned to love football: a very short story*

Katie was pretty sure they'd only had sex twice that month. Or was it only once?

She marked the calendar with big black Xs every time they did it. Wait, now that she thought about it: Maybe it was only once that month. It was this strange, oddly predictable pattern where, pretty much, every 11 days he’d give in. And her birth control cost $34 a month so when she knew they were going to do it, she’d say, “Baby, make this one good. It’s worth $11.33.”

They’d known each other, oh three, four years by then. But she had no idea what they were doing together. Because it certainly wasn’t the passion keeping them glued. To this day, however, she has him to thank for getting her into sports, though. Katie became a football fan because of him.

Bill would spend every weekend—Saturday for the college games, Sunday for the pro games—immersed in the TV. It was all about him, his microbrews, his weed, his remote control.

And Katie would try anything she could think of to get his attention. And that meant, just like a terrible joke or cliché or Peg from Married with Children, dressing up in slutty little outfits and pushing her super duper, push-up bra boobs in his face or just standing there, blocking his precious TV, pride gone, bare ass naked and damn near begging:

Come on, Bill, can’t you peel your eyes away even for just a second?
Please?

It’ll take ten minutes. 
Tops.

Nope. Not Bill. 

He’d say, without even a hint of a smile, “Katie, come on, you’re being ridiculous.”

It was like a really disappointing beer commercial featuring Robot Bill the Anti-Sex Stodge sitting there in a haze of wasted potheadedness. Cue computer generated voice: Hot chick in way of game. Move hot chick out of way. Drink beer. Continue viewing game.

Meanwhile, Katie was thinking: how about we get creative like they do in a cheesey sitcom or a bad porno and do stuff while the game is still on? She was willing to compromise. Let him have his football. Let her have some fun. Really. She was willing to make a deal.

Ridiculous? To him, she was.

To her, she was just a girl looking for what a lot of women, so she heard, turned down on a regular basis in the context of marriage. (Katie's note to self: never take this for granted. Idiots!). And what were all these rumors flying around that men were constant sexed-up freaks and women were orgasm fakers?  

There she was begging for it, not understanding why. She knew that was messed up, everyone told her it was, but then she started wondering if maybe she was undesirable. But that was ridiculous and she knew it. All the men she'd ever known couldn't keep their eyes, hands or other parts off her. This Bill was the weird one. Why she hung on, she didn't have a clue. It could've been all that money he had. 


But she knew it was only a matter of time. A ticking clock, time bomb. She wasn't going to stick around for this. Even though he was worth millions. Like tens of them. Jewelry, expensive clothes, vacations made life comfortable and pretty. But Katie wanted to get down. In sexy outfits. Even while he sipped his stupid beer and watched his stupid game. It was any "normal" guy's dream. Wasn't it?

But instead of getting angry, she’d go to the kitchen and pour herself a stiff Jack & Coke, didn’t matter what time it was, and sit on the chair by herself, dangling her hooker shoes off the side, naked, maybe not naked, whatever, didn’t matter, he didn’t notice. And the more she sipped, the less she felt. 

The less she felt, the more she watched.

And so, what else was she gonna do but learn to love football? 

To be continued....

* this is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to characters living or dead is entirely coincidental. 

buzzwords, the buzzkill

I’ve been surrounded by intimidating smarts before. The kind of smarts that make you wonder if you’ll ever amount to a hill of beans in life. But as you get a little older, a lot of those seemingly “intimidating smarts” turned out to just be really good talkers. Good talkers who really know how to effortlessly toss out these little buzzwords and incomprehensible marketingspeak designed to make an intelligent, well-intentioned, hardworking (usually female) newbie feel like not only an outsider but maybe, horrors, a real dummy.

Things often said by coiffed, cologned and cufflink wearing men.

Things like:

“identify best practices”

“the low-hanging fruit”

“push the envelope”

“capture mindshare”

“are we polishing a turd here?”

“perhaps cast a wider net”

“dimensionalize that paradigm”

“tear down some silos”

“the scenery only changes for the lead dog”

Meanwhile, everyone’s nodding.
Taking notes.
Sipping their boardroom table burned coffees.
Saying equally hideous things like:

“I’ll circle back to you on that”

“Are we on the same page?”

“Noodle that”

“Let’s explore core competencies”

“Next steps”

I can’t think of any more at this very moment but "at the end of the day" I’m sure I will. Oh yeah, other stuff like “30,000 foot view” and “where the rubber meets the road” and a real sweetie: “the smell test.” Good times!

As an impressionable young copywriter back in 1999, the big term was (let’s all gag in unison): “We’re all about thinking outside the box here.” Yeah, we get it. Like coloring outside the lines. Big whoop. It makes for a stupid, lazy, dumb-kid-did-it sort of crayon gone mad mess. Later on you learn that no client wants anything that doesn’t come in a neat, tidy container. So stay in your box. You belong there. It’s where the money gets made.

Anyway, now I realize that clarity is best. It’s always been best. Clarity is where communication thrives. Is that clear? If you can still say what you want to say in a clever, interesting way, great. If not, stick to clarity. Otherwise you lose people. And nobody buys anything. And the client moves on to an agency that can deliver smart, CLEAR creative. And you’re out of that nice, cushy, outside-box job. Suddenly making a staggering $275 a week off the good ole Florida government wondering how in hell you’re gonna pay for that Lexus.

I digress. Sorry, did I just get personal?

All I can say is that the box is cozy. Stay in it. Be smart.

In the meantime, get clear. Please.

I read on NPR this week a great reminder about simplicity and impact, the “Six Word Memoir” made truly famous by Ernest Hemingway years ago.

Hemingway’s goes:

“For Sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”

If the hair isn’t standing up on the back of your neck people, stop reading now. You’re not my friend.

Anyway, the point is: you can say a lot with very little. And you can be very clear, too.

What if, on the other hand Hemingway wrote:

“SIDS. Sad. Shoes Straight to Goodwill.”

Just doesn’t have that one-two-punch does it? (There I go again. I’m telling you, this marketingspeak is a tough habit to break).

So can you please do me a favor, and yourselves an even bigger favor, and let’s all try a little less marketingspeak?
(No matter how smart you think it makes you look). To me, and to a lot of my friends (who shall remain nameless, for now), it actually makes you look like a wannabe jackass who is, yes, very much so…polishing a big, stinky, steaming turd. And no, you can’t make ice cream out of horseshit. (another gem I’d forgotten about).

If you’re not sure if a product is going to work or sell or what, don’t give it a “smell test.” Gross.

In that next meeting, and this is pretty revolutionary stuff, I know….why not astound your peers and say, simply:

“Let’s see if this works!”

Now that’s some intimidating smarts.

Peace out yo. That’s all I gotta say. Carry on friends.