the words inside

I used to write them for you. Long letters like stories, with beginnings, middles and neatly tied up endings. Then, a few weeks later, I'd do it all over again like composing a symphony about my life's current events, with a chorus, with harmonies and discord too, and always a cascade of cadences that made sense the way words do in my head, the way words conjure up all my feelings.

I did it like poetry, I composed it – for you. So you'd like me. So you'd feel like I was good enough to be your daughter. I wrote all those things down. Before you got sober, you'd - hazily and slow-motion-like the way all good drunks do -read my poetry, my letters, my stories, my lyrical, luscious, so pretentious musings within words. You'd read them all aloud to so many other people, at dinner parties by candlelight among close friends, and latest girlfriends, in your studio. There were so many nights like that. With so many eyes all glistening, some smiling, in the flickering light, and everyone hush-hush not necessarily because of my honest words spoken so dramatically by you, but simply because of you, because of your magical, captivating presence, your studied actor's authority, and also because, of course, there was I, your daughter, sitting beside you, the artist, the King in his grand domain.

Still, years later, as good as it felt to have you read my words out loud, as shy as I felt, I wonder: was I any good? Even now, I ask myself: am I any good? I write for pay, like a sell out. Sure, this is a good thing and yes, I am proud of it. But I am no award-winning novelist, not a poet, not a playwright. I am not the writer I thought I might be. 

There was always too much self-consciousness in it all. I hated the writer's workshops, the studied, anal nature of it. The flares, the foreshadowing, the dissection, the over intention, the craving for attention. I wrote because I had to. That's what all artists say. And they say it because it is the truth. I wrote for an audience of one: you. But when I began, I wrote for an audience of one: me. It was that simple, that plain, that true.

My first boyfriend was a tremendous writer. But he was also the sort who over-studied, and over-thought, and ultimately thought me out of his life. I couldn't stand it any longer. We were competitive in school, two writers taking the same classes. He would glance over at my paper and if I had an A and he didn’t, there was a rageful fury in his eye. It never went away.

He destroyed several of my journals in fits of crazed jealousy – over other boys – over what else I'm not sure. But he destroyed years of my writing, years of my sophomoric, adolescent angst and pain and joy. I hated and resented – and even still to this day – never forgave him for that. I wondered, as people do, as years go by, whatever happened to him. I had, in a strange turn of events (too long a story for now) been a bridesmaid in his wedding. I had become quite close with his fiancée. They lived in Tennessee, then Texas, had several children, and pets. He reached out to me – and to my mother – via email some years ago. Strangely. Mysteriously. Incomprehensibly. Like someone in the midst of a mental breakdown.

No one will tell what occurred. No matter how many times I've asked. Not his ex wife, his mother, his sister. No one. And so I went searching on the Internet. And I came across a blog post about him and his 'literary fall from grace,' his advance given by Alfred Knopf for a book and how he coudln't make the deadlines, about his admirers and fans, and his apparent wanderings though cities, his disappearances and strange dalliances, various bizarre mental episodes, and something clearly resembling a bi-polar disorder or just a totally unhinged human being.

And I then began to think differently back on the way we had been when we were young, 19 and 20, in the cold winters of Chicago. Perhaps, after all, his inward longings, his strange behavior was not for show. Perhaps, indeed, he had been rather mentally unwell all those years ago, with the first stirrings of a disturbed man-child, one with thoughts to share, with pain to explore, not merely to exhibit as a means for attention and weirdness, but, as I see it now, perhaps exhibition was his only means of sanity.

My father was so much like him.

It's sad to me to think of you, Dad, all the letters and stories and poetry I wrote because you were my number one fan, it's sad to me that we no longer speak. And here it is Christmas, another year passing us by, and you are old now, and sometimes I see a man about your age crossing the street or sitting in a coffee shop reading and my heart beats faster and I know that we don't have all the time in the world. It's so short, this maddening life. I want no regrets. I want to feel that I did the right things, that I opened my heart for the right reasons and, at the same time, that I honored myself, too.

You were cruel, too. You have been cruel. Cold. Your words cut like razor blades. I had to shut you out. It has made me sad but I had no choice.

Words were once our one thing, as two artists who met somewhere in a world lacking in poetry. I don’t know what to do with my words now. I hold them in tight. They are mine but they miss you – they miss the idea of you - all the while.

complacency - or revolution?

Are we living in a time of revolution? Or are we complacently nodding off, hoping someone else will surely make a stand on our behalf? In this era of immediacy, of constantly evolving technology, of our access to the very latest, up-to-the-microsecond of events reported at that very instant, certainly we think that someone, someone highly intelligent and 'in charge' will stand up for whatever it is we care about. I mean, it takes 45 minutes to change your cell phone plan or your cable plan even when you do get to converse with an actual human being on the other end of the line. Who has the time to even care about real stuff? Who has that much time in their day to dedicate to what really matters?

Has technology robbed us of our ability to do anything? Are Facebook and Twitter just flaccid ways of blabbing about what we feel? Have we become an impotent, incompetent group of beaten downs? What happened to taking action? And why--- (when so many of us feel so tired to do what we really feel passionate about because everything else is weighing us down) ---why are people bashing the so-called 'idiot kids' at Occupy Wall Street? Some of the right wingers are saying 'go get a job you spoiled brats.' Yeah, right. What jobs? What jobs are you talking about?

Unfortunately, in my case, no action is not saying I don't care.  Because I know I do. I know most of us do. I'm not marching or calling congress or doing anything particularly dramatic. But I am talking. To my friends. To like-minded people. And asking a lot of questions. And I am wondering when things will change, if they ever will. Whatever any of us believe, we all care. Absolutely. But, the thing is, who has the inclination to think that their version of caring, their effort and their time to promote something will even make a difference?

And, seriously, like I said above, who has the fucking time?

It takes ten times as long to get anything done these days. And the time we spend procrastinating involves reading what others have posted or blogged or bitched about on some social media channel. I'm as much to blame as anyone. Yet I'm angsty.

Stressed. Scared.

Who else feels this way? 

And what can be done?

I'm upset by the way the government has handled things financially. I was raised in the 1% and now, well, not so much. We've fallen even though no one wants to admit it. I was raised Republican (little government) and now, hello religion shoved down your throat and anti-civil rights and…yeah, not so much. I am not identified with any party really. It's like dating a guy who wears skinny jeans. No way. I hate that I don’t even have healthcare. (I will do this, Mom, I promise – and soon).

We are living in strange times. I keep saying that. But it's true. I don't have a solution. But I want to be a part of the conversation. Even if I don't have enough time to take serious action, I want to be informed. I spend most of my time working and drumming up new work and paying those bills, and talking to creditors, and just living my life as best I can. It's all I can do in a day. But I do care.

Who else cares? And what are you doing about it?

catnip

I know what you smell like. How you taste. What the sound of your - slow, quiet, almost inaudible - breathing is like. I watch for the rise and fall as I wonder if you're still alive. In the early morning, a part of me wants to wake you up and grab your smooth, broad back and repeat what we did last night in the half light of my little room. But another part of me just wants you to leave. And once I wake up and these thoughts begin, I lie there, trapped and suffocated. Transfixed by desire. Paralyzed with fear.

I told you you were catnip. You are. If you’ve ever seen a cracked-out cat on catnip, there’s a love/hate with it. It gets all needy with the stuff, then it bites and claws at it, like fuck you, fuck you for making my eyes black with craziness. But I’m so out of control. I liked it at first. But I am high as hell right now and I’m just stuck with want. And need. So fuck you.

Catnip.

I know these things about you now. Like the way your mouth feels, all wet in the shower, and how the water on your lips tastes sweeter somehow. And how I’m crazy for the way you can pick me up like I’m weightless. No matter how many craft beers I’ve bad that day.

Strong arms. Soft lips. Catnip.

I can’t unknow these things, I’m stuck with them.

You reached out to me in a small, innocent way. Over a year ago. An invitation to a party. Nothing big. But months later things were said, things that you say when you’ve had too much bad whiskey or too much loneliness.

Late at night, last winter, you played the guitar for one song, at a bar with your friend. He sang the words, you were the rhythm and the emotion. Afterwards you told me, with this face that looked all honesty and all silly, yet true, that you played to impress me.

Later, at my house, you said you’d always thought about me. Even back then when you weren’t supposed to. 

You even used the word love. Bad whiskey will do that to you.

I didn’t say a thing. But you just laughed and said, “Yeah, love. But not love love. You know what I mean.’

You are the rawest person I’ve ever met. You make no promises. You apologize for nothing. 

I don’t want to miss you. Even though, I do want to miss you. Or, at least, somebody who looks like you. Smells like you. Tastes like you.  

One day you’ll wake up and be in the right place with the right person at the right time. And so will I. But maybe we won't.

In the meantime, I’ll just put my heart in that sling and let people sign my cast. It’s what I’ve done all my life. I’m nothing but an autographed and well-traveled gimpy limb. At least it hasn’t been boring.

Don’t blame me in my sleep, though. I can’t help it if sometimes the character I’m playing loves you there, in some vivid story that gets made, a story that something much bigger tells about the way it is, and I’m just letting it take me where it wants to take me.

It’s not my fault. 

Fuck you catnip. That is the only place I’m not in charge. 

deep-dark-sad-light-elated choice

I was in the dark hole again. Under the covers. And the only measurement of the fact that I exist, are the inhalations I see of the cat's small ribs rising, the fur rising and falling, ever so slowly, beside me. We are breathing together, in near silent unison. Cats sleep 16 hours a day by design. The depressed human sleeps 16 hours a day by default. 


I consider in my half-awake coma, slightly ashamed but less ashamed than exhausted, some of the people I know, strong ones, motivated ones, people with children and alarm clocks that blare before the sun even rises. I recall myself, not that long ago, that I was a welcome member in that club of doing and being and forward-thinking and growing, and right now, here in this comfortable and dark room, picturing myself, eyes closed, in the dark of another room, a spinning room at 6am, sweating, pumping, moving and feeling, almost, almost, almost that I'm becoming Type A. I remember a feeling of pride in that. I felt so productive and in step with inspired others. I felt like someone, maybe, to admire.


But now, there I was, behind the deep blue, heavy IKEA curtains, wondering how this all happened. 


Depression is not an overnight thing usually unless brought on by some tragic loss. And pity parties are a common problem that one wishes to attend night after night. So long as the promise of a happy party is thrown later. Yet you can't really look ahead to that party for the moment. Your focus is here. Here in this ceiling-fan whir, hypnotic cat inhalations, mind-numbness of now. Now.


A call this morning to a friend on the west coast, a friend who embraces the depths of our innately bi-polar natures (all of ours because he thinks this is a choice, that all humans are bi-polar, it's that some choose not to let the pendulum swing to far to either side), freed me somehow. Perhaps the ability to feel great joy, and I mean great, deep, profound joy on the other side of this dark hole is, in its way, not just a choice - yes, a choice - but a gift. 


The light has changed. I can sense it. Fall is here. I can feel it in the hush of the breeze in the evening air. I can see it, a change, a physical one, but also the butterfly flutter of something small yet magnificent happening all around us. 


I picked paint colors today. Finally. Deep, magical, elusive blue. And it's perfectly juxtaposed contrasting color? I haven't decided yet. It will come to me. And soon.

thoughts from 1992

Sometimes it's good to go back and revisit your former self. Particularly when you're missing a college reunion weekend set aside for the brainy crew you once ran around with. You remember how in awe of some of those people you were (and perhaps still would be given their sheer intellectual capacity). But as you look back on that time and while you realize that, of course, you've grown and changed immensely (and certainly some of your young writing was embarrassingly sophomoric and self-conscious and full of misused words) you're still always just...you in the end. 


I recently came across (let's be more accurate: I unearthed from old files out of curiosity and nostalgia) some old writing of mine from college. Here's a piece (totally unedited) from my 20 year old brain....


February 24, 1992.


There have been times that I've thought nothing matters - not the body, not the soul (whatever that might be) - but a source of sunlight, even the smallest light reflecting into my eyes like the aliveness it owned; there have been times when that light is the light by which I see the life I've created. The life existing in my body, the own child of myself that I carry with me always and which refuses to grow up urges me to stretch from my corner and scream the way we are forbidden to scream, to laugh and hold my body as if it did not belong to me.


Whatever urging the body finds are simply the outlines to a picture far larger than the world, far louder than any sound. Sound is so crucial in our explosion from the box of oppression. To scream Oh My God during orgasm may be our only outlet; were we allowed to scream across campus hallelujah fuckin' a as loud as we could and expelled as primal a scream as our bodies permitted, perhaps sex would not be so extraordinarily "out of body."


And this writing is a scream all its own, a scream of passionate yearning demanding a voice, the voice inside my head, the voice calling from deep within and expressed onto the page. Like the touch from under the sheets, bare skin, the man touching me so profoundly as if we touched the very me.


She was the temple. I was the temple, the arched wing in flight. No one told me either, no one prepared me for what I feel. I asked myself about the color in your eye, no longer a color when I looked again, but a large and open sky. A sky void of stars, closer to darkness, you said: "With you I have days" and then there's the night. It's the night I see in your eyes. Last week fingers were for scribing, I'd forgotten how good they feel in your hair. Have you felt me ever before? No body is the same. Mine is the same, only different. Seeker of hard muscles hid in a fretted friend, I need you.


Your days are numbered but only by the fly-by-night birds that stop to you, drifting the songs that become yours. My ephemeral anguish here, the longer I'm reminded of you pulling back like a turtle's feet into his shell, closer to yourself and me. Don't forget the way I touch you.


And then there's the voice proclaiming (but softly) "By the time you read this, I'll be half way across the country. By the time you've heard of me, I'll be a poet of moderate fame, searching for the love I couldn't find in you." And this is where my body takes me. He asked me to stay awake and write song lyrics for him. Of my shelter - short hair, rope bracelets, kickball - I was still tender, I always felt. Abandoned like an island cat, dirty but soft and manipulative.


Whitman said: I sing the body electric! You said: My body wrapped around my guitar, I let the music speak for my heart....But were they your words? No. No one's words are their words, you said yourself everything is stolen. All the great things have already been written, all the great music already composed....it is the stolen PARTS of the body that make it unique for it is all taken from the same source.


Like the child in the burning building, go to that child. And my words give me a thousand years of freedom. 

Celebrityishness.

I was nineteen when celebrity hit me like a gale force wind. This was long before the celebrity worship and reality TV crap that pervades the world today.

To be sure, celebrities have always been adored and treated like otherworldly beings. Even when I was really young, I thought the idea of screaming at someone or jumping up and down at them like a crazed fan at a concert was pathetic and ridiculous. Even if I admired a person for their talent, it would never occur to me to claw at, cry, or act desperate towards them if I got close to them. My natural reaction was to probably want to shake their hand and tell them how much I respected their work. But that’s because I don’t worship people readily. Never have. And because, to me, people are people.

And, as my brother Rich says, “Even Angelina Jolie poops.” For real.

In any event, at one time, celebrity did impact my life. Considerably. And without warning. In the summer of 1991.

My roommate and I went to go rent a movie at the local movie rental place in Vineyard Haven. I’d been out running and I was sweaty and wearing a pair of faded dark green with white writing Proctor Academy shorts and an oversized t-shirt. We scoured the racks of old movies and, for whatever reason, (I’m pretty sure our other roommate Maisley requested it, she liked the classics which was a good thing) we rented a Marilyn Monroe classic. I honestly don’t remember. What I do remember is the movie: Some Like it Hot.

In the aisles of the tiny store, we suddenly saw the statuesque, tourquoise suit-wearing, Carly Simon. She was so stunning and so self-possessed in that movie star quality that you can’t quite put into words. Something ethereal, yet immediate. Goddess-like and accessible all at once.  It wasn’t until she was in line behind me, though, that I dared speak.

Because we caught eyes. And she just looked so strangely familiar. And she clearly knew I knew who she was.

“I just have to tell you,” I said, making my voice bigger with each word, pulling myself as much as I could out of my nineteen-year old shyness, “I’ve been told my entire life that I look like you.”

In the theatrical way that I later tried to mimic because it was so compelling and dramatic in this genuine way, she didn’t say a word, but instead she let her left hand soar to her heart, as if her body itself had been possessed by my words and she broke into that broad, unmistakable, famous smile.

“Really? I’m so flattered.”

I considered my roommate, paying for our video rental, looking for a shared experience. But she was oblivious.  She didn’t even notice. Nothing wrong with her, not at all, but she was likely stoned, actually. Just ready for some hummus and filafel back at the house. And some leftover Black Dog cookies. The broken ones that Maisley was lucky enough to bring home to us.

“No. I’m flattered,” I said to her in return, smiling my very own signature toothy grin.

And then, in a moment, a thing that changed my life forever, this beautiful introduction occurred, an event that left an imprint that would tread the road of my brain for all time.

“I’d like you to meet my son,” she said, gesturing behind her.

I followed her hands.

“Ben.”

And there he was.

I had to turn almost all the way around to see him standing there – and there he was -  all 6 feet 4 inches of him and his big blue puppy dog eyes. We shook hands. He bowed his head graciously, and smiled.  A sweet underbite smile, eyes as blue as blue ever was, and he said in an almost Southern accent, “Pleased to meet you.” That’s when I knew. This was the Southern charm, the consummate gentleman behavior, he learned from his father, James Taylor.

to be continued

my nine-eleven (ten years later)

Ten years ago, on September 11, 2001 I was about to get married.

I was about to get married - on the following Saturday, September 15 - and I was already out of my head. The wedding was imminent. They’d done the requisite dress fittings but, in my preoccupation with all the planning and nervousness and, perhaps, utter panic at the idea of losing my identity, I had become too thin, and they simply couldn’t cinch the organza and lace any tighter.

My mouth was filled with canker sores. I was grinding my teeth. I had night terrors.

The ‘love of my life’, Jeff, was drowning himself in Jack and Cokes pretty much constantly and I don’t remember us speaking much after one day in March that he tossed a 1.5 carat round brilliant diamond in platinum (in a classic, pleasing diamond baguettes setting) on my finger. All I remember is that the wedding itself had become a thing of its own, outside of us. And it breathed. And it demanded all of my attention. Was this not what love what about?

Ten years ago, I followed a path in the dark with someone else holding my hand telling me it was alright. I was twenty-nine years old. It was time to grow up. I said, alright then, I’ll close my eyes and follow you.

It was an ordinary, albeit sun-filled, morning, and I was puttering around in my new condo in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, emptying the dishwasher in my tank top and cotton panties. The phone rang and I let the answering machine get it. My mother said in her expected grace under fire voice, “We’re under attack. The pentagon. The world trade center. We’ve been hit. Perhaps the white house is next. The buildings are on fire.. Jess, call me right away. Do not go to Boston.”

I had no television hooked up. Everything was still in U-Haul boxes from our recent move from Philadelphia. I called my aunt to tell her we couldn’t meet in Boston to get our highlights done. I’d go on with my wedding with roots, damnit. (yes, this was the least of my concerns). When I called her to tell her I wasn’t coming, she turned on the TV. She told me, explicitly and horribly, that people were jumping to their deaths. My imagination was soaring; everything was in slow motion the way things are when nothing makes sense.

I had to see this for myself. I went out to my deck only to see my neighbor, Isabelle, placidly watering her many plants in the sunshine. In her broad straw hat with her green watering can. I threw on some shorts and ran outside. She had no idea. I was the one to tell her. She wasn’t much of a TV person but we went into her house and sat down in front of her impossibly small television set and we watched - and we listened. We watched the first tower come down, we watched it fall in a surreal grey crumbling, an oddly weightless ashy heap.

Later that day, we gathered at my mother’s, me, Jeff, my brother Rich, his girlfriend Quenby, my brother Bob, my mother, my stepdad and several big jugs of pinot grigio, the cheap, easy drinking kind in abundance, and several bricks of cheddar cheese and boxes of crackers. We subsisted on this while we watched the second building come down and we waited for the phone calls.

My cousin happened to be in Jersey City that day, instead of onsite. Check. My uncle, whose 8:30AM meeting on one of the top floors had been rescheduled for 9/12, was a lucky bastard, too. Quenby’s friends got out in time. Down the stairs. My highschool friend, Teddy Maloney, was not so lucky. He died in the first tower.

I announced, abruptly and with no emotion that I wanted to postpone the wedding that it seemed like the right thing to do. Jeff had no opinion. He just drank more beer. Quenby was in my corner on this one, vibing off the emotion of people we knew, the closeness of the tragedy and the weirdness of everything happening around us. My mother said that was a stupid idea and that we had to go on. And then my mother and Quenby argued about it while I stood by, silent and disappearing, into my anxious and already too-thin body, disappearing into that darkness and feeling for the hand that had guided me this far.

I couldn’t find it.

The following weekend, just days later, I got married.

I got married on the green grass by the sea. Surrounded by people I loved. I felt, most of all, the overriding feeling that most people shared that weekend, that it was a glorious excuse for celebration, for distraction from it all, for gathering together in such a confusing time.

I’ll never forget how we all slapped American flags on the back of our cars and drove around the desolate landscape of Maine, where, in fact, the hideous terrorists had come through. Canada first, then there. They had trudged this way, through this unmarred land and sky, they had been right here. Breathing this same air. And I could feel them all around me.

Ten years later, I do not have an American flag on my car nor do I have a ribbon of any color. My marriage, based clearly on something we’d already outgrown once the vows were said, unraveled. Without passion. And without regret.

I will never forget that weekend of unity, of a divided world suddenly bonded together, all of us celebrating life and love, and also deeply mourning, not just the innocent people who died but also the profound loss of something we once shared together, something indefinable. For that brief time, we were so unified, as a people, as a nation, "indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" and it was good. But it was only temporary. Ultimately, it seems, the terrorists took something very specific from us. They inspired us to sever apart and hate each other in a whole new way.

I don’t know what to think of our nation ten years later. I know less now than I thought I did then. Party lines don’t define me. I was in independent my whole life and I’m not a Republican or a Democrat even now. I only want what’s right. What’s fair. What’s just.

My car was recently stolen and the thief got away with it. A level-headed friend of mine took a crazy stalker to court not long ago and couldn't get rid of the problem. Our laws protect the criminal more than the victim. We have to ‘prove’ the hideousness of people in the wrong. But when you lead a decent life in this complicated world we live in, who has time for this nonsense? We can barely keep track of the legitimate concerns we have like our cable bills and insurance. Who has the extra time or inclination to do this? And the sad part is, you then become a victim, not out of weakness, but as the result of a very, very broken system.

I’m not sure how things can change other than blowing the whistle, very loudly and very frequently, on what’s not working. But who is listening? Who has the time to listen? There is so much corruption today, more than ever it seems. From the banks and the (let's not talk about the elephant in the room) mortgage crisis to baby-killer Casey Anthony walking free. What is this place? What is America 'the great' today?

I mourn 9/11 not just for the profound tragedy of that day, the awful loss of life and the absolute loss of innocence for our country. But I, solemnly and truthfully and painfully, mourn what I once thought was a great country. I don’t know so much anymore about us.

I’ve lost a lot of faith in this place in the last ten years. It’s hard to really love it like I used to. Am I alone? Who else feels this disenchanted, disenfranchised sadness?

This feels like a dark time in our history. A very dark time. And I don’t know when we’ll see the light again.

Perhaps not in our lifetime.

the bearable lightness of being

Ten days earlier, I went to my masseuse who is also a psychic healer, an intuitive if you will. You can roll your eyes all day long if you want, that's fine with me. I scoffed at this myself for a long time. That is, before I went.

I've been going to her since late April, perhaps early May. I finally decided to use the gift certificate I'd been given for Christmas. And, truth be told, my mother had been telling me to go see her for several years. I found every excuse imaginable not to go as if she was the dentist or something. Why is that, I wonder now, perhaps because the idea of someone being able to 'read' me the moment I meet them somehow...terrifies me? Could be.

Ten days before the bizarre weekend of events, one of which involved car theft - or more specifically, grand theft auto, which is considered in all 50 states, a felony - which I reported (thankfully) but for which I did not press charges (coercion after a hostile event that took place on a boat) which I now regret. I am hoping this all works out for me somehow even though I was the innocent party in all this. A bystander, really. Seeing a man strike a woman while out on the open water, in someone's boat, a someone I met years prior but don't really know that well, there's a certain shock that takes over. And, in my case, a horror at the Jerry Springer meets Jersey Shore-ness of it all when that same person stole my car. And his abused girlfriend begged me not to press charges. I was in some kind of alternate reality, certainly. Not thinking clearly.

Ten days before this shitty chain of events, I lay peacefully, on a comfy, easy, flannel-sheeted massage table in Maitland, Florida. "Energy work" was performed, a psychic healing method that, quite truly, left me shaking, woozy, and elated. Sex might be better than this, but not by much. The internal 'stuff' had been, for all intents and purposes, rooted out. And the best part? I never had to say a word, not one word, and yet, this healer KNEW what it all was. She 'sensed' (I don't know how)the hot part in the middle of my back, and the cold part in the lower part. Energy blockages, she explained. I was hanging onto something that I had to let go of, but couldn't. I was hanging onto a person, or persons. And I knew precisely who those people were. And so, incredibly, did she.

This is not a tarot card sham, or some shallow palm 'lifeline' reading, this is something altogether much, much more intense and, well, a little scary, to be honest. To have someone identify, often within seconds, of what you're feeling without your saying so much as 'hello' is just amazing. They say there are people who are blessed with this sort of ability, more of us than we realize, but we aren't taught to pay attention to the signs.

I'm one of them. I'll never forget my senior year of high school when I was working as a waitress at a tiny cafe. It was closing time and I was vacuuming the store. While I was vacuuming, I knew, I just KNEW that the phone was going to ring and I wouldn't be able to hear it. I knew the phone call would be for me. And it would be my mother. And she would tell me that someone I knew, a classmate, had died. As I methodically vacuumed, in some quiet trance, I just waited for the owner to cross the store and tell me the phone was for me. Which she did. I thought perhaps it was my accident prone friend from boarding school but that was too obvious. It turned out to be something far more sinister. Ryan Brownell. More of an acquaintance than a friend. Sure, we'd drank together at parties. He dated a girl I knew. And my mother called to tell me he shot himself. In his parent's basement. Just days before graduation. And I could FEEL that. It was hanging heavily in the air all around me. Quiet and dense.

There have been other times, countless times really, that I've just known something was going to happen long before it did.

But I can't tap into that readily. Not really. But some of us can.

And the woman who, literally (there's no other way to explain it) 'pulled' these people OUT of my body, just knows. She just does.

The experiences I have had with her (this recent session most profoundly) has taught me, more than ever, to be more open to the strangenesses in life, to accepting that while we are matter, while we are flesh and bone, yes, we are somehow a great deal of soul, too, and we are very much connected - undeniably.

As I let this go, as I left in my car in the late afternoon, lighter from releasing the energetic 'weight' of two people, I was, unfortunately, a bit too vulnerable, a bit too carefree with this sense of weightlessness. I don't know how else to see it.

Perhaps I felt too safe among the strange. Why else would I venture off with two strangers to the beach, for a day on a stranger's boat? What gave me the unwary right to feel that alright with something so untested? Where were my guards? Why was I so trusting?

A car is just a car. I consider this a lesson. A pretty major one. It could have been far worse.

It's like when you break up with someone and they say 'let's be friends' and you think 'I have enough friends.' Well, I have enough friends. I've met some amazing people in my almost five years here. I've also met some losers that I've had to cut loose. Try 'em and let 'em go. That's all part of it. I'm not going to say I'm done meeting new people. Not at all. But I will be much, much more careful with my pure heart.

This 'unbearable lightness of being' is, in all honesty, a beautiful terror. What can we do with this much space in our hearts? How much can we give when we've truly let go?

Not everyone deserves me. I have a lot to give. And I want to give it to the right people. That's not holier than thou or 'above' anything. It's just true.

And believe me, I embrace the strangeness of possibility. But I protect me. And this is my truest, most valuable lesson of the past 20 days.

Thank you Kathleen.

You enlighten me in the very instant you make me weightless.

Puppy Love - for Rich on his 37th birthday

My brother Rich has always been my protector. Even though he’s my younger brother, he just took on that role. I’m not sure exactly when. It might have been the crazy summer we all lived together on Martha’s Vineyard with Julia and Nick - when I was almost 20 and he had just turned 17. Maybe it was then, I can’t be sure. It just feels like it’s been for almost always. And perhaps Rich had a natural inclination to protect me because our father was out to lunch, perhaps because he felt that he should, and that I somehow needed it (which I sure did). During the times that we lived in the same city (Los Angeles, CA and Manchester, NH, respectively), he always had my back. Whether it was taking my keys away after we were all stumbling down the street from too many La Carreta top shelf grand marnier margaritas or setting straight an obnoxious misogynistic chef who hit on me once (this one got the two-finger and steely eye right in his face ‘don’t you EVER mess with my sister again, you understand?’ Rich was always there.

He may appear tough on the outside, but tough on the inside? Yeah, not so much.

This soft underbelly became quite evident recently when his beloved dog, Red Dog, became physically distraught and just about unable to walk after months of mysterious deterioration and discouraging vet visits. The vet determined that Red had a degenerative neurological problem that was only going to get worse. Rich called me on his way home from work, several days in a row, just straight up sobbing and beside himself at the idea of putting his dog down. He owns his own design/build business and Red goes to work with him in the truck every single day. Has for nearly a decade. Red Dog is a red-nose pit bull. Sweetest dog you’ll ever meet. Smart, too. And not a mean bone in his body. Curls up with Rich’s 4 year old son, guarding over him in a way, but mostly just napping. Red is special. He just is. He’s just one of those dogs.

So after days of distress, Rich decided hell no, he wasn’t going to just take the vet’s advice and put his best friend down. So he drove 3 hours up to Maine to a specialist. An MRI revealed that Red had a viciously bad herniated disc in his neck. It wasn’t a neurological problem at all. But he would need surgery and it was going to cost $6,000.

Six. Thousand. Dollars.

On a nine-year old dog’s neck.

He might not even survive the surgery.

But the doc was confident. Red was a tough old man after all. With impressive musculature. In proud pit dog form.

That’s love baby. Rich is the sole provider of a family of four. He works in the construction business during one of the worst economic times in history. No pension plan for him. No cozy, 2-martini lunch, 30-year career in a suit. Nope, not this guy.

But so much love instead. Puppy love, I guess.

So this whole episode got me thinking. About our love for animals. Animals are so, so easy to love. They give so much and expect so little.

Rather unlike people.

People are so damn busy complicating everything. Overanalyzing. Sweating vulnerability and honesty. Putting up walls. Creating drama. Living in fear of this thing we all want and need.

Love.

Animals are easier to love. It’s just the truth. Animals are pure love embodied in such a wonderful, whole form. They don’t care what you look like or what you do for a living or how much money you make or what kind of car you drive. They barely even care what you feed them. So long as you feed them, of course. They’ll love you no matter what.

They lower blood pressure among the lonely.
The make older people live longer, happier lives.
They bring joy to babies.

It’s too bad that our relationships with people can’t be simpler. Kinder. Gentler.

Well, sometimes they are. But our complex brains and our primitive hard-wiring make us do stupid things too often. It would be nice if we could all try a little harder. Or maybe just have more pets. I don’t know.

Whatever we can draw into our lives that is pure and good is, well, good.

And as for my brother who has always been there for me, I miss his presence in my life. We talk all the time on the phone. Mini therapy sessions. Rants. Raves. Laughter. Joy. Pain. Sadness. Disappointment. Heartbreak. Success. Failure. More success. The price of gas. How annoying cell phone bills are. All of it. I may not ride shotgun to job sites but I feel, a lot of the time, that I’m almost right there.

Me, Rich, and Red Dog. And that’s pure love right there.

Happy 37th Birthday Rich. I love you with all my heart. I’m sorry I’m not up there on this particular August 3rd to celebrate with you this year. But I promise you I’m right there in spirit.

xoxo

Count Stalkula - tedious dating in Orlando

Count Stalkula.

Dating can be so tedious. Particularly when you arrive at the date---at the agreed-upon meeting place and you realize, within microseconds, that the person with the big smile and the big ready hug, standing there greeting you resembles so very, very little of the person you met last Friday night.



You don’t want to admit just how much what a man wears matters to you. But it does. Damnit. It does. At the very least, what they’re wearing shouldn’t look like they picked it up at GoodWill. But this strange and clueless person is not only wearing black on black ( as if channeling Sprockets without the turtleneck), each item is also terribly faded. And the ill-fitting pants are baggy, akin to the kind sous chefs wear in the kitchen, and now, no longer black, but almost gray. And the shirt is equally faded and pilly. With bad buttons. And there’s this awful, worn out belt. A belt that even in its heyday was nothing shy of terrible. And let’s not forget those exceedinlgly in full bloom gin blossoms adding sprinkles of color to his clearly unhealthy pallor. Yes, that’s right: gin blossoms. And no, we are not talking about the band.

(Social alert: alcoholic freakhead who can’t afford new pants. And biology alert: bad genes. Run).

Let’s be honest here, Jessica. Ask yourself this simple question: Why does he look nothing like the fantasy person you crafted in your spindly little brain over the past 48 hours? Could it be the oh, say, 4 refreshingly heavy-content craft beers you drank the night you met? Or was it that round of mystery shots that you were coerced into drinking because the pretty blonde, black eyelinered Graffiti Junktion bartender said in her insanely short-shorts (that you wanted to hate her for wearing but couldn’t because they looked too good on her), “Come on girl, all the proceeds are going to charity---for sick kids. You’re doing a good thing.”

Wink wink. Nudge nudge. All the cool kids are doing it! An altruistic opportunity: help sweet innocent babies with a painless down-the-hatch shot? But of course!

So you, along with your fun, smiling friends, power it down. Whatever it was. Something raspberryish. Something fizzy and scarily not at all strong tasting. Those are always the creepers. Like fruity jelly beans and little pink candies. Just a sweet mere nothing that kicks you in the ass before you can stop yourself from saying “another round please!”

As luck would have it, it was damn chilly in February in Orlando and this person you met was wearing a light parka.

Light parkas make you think of home. Your original home. The freezing cold state of New Hampshire. And, as luck would have it even further, this person went to college at Harvard. Where you also studied.

Ok, Jessica, let’s be even more honest. You didn’t ‘study at Harvard.’ You took a playwriting class at Harvard Extension School in 1993. (So? What’s your point?) You are a sucker for sporty men in parkas who ski. Or at least shovel snow. But, even more so, you’re a sucker for guys with actual, useable brains in their heads. Not that going to Harvard makes you smart actually. Because it’s just a school and true intelligence is much, much deeper than SAT scores and ‘my dad bought a building so I could continue our legacy.’ That being said, this person was also from another country.

Most people seem to be allured by foreign accents. And you’re no exception. They’re kind of mysterious and exciting. At least in sound. A man’s throaty tenor of utterances just seems to elevate ordinary topics of conversation. And, inspired by the exotic supermodel side, certain guy friends have told you that any girl with a Dutch accent is positively---well---um, foreplay.

In any event, that sinking feeling in your chest at the arrival of the so-called date is hard to brush off. You wish you’d scheduled an emergency phone call from a friend---expertly timed 20-30 minutes in---where you can feign a dramatic ‘oh my gosh, wow, I have to go rescue my poor friend. She had a fight with her boyfriend and he has her keys. She’s locked out of their place and I have to go console her. RIGHT NOW. Soooooo sorry! I’ll call you!’

You used to do this back in the late 90s in Los Angeles. Your brother was your emergency call. He’d give you a shout within a reasonable amount of time into the date and, more than a few times, you were high-tailing it out of there only to meet him for drinks at El Cholo a few blocks from home. Escape. Pure freedom and immediate celebration—chin chin dear brother, bottoms up--- from the hideous politeness of enduring painful time with someone there’s no way in hell you wanted to keep talking to, much less kiss---ever.

And now, here you are, years later, married then divorced, then wrapped up for more years in long term, go-nowhere relationships that you haven’t had have the strength—or perhaps courage---- to end for whatever reason. You’re single. Again. And you know how this has happened. But you wish it wasn’t this way. But it is.

So now, here you are, standing here having polite chitchat with gin blossoms whose once resonant and intriguing voice now sounds only like the Count from Sesame Street.

One….two….ahh ahh ahh…three….four….ahh…ahh..ahh. Five….



The briefly charming man in familiar parka now standing before you is just unimaginably abhorrent. You don’t know how you can endure this date for very long.

So.

You don’t.

Yes, you eat. Yes, you drink. And then you drink some more. And, unfortunately, he doesn’t get more interesting. He absolutely never gets sexy. It’s true, he does have a brain. But his intensity is obnoxious. And not once, but twice, at dinner, he grabs your hands and caresses them.

Yes.

Gag.

Caresses them.

You feel profoundly nauseated and look for a reason (any reason at all) to pull your hands away. You pretend to look for something in your handbag, take a sip of your drink, scratch your nose. He clearly has no sense of personal boundaries. But worse, he has no sense of body language. You know the tricks. Crossing your legs in the direction of the person you’re with indicates interest. Cocking your head and playing with your hair are coy ways of flirting without saying a thing. But you don’t do any of these gestures. Your entire body is situated away from him. Your head is front and center dead-on. No indicators of ‘yes, go for it.’ Not one.

You announce abruptly that you’re tired and you need to go home and work. You have a deadline. This is not entirely untrue. Except the deadline is 3 days from now. If the Count were at all hot, you’d be willing to procrastinate until day 2.5 and work until the wee hours. Alas, the idea of work seems like the best idea in the world. He says “Wow, you said you were stressed. I had no idea.”

(You mentioned at the very moment you set eyes on him that night that you had trouble relaxing after work. What you really meant to say was that you had trouble relaxing after you realized what a doofus you had to have dinner with).

Adding insult to injury he--- of the faded-black-pants-bad-buttons-gin-blossoms who has suddenly become the Sesame Street Count---does not even pick up the tab.

You split the bill. And he was the one to ask you out. Gross. Just the cherry on the already bad sundae. Please take it back.

You discuss this with friends afterwards. Not because you ever want to go out with the Count again (even if he had paid) but just out of modern questioning: is that what guys do? Really? They don’t even pay anymore? The general consensus was that nice guys, yes, indeed, gentlemanly guys who ask you out still pay. And, even the truest gentlemen will pay even if some modern babe asks them out. Thing is, you’ve never asked a guy out. Ever. You have no problem splitting a bill or even paying with someone you’ve been dating for a while or, of course, a friend. But a guy who asks YOU out and has romantic interest in you had damn well better pay or else risk looking like a major cheapskate. Seriously, come on.

Anyway, you manage to escape quickly and cleanly with an attempted quick hug that he disgustingly lingers on with and then, horrors, tries to get a kiss but you turn your head and he gets your cheek which you immediately want to wash. It’s like you can still feel his lips touching your face and you just feel ill.

So you get home, wash your face, put on some sweats, pour a cold glass of home-safe-thank-god-wine and plunk down---ahhhh---- on the couch, and begin to flip channels---when the first text message comes in:

10:06 pm “Really enjoyed the evening. Time flew by. When we were saying good-byes it somehow felt familiar. You are special.”

No. Please no. These are the things you want to feel when your heart is racing and you’ve just kissed the most amazing man on the planet, someone who makes you laugh, and sees you for who you are, even in that moment of madness, of proximity, of chemistry, of animal attraction and breathlessness. Even that.

Not this. How can he have missed your complete and utter lack of interest?

So you don’t reply.

The following barrage of texts is too painful to record so, in summation, this determination of contact shall suffice for storytelling purposes:

“I like you.

I really like you.

Why are you not returning my calls?

Did you get my texts?

I like you.

I’ve begun to stalk you on the Internet.

I found your blog.

I read it all.

Every last word.

You’re bitter and need to realize there are good men out there.

Good men like me, of course.

We have so much in common.

I have deep thoughts, too.

We should get together and drink hard liquor together and discuss your problems.

Plus I have gin blossoms to maintain. “


Ten days later. Text message. March 15, 2011 5: 26pm

“You somehow decided to exclude me completely from your life. (Still a mystery to me what specifically turned you off SO bad so suddenly – it seems you have enough depth to study a bigger picture rather than a limited kaleidoscope on which to base assumptions). “

Your response: March 15, 2011 5:45 pm.

“I have feelings for someone else and have for quite some time. I am sorry.”

You thought this was the clincher. The ole deal sealer. Wouldn’t have to worry about hearing from The Count again.

Wrong.

He actually had the nerve to ask you “does this mean you want nothing to do with me at all?”

To which you responded, under the guidance of two trusted and supposedly wise friends, to tell him, quite honestly, why it wasn’t happening – and never would happen. The hand caressage situation for one. The cheapskateness for another. You figured you were perhaps doing him a favor. So his next date wouldn’t be accosted and he might realize that paying for a tab goes a long way.

This did not discourage the poor chap. On the contrary.

He decided instead that writing a sort of show-tuney type song, composing it, recording it in an off key voice and then sending the mp3 file to you via email was in order. That just had to be done.

When that fails to get a reaction, he then felt compelled to send you an e.e. cummings meets Ogden Nash style ‘backwards poem’ that alluded to your hurtful rejection of him. Keep in mind people: this was after ONE DATE.

ONE.

(You so wish you could share these tidbits – but this town is just too small and you don't want to hurt anybody).

Finally, on March 24th, after not only more phone calls and texts (which you won’t bore anyone with here), you shut it down with threats: "DO NOT EVER CONTACT ME AGAIN. THERE IS NOTHING BETWEEN US. WE HAD ONE DINNER. NOTHING MORE. PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE."

In fact, at this point you got your parents involved. They were ready to call the cops. You were soooo done with The Count. They were so done with The Count.

"One...ahh ahh...two...ahh ah..." became an immediate family joke.

Oh, but you weren’t done with him.

Were you?

Out of nowhere, one rainy evening, months later in June, out with friends, you ran into the creeper at Burton’s. You were outside checking out your friend’s purchase of an antique Mercedes when you spotted him. Or, should you clarify and say: when his crazy intense eyes bored into your soul and made you want to run for your life?

You went inside to escape the rain and meanwhile he just stared. Across the bar. Finally, the bartender Joey intervened. He knew the guy was off. So he interfaced, got close to you to talk to you so Stalkula couldn’t stare anymore and said “that guy’s a creep. He’s just weird. I can get him out of here if you want.”

Instead, you had your friend talk to him.
“Please talk to that weirdo. I can’t take it. I want to get out of here.”

You went outside to escape, thinking there’s no way he’ll follow you out there. But he did.

“Hello Jessica, how are you?”

You’re speechless. You barely look up.

You finally get your other friend to take you home. Quickly. Quietly.

Dating can be so tedious. You wonder why you even bother to say yes to the idea of possibility. It’s better to just say no, no, no.

NOTE TO SELF: Never say yes to a man with an intriguing accent in a familiar parka in a friendly bar in Orlando who wears spectacles on a dimly lit, moonless night.

Never assume that anyone is what or who you think they are. They never are.

Open your heart, however, to the other things, the other people, the ones you run from because they are too good to be true. The expected and the seemingly true. Don’t run from them. Don’t. Even if the good thing still has a skank that calls him on a regular basis. If he only knew all the guys that called you. Some you keep on hand just because. Because they’re not that bad.

Yeah, but they’re not that good either.

Nothing is ever what we think.

Yet it kind of is.

Dating in Orlando is so tedious.

And so, you hear, is dating everywhere else.

Boulette de Viande!: One Nation, Indivisible, With Liberty And Justice For All

Boulette de Viande!: One Nation, Indivisible, With Liberty And Justice For All

Drink like this.

The other night, with friends, over several captain and diets (or was it jack and diets? One can’t be sure when so many liquors mixed with bad aftertaste diet cola are consumed in succession) I said: “why are we partying like this? Wait a minute, I think I know.”

One of my friends, a feisty, temperamental litigator, shook his head vigorously, as if reading my mind.

“Because we’re escaping. We’re all escaping.”

Simple enough. But even in the escaping, we’re not really escaping, we’re examining. Keenly.

Within so much honesty, the conversations become more animated, more and more open, as we all reveal our fears and doubts, the anxious thoughts that keep us up at night, and those wonderful, brief states of denial and euphoria found in a collective sensibility about the fragile state of our world, of our culture, of the unraveling fabric of our society (is it really unraveling or has it always been this way?), and our ignorance not to be confused with our apathy.

From tornadoes to tsunamis, from sound investments to profound losses, from so many overworked and underpaid, from others having no work at all, from the majority of us hiding behind the crumbling façade of our former so-called success yet we’re now hanging by a taut thread, doing all we can to keep it together, to keep our minds from unraveling too: this is what's haunting us. And so we hit the liquor store and we drink like this. And sometimes we dance till we sweat, and we laugh because we can and we need to, and because among the safety of friends, we can tell it all.

The following morning, in the confines of our own abodes, in the early light of day before all the reality smacks us in the face again, in the silence that follows all the confessions of the previous evening, we go on about our lives, at first quietly, at first reasonably, until the mid-day pours out all over us, in its shiny, optimistic gleaming as is the norm here in Florida, as if so much sun should indicate so much prosperity and easiness. But, instead, it becomes a representation, even further, of the fake-it-till-we-make-it smiles we plaster across our uneasy faces all day long. For our clients. For our colleagues. For ourselves.

All that sunshine and all those lost daydreams remind us of seemingly simpler  times, and the persuasive lazy palms in the late afternoon, almost---almost---wash our cares away. Drink like this and your worries will fall away, if only for a moment or two.

Drink like this and, if nothing else, we’ll share this.

Tribes

To the Tribes We Belong.

Just like cliques in high school, I don’t fit into any of the tribes of adult life either. Never have. Even though it might be easier, I don’t want to. Actually, the real reason is that I can’t. I’m just not right. I’m terrified of rejection. And I’m this sort of a hybrid, a mixed breed, a feisty mutt. I change my mind too often. I want to be proper sometimes. But I’d rather be fun all the time. I would never go to a furniture showroom and buy it all at once. I am not always creative. Or cool. Or interesting. Sometimes I’m a slob. With iffy decorating skills. And in the mood for good-quality beer and bad-quality bars. I simply want the buffet of life. I don’t want to say no unless I’m really sure I want to say no. No is just too suffocating for me. I have to be able to move around, remain noncommittal, and always say yes to my place among the placeless.

Take last New Year’s Eve for example. I was thrilled to be invited to five parties. Of the five, I made it to three. (There is only so much booze one can ingest before it’s time to go home). Of the three, all were prime examples of tribal behavior. The first party, at an Anthropolgie-chic, 1950s cement block home-turned hipster haven in College Park, on the other hand, is an excellent example of people who don’t really prescribe to a tribe---yet are one anyway. They’re just a friendlier, more accepting, more fantastic humor-based tribe. These people are the very best possible sort. You could take a survey at first glance and assess that these are the so-called ‘artsy’ types. Creative. Fun-loving. Gay. Straight. Bi. Whatever. All over the map. Some with corporate jobs. Some who play in bands. Some who do lots of things that might surprise you. Like turn bicycles into bling. Write beautifully. Take stunning photographs. Or make their own costumes just because. These are the creative people who organize the books on their bookshelves by color. The people who quote Voltaire and make thrift store duds look like couture. To be honest, this is the group I feel most myself around. Because this is a warm and original crew with a nerdy edge. But I also feel like I just might not be nerdy-cool enough all the time to really belong. Yes, we are all insecure in our own ways. As for me, I am still just fifteen and a little unsure of myself underneath this hope-I’m-sexy, hope-you’re-impressed clothing I wear.

The food at their party: Iron Chef-inspired same-ingredient variation, please-try-me-I’m-yummy
The booze at their party: cheap but tasty wine, cheap but tasty champagne, only the best micro brews

OK now let’s examine the second party. If the stately--but not overly so--Winter Park home isn’t a dead giveaway of the upscale party in store, the crowd certainly is. The men are equally clean-cut, attractive, upwardly mobile, in Brooks Brothers and Ralph Lauren sport-coats with impeccably highlighted yet demurely manicured women counterparts in tasteful sequin skirts or not-too-this-or-that cocktail dresses with differing Tory Burch, Gucci and/or Louis Vuitton bags that are displayed for all to admire on the large stone kitchen counter. The interior of house itself is impeccably decorated (by Mom? Former girlfriend? One can’t be sure.) There are monograms on everything: from the pillows on the couches, to the pillows in the master bedroom and guest bedrooms, even that blocky masculine lettering winks at you from the shower curtains. And there is, of course, a big “M” on the oversized, nautical-themed ice bucket on the charming hail-to-Nantucket porch. The music is perfect for New Year’s with loads of old-school hip hop that inspires a great deal of dancing. Some of this dancing involves a sassy bob-haired mother of two grinding and butt shaking to the point of serious panty exposure (flashed from beneath her Lilly Pulitzer tunic dress) not just once but several times.  These are my people too. Perhaps only because I share some of the strange upbringing rituals that I sometimes wish I didn’t know. Like prep school abbreviations and made-up terms for pretty much everything in order to create a secret language. I know other tribes do this, too. It’s a way of making experiences uniquely intimate to the people involved and a useful strategy for keeping others out.

The food: fancy cheese and crackers, individual gourmet desserts
The booze: top shelf everything on the deck with serious dents being made in the Crown Royal and Bombay Sapphire

The third (and final) party is the, for lack of a better term, ‘Euro-trash’ tribe. That sounds so mean. But I don’t intend it to be mean. It just is what it is. Everything is new and posh, oversized and overdone. You could compare it to the monogrammed OCD house in the sense that there is no originality or evidence of personality anywhere. In this particular house, it’s as if they went to Ethan Allen and Z Gallerie showrooms and said “I’ll take it” without any consideration for individual touches. So be it. This place is mighty comfortable, if soulless. The Taittinger and Cristal (and, ok, some pedestrian but perfectly acceptable Korbel) is flowing graciously by the hosts of the gathering, each of them circulating through the party and refilling our glasses one by one. The back terrace is like a Hollywood movie set all breezy and beautiful on the glistening, glass-still lake. I can’t complain. Until I notice all the hoochie. This was markedly and refreshingly absent from the previous two parties. Hoochie, by its quick’n’easy definition is “maximum makeup, minimal brain” or, as I like to say when I’m out and about: “lotta tail, no head.” The artsy tribe had their original beauty, their cerebral interestingness. The prepster tribe had their classicism, studied manners and elitism. This third tribe couldn’t be nicer but damn, what’s with all that cleavage. I’m straight and all I see are boobs. I can’t look anywhere but there. Tits hiked up on spray-tanned chests like bowls of overripe fruit. Ample round bottoms are stretching out clingy, jersey dresses with a hem that just covers their panties, if they’re wearing any. It’s distracting. I’m not jealous of the fake boobies. But I am a tad miffed that I’ll never have a butt like that.

The food at their party: those little frozen mini quiches you get at Costco near-burning in the oven, yet enjoyed by drunk people, in the huge kitchen
The booze at their party: Champagne at varying price points from decent to super-fine

It’s official. It’s now 2011 and I am drunk. I wonder how many of these chests are real. My phone rings. It’s this guy I shouldn’t like. I think about answering. But I won’t be rational. I’ll make a mistake. And I can’t leave my friends. I want to answer. But I don’t answer. It’s probably time to go. I’ve seen enough curvy ass for one night. It’s time to go home and sleep off all this champagne. Those monograms. Those saline implants. And all that intellectual curiosity.

To these tribes, I salute you. To these tribes and many more, I admire you. If you offered me an invitation to join, I think I’d only disappoint you. I want to visit all of you, though. And often. I really hope that’s ok with you. Thanks for letting me feel like I fit in---even just a little.

you're right

You’re right, we’ve never had a deep, philosophical conversation.

So what? What sort of deep, philosophical conversations do you need?

My ex just wanted me to shut up, stop asking so many damn questions, stop being curious. Just be a quiet nine-to-fiver, pay the bills, don’t take too long to come. And please, for the love of the god I’ll never believe in, be efficient in this life, dear girl. Don’t entertain those ambitions or dreams of yours.  Oh no.

Just make it safe. Do it all on time. And please, for me, baby, keep it dull.

But not me. I’d rather sharpen that knife. Over and over.

This blade is ready for slicing. Not for inflicting any pain, just for accuracy while I cut through all the bullshit.

And what good are these conversations anyway? What do you want to know about me that you can’t perceive right here, right now?

Yes, sometimes, I think it’s really that basic.  After all these years of trying to love people, of them trying to love me, after all is said and done, we only see what we want to see. You see what you want to see. And I can tell you for a fact that one, or even two or ten or twenty, so-called deep, philosophical conversation is not going to illuminate my entire soul. Or yours, either.

Why me? You could have any guy. Why me?

That’s an annoying question.

Why not you?

Kissing you reminds me of high school.  Me and a boy on a couch in my parents’ dark living room, the old Sony Trinitron flickering images on the wall behind us. It’s late and I know, any minute now, my stepdad is going to come down the stairs---stealth quiet as if he’s hoping he’ll catch us--- and tell the boy it’s time to go.

It’s like waiting for the creak in the step on the stair. That one sound will break the spell.

But until then, it’s nothing but the silvery hue of the television on our faces, and the smell of Downy fabric softener, and the itchy feel of his wool sweater.

With you it’s just your tan arms and muscles, your urgent hands that pull me close, and own me, take me over. I've always wanted someone to pull my hair and shove me up against the wall and hold me there with his lips and chest alone. No one does that.

Hold my arms down. Tell me how it’s going to be. Push me into the wall.

You do that. Almost.

I know you could do that completely if I knew you better. Oh, that’s right, if only we had deep, philosophical conversations. 

You take over in your way. I get lost in it. It’s good.

The thing is, I want to get lost in all the things you make me want. What more is there to say?

after you

After you, I decided I’d never date a writer again. 

No one who would hug, yes really, literally, hug the giant trees all around campus, oblivious to the people around him. Never again would I date a writer, someone who would grow wheatgrass in his dorm room, in tiny, smelly containers, and shout, fearless and humiliating across the quad I love you Jessica while I was walking with somebody else, someone who had just taken me to dinner.

Your brilliance was captivating, to be sure. But your insanity, even more so.

I still have all your letters, your poems, that soliloquy you wrote for me about Orleans, the summer we spent, that magical one, the kind that lives on in your mind, contained, like a locked wooden box, because it’s a place you can go to remember what innocence was like. Once in a while, every few years or so, I read them. They are sad. You made me out to be something I never was.

I was never a person. I was just another poem in your mind.

You once locked me in a room when I was seventeen and you were twenty. And you said, nothing but bathroom and water breaks, because you were going to teach me.

If you can get there yourself, you can get there with me, you said.

At the end of the long afternoon, I cried from frustration, partly at you, partly at myself.

I just can’t.

Yes you can.

No I can’t.

We were sweaty with the sun sinking into the horizon, so sweaty and your mom was going to be home soon. We’d hear her car, wouldn’t we?

I was your prisoner. But I didn’t want you to let me go.

I needed to let me go. But when I let go, you held on. And on. You made me afraid. You were writing me. All the time.

When we were together, I was just words forming poems, and you saw past me. You saw past everyone. Everything was a poem for you.

I was in your wedding. Years later. A bridesmaid. I loved your wife, too. It was strange for everyone but us. I’ll never forget late at night in the wedding tent, hours later, after we all took too many pictures, pictures I never got to see. It was such a beautiful wedding, so dramatic in the endlessness of the Catholic church, echoic and haunting, foreboding even, and the reception at your parents house, the backdrop of the Berkshires in the distance, the shimmering water, and your new wife. No one was ever more beautiful. You had everything.

But everything was only words.

Where did your words go?

portrait of a breakup. recognize. (part I)

August 2010. Orlando, Florida.

So I’ve collapsed on the floor of my kitchen. The floor is dirty but I don’t care. Cat hairs, onion skins, a cornflake. There are these brief moments of almost silence, while I contain it. And in between, the cat comes in, regards me, with the ears back and then the eyes wide and disturbed while I wail “Whyyyyyyyyyyy?” or some gurgled rendition of “I fucking love youuuuuuuuuu.”

This is followed by body-shaking sobs, and----all together now---the blowfish puffed-up face, this red ball that resembles me slightly. And, with the wailing, comes the slapping of the cold gray tiles.  Then the almost silence again.

And I hate fucking every last thing. I especially hate that we ever met.

My knees are weak. I really can’t get up. In a flash of memory, I am right back there at that stupid bar. The scene of what should really be called a crime. That damn bar where he stopped me while I was walking out. He was cute but not that cute and I remember being irritated because he was holding me up. And why, when he asked for my phone number, did I give it to him? I said no way, the first time, and then he said, oh come on, I’m a nice guy.

A nice guy.

My ass.

If only that moment had never been, I wouldn’t be here on this cold and dirty floor tonight, slapping the tiles, frightening the cat, wishing it all back.

Love makes you crazy. Every song ever written will tell you that. Every story ever worth reading or seeing or hearing about is the same regurgitated tale of love---lost, regained, lost again---just like sand through somebody’s knobby fingers, and for what? To feel like this? Like this out-of-my-mind zombie who is about to pull herself off this goddamn floor, pull on a dirty baseball cap and drive, angrily drive while listening to loud angry music, to go buy a homeless guy’s version of Jim Beam and some gingerale to chase it down with. At home on the couch. Yes, alone, thank you. Shameless self-medication. Oh hell yes.

And the couch. Goddamnit. His old, stinky, masturbated and farted on couch. That, too.

“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!!!!!” The cat’s terrified now. I’m terrified.

Nothing makes sense. I want to smash things. I want to rip up all of his stupid, fucking, bullshit letters. I want to slash his tires, slash the tires to his stupid car that he thinks is cool but isn't, I want to be breathing heavy in the dark, heart pounding at the prospect of getting caught, leering outside the window like Glenn Close boiling that rabbit. Slash his tires. And hers. Throw eggs on everything. I think these thoughts, sure. They help get it out. I can imagine his hunky dory, huh what, ass coming out in the morning with his fresh brewed to-go mug steaming, her lame bye-sweetie smile in the doorway or some shit, his key in the ignition. And…..scene. Go nowhere ass clown.  Gotcha.

But I don’t.

I may be crazy but I'm not insane.

And maybe I'm not crazy. Maybe I'm just misunderstood.

The coldness of the tile has broken through my sweatpants. My ass is officially a new temperature. Two cheeks at 74 degrees Fahrenheit cold.

It’s time to get up, girl. Baseball cap awaits. Jim Beam is calling.

So I go. I drive. I do. I run and hide from my own mind. And, for the moment, on that hideous couch, everything is calm. Everything is just fine.