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.

play the numbers game

I have some advice to impart to those shy guys out there. Don’t stop playing the numbers game. If you like someone, let her know. I mean, don’t pressure her or constantly engage like a moron if she’s not responding, but don’t play it cool either. Here’s the thing: you just have to let someone know and take the risk. Here’s why: in my experience, apparently I’ve missed too many good ones because they were “too shy” to do anything and I later heard from them (or their friends) all these wasted years later that they had liked me after all. But they were too shy, insecure, whatever, to tell me at the right time. This is unfortunate. Really, really unfortunate.

So I say: throw it out there. What do you have to lose? Seriously, if someone I actually liked told me half the things I hear from guys I’m not into, well, I’d be ecstatic. It's pretty evident that the dorks seem to have the corner on this numbers game by fearlessly, and (in the case below) creepily, pushily (yes, those are both words: creepily and pushily) purusing the wrong women and by ignoring the obvious signs that they are not interested in them (like when we're not returning calls, barely returning texts, never saying yes to getting together) I still suggest they continue. Not with the same girls, no. That's just DUMB. But, yes, they should just continue throwing it out there. Don't hold it in. Despite the rejection. It’s the same thing as having any kind of worthwhile goal---and not giving up on it. As for shy guys (who are not dorks but who are just shy), they might want to take a page from the fearless dork book.

Many, many white trash lotto winners can't be wrong: if you play the numbers game long enough, sooner or later, you'll win.

Knowing what it's like to be the girl on the receiving end of this unwanted interest, there’s this weird guilt associated with rejecting someone even if you don’t really know them. And perhaps weirder still, you develop a strange resentment toward that person for making you feel guilty because, after all, you don’t really know them. It’s not your responsibility that you’ve inspired this bizarre attachment or inappropriate, superficial adoration on their part. 

You just wish this same sort of attention was coming from someone else. Someone you actually liked. Then it wouldn't be weird, creepy or pushy. It would just be....good.

So the advice is: throw it out there. Why not. You may miss the mark. Like this series of texts I got from (depending on your perspective or your mental state) either the sweetest guy on the planet or the most desperate. I do love grand, sweeping romantic gestures, particularly in today’s cold, digital world. We are missing too much of the time and space between that makes people think and miss each other and say things from their hearts. However, this is just, well, this is not that. 

This is someone who I met once and only once who has granted me, I imagine, qualities I most certainly do not possess and who is merely infatuated with, yet again, the “idea” of me. 

So let’s examine, shall we, some fairly recent texts sent by someone with clearly NOTHING to lose. We met at a networking event I attended with my parents. With my parents. The only reason Noway Inhell (not his real name) has my number is because I thought he might be a worthwhile business contact. Ugh. I was superficial about this. He has a good job. He went to a prestigious college. He could (kind of) hold a conversation. And, oh horrors, to think I was safe with my parents. Goes to show, these dorks have no boundaries. 

See for yourself, at first the seeming (albeit cringe-worthiness) benign interest when I told him that “oh wow, I am just sooooo busy…” blah blah blah…(which I don't have a snapshot of, sorry but his response covers it) and when I did not answer my phone, return his calls or texts, he still just GOES FOR IT…the “we both love food” comment had me stumped other than, I guess, some obscure reference to, I don’t know, sharing some nachos at said networking event?….(with, yes, my parents) and as for the Santa comment about me being 'nice,' ugh, really?:

But it doesn’t stop there….please, for your own amusement, read on…I was forced to lie at this point so as to not hurt the poor chap’s feelings.( I am not seeing anyone and merely made this up.) What self-respecting guy asks a woman out for NYE on the 29^th of December? Clearly, not a normal one. Or one who has any kind of social life. And certainly not one that you meet with your parents at a seemingly innocuous networking event:

You’d think the poor boy would get it at this point on December the 30^th. Oh no. Nope. He sure didn’t:

Still no response from me FIVE DAYS later….so, on January the 4^th, the bloke (I’m running out of words for “guy”) makes the brilliant decision to text me again, thinking, something like:  'gee, I better text her one more time lest she forget allllll about me' :

I must admit….running a marathon in the rain really had me thinking. It had me thinking this dude was out of his mind. And not in a fun, sexy, wow, how awesome that he throws it out there like that way. No. In a, holy shit, I better change my number, this guy is s creepy stalker kind of way. But then….what do you know…from the 4^th to the 21^st, he does a little more thinking and decides….21 must be his magic number….I’ll reach out to this girl AGAIN…even though she hasn’t once (not EVEN ONCE) responded to my calls or texts (except to say that she is seeing someone!!!!!)....

I deleted the rest of the texts but this one just says “I have 2 tix to Linkin Park in Tampa, etc.” Yadda yadda. At this point, I was looking for back-up. I called a guy friend here in town. He didn’t answer fast enough for me. So I called another one. In Vermont. In VERMONT. Someone I knew could handle the deal with class. With balls. And with humor. So I called my buddy up in VT and said, “Hey, listen, I have a bizarre favor to ask you. Can you be my boyfriend for five or ten minutes and tell this whacko to back the F off?”

One call. He did it right then. Done and done.  

I have not heard from networking creeper since. Then again, it’s only February 3^rd. The month is young.

You’d think from the truly embarrassing nature of these texts that I’d be waving a huge red flag saying “DON’T.” But I’m not. Somewhere between desperado dorkface and just shy is the way to go. It’s just sad that the best guys are sometimes the shyest. Chances are, if you put it out there even a fraction of this poor chump, you’ll be surprised by how much you get back.

Really. 

. 

Apparently, back in 2006, I thought it was really quite something 

to take pictures of myself while eating 

fruit and then send them to people. 

So attractive.

I remember I sent this one to my mom

Fruit as shot chaser.

I'll bite you.

Clearly I rolled out of bed that day.

Really? Oh my god!

Fruit even wound up in my work.

How is this not sexy?

You want some.

Really. You do.

Darth Vader saved me

BEFORE (in the corporate world):

Please don't make me write anything with the words "keepsake" or "figurines" in it, least of all together. Yikes. If you need keepsakes---or figurines---please go away.

I'm looking for inspiration today and I want to look for it alone, the same way I like to run: alone. And do yoga: alone (in my head at least). I don't like collaboration all the time. I like it when I'm ready for it, when I'm primed, well-fed, juiced with my own ideas. I don't like my ideas to get watered down (pissed on?) by those with less inspiration, perspiration, passion. Please, spare me. Leave me be. To my searching by myself.

Chances are, my ideas will be good, if not quirky and hard to convey (Seth knows). While yours will be pedestrian and perfunctory. I will hate you. I will berate you a thousand times, silently, in my head. Berate you for not choosing a profession more apt to your uninspired ways like telemarketer for a large, angry credit card company or administrative assistant in a windowless insurance agency. Why are you taking your anorexia of thought out onto my smorgasboard of try-it-all dreams?

I want to hide but I am in a cubicle. I want to run away but my car is downstairs in the huge parking lot and I am 60 miles from my home. I will stay here until my assigned "cohort" comes to fetch me so he can condescend (ironically) to my idea-machine with his churned-out, resigned-to-mediocrity schlock.

Chained to my need to pay bills every month, I have to tolerate. Endure. Breathe in. Breathe out. One more time.

Somebody save me.

Darth?

Oh Darth.

At least stolen ideas masked by that deep, haunting voice are....ideas.

AFTER (on my own): Ever since making the decision to work for myself, I have attracted more like-minded people. More talented people. More crazy people with ADD. Hallelujah baby Jesus.

When I said somebody save me, well, I guess I didn't realize all I had to do was save myself. Blah. So typical. A total cliche, I know. But still. When you're in the thick of it, you don't see any way out. It's too scary. You literally want Superman to swoop in. Or Calgon. Or Mr. Vader himself. Not that he saves people. But you get the point: Just something to transport you elsewhere. What you don't see is that all you have to do is...stop.

And I'm not going to lie and say that being on my own isn't, at times, terrifying. What freaks me out the most isn't the financial aspect, because money comes and goes, (and it mostly goes and the coming part is a lot of chasing.) Fine, so be it. What is the most daunting, really, is the idea that people rely on me, they look to me for answers. Who me? Answers? An authority on something? How did I get to this place? Years ago, I was the quiet girl at the meeting, hoping no one would ask me a damn thing. And now I can't shut up. Well, I can. But if I'm on a roll, I'm on it. It's a good feeling. But it still scares me, nonetheless. And I'm afraid that I might suck. I'm afraid that I might really suck a lot and my bullshitting is going to catch up to me. Except this is a bullshit industry, isn't it? Marketing and advertising? Yep. it sure is.

So it's really all so subjective. However, one non-negotiable is having a strong opinion and a persuasive personality. And because I work with others with strong opinions and persuasive personalities, we end up doing some really great stuff together. And I realize I've finally gotten to that point in my career where work is actually fun.

This is a new year, a new time. And I'm really grateful to work with the inspired and the perspiring and radiating and crazy and dedicated to the crazy and just being and doing and all the rest. I'm pretty happy. Happier than I've been in a long, long time.

Thanks for listening. I just had to get that out. But make no mistake: this is a call to action to anyone who's stuck in "BEFORE." (See above). Go out there and get your own. I can't recommend it enough. That is, unless you have outlets for your passions outside your day job. That's pretty cool, too. I have a friend who's a tremendous writer but his day job is in finance. I think it's amazing that he can work and be successful in that area and also be so talented and get a lot of satisfaction from writing for writing's sake. If I was good at anything besides writing, I'd love to be able to just write to write. But, well, like I said, I'm happy. I write for pay and that's alright with me. ;)

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.