“this is Austin, and I still love you.”*
April 30, 2010 by admin, under Journal.
My mom arrived in Austin late Saturday night, to help me buy a car and drive with me up to New Jersey, so that I could start work this coming Monday. We spent Sunday driving around town testing a series of gasping, jerking, wheezing cars, finally collapsing at Shady Grove. The beloved Austin restaurant has a large outdoor seating area, generous Tex Mex menu, and that night, a nearly-full moon hanging overhead. It was the perfect spot for my mom and I to enjoy drinks, nachos, and this town I had already become so fond of.
A few days before my mom arrived, I went to Eeyore’s Birthday, which is your basic hippie festival, with wild costumes, beer tents that kept running out of cups, and drumming circles at each point on the compass. I was there because I’d fallen madly in love with one of the women whose website I’d started redesigning (left), and she and her friends were already there. They were so spiffed by the time I arrived, I gently herded them to a restaurant outside the park, lending one of the women my sweatshirt to cover the belly dancer’s spangly bra she’d worn to the event. As we left the park, I called another friend, also new to Austin from Muncie, Indiana, insisting he join us so he could meet some people who were actually going to stay in the area. We fell on our greasy nachos and buffalo wings, comparing notes on our various locations (no one in Austin is from Texas). Philadelphia, Muncie, Rochester, somewhere in Ireland, and Seattle sat at the table, plus two women I didn’t survey, who were probably from Nepal or Australia or Jupiter.
A few nights before that, I went to “sweaty candle yoga” with my roommates. We lined up mat-to-mat in a dark room, surrounded by slender shaved people. Instructors lit candles, turned on the heater, and scooched us closer together to fit everyone in. We spent the next hour practicing Downward Dog and Cobras, our knees in our neighbors’ faces. By the end, we lay limp and loose on sweat-soaked towels, each breath naturally floating clear down to our toes. Walking between our heads, the instructor talked about letting go of everything in order to get everything. He said he’d left a successful career in Houston, packed his belongings and two dogs into his car and driven to Austin… to open a yoga studio and live happily ever after. Blissed out from the reverse bloodflow as I stretched my legs out behind my head, I found it ironic that he described exactly the process I went through when I left NYC two years ago… a week before my return to that city and that lifestyle.
A few days before that, the friend from Muncie and I window shopped on trendy South Congress. I wanted to show him as many good Austin things as I could before I left him to his own devices. We went to see “Hot Tub Time Machine” for my second time (see it if you haven’t already, it’s high-larious), and I enjoyed listening to Muncie cackle as much as I enjoyed the movie itself. Afterwards we met a man selling an old Volvo, for my First Ever Used Car Test Drive. I was so nervous before the car came that I bought a bag of jerky from the nearby Target and ate nearly all of it.
The car’s brakes only vaguely worked, but I endured the experience without making an ass of myself, or crashing… and even though Muncie had plenty of snarky remarks to make, his sense of humor made the test drive fun rather than intimidating. Which basically sums up his overall effect on my Austin experience.
A few days before that I rode on a motorcycle for the first time since I was fourteen, when I rode home with my dad one day from the motorcycle store he managed in Anchorage. [Yes, this is a flashback within a flashback, but who cares?] We didn’t yet know he had diabetes, and his high blood sugar was making him unwittingly short tempered. It was the first time I’d ridden since I was a little girl. I was anxious for his approval, but when we got home all I got was a grumbled, “you fought me on the turns.” It was the kind of little remark, followed by several years of my dad not owning a bike for us to ride, that left super-sensitive me wasting half my life afraid to get on a bike again. But the other night I went out with an Iraq vet turned UT student, who is a story unto himself. His truck was towed while we had a few drinks on 6th Street. The only vehicle he had to take me home on was his little black 250cc of mysterious Asian origins…
I sniveled, as is my wont, confessing my fear that I’d feel like a big, fat, dead weight if I climbed on another motorcycle. Also, I was wearing date-night high heels. He said fears like that were meant to be let go, and I knew he was right. The minute we turned onto the rode, with a little breeze running past us as he turned into a curve, I regretted the past fourteen years I’d avoided motorcycles. In fact I regretted not owning one of my own already.
My month in Austin wasn’t a star-studded fantasy parade. You may read about yoga classes, hippie festivals and motorcycle rides and wonder what the hell I’m gong on about. But it was just what the doctor ordered. It was fun, nonstop and laid back at the same time. I met so many kind, interesting people, who wanted to make me feel at home- and succeeded. By the time my mom arrived, I knew my way around town, where to have a great lunch, and which coffee shop to spend a few hours online looking at car ads on Craigslist. I had conquered fears, I had trusted men again for the first time in months, and I had freckles.
At the same time, I’d already started doing offsite work for the job waiting for me in New York, and it felt great. My own design work had kept me up to date on software, best practices and style trends, the agency has retained many of the freelancers I used to work with, and the thrill of hooking someone up with a job was just as tangy as it had been.
I’d also spent four or five hours on Skype talking “out loud” to Mr. Hotness, for the first time in more than a year. Our conversation ranged from relationships to the evolution of souls. I was startled to find him so willing, now, to discuss issues he’d once avoided, and he said I sounded more calm and relaxed. The past year, difficult for both of us, seems to have strengthened our connection rather than weakened it. I don’t think he knew how close I was to crying when he said he wanted to settle down a bit and start a family, and couldn’t think of anyone he’d rather do those things with, than me. We talked about ways he could visit me in New Jersey in the coming months. With the job I was taking, I’d be as close as either of us would come in the foreseeable future to being able to support him on a long visit or even a marriage visa.
I knew exactly why I was going to New York. I just wasn’t sure why I was leaving Austin.
And truth be told, having driven from Austin through the rest of Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Ohio, on my way to New Jersey, I still feel that way. As flavors of uncertainty go, it’s a tasty one, like setting down your mocha almond fudge ice cream cone to pick up a fork and dig into a slice of raspberry cheesecake. I’m excited and grateful for the opportunity to work in New York again, and also aware that Austin was a great choice for me: liberal, arty, hippie, peaceful.
Thanks to that city and the people I met there, I’m returning to New York with a refreshed heart. I hope to infuse my experience of Manhattan with what I loved about Austin: sweaty candle yoga, outdoor patios, warm friends. And Mr. Hotness, who I could not have afforded to fly here or stay here, on a freelancer’s budget in Austin. With luck, this will be my little version of giving up everything to get everything.
*Title borrowed from a great Blake Shelton country song.
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diamonds.
April 4, 2010 by admin, under Journal.
I sat in front of a pilot on my way from Buffalo to Austin last Tuesday. As the plane descended into fogbound Newark, I flipped through the fashion magazine I’d bought for the flight, wondering if there was any reason to lug it on the next leg of the journey.
I decided to leave it in the seat pocket for the next passenger. The only thing I tore out, inexplicably, was a two-page Tiffany’s advertisement for Celebration Rings. “Good taste,” the pilot said, resting his forearms on the back of my seat. I said I had never been into fine jewelry, and wasn’t sure why this particular ad appealed to me. He told me his grandfather had been Mr. Tiffany’s secretary, and had such perfect penmanship, he’d handwritten his daughter’s wedding invitations.
I said I spent so much time on my computer, I could hardly write a grocery list legibly anymore.
I didn’t tell him that I had left another Tiffany’s ad taped next to my bed in Buffalo, this one showing a man standing on a doorstep in the snow, holding a little box behind him. The copy was something like “This is the one, this is the moment.”
I love jewelry like everyone else, just not the kind of jewelry you have to lock up. But lately I’ve found these images of gold and diamonds as mysteriously compelling as a pregnant woman finds a jar of pickles.
Just before Mr. Hotness came to visit me a year ago, he got really stressed out about how little money he had for the trip. It took half an hour of calming conversation before he admitted he was disappointed his savings was so small because he’d wanted to arrive with a ring.
At the time, I wasn’t feeling quite as confident as he was that our relationship merited engagement rings. And even in the months prior, when my love for him was at its strongest, I had found the idea of marriage and all its trappings showy and unrealistic. Not only did I feel mystified by the ceremony and cost, I couldn’t take the idea of lifelong commitment seriously in the middle of my parents’ dissolution.
When he told me he’d wanted to buy me a ring, my audible response was, “That’s sweet, but you don’t have to right now.” Inside, I was thinking, “Gee… that would have been kind of nice…”
It took me a long time to realize that while I was attracted to him for his complex intellect, sense of humor and, well, hotness, I loved him for his devotion, rationality, and stability. These qualities, that I do not have in abundance, were also the qualities that made him consider buying an engagement ring despite my scoffing. At every step, I struggled with the slower pace at which he makes decisions, the thin veins of traditionalism running through his bass-playing, Japanese horror-movie-watching personality, his hesitancy to throw everything in a suitcase and fly someplace new and strange. But the same way he may need my impulsive unpredictability and grandiose emotional gestures, I may need someone who looks before leaping.
I’ve enjoyed myself since landing in Austin on Tuesday night. I’ve walked its beloved Sixth Street, crowded with college kids and noisy with live blues. I’ve had wine and hummus at a great coffee shop, talked to welcoming strangers, ridden clean buses, meandered downtown, had a delicious Tex Mex dinner with one of my new roommates, and been on two dates.
After not dating at all for more than a year, I’d forgotten the thrill of interesting conversation with someone you might get to kiss as well. I’d also forgotten why I keep circling back to Mr. Hotness. It’s very hard to find someone capable of witty date-night banter, who can also learn from his mistakes, cope with challenging emotions, and not require a lot of ego-feeding.
Meanwhile, a Tiffany’s ad from a magazine sits on my desk here, displaying rings made of gold, silver, and tiny diamonds. Rings you have to save up to buy for someone. Rings you can’t take off when your fingers swell in later years. Rings you worry about losing. Like so many traditions that cynical young liberals like myself mock, the wedding ring is more than something to wear; it’s symbolic of a relationship that shares those qualities. A relationship you have to work for, that becomes part of you, that you can’t bear to lose.
A relationship you’re willing to take risks for.
Mr. Hotness can’t leave England, and I have moved to a town in Texas that, at least on first impression, looks like a great place to be single. A few years ago I would have cherished the tattoos, vintage clothing shops, and huge Mexican Margaritas. And I may wind up staying here for years, enjoying those things. But the magazine ad sits on my desk for a reason. I can’t take the next step alone, and I can’t take it without investing in someone.
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a feminist diatribe about ass.
March 20, 2010 by admin, under Journal.
Let’s talk about naked people.
Last night I watched a naked woman cross the television screen in “Up in the Air.” Her back to the audience, a man’s necktie around her waist, the forty year old character laid down on the bed to flaunt round hips most women in their twenties would envy. Assuming that was the actress’s real ass.
Tonight I visited American Apparel’s website for the first time in a few months, to discover they’re marketing their “Best of Bottoms” campaign. What looked like a seventeen year old Ukranian girl with long dirty-blond hair was flashing across the screen in a thong unitard. The animation had the same efficiency a car manufacturer uses to demonstrate its latest model, with front, back and side views. (This photo is not of her- when I revisited the site an hour later to find an example, I couldn’t. But hey, this one, also from the website, is close enough).
I sometimes visit the small branch library up the street from my house. It carries about forty-two books, and a bank of computers patrons use to surf the web or print documents. The sad, generalized truth is that a lot of the people you see using these computers are either drooling, stinky, or lack fundamental verbal communication skills. As I passed the bank of computers, and a vacant-stared man who was rising from one of them, I noticed behind him a copy of a major fashion magazine, resting on a shelf between Gourmet and National Geographic. On its cover, a naked woman covered her breasts with one arm. You couldn’t see her nipples, but it was an easy “fill in the blanks” shot. It occurred to me that this was probably not the audience that model had had in mind when she asked for or agreed to do a nude cover shoot on a major fashion magazine.
She probably imagined her usual companions: turtleneck-wearing art directors and gay male models. But, like the subjects of the photos I pulled from the American Apparel site to use here, her bare skin will be available for anyone to see, at any time, forever. Including the drooling and the stinky.
I like naked people. I love sex. I masturbate when I’m not having it. I think we should all have more sex, talk more about sex, wear fewer clothes, go naked more often, vacuum in the buff. I appreciate my body and at the same time admit I could stand to lose a few pounds. I enjoy roleplaying in the bedroom. I’m not criticizing these girls’ sexuality. But, pun intended, there is a “but” coming to this conversation about butts.
George Clooney shows one demure, naked arm in “Up in the Air,” whereas his female costar, whose name wasn’t even on the movie posters or DVD case, shows her entire back, butt, and legs. Open up a women’s magazine, you’ll see naked women, open up a men’s magazine, you’ll see naked women. You cannot watch hip-hop and R&B music videos without getting a hard on, regardless of your gender, and it’s not because Kanye or Akon is shaking his booty on that screen- it’s because women whose names we’ll never know are shaking theirs.
I used to work with production artists who create advertising images. I remember talking with one who laid up the pages for J. Crew catalogs. She pointed to the collarbones of one model, mentioning casually that she’d “smoothed out” the model’s shoulders. When I asked her what she meant, she said that she had to erase, in Photoshop, a lot of the bones sticking out of these models necks and shoulders, because they were so skinny they looked unattractive.
They had to be that thin to look that way in those clothes. So the models walked around looking like Holocaust survivors, and then got the most unsightly bits erased from the photos prior to printing.
If my cousin or my aunt or my coworker bought one of those dresses, she would inevitably feel angry with herself for not looking as good as the model in the catalog did. I’m not making this up, I’ve had this conversation with women from twelve to fifty, in multiple countries: women think they’re fat, even when they’re not. They think it’s their fault if clothes don’t look good on their body type. They think they should eat less, enjoy life less, have more bones poking out.
They feel this way because they are surrounded by idealized images of women. They live in a culture of judgment, and no one even notices.
I grew up in the motorcycle industry, where women still parade around trade shows in skimpy skirts, straddle bikes in bikinis on magazine covers, and have to work double or triple time to prove themselves as mechanics or salespeople. You see a lot of nudie calendars in those shops and garages, and often the calendar owner defends it with, “I find the female body beautiful.” Which is a great conversation-stopper, because no woman miffed at the sight of a dirty calendar is going to tell a man “You should find women unattractive.”
But the shoe’s not on the other foot yet. Sure, we have Chippendales and the occasional Ladies Night at the club. But men don’t have any idea how it feels to see images of other men, buffed, polished and waxed, on every newsstand and every TV show, all the time. I’d rather they didn’t have to find out. Maybe our future will see women going to male strip clubs, paying for sex, and watching female-directed porn, as often as men do those things today. But it’s not a happy place to be. It’s a place where boys would fixate on their thighs, offer sexual favors in order to be liked, and do weird things to get on “Spring Break” videos. As envisioned futures go, I could think of a helluva lot more interesting alternatives.
Look, I’m not Tipper Gore, and I’m not Mr. Rogers. I don’t want to ban anything or start singing happy songs about yesteryear. I think the photos I used in this blog are sexy, I’m just tired of seeing them sell everything from t-shirts to deodorant. I’m tired of hearing women talk about themselves like they’re fat, boring puddings. I’m tired of men spending thousands of dollars on strippers and online porn. I think it’s a stupid place for a society to have gotten itself into. I think we could all be having a lot more fun. But it starts with the woman on the magazine cover. She has to go. Until she does, or her boyfriend starts joining her, girls are going to feel insecure. And guys, instead of griping about it, just put yourself in your girlfriend’s goddamn shoes and think it over. You’ll find strengthening those ol’ empathy muscles work wonders in the bedroom, too.
To those fellows I’m lucky enough to know who don’t define sexuality by American Apparel’s standards, women everywhere owe you a very special thank you. We’ve come a long way, baby… with your help.
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the towel ultimatum and telling the goddamn truth.
September 27, 2009 by admin, under Journal.
Mr. Hotness and I have been talking about the successes and failures of our seven-month, largely long-distance relationship. It’s been good to do so. One thing that came up was anger, which I never showed him. I don’t like losing my temper with anyone, and always assume that doing so with a boyfriend would drive him away (more parental stuff I’ve never had to work out because I don’t stay with anyone long enough to lose my cool… bad sign?).
During the winter and spring, when my conversations with Mr. Hotness did not go well, I’d just get off Skype and rant to my mom, my brother, the DF, anyone who’d listen. Never to the man who was causing me this anger or frustration. I assumed that, in order to keep our long-distance love alive, I had to be the soul of patience and tolerance.
The other day, during our catch-up conversation, I lost my temper with Mr. Hotness, and sent him an email about it, instead of someone else. I didn’t edit for readability, couch in reflective “how this makes me feel’s,” or douse with compassion. It was doused instead with poor sentence structure and swear words. And hitting “send” felt great, like I’d exhaled after holding my breath for months.
Instead of throwing up his hands and ending the conversation, as I’d expected him to (as the DF, ironically enough, did several times) he thanked me for being honest about my feelings, saying it finally sounded like the real me.
Mr. Hotness is nothing if not complex and unpredictable.
But his reaction made me aware that while I pride myself on honestly expressing sadness, confusion, and stress, I do not honestly express anger. I hide it. I have historic reasons to expect it will push someone away, but that’s no excuse. It’s unrealistic. I do lose my cool with my relatives, and sometimes I’m able to with friends, although it depends on the relationship and person’s fighting style. But even though I assess the strength of a relationship based on how emotionally open it is, I forget anger is an emotion, forget the importance of surviving pissed-off-ed-ness.
When I met Mr. Hotness, I felt instinctively there wouldn’t be time to slowly reveal my emotional, “messy” side, as we sometimes do in a relationship. I let him know, before I’d even met him, that I was angsting about living so far from home. It set the tone; I didn’t have to pretend to be happy-go-lucky when I didn’t feel that way, and I knew he could bear the mess. Because of that, we were somewhat prepared to deal with my world becoming very messy indeed when my mom discovered my dad had cheated on her.
But when he took three weeks to buy real towels to replace the one towel he’d cut into several pieces for himself before my arrival in his life, I didn’t throw one, frayed and wet because we’d both used it, in his face and insist he buy some new ones if he wanted me to spend another weekend with him. I wanted to. It was stupid- how hard is it to buy a couple goddamn towels, when you keep talking about doing so?
Instead I made little “it’s nothing”comments to him when he’d express frustration with himself for having let another week go by without getting any. Instead I talked to my friends there about it, telling my mom that, yes, if he did take another week to buy them, that was it. I actually made an ultimatum in my head about towels. Who does that? My only argument was that it seemed symbolically disrespectful and procrastinate-y at the same time- but I didn’t tell Mr. Hotness that.
He did buy towels, a few weeks later than I felt it should have taken him, the way his plans to move here took a few months longer than I felt it should have taken him. The Palmer he knew, though, had infinite patience. The Palmer he knew would wait.
And I didn’t wait. I couldn’t. So maybe it would have been helpful to throw that towel in his face a lot earlier on.
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molting, or, the unexpected shrug.
September 9, 2009 by admin, under Journal.
In a recent blog post, I described the three men, “the lover, the boss and the friend,” (recently referred to in over posts as the “Distant Friend” or DF) who played important roles in my emotional and literal life over the past year and a half. In the past week and a half, each of them have effectively told me that their play is over.
The day I climbed into Dawn’s car to drive with her to Biloxi via Ann Arbor, I received but didn’t answer a call from a 212 area code. I was surprised when I picked up the message and heard the voice of my former boss. He said he’d accidentally called me instead of the next number on his phone. He left, like, a four hundred minute-long message, rambling on about a Filemaker project he’s working on, saying at the end that he wished me well.
We used to geek out about databases and websites. Touched that he harbored no anger toward me for agreeing and then refusing to return to his company back in June, and despite his saying, “you don’t need to call back,” I couldn’t help but email him a link to the website I’m redesigning for my current job.
He did not respond.
On the road trip, while Dawn drove across Ohio and Tennessee, I sat in the backseat in the dark, typing crabbed little emails into my phone, asking the DF yet again to recognize or apologize for the harm he caused by breaking up with his girlfriend just long enough to visit and sleep with me. He said he’d done nothing wrong, and it was up to me to just get over this. His response gave me both a legal reason, and sufficient anger, to stop talking to him altogether. I need silence to get over him, but couldn’t justify ending our friendship until I recognized how little he respected that friendship.
Several days later, it looks like he is not going to argue that decision.
After the road trip, I sat in the kitchen catching up with my mom and brother over Hershey’s kisses and beer. I admitted to them that I wondered how Mr. Hotness (the lover) was doing these days. Later that night, we discovered that Mr. Hotness, who is still my brother’s friend on Facebook, and rarely posts anything on it, had just announced he was quitting his job and returning to university.
Startled to have my question answered so coincidentally, I emailed him that I was happy for him that he’d decided to get his masters.
He has not responded.
I don’t know what surprises me more, the coincidental contacts, or my reaction to them. After months of worrying, analyzing and ranting about these relationships, I receive three cold shoulders, and am merely mildly offended. I’m not crying, I’m not hurt, I’m not demanding explanations. It’s an “enh” moment.
The geographic distances, wives, and differing priorities that we struggled with in different ways, over the past year and a half, have finally surmounted the emotional ties we shared.
Which feels a heckuva lot saner than a married boss who asked me twice to return to his employ after I’d quit to avoid throwing myself at him, a friend who was annoyed with me for not wanting to discuss his love life after he’d refused to have a relationship with me, and a lover who asked me to keep waiting for him to move to the US after he admitted he’d spent five months lying to me about how afraid he was to move to the US.
I can’t help but appreciate the symbolism my body offers. I write this as the skin on my back and stomach peels off in transparent strands, leaving behind skin that is unburnt, and smooth.
Maybe, just maybe, everyone has moved on. Maybe, just maybe, I can be a drama queen over someone new. Endings, you see, are also beginnings.
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since last we spoke…
September 6, 2009 by admin, under Journal.
Since last we spoke, I went on a road trip with Dawn and her friend Lauren. Sunday evening, Dawn and I crossed southern Ontario to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to pick Lauren up, and then the three of us drove through Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama to Biloxi, Mississippi. We sat on the beach. We drank wine. We gossiped, joked around, accidentally walked four miles to a casino. I forced myself to relax with a book and got a horrendous sunburn doing so. We ate BBQ in the company of love bugs locked together, falling on our beer and pork. We visited the site of the Battle of Franklin, south of Nashville, where fourteen hundred men were buried outside a white plantation with columns and green shutters. We drove, and drove, and then drove some more. We accumulated a lot of hot, half-finished bottles of soda. We sang along to country music. And we thought, and thought, and then thought some more, about men.
Staring out at the dark highway on our drive down to Mississippi Monday night, I reflected that my feelings for the Distant Friend were so deep, it seemed impossible to move on. This annoying, motherly, unsympathetic little voice responded with, Well, you could move on if you wanted to. It took me an entire day to agree, but I eventually had to- it’s not like the DF and I dated for years, his smell lingering on the sheets, his books filling my shelves, his laughter ringing in the halls. He’s a mildly well-informed fantasy. Why hold on?
My decision to begin the process of moving on was easily the best souvenir of the trip, although Dawn muttering at four in the morning on our twenty-two hour drive back to Michigan, “I need a shower,” was a close, close second.
I don’t like to embark on trips with expectations, preferring to let the trip give what it’s going to give. Two days after its end, I can say the trip gave me itchy, peeling skin, a deeper understanding of Dawn, some great memories of a part of the country I’d never seen before, and plenty of sheer roadtrip adventure.
But I have to admit I hoped I’d return enlightened about the meaning and future of my current situation. Buffalo looked pretty as Dawn and I crossed the Peace Bridge Friday afternoon and drove past D’Youville, but it didn’t speak to me. I’d hoped I’d return reinvigorated, to look for apartments, start a novel, develop my position at work, watch and help my mom and brother settle here. Generally, to put down roots. Or, alternatively, to know what wagon train I should ride out of town. But I’m not any more sure of any of those things than I was when I left.
I just know my back is peeling, I’m not investing in the DF any more, the suitcase is put away, and I do have an idea for a novel.
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passionate and be-furred.
August 24, 2009 by admin, under Fiction.
Cat’s tongue rolls along the curling, velveteen surface of the catnip.
Arms stretch across the sateen-sheathed stuffing of the quilt.
Satisfied, the cat exhales.
It lolls on back, paws curled, in the middle of the room,
for anyone to see its ruffled tum-fur and wide expanse of belly.
Reckless between its out-hung thighs.
The cat can stare for hours, who can tell it not to?
It will watch the bird through glass the sunny afternoon,
if it wants to.
The cat can ask, with meows rehearsed,
for a stroke,
an open lap,
a kiss upon the head.
A scribble of the chin or brushing of the back.
Your hand along the length, from head down to the tail.
The cat could lay beside you,
and even if you sneezed,
the cat could simply turn aside and fall asleep again.
Content to feel itself against you, closer with each breath.
There is nothing you could do about it: it is a cat.
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destination heartache.
August 16, 2009 by admin, under Journal.
Growing up with cousins in 4-H, grandparents who spent hours in the sun with their beans and roses, and a mother who loves pygmy goats, I took an annual summer trip to the Monroe County Fair in Washington as a matter of course. In various family formations, my family and my two aunts’ families would make their way out at some point in August, to eat corn on the cob and hamburgers with grilled onions, argue over how many rides we could take, and ooh and ahh over the floppy-eared rabbits.
We’ve been to fairs in Oregon, Washington, California and even Alaska, simply because we’ve lived in all those places, and a family has to do what a family has to do- even if Californians don’t get the importance of grilled onions and Anchorage can only afford four rides.
I’d never been to a fair on the East Coast, however, and Buffalo’s slogan, “America’s Fair,” was a red flag to a bull (yes, in this analogy, I’m the bull). Imagine with what enthusiasm, then, I rallied my mom and brother and our friends to go to the fair last night.
We were a hodgepodge group: my mom, a fair veteran, beelining for the market building, the rest of us in our twenties more concerned with riding the Star Blaster than perusing the demo booths. Admittedly no one did anything until we’d all stuffed our faces with deep fried foods (“I’m surprised no one’s deep fried the Kettle Korn,” my mom said, as my brother cowered away from the fried Oreo I was waving in his face).
Like one should after attending a county fair, I have picture postcard memories: Plumtopher and Dawn holding hands under the Ferris wheel, my brother shrieking like a girl (on purpose) on the Magik Xpress, Candi wrinkling her nose at the lemonade she’d bought from the wrong booth.
“Nights like this make me want a guy’s hand to hold,” Candi said, swinging her hand with a cheesy expression on her face to illustrate. Standing with her next to the sickening ride Plumtopher and Ian had insisted on riding twice, I looked up at the multi-colored lights of the rides against the dark sky. It was a beautiful night, and like nights at a fair in August should be, it deserved to be shared with someone.
Flashback to Wednesday, when I found out that my Distant Friend had been single for three weeks without mentioning it to me. We all know how I feel about the DF. Yet discovering he was A) free B) still not desirous to do anything long-distance, I found myself telling him, “This is one of those big changes that doesn’t change anything.” I still wasn’t ready to move back to NYC, especially for a man admittedly still not over an old relationship. He said he thought about me, but was still holding back, not ready to commit. We were right where we started two months ago.
Which of course led us to talking over a “visit.” We agreed it was a fun but risky idea, but I continued to think about it. I had put in overtime this month and earned a week off in September. Why not bus it down to Manhattan?
My mom and brother arrived in town Thursday. Plumtopher threw a sangria party on his porch to celebrate. Leaning over her glass, Dawn told me she was going to Mississippi on a road trip with a friend, and I was welcome to come along. I told her I would think about it. What I was thinking about, though, was Manhattan.
I went to work on Friday, starting another conversation with the DF about a visit. He said he’d “look forward” to it, but not as a gesture of commitment. I compared him to the carton of ice cream in the freezer I knew I shouldn’t eat, but knew I would. Why fight it? He stopped me mid-sentence with the question, “Are you being good to yourself? By considering this?”
Reeling from the pathetic tone of my inner voice responding with “She’s never good to herself!” I told him I needed to sleep on that one. Dawn called, asking if my drunken interest in the road trip still held now that I was no longer under the influence of the sangria.
I could only do one or the other. One entailed trips to the beach and bars with girls whose company I truly enjoyed. One entailed… certain things even the best girlfriend cannot provide.
Saturday night, watching people swung into space, I could feel that old heartache tiptoeing up behind me. My sentimental heart wanted to waste moments, if not hours, under that sky, wishing I could share it with the Distant Friend.
Instead I turned back to Dawn and Candi and made a joke about my brother and friend screaming from the ride overhead.
If Dawn hadn’t offered me an alternative, I probably would have gone to New York, to let someone who’s not going to take risks for me, touch me. There’s a big problem there, regardless of how well I understand where the DF is emotionally right now. But at least I took the alternative. At least I turned away from that night sky and continued to have fun at the fair. The DF would have wanted me to anyway, that’s the irony: he’s not asking me to pine. And he’s not the first person I’ve pined for. Still don’t know if it’s bad luck or bad choices, but for the time being anyway, I tried to avoid making journeys that were bound to end in tears.
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a bit of Shana and Donny.
August 8, 2009 by admin, under Journal.
“I feel like any conversation I have with any man right now is going to end with him mentioning a girlfriend… or just being a weirdo,” I said to my brother on the phone yesterday. “Maybe it’s a full moon thing, like that one Archie comic, you remember, when he dressed up in a wig and dress to escape the crazies?”
Yes, yes, my brother said. I had just finished listing all the “weird” male behavior I’d witnessed in the past two weeks: the Distant Friend who said he’d like to hear how I was doing, and then didn’t respond for several days, the married penpal who appeared to be sending me provocative poetry, someone I’d met online who, when I suggested we meet for a beer, asked, “Should I bring my overnight bag?” the guy who kept staring at me during a recent BBQ but turned out, at the very end of the evening, to be dating a girl he hadn’t so much as brushed elbows with the entire time I was there, a likable photographer I met with my boss for a work project, who had just moved from Rochester to Buffalo to live with his girlfriend, and a guy named Charlie who leaned all over me at Goodbar last weekend, buying shots and cracking jokes, assuring my wingwoman that he did not have a wife or girlfriend, but who didn’t even respond to a casual but friendly text message a few days later.
“Candi said he might have been so drunk he didn’t remember who I was,” I told my brother, “But he was just a liquor store guy!”
“Maybe this is because you talk to the guys at the bar who wear Wheeler’s Used Cars t-shirts, and not the guys in suits,” Ian suggested.
“No, I did talk to a guy in a suit lately, that friend of Plumtopher’s,” I reminded him. “He freaked me out.”
My brother had nothing more to offer, but I invited him to continue brainstorming reasons why every interaction I had with men lately had either mystified me or contained that dreaded line, “My girlfriend…”
At the same time, I’ve been watching a lot of A Bit of Fry & Laurie, a late-eighties, short-lived English comedy starring Hugh Laurie (Dr. House) and Stephen Fry, that guy who’s in everything. After lusting over House with my mom for the past couple years (you can find proof on this blog’s very first entry) I would probably watch Hugh Laurie read old grocery receipts and enjoy it. Still, although they’re genuinely funny actors, their skits in A Bit tend to wrap up with a joke that’s always a bit too tidy. They set up two engaging characters, play out an amusing conversation, and end it with one elbowing the other while the live audience laughs. It’s forced.
And, so is my life. In order to convey this properly, I will now switch to present tense.
I rant to my brother, release him from the phone conversation, finish work, and walk home to gather taco fixings and a leftover six pack to bring to my friends’ house. The three of us eat chicken tacos on the front porch and drink too much while watching a comedy I love dearly but which put Dawn to sleep, ending the evening a bit early.
I say my goodbyes, gather up my salsa, and head home. But as I reach my corner I pause, tempted by the sight of the bar across the street. It’s only eleven-thirty and I’m not quite ready to go home yet, so, warning myself to behave, I go on in. Ordering a vodka and settling in at the discreet, far corner of the bar, I admire a muscular guy playing darts with his friend, make unfair assumptions about the couple sitting next to me, and keep an eye on the bartender. The bartender wears huge glasses, skinny t-shirts, and full sleeve tattoos on both arms. I have actually met this bartender before while drinking vodka with a man I was very sorry to wake up with the day after Fourth of July. But I can’t remember his name, and this saddens me, because he has a big smile and those great tattoos.
A seat opens up in the middle of the bar and I move down, ready for fresh people watching. A female bartender appears, complimenting my earrings and introducing herself as Shana. Next to me, a man with bags under his eyes and white hair curling over his ears asks Shana if she approves of his Hawaiian shirt. He holds his shoe over the bar to show her that it matches his shorts, and she assures him it’s all very tasteful. He glances at me and, immediately deciding he’s the most entertaining person in the place, I tell him the shirt may be okay but the comb-over is a mistake.
We engage in acceptably distant banter about his hair, his grasp of the French language, a bad joke about cannibals. Then he offers to buy me a drink and I tell the tattooed bartender, sorry, no can do. A bit more banter, but I’m also watching Meryl Streep laugh with Stephen Colbert on the TV over the bar. I can’t remember why the elderly man started to unbutton his Hawaiian shirt to show me his chest, but I look at nearby Shana for help and she waves her hands, saying, “No, no, come on, let’s at least keep the nipples covered.”
Buttoning his shirt with great reluctance, he moves on to heritage, trying to guess what I could possibly be if not Irish. Somehow that leads him to announce that Obama is going to ruin this country, being a socialist leftist mumble mumble who’s trying to take credit from Bush for ending the war. I gasp and tell him Bush did no such thing and the war is very far from being over, at which point my Hawaiian-shirt wearing buddy exclaims, “F*** you!” flings his drink over the edge of the bar and storms out.
I look around, astonished at how quickly he’s vanished, and turn back to see Shana pouring beers, asking, “Where’d he go?”
“I don’t know,” I say, “I defended Obama and he said f-you and stormed out.”
She rolls her eyes. “Thank you.”
We joke a bit about him, she returns to tending bar, and the tattooed bartender takes her place. “So did you really not want another drink or did you just not want one from him?” he asked.
“Not one from him,” I respond, telling him about the Obama thing. The bartender shakes his head with a big grin, saying, “He hasn’t been president that long, it’s too soon to judge. And besides, I’m just happy he can string together a complete sentence.”
We bond over our enthusiasm for Obama’s command of the English language, and the tattooed bartender reaches his hand over the bar, introducing himself as Donny. We keep talking and he says, “Is your hair naturally red?”
“No, I dye it.”
“Because my girlfriend has red hair and she can’t tan like you are…”
I could just hear the English audience laughing.
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song lyrics, romantic comedies, and the meaning of love.
August 4, 2009 by admin, under Journal.
Candi and I drove from Rochester to Buffalo last Saturday night, Dixie Chicks blasting through the open roof. She’d never listened to their latest and most gorgeous album in its entirety. I turned up “Voice Inside My Head,” announcing that she should listen because the lyrics related to an old boyfriend she’d told me more about that afternoon.
As she drove, I stopped humming along to the song and fell into a glum reverie about the Distant Friend. “I can hear the voice inside my head/ Saying you should be with me instead/ Every time I’m feeling down, I wonder/ What would it be like with you around.”
As the song ended, Candi said, “I have a feeling they knew a Distant Friend too.”
“Yeah, that song made me sad.”
“Is that why I felt all the fun being sucked out of this car?” she asked, with pity rather than sarcasm.
Everyone has their “what if-?” The week I spent with my brother here in Buffalo a year ago, anticipating my imminent flight to Barcelona, I spent several wakeful pre-journey nights recalling the men I had dated in New York. I longed to find some treasure in them, some spark in my memory that could give meaning to the relationships I had left, or was about to leave, behind.
But even though I thought about my ex-roommate while on that flight, I didn’t board it wishing or what if-ing about any men that I knew. They had each made their unsuitability clear, or hadn’t needed to, because I had chosen them for their unsuitability.
I arrived in Spain enjoying Death Cab for Cutie’s “I Will Possess Your Heart,” the music video of which shows Benjamin Gibbard mooning outside what looks suspiciously like a West Village brownstone, waiting for the girl of his dreams to stop traveling and come home long enough to notice and fall in love with him. I was glad to be that girl, wandering, someone else’s “What if?”
But now I feel stuck, what if’ing about the Distant Friend. Doing so prevents me from fully embracing my life here. It also strikes me as suspicious from a psychohistorical point of view. I may feel most comfortable with someone who is not going to call me first when his boss patronizes him, not going to bring dinner around on a Tuesday evening, not going to introduce me to his parents when they’re in town. It bothers me that I’m most familiar with being the woman outside a man’s life, rather than his partner.
It was that realization that prevented my enjoying “Voice Inside My Head.” I followed the song up by confessing to Candi that while the Distant Friend had clearly told me in words and actions that he did not feel as I did, I couldn’t just walk away agreeing that our time together was “one of those things.” Returning to friendship has required pretending I feel that way, but I don’t. It meant something to me. And a fear of being alone in that sense of meaning has prevented me, in the weeks since, from reaching out to anyone.
At which point I turn on the country radio station and sing along to Taylor Swift, “she wears short skirts, I wear t-shirts/ she’s cheer captain and I’m on the bleachers/ Dreaming ’bout the day you wake up and find that what you’re looking for has been here the whole time.”
Yes, I am that lame.
Along those pubescent lines, I recently saw He’s Just Not That Into You, for obvious reasons. The main character spends half the movie agreeing with a womanizing bartender that she’s foolish to wait for clearly disinterested men to call her, only to discover that however disinterested he may have acted, she is the bartender’s “exception.” The movie never addresses the way she ignores her own lackadaisical feelings about her dates while fixating instead on how they feel about her. But there’s probably a reason the screenwriters didn’t bother. If we can get gender-typical for a minute, men look for the chase and women to be chased, both forgetting they may have nothing in common with their prey/dator.
It annoyed me, while watching the movie, that my years as the bartender, always ready to move on to the next relationship, has been replaced by an era, however brief, of fawning over someone two years younger, who wears tidy, solid colored clothing and would never dream of letting the dishes pile up in the sink so he could write a blog or pin scraps of torn paper to a second hand bulletin board and call it “art.” He is the Gap and I am Goodwill, he is a soon-to-be graduate student and I am a nanny, he is a smooth lake and I am crashing tidal waves. The Distant Friend, when viewed clinically, appears as a hapless man who took physical affection where it was offered and then found himself targeted by the Heartbreakinator (moi) with the absurd hope that I could be his exception, regardless of where we live.
It’s so embarrassing.
“But I saw glitter and felt tingles and heard the tinkling of fairy bells when I was with him,” I tell my clinician, who only tut-tuts and stalks off, scribbling on her clipboard.
So I continue to follow an old manager’s advice and “fake it till I make it,” pretending, successfully or not, that I no longer want to throw pots and pans at the Distant Friend and yell, “what the hell were you thinking?!”
Meanwhile, all I have is music, movies, and Beyoncé, singing, “You don’t listen to her/ you don’t care how it hurts…”
Because when affection has been misplaced, anyone can turn into a twelve year old.
