Welp. I've always been attracted to irony. So why not try to make safe space out of a man today of all days? Swim against the riptides.

Lancaster. Two separate occasions. One on a guest bed (though he had offered the main bedroom, with the memory foam mattress they had gone to buy one day when we were just friends, they bought a vacuum cleaner too, a Dyson, I remembered so many details he had told me, about trying to be with her, about tofu scramble and chicken wing tower disagreements) on top of the comforter (guestroom brown?). That time, it was if I took all that in along with him, every story of himself he had, up into my own body. I was giving.

But there was another time, in a living room, there was a couch, I remember sitting at his feet looking up at him, we were talking, he found that particular arrangement uncomfortable, he asked me to sit with him instead. This is what I remember, what happened on the couch. Not the boots later, which of course I kept on, I never took them off, I slept in them back then to be ready to run. Like people keep guns next to their beds only different. Straddling him on the couch, I felt for the first time the sensation of inhaling another person, like pulling a string of light from inside him, letting the weight of my want grow until he felt pinned and his soul was on my tongue, where I would keep it and never give it back. I was taking. 

And I would keep taking, years of it, increasing my capacity until I could swallow him past all that had been stuck in my craw for  forevvver, swallow him to where all my words were all stuck. And glow from there like Mavis could sing.

I still have the skirt, so I put it on. Sense memory has truth in it, so I've been told. I've always liked this skirt, the silky nylon feeling, very thin, black and white quick dry. Unlike his cargo shorts, which were soaking wet. He left his shirt untucked to hide that out of gentlemanly courtesy towards me. Like calling me ma'am only different.

"taking myself back"

 

I've been reading that book, Sacred Sex. The font is in fucking pink 🙄. But I'm trying to be OPEN to what the universe is putting out there for me atm, so I stick with it long enough to get the jist: masterbate more. Well maybe not MORE, but more attentively. Dwell on it so you more fully understand yourself. 

I very much liked that I never saw him coming, the opposite of a hard sell, and that as a result I spent a long time coming to trust him and then not-fucking him, learning to trust him more, trust him with my body, learning to trust my own body and its choice of him. Even that day, when he stood in the doorway pulling his shirt tail down in front, trying not to laugh, my kissing his smile, his teeth, him laughing more at that. There were more times, in my house, his face between my legs, then standing in the driveway after, telling him to go get to work getting divorced. The time on the grass. I fucked him none of those times. He said another new fact recently, "I love hunting." I loved being hunted. Being hunted means being seen.

I'm the Elmer Fudd. I can stand in front of rooms full of people and nobody sees me. Almost nobody.

I learned to write to him. To risk articulation. To let words come that are about him, to write those down even if I am not sure what sense they make. I remember sending him a thing I wrote about him, a fantasy, I wondered if word version I had made of him felt true. I knew it would summon him, if it felt true for him, true of him. And it turned me on very much to find I could do that.

What we remember about "Us" is the sex. And I let everyone understand it that way, it's easiest, I had a good time, men do it, midlife whatever. But that is a cover story. I do not know how to understand all that happened between him and me - I don't know how to understand it, how not to crave it, how not to feel aversion toward it too, the way people often talk about where they're from. Home sick. And I want to understand it. I need to understand it. 

I very often do not get, am not getting, what I need.

Here's what I know (a poem?):

This friendship is valuable to me right now. 

It feels missing, like this blog is half a conversation, a block of text on a milk carton.

We are not dead. Or missing. Except by choice.

He's some kinda getting divorced. Getting, I remember the getting days of divorce

Boy, I was mad. And under that, what?

Sometimes I'm so mad again now. And under that, what? 

Anyone getting divorced needs friends.

The 'get you' kind of friends have particular value.

We can get laid easily, nothing is easier than that on the person:person option list, why people do it so much eludes me frankly.

Understanding from or for someone, not easy at all, to find to get to give to want to (let one's self) need.

So here's what I'd like to do: be a good friend. 

I can try. 

Play me a song? 

sis doesn't find brother-in-law memes funny 🤷🏻‍♀️🤣

crush - billianne (from 'love in the living room' playlist)

My daughter observed that Nebraska "does not seem to know you very well, even still". That really struck a nerve and stuck, cz I realized: I have done that. I have loved a LOT but/while not understanding my mate very well. And now I know how that feels.

Not being understood = my needs do not get met. And that feels a whole bunch of confusing kinds of shitty. Because they looove you, so you're the "bad" one for not being enough. 

I just mean I've fucked that up before, too. 

Ideally, on a long enough time horizon, exlovers become friends so that they might gain insight(s) about themselves with someone who knows them well and now that there's no reason to be full of shit with each other. (And they may still get each other's jokes, humor being vital and scarce 🙏)....

"What a night", he says, processing the space between how fucking cool the tech specs of the body are and how fragile its soul. Confusing me with the cath particulars, looking for the best metaphor for THE thing: the potential inability to save/protect what is most precious and the complexity of what/who that altogether is. Picking up there, where we left off. Leave off, repeatedly. Unable to include one another as precious enough.

So, let's amend the 'exlovers are valuable friend resources' opinion piece. I am still PRO that but include the following guideline: don't fuck each other. Especially if you've already tried that every which way - as forbidden love true love spiritual practice make up lust big spoon little spoon post-apocalypse casual passion apology compulsion ecstatic learning curve - especially if the casual category failed the most miserably ft sex too good for that.

love somebody - post malone and morgan wallen

chemistry probably unavoidable, possibly quite enjoyable, and feeling fuckable is great  - but I'm going through a NO PHASE

 

Boy poison - a boy's kisses were like a poison, which infected you and after you were exposed you craved more, like an addict.

Susan Minot, Rapture

Two of the world's most famous paintings are the Mona Lisa<>/i> and The Last Supper. Both were made by Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), one of the world's most famous painters. Yet the brilliant artist left us with only 24 paintings in total, many of which were unfinished. Why? Here are two of several reasons: He worked slowly and procrastinated constantly. In the coming months, Virgo, I feel you will have resemblances to the version of da Vinci who created The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. Some of your best, most enduring work will bloom. You will be at the peak of your unique powers. Halloween costume suggestion: Leonardo da Vinci or some great maestro.

Virgos always have horseshit horoscopes. They even leave the typos, like we're gonna clean it up ourselves. Maestro my ass, I'm going as neurotic, i.e. I seem to give a person pause 🐾 enough just as my own little self.

I hope we get to come back - jadea kelly from the reincarnation aspiration playlist

my tarot card advised me to be patient today

All Souls

Tonight, you can die a little and lend a little life to the dead so you can touch each other, like finger tips on glass.

How do you serve the sacrifices and suffering that all your dead took on to BE, incarnate and then dying then dead, so you can be here right now? They all had to go through this life, then be dead on top of it all. I wish they could help me sometimes. I talk to my grandma, ask her to help me hold it together when shit gets so rough. But they've already done so much. I want my dead to rest. Or listen to music. However joy looks once you're finally done, I pray for them to have it. I rolled them a joint. 

I want them to know it is appreciated, all their living and dying. And that I'm sorry I'm not better, more, worth all that. 

I'm sorry - Ziggy Alberts (acoustic) 

dirty prescott kids - outlaw state of mind from 'the world is ending in a week (or not)' playlist 

 

il mare calmo della sera - andrea bocelli ft chris ouch. do you have to be Italian to feel 😭 o solo mio lalalaaaaa (lol)

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). If you had a single wish for your love, it wouldn’t be for fame or riches -- although those wouldn’t hurt -- but it would be to live in emotional sunshine. Irrational confidence will pay off. The grind gets light. Ordinary days become adventures.

Yesssssss. Sunshine again, the whole glad to wake up to my ordinary life thing. The adventures of afternoons. All I need is "irrational confidence", which sounds like my wheelhouse, doesn't it? 🤔

"bed head"

 

118.2lbs exactly. The day my then- primary care doc in Lewiston weighed me in, all was about to be well again, I assured him, thus my looking wonderful in the black yoga outfit I was wearing (showing off), while he was dubious, sitting on the chair below and in front of me, the same as a lover might be to untie panty sidebows, and he questioned my judgment, suspecting that being too trusting might be an undiagnosed condition of mine, a comordidity. I thought about the sex I'd be having if I was right. I can remember his face perfectly, his posture, a semi manspread with the ankle on his knee, his shrugging and looking down at the chart to indicate that he understood that as always I was probably going to ignore anything he said. I noticed just then that our postures matched, I was sitting on one foot, crotch aimed at his face. He looked up for a second, right at me there, I felt sure he could smell me, I shifted a little, yea THAT, it's quite a handful, my vag. Concessions must be made to such a Goddess. He stood, conversation over, subject closed.

But he was right in a way. Not about the soon-returning love of my then-life, but about me. I can't shake the habit of believing in words. You don't have to talk at all really, to anyone, you can easily avoid it with "wow", especially if you're a man, you can pass for the strong silent type saying virtually nothing, so why lie about anything at all ever? What I have not been able to really absorb is that people lie to themselves constantly. And what they're doing by lying to you (often unconsciously) is getting corroboration, like an alibi. All people do this. I do it. We build a coherent narrative of our lives, hoping it's not pathological/unsustainable (but it sometimes is), a coherence of who we are that we can explain to others. I know this, as a fact, it is a constant necessary human foible, I teach the concept for christ sake, but I forget it all the time.

I suspect Nebraska has passed for boring af like Keyser Soza sorta. All he ever says is how much he adores me, NONSTOP, everything I do, on and on 🙄, and everyone (my mom) believes that/him. It's so boring!, you have no idea, like being forced to stare at yourself in a funhouse mirror all day. Now that I'm going amongst his coworkers, ie walking the halls of his world, what I'm learning about him is that he absolutely adores me. He says that and only that to them as well, for YEARS, that's all they know about him also.

All along my gut has recoiled from this. But there is no sense discussing it with anyone. I have tried. I just get the "you have to feel deserving of love" schpeel because of course all women have feelings of low self worth blablabla. So boring. 🤦🏻‍♀️

I am worth enough. Obviously I think so because I have taken the adoration of this man, and others before him, so for granted that I forgot it was bullshit. 

I asked my body her opinion. Very literally, I laid on my back in my sister's house and asked my body how she felt about it all, the brain to vagina via spine hotline (batgirlphone). And immediately got my answer: you've been here, caught in selfbullshit(s), it makes you very angry. 

Yessssss. 

first high - nikki lane

I was just in Lewiston looking at houses for sale. The village bake shoppe is as ever, mile high apple pie. And I weigh 118.2 pounds precisely. That's what we call in the witchbiz a "synchronicity". I don't know how to read signs like that tbh. I tried skimming blog entries in Oct 2014 and gave myself a headache - I'll spare you, kind reader, a linkback 🙄🤦🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️ -  but I found jealousy to be 1 constant 2 boring 3 bullshit. I didn't remember that, but yesssss. I put it something like "I spend my time wanting a piano to fall on his mother and he thinks I'm thinking about dick" which in a sense I was thinking about dick, HIS DICK 🙄,*I* was the jealous one for christ sake, everybody buying their own bullshit like slapstick. I am not bewitched by dick at the moment, so not the same. But. Nebraska's "affirmation" of me is 1 constant 2 boring and 3 some kind of bullshit. I'm just not sure what kind of bullshit and everyone around us completely buys it, whatever it is (masterful gaslighting). 

Since I don't know who or what all is not to be trusted to put any weight down on it, I'm toe tapping, kicking tires (possible lives) with bare feet, seeing what feels real to the touch.

past the point of rescue - hal ketchum 

Here it comes. I can feel it rolling in from a ways off, like thunder in the desert rumbling the ground and charging the air. 

nobody - niia

muffalotta

I think about it all the time if I'm honest, my shortage of passion. I keenly feel my lack of feeling. 

Everyone prefers this, my meh state/mood. And it does matter to me that the people I care for are happy with me. And it matters a lot to me that I rarely let anyone down and never from lack of trying, stability being helpful for that, feeling meh being helpful for stability. But. I'll go off the rails sooner or later just to enliven my existence. I've done crazy shit like disappear in New Orleans for umteen hours, for instance, for that very reason. What I don't understand is 1 lying about it ("maybe I was drugged" = maybe I was abducted by aliens = either scenario would leave you without your pants) and then 2 pretending it never happened by making me discuss your SANDWICH. At length. I finally turned the phone off. A kindness, forcing him to just shut up about what he is eating already.

He isn't lying to me because I don't care. I soberly faced down the lies I cared about (what is actually possible) (not much). So he's talking to himself not really to me. What is the point of that?, I often wonder. Does everybody talk every day about the nothing they mostly did then the chicken they mostly ate? Maybe everyone else gets the point of that [?] 

I experiment - if I just don't say anything at all, how long does it take him to notice? If I say only the avoidant phrases ("wow that's crazy") that TJ taught me, I can do that for days. Maybe forever! That's marriage, saying shit like "wow" forever and serially agreeing that the kids/dogs are adorable. Maybe that's why everyone seemingly wants to get married all the time, so they can retire conversationally to "wow", the intimacy equivalent of assisted living.

I crave the intimacy equivalent of a muffalotta but different.

(sigh) (the radio game in Earline, see if it'll cheer me up:)

Play me a song.

miles on it - marshmello

Play me another one.

thinking bout you - dustin lynch

Play me another.

I'll make love to you - boys II men

Ok, that was kinda funny 🤭

Nebraska went missing shortly after midnight in New Orleans, on a trip with college buddies all named something like Jeff (Dave). I joked that everybody has to get hammered and do something regrettable with somebody named something like Jeff in NOLA. I wasn't really joking, more like slightly daring him, go on dude, do something unacceptable. One of the many weird things about Nebraska is the truth of him is obscured by his insistence that he be taken entirely at face value. He "loves G...", that's what everyone knows about him because he says that over and over and over and over. Being the object of that sentence, I can assure you he's just blowing smoke, a cloaking device in the form of words.

After 12:18, nobody could find him til late afternoon, when he turned up beaten and disoriented, doesn't remember anything and/but is "sorry". The apology compulsion. Instinctive camouflage and (notreally)apologies constantly. I do not judge it, everybody is crazy somehow, but I know it isn't benign. Lying all the time makes a person feel physically stressed and chronically shitty, like chewing your nails down to bloody necrosis risk levels. And I'll just let him do it, let him be whoever whatever however he says he is. 

I think about it all the time if I'm honest, my shortage of passion. I keenly feel my lack of feeling. 

I already know what I will say ("wow that's so crazy" "so glad you're alright" "you should try to enjoy the rest of your trip" "where are you going to have dinner?") I am very glad Nebraska is OK, I was quite worried when he was missing, but I won't press him on the bullshit story of it because I don't care to know his truth(s). 

19-2000-gorillaz (soulchild remix)

Update: Sure enough, the next text I get is about what he is having for lunch. Oysters and ginger beer.