"“You go at sex the way you walk.” “The way I walk?” His erection subsided. His dick didn’t like the way that sounded. “Remember when we went to the movies? You saw the marquee, and led me diagonally across the lot, through that short alley, between two moving vans, and jaywalked. A straight line to the goal.” He rolled back on his haunches. “Watch me,” she said. “Don’t touch me except where I put you. I’ll tell you if I need help. Otherwise, don’t touch me. You’ll want to do something slick-like, like stick your finger in my ass or something. Every time you do that, you reset the meter. Be patient. And you shouldn’t drive anywhere until the engine is warmed up anyway.” She took his hand, squeezing two of his fingers between her own, moved the fingers back and forth across the outer edges first, ruffling the faint downy trail below the navel before brushing along the shorter, bristly hair between her legs, at one point moving slower and slower, his hand just grazing just teasing, then faster, then tracing the fingers straight up the center, parting the folds, her back bucking as she did, and slipping in only the tip of his finger, and Achilles bit his lip at the heat as she made larger and larger circles around the outside, her other hand strumming up and down until his breath was as shallow as hers, shorter and shorter her breath, faster and faster the fingers, until she was rigid and then melted, and he was as long catching his breath as she was. His hand. His hand. And his hand, feverish with the memory of her skin, spent all that night stroking his chin, bowled like an oxygen mask. After that, he knew their bodies were made for each other." ~ Hold it Til it Hurts, T. Geronimo Johnson.

bonus track ~ The Perils of Intimacy

VIRGO To be present to another person's pain is to expose yourself to it and risk possibly getting hurt, too. But that's what friends do. You'll do it again and again this weekend.


But.  What if the virgo is already hurt bad herself? Then what? Who comes to the aid of the earth sign? Weekends are the hardest too. I go so far into the deadly quiet of myself that I am pretty sure I can see the shores of Catatonia.

Ah well.


   this kid is great

The widow thought: I should have opted to be the mistress, not the wife.

The widow was in the habit now of meditating by the pond daily, daybreak or dusk.  She liked to watch the birds wash themselves in the waterfall.  They came in couples mostly.  Each with her own kind.  She liked the cardinals the best, the wariest ones.  The white pond fish, formerly the baby, was now a woman – she was hiding in the pump box, safe from being humped half to death by the showy greedy gold boys.  The candle burned at Mary’s feet, presiding over the untied cord, a holy light between the ends guiding them on their separate ways (your ways are not my ways).  It wasn’t sentiment that kept the cord, the fire burning – the widow just didn’t know what to do with it other than that – she trusted that knowledge would come to her when it was time to know, and until then GO was the what the light was for, simply that, one half GO and the other STAY.  The widow was STAY.  They had tied themselves together with the cord ‘in this life and the next’, and the widow had untied it once and for all, thinking that surely this was now the next life.  The After-Our-Life.  That thought heartened her, for it meant that they didn’t have to do this all again reincarnated, which made her imagine living miserably next to him come back as bullfrogs: him BUD, her WISE, and always waiting for some young ER to show up and rock the lily pad.  The covenant of the cord had included a spell, the Witch’s last for the unintended force of it, that their skins be knitted and to part would feel like peeling.  The widow didn’t feel peeled at all.  In fact, to take a fearless searching inventory of her damage was what she meditated for, and she was still recovering certainly….but she didn’t feel like the last time, and that led her to believe it was a turns-taking thing, and that it was his turn to peel, as if encased in lemon juice with a nettle leaf wedged in his ass, rubbed raw by memory, by planning, by action, by inaction, by solitude, by sociality, until all if it added up to a 3^rd degree injury.  She remembered.  Feeling that way.  

But this time around, if she were to choose a word for how she felt, it would be stolid. A little Godflick to her forehead, an itchy scabbing stabwound between her shoulder blades, and a sometimes still-poisoned feeling in her lower guts like wads of wet cement there – she put her hand to it, willing it better, the poison to abate. To do this inventory, she started at her toes and felt her way up, flex and release, each muscle and organ and bit of skin she could control.  Without him to attend to, alwaysalways, she could tend her own selfhood, and enjoyed the feeling of being alive to herself, her skin oiled, her frame lightened to her natural state of butt anchored and shoulders slender, her cuticles healed back from chewed, her hair unfussfettered loose around her shoulders, her lips tingling with bee balm, etc, as if she were own babychild tended back from illness or a too-long stay in foster.  Last, she inspected her mind.  This was her favorite part.  What she felt was reality and what she knew to be reality matched (!), and thus she basked in sanity, sunk into her mind as if into a bath that indeed had water in it like it was supposed to, and she let it think what it wanted without censure.

She was surprised by the thought.  ‘I should have opted to be the mistress, not the wife.’  But she let it. 

In almost all appreciable ways, he had gotten the better end of their deal.  She tended him diligently, never harmed him deliberately or casually, always sought to provide proof of his value and the like, kept the lights on, all of it.  But.  She had become better, especially this last time around, a better person for the sake of their union, striving.  And she still retained that.  And he had not gotten better, so he had not grown richer at all in that way, logically speaking.  Starting from the very simple but culturally revolutionary premise that a faked orgasm was a lie, she would be ever honest, she never had faked it.  And that changed everything by extension.  She never acted happy when she was not – instead, if she was struggling to be happy when she was not happy, she said that.  She never made herself watch Cops, she did chores instead, puttered, which she liked.  She never pretended to like ska music, which was like a rusty nail to the eardrum as far as she was concerned.  When they began, she didn’t lie about big ticket items, like she wasn’t carrying on with other men (duh) – but that was way too easy.  She took honesty way further than that as they went on.  Real, utterly, all the time.  Not rude, just not false. That’s what she felt she owed him.  And that’s what she felt like now, still. Real. Stayed. 

But he.  He lied.  About the big tickets, and by extension probably about every little thing.  It would be the mistresses, and he always had one, who would get the truth.  To the permanent women, he would be accountable, and not wanting to be accountable, he lied.  So her thought, ‘I should have been the mistress’, was her wondering if that could be reversed.

The question was this:  If he was not accountable to a woman in any way, if obviously he didn’t owe her monogamy being married to someone else and all, and didn’t owe her his time being expected elsewhere and all, etcetcetc, would that render a space in which he too could be Real.  She meditated on it.  She suspected the answer was: No.  He would make an oppressor out of whomever was with, in any capacity, because he didn’t know how to live without one.

Upshot: To tell a lie is to hide a truth, right?  Why else?  You keep the latter safe, somehow, by presenting the former instead.  If you’re not lying, how do you know if you have any truth to protect at all?  HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU’RE REAL?  You don’t.  Not if you’re him.  Pinocchio’s conundrum. And so, even to a mistress, he would make up reasons to have to lie.  To ‘save her feelings’ or if he were a little more honest ‘to save himself from having to deal with her feelings’, something, some imperative to create a false self that cast a shadow he could pretend was his real personhood.  How could that ever be overcome?  She thought: ‘I should have opted to be the mistress who could not speak English.’  Ha.  Yes, radically limit language.  Perhaps that would have worked. Ever the professor, she knew the value of concision.  An essay is good, a sonnet better, a haiku better than that, for distilling. 

On a whim, she took up her half of the cord in her mind and cracked it like a wet towel in a locker room, hard. Say one true thing. If you are able. A brief declarative sentence. No commas, don’t fuck around, and if I smell manipulation in the intent I will belt you bloody with this thing.  Then she listened, head tilted to the wind. And heard not a peep, not even from the birds.  

haha!VIRGO Love shouldn't hurt this much. Consider that what you're going through isn't really about love at all. Rather, it's about working out power dynamics. And don't worry; it doesn't have to be solved in a day.

As soon as I run a minority voices course and there is not murder in the news of a black kid or a gay man or acid to the face of some woman, then fine, we can get rid of it in favor of "Post-Modernism and Gothic" or whatever.  I am not holding my breath, obviously.  Last  week, my students  told me homophobia was all relevant "then", back before we all accepted each other as is, before you could 'get gay married'.  Uh huh.

Update: Seriously, how can he give a whole speech about it, say 'isil' a buttgillion times, and 'gay' never?! Like, if the victims had been black, we'd be mentioning that shit.  Earlier on the news, they showcased one of the victims who was there learning to dance WITH THIS GIRLFRIEND, like we found the one straight guy so you might care. Unreal. Truly.

It was the 10 mile yard sale this weekend.  I put it all out there.  Watched keepsakes walk away for 25 cents. I didn’t feel a thing about it, not sad or mad or anything. I figure that’s okay, in so far as I was half of a thing and the other half of it felt nothing about any of this, so I’m just providing the other half of Nothing now, an accommodating mate to the end (ha).  That’s what it’s like mostly.  With rare jolts of feeling-exception, I feel like one of those target dummies made of straw, flammable maybe but otherwise inert.

I sat outside on the driveway with the kids until it was all gone. It was pleasant, like porch sitting.

Neighbor: How much for the chair?

Me: (shrug) 2 bucks?

TJ: Why did you sell your own chair?

Me: I didn’t – there were two of them, remember?

TJ: O yeah.

Me: I’m letting all this stuff go to make new pleasant memories for other people, and embracing my spinsterhood. 

TJ: You’re not a spinster.

Me: (shrug)

TJ: I mean, that doesn’t seem like the right word.

Me: What is the right word?  Don’t say MILF, I’m super not in the mood lol..

TJ: (thoughtful face)  Widow.

Me:  Well, hmmmmm.  I married my high school sweetheart.  He died this year of pancreatic cancer.  I am alone now.  All of those sentences are technically true.

TJ: That’s right!

Me: Okay, Widow shall be my word.

Ha.

I write a lot, trying to get to feeling some things, then I look back at it the next day and take away any feeling that didn’t stick, was actually just a fleeting thought, and that’s mostly all of it.  I know I must probably be feeling something.  Like yesterday when I woke up I had been crying in my sleep. But I couldn’t remember the dream, and I didn’t feel sad, I just felt wet. 

I sleep a lot. 

I might un-write this tomorrow.

"You’ll know my brother by his heart, fearless and light, like a rock that floats." ~Hold it til it Hurts. T. Geronimo Johns.

(I wish I had a brother.)

I want to pull the blanket of this little town over me and disappear into the rest of my life, quiet as a pin dropping except for the benign monosyllabic greetings of familiar but not intimate acquaintances, unmolested any more please god.

(Yeah, that still feels true.)

I'd stay back way more than 13ft if I were you, more like SEVERAL ZIP CODES

(Yeah, that's probably a keeper too mostly.)

looking forward

blessings

TJ: You look like you walked into a unicorn.

Me: (lol) But I did not.

TJ: Yeah but, you might have.

Me: No, I might not have.  I walked into a door like a moron.  (I mime it.) Like, I walked this way and then wap, into the side of a door typa deal.

TJ: Yeah but half your hippie friends think unicorns are real.

Me: More like they believe in unicorn energy.

TJ: But wouldn’t it be kind to give them the story of a real unicorn?  Like, what else do they have?  It’s NIAGARA FALLS, c’mon.

Me: Jesus no, that’s not even funny, I walked into a damn piece of wood.  And if anybody needs anything in this world it’s reality checking. 

TJ: Are you sure about that?!

Me: Yes!! What are you even suggesting, seriously?

TJ: Ok, that gash on your head is like, it looks like a bindi or whatever, like your third eye is poked out.  Did you ask The Witch about it?

Me: I didn’t ASK anything, but I told her, I accidentally carved out my forehead.

…..

…..

Me: Shut up. Lol.

TJ: Fine fine, I think that’s all batshit, but if I DID think there were unicorns magic energy or whatever, I might wonder why the fuck you have your ‘third eye’ (which granted is NOT real) poked out like you’re fucking Cyclops.

Me: lol ….. I SEEEEEEEE YOOUUUU MY SON

TJ: Stop! That’s freaking me out.

Hahahahahahah

Hahahahhahhahaha

Me: I could inspire a new superhero.  No supervillain, that’s even better. 

Ears: Oh by the way, did you know that the one you made up by accident because you couldn’t remember Magneto’s name, Mephisto, that’s a real supervillain!

Me: Nice!  And that’s got to be scarier than Magneto.  I mean, would you rather have to deal with super magnets or super fisting, am I right?

Ears: Totally.

Me: It’d be hard to beat that name with a carved out third eye.

Ears: Yeah.  Like “Head-hole-o”? Meh.

Me:  Eat your hot dog for Christ sake, you never eat anything anymore, I’ve drunk more of your malt than you have.

Ears: You can have the rest of it.

Me: No, you drink it – you need the calories and any more of it is only going to make me gassy.

TJ: O my god that reminds me, there’s this girl in my class at school, and she’s hot, like cheerleader prom queen hot, but she’s going through the girly vegan phase ya know where they can’t eat meat because of puppies or whatever, so now she RIPS ASS all the time.  Like walking behind her in the hallway is a dare now. 

Me: hahahahhahahhaaHAHAHaahahaa

TJ: Why do girls always have a stupid vegan phase?

Me: Not all of them.

TJ: Uh huh.  It’s either that, or “suicidal” which means they have to call all their friends for hours every night and can’t do their homework, or “lesbian” which just means a short haircut.

Me:  That’s not all the same thing!

Ears: Yeah dude, some girls are lesbians, and some people are suicidal.

TJ: Ok fine, but nobody is a real vegan.  I mean, that’s a cow’s diet, you’re supposed to have like 8 fucking stomachs to eat grass all day or whatever they eat. Why the hell would a girl have that as a phase?!

Me: Serious penis ambivalence.

TJ: Really?

Me: I’m guessing.

Ears: It’s not that big of a deal. They have regular food, it’s just made out of vegetables.  Like vegan hot dogs are made out of…actually, what would be in a vegan hot dog?

TJ: Whatever it is, they should call them Frankenfarters.

Ears:  Is the farting bad enough to be a deal breaker?  How hot is she?

TJ: She is HOT, hothot, but yeah man, these farts are not like normal ass rippage, they clear rooms, it’s a total deal breaker.

Ears: I dunno…I mean, from where I’m standing, any hot girl willing to let me get anywhere near her can eat what the fuck ever and I’d probably deal with it. 

TJ: No no, you have no idea, like if Emma Watson was your girlfriend and she turned vegan on you, pretty soon you’d be calling her Frankenfarter behind her back and looking for a way out of the relationship.

Me: That can’t be just universally true, like all vegans fart smelly.

TJ: IT’S A THING! Seriously, google it, vegan farting, it’s a total thing.

Ears: Emma Watson even?!

Me: (http://jacksdailydose.com/2013/10/27/why-vegans-smell-so-bad/  Huh.)

TJ: Yeah, and ya know like how sometimes if you’ve been ripping ass really bad and you take your pants off to take a shower, and it’s like gas has built up in there, like even without tracks in your underwear it’s still there, woven into the fabric of life.

Me: hahahahahhaahhAAHHahahah gross!

TJ: I’m just saying, that vegan fartage has got to be contaminating the whole area.  So yeah, even Emma Watson bro.

Me: Ya know, I just had a thought – perhaps the vegan phase in hot girls is correlated to the karmic baggage of boys who tend to go for girls based on hotness alone without reflection, and thus somewhere right now shallow stupid men are getting a face full of ambivalent Frankenfarter even as we speak, closing the karmic circle. (bittergigglegigglegigglegiggle)

Them: (nervousgiggle)

Ears: That just went somewhere dark.

Me: I love you guys, ya know that?

Them: We love you too.

blessings v 1

I often think of it no matter how much or however I try to distract myself (such as painting doors and cabinets then leaving them open to dry then walking right into one and splitting my forehead open like an egg - sigh - as if I needed more to make me look like a battered woman, oye).  I think of the way he stabbed me in the back while holding me close and looking into my eyes.  Like Ramsay on Game of Thrones or some shit. 

But there is not something wrong with with life, in general.  If I had any doubt about that, God would be sending me plenty of tangible proofs lately, kindnesses wrapping around me. 

I heard on the radio this morning that Ramadan is starting, and that it's a big deal during this time to speak no ill of other human beings.  When I heard that, I decided to say no more about Trainwreck.  To wash reference to him out of my use of words, like a fast. And to pray that unlike the Ramadan the giving up of that might never end.

Instead, I will count blessings.


(I love the trailercabin, metaphor for decent unassuming haven want of)

I like to look up into the canopy of the maples in the yard.  I accidentally snapped a pic of myself instead first.  I don't feel self-pity, honestly - most people in this world have it a hell of a lot worse than I do, so mostly I feel grateful for life - but that pic gives me a sick feeling a bit, the dark circles that look like a woman who has been punched.  I haven't slept peacefully or for more than a couple hours in a row in months.

"Trouble comes in lots of different ways in this life, but usually people are the ones who bring it." ~jd, Wave Man

Trainwreck -- (a nickname a mutual friend gave him after this most recent stunt – “He is a trainwreck, and it would be better for him if he also seemed like an asshole instead of a nice guy, because then maybe he wouldn’t get so much leeway to make such an unredeemable mess of himself”) -- Trainwreck, intentionally and with malice of forethought, made me feel like a bad partner for feeling lonely and rejected when he was rejecting me, made me believe I was paranoid/crazy/hormonal when he was actually sneaking around, made love to me just enough to keep me buying both those lines of bullshit, and then he let me pack his lunch.  He deliberately undid me, made me ever more exhausted by the sleeplessness that his disappearances (“emergency medicine”) and associated lies caused, clouding my mind and making me feel rather than ever tell me what the truth was finally: that I was as dispensable, as valueless as shit to wipe off his shoe.  He snuck it to me like poison, saying I love you when what he meant was You are worthless, and I can prove it.  And he sure did.  

I should be happy about what I know happens next to him, given all that.  I keep trying to talk myself into feeling that way.  But I'm not. Not vindictive.  Not even distraught, either, really. I just feel empty.  As Lorrie Moore puts it, "full of emptinesses". 

"People think there’s a type of logic to life. I’m not so sure. Some days when business is slow and clients are scarce, I sit at the window and gaze out at the water of Port Robertson. Gulls wheel around the tourists at the fry shack on the town pier. Working boats and yachts drift across the offing. The town’s tiny ferry works its slow way across to Shelter Island. It’s a continuing surprise to me that I’ve ended up where I am, doing what I do. You could argue that my past has led me here, but I’m skeptical. When I look back at my life, I don’t see a logical and predictable progression. It’s a track marred by footsteps, sure, but it hasn’t been a parade. It’s more the scuffmarks of someone staggering through life, step by blind step.....we create our personal disasters one step at a time, with the optimism of the ignorant." jd, Wave Man

I remember. When he left his first wife, and he needed to go there to retrieve things, she left used condoms around dripping and recently spent to get under his skin, he told me.

I remember. He was half crazy to have been with her, always always always beset with doubt and anxiety. That she was not who she said she was, that in fact she was carrying on with other lovers or would-be lovers all the time, always needing to be wanted wherever however.  She was, as he put it, malleable – she would be whatever you wanted, what whoever wanted. “Easy.”

I remember.  When we were new, he watched me like a hawk at first, and I laughed at that.  I am unrelentingly exactly what you see. And not easy.  Watch me all you like, ha.

Finally his mind calmed, when he had blown me to pieces and still, well, I was just what I said I was, true to my word.  Then for a little while, he lived as one thing, an integrated person who was also what he said he was.

But then, at some point, I guess, he realized he was more at home with duplicity. Entropy.  

For several months, increasingly every day I would feel certain he was again lying to me somehow.  To honor him, to honor my word to honor him, I put these feelings aside as my problem.  He would act so hurt to be suspected, and I didn’t want to hurt him.  I had sworn never to hurt him intentionally.  So, I imagined he was betraying me then I put that imagining aside as an evil fantasy.  Until I was having to put my own mind aside almost constantly for his sake.  And when I would look around me and see clear evidence that he was “elsewhere” really, though he was still here, his utter disinterest in things he claimed to love, his brewery, his dog, the kids, me – then I chafed finally, but he looked me right in the eye, dead in the eye, held my gaze, and told me no, that we were fine, that he was just tired.  And I blamed myself for doubting him.  And I cried.  And he watched me cry.  And I tried to be better.

Now, I think about those condoms.  Places like that, not homes, people like that, who would do that, who are just one of however many, and mean nothing truly to anyone, just points to leverage. 

home

the smell of fresh paint is better than napalm in the morning

sisters, thank God for them

Me: I’m choosing my own take-away. I am a woman who can inspire a tattoo, a deep one.

Her: I forgot about that tattoo (giggle)..... .....

Here Django, you read it. 

"Forgiveness, I finally decide, is not the death of amnesia, nor is it a form of madness, as Derrida claims. For the one who forgives, it is simply a death, a dying down in the heart, the position of the already dead. It is in the end the living through, the understating that this has happened, is happening, happens. Period. It is a feeling of nothingness that cannot be communicated to another, an absence, a bottomless vacancy held by the living, beyond all that is hated or loved." 

“Healing is a small and ordinary and very burnt thing. And it’s one thing and one thing only: it’s doing what you have to do.” ― Cheryl Strayed, Brave Enough

VIRGO Long ago someone dear to you didn't treat you with the care you needed or the respect you deserved. You can be sure that this person has regrets — not that it brings you any satisfaction.

“And that is how we are. By strength of will we cut off our inner intuitive knowledge from admitted consciousness. This causes a state of dread, or apprehension, which makes the blow ten times worse when it does fall.” ― D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“She wanted to feel safe. Untouchable in her home. The ultimate female fantasy.” ― Kathy Reichs, Déjà Dead (yup)

the golden rule is lame

“Diamond Rule”: “Do that which others need and no one else can do in your place”.

"I can only testify that he was a sincere man who believed in everything he said, even if it was a lie, which makes him not so different from most."~The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen

If you lose your fear of God la la

I wouldn't have watched except it came on during Jeopardy and I was sitting there...and I swear, WTF IS TALKING ABOUT??, he just makes no sense, it's like listening to one of the old guys at the nursing home who you can tell used to be an asshole but now is just nuts....and then, Did he just say he was at a 711 when it was attacked by terrorists??? Not quite lol

Scary stupid