men

Just call me Angel of the Morning

September 21, 2016

Just call me angel of the morning, angel
Just touch my cheek before you leave me, baby.
~Juice Newton

I just looked that song up and it is way more depressing than I remembered. It is absolutely about a one-sided one night stand. Nope nuh-uh. That is not what I want at all. I think my child’s mind mixed that one up with My baby takes the morning train (Sheena Easton)…I can get behind that sentiment, because he came home and she was waiting for him.

My child’s mind, constantly misunderstanding lyrics. Early memories of music and early mornings.

My alarm went off at the same time as the church bells. Chimed 6 times, and I was out from under the covers by the last bell.
It’s still dark. Wrapped myself in a blanket and sat on the porch sipping coffee, smoking and musing about my day. I had a letter to write, and a book idea that presented itself yesterday. Of course on a day where I slept in and I couldn’t do a damned thing about it, although for the first time since I started this new job I was tempted to call in sick.

I’ve had my alarm set for 6 for a while now and I don’t often get up. Preferring instead to stay in bed, force REM sleep and enjoy the strange dreams that occur in between 6 and 7:15.

(I was in prison, you came and I handed you a tiny precious snake to look after, you said you would)

Also, I have been getting into the wine and staying up later than I mean to.

There is something magical to me about being up in the darkness, just a little glow from one or two incandescent bulbs. The radio turned on low, hiss of the coffee maker, sleepy eyed and wrapped in blankets.
It meant something different when I was little. It was a break from our normal routine. It meant an event was occurring, like a trip to London, field trip at school. Excitement, different than trying to scarf down my cereal before it got soggy and the trek to the bus stop.

If I was exceptionally lucky two things would happen. I would get to watch cartoons until the bus came and even more important, I would get to see my dad. Standing in the glow of the stove light, sipping his coffee and I could hug him before he left for work. My dad worked a lot and those tiny extra moments were precious.

When I lived on the farm I used to catapult myself out of bed at 5 or 6. Not because I had chores to do, I had finely tuned my critters not to expect me till 8 or 9am. But for the stolen moments of peace. I don’t need both my hands to count the hours I was actually in that house alone over the course of 6 years, so I started carving out my own alone time. Occasionally jumping in my Jeep to catch the sunrise over the causeway.

Freedom is just chaos with better lighting. (Alan Dean Foster)

Another 5 year relationship, he was up at 5am and gone by 6. He’d let the dogs into the bedroom and I’d snuggle them for 20 minutes before I got up, again, just enjoy my alone time before getting myself off to work. Sadly, that man couldn’t be alone, so by default I wasn’t ‘allowed’.

Now that this second book idea has made itself known, 5:30 with a snooze it is. The muses have spoken.

I have to make time.

Life isn’t something I have. It’s not something that happens to me. It’s something I participate in, wander around with childlike wonderment at the beauty of, and something I create with my thoughts and actions. I want to be awake to enjoy it. My night dreams are mystical magical things that are fun to interpret. But my day dreams are infinitely better. I sat awake this morning in the dark and let my mind wander to a time and place that haven’t happened, yet.

It’s been over 3 decades since those frosty fall mornings as a child, waking up early just so I could have a few extra minutes with my dad.

I am 42 years old now. I don’t have to steal moments or feign sleep to get alone time. My life is my own and so is my time. And I cannot think of a better way to spend it than waking up before the sun, to the hiss of the coffee maker, wrapped in a blanket just to be awake enough to spend a few extra moments with a man of my choosing.

men

Laughter is the Best Medicine

September 12, 2016

I haven’t been writing much lately. The book is stuck in a weird spot, my hero and antihero took themselves a walk ages ago and took my motivation and outdated muses with them.

I am also scared of manifesting what I’m writing about. I don’t want my book love anymore.

I found something better. Safe, sane.

The kind no one wants to read about, and the kind I don’t feel compelled to write about or share.

My girls tried to pry my phone from my hands last night to read what he’d said that was making me smile.

Nope, nuh uh. This is mine, besides, they would need a decoder ring and I am not sharing that either.

It doesn’t look like anything spectacular on paper.

I have had ‘spectacular on paper’. Boys and men who wrote so eloquently, words dripping with love and intention and promise. Then nothing… and the silence was deafening.

Magic words, conjuring spells and beautiful illusions.

That is the thing about loving these magic men, the final act is always the same.

Puff of smoke and they disappear.

Or they are just a man behind a curtain. Looking and sounding bigger than they are.

It wasn’t the talking wolf in Red Riding Hood that saved her, it was just a lumberjack who happened nearby.

Truth be told, I’d already killed the wolf. I don’t need saving, I just want some snuggles.

I was talking to a darling friend of mine. She is a writer and she loves my writing.

She sent me this.

https://www.facebook.com/MonikaCarlessAuthor/photos/a.808458765894457.1073741828.807727775967556/1175781619162168/?type=3&theater

With the message “I feel like this is about you and one of yours. Past love maybe?”

T’was.

He was my poison, and my remedy. For a while I had more of him in my veins than my own blood.

I had to keep him on a low dose, metered IV drip, the withdrawal was too much. Then slowly but surely I started weaning myself off. But every now and again, there would be a puff of smoke in the air, a turn of phrase and I would be back at square one, tremors, shakes, tears and a craving I couldn’t control.

I am feeling better now.

My cells regenerated, triggers lessened.

Time heals even the deepest wounds.

I called him by his real name for the 3^rd time ever.

Rumpelstiltskin Rumpelstiltskin Rumpelstiltskin

She got a little starstruck and curious, asked if her impressions of him were true.

They were, so I let her keep them.
Spoke only of his talent and intelligence.
His passion, intensity and wisdom.
How he motivated me to be better, at everything.

But one story slipped out and it made me sigh with a rather huge twinge of nostalgia.
Twinge is an understatement, this memory grabbed my arm, wrenched it behind my back and wouldn’t let go even after a 1000 cries of uncle.

He more than once said I was guarded, because I was. After a few scoldings I stopped talking too loud or too much. Kept my swearing to a bare minimum, tried to conduct myself with dignity and composure. Failed miserably, I am not a composed girl. But I tried. Only told stories upon request, kept my answers short, like I was on the stand, on trial. And I was. Left as much emotion at the door as I could. Held my dorky self down until she passed out from lack of oxygen.

Except this one time.

We were talking about the weather of all things, he was perplexed by how hot/cold my part of Canada gets. There were metric conversions and I said something ridiculously stupid and I started laughing. Hard. At myself. I had to put in Herculean effort to stop. When I get the giggles, there is no ending them, but I managed.

You must understand I have the derpiest laugh ever. It’s this low ridiculous chuckle better suited to an old black woman in a rocker on a porch in the bayou, with a slight case of dementia. My friends mock me as they laugh along with me, which makes me laugh even harder and derpier.

I love letting go, but in that moment (with him) I was scared.

That laugh was capable of crushing the eggshells I walked on with him.

I waited for him to make a thinly veiled excuse to quit the conversation.

Instead, he took a deep breath and told me a pirate joke. Even did a rather convincing pirates ‘Arrrr’ at the end for effect.

And I laughed my strange dorky laugh some more, and he joined me.

For a minute there I thought everything was going to be okay. With him.

I wasn’t wrong, everything is okay. It always is, at varying levels.

I hope he is okay wherever he is.

I learned something from all of this.

It feels so much better to be unedited.

Yes, there are things I can always change, tone down, turn up, learn, etc…
Life is a natural progression of refining who I am as a person as I experience the world. Seeing some of my behavior in others and using them as a mirror to reflect on what works and what doesn’t.

I laugh at older outdated versions of me. The girl who cared too much, who was scared too much.

Belly laughs are now (and always have been) important to me. They are my joyous noise unto the lord, my unabashed moments of bliss at being alive, they are a spontaneous explosion of gratitude for this one perfect moment. It is my brain mixing up a superb cocktail of happy chemicals and me getting tipsy on it.

Laying on the couch with the new boy the other night, he grabbed my hip in a ticklish spot, squeezed and I giggled. I apologized for immediately, saying I knew I had an annoying laugh, which is my knee jerk Pavlovian ingrained response. He proceeded to pause the movie and tell me funny stories in funny voices and tickle me until I forgot I wasn’t supposed to be laughing.

gypsy travels

My Lake

September 6, 2016

Driving home I could still hear the waves crashing in my head. I still can now actually. My lake was in fine, angry exhibition this time home. I felt proud, oddly. Standing in front of her, introducing my girls. Have you met the undertow? Do you know what to do if she catches you?

I call Lake Huron my lake, but really I am hers. She soothes me, soaks my sins away, batters me with waves until my soul comes out clean. And I don’t know what she does to my hair, but damn. I didn’t want to/have to wash it for days after I’ve been in.

I don’t have a God per say. I have a moral compass of my own. I do what feels good and light and right.

We 4 girls spoke on the way home about religion and its purpose. Sacrificing virgins came up. I said “well this one time somebody killed a girl and it rained the next day, so they kept doing it for 1000’s of years.” And sometimes the rains came shortly after, because of weather patterns, not virgins.

That’s what it felt like in the lake that night. God’s marionettes. Tossed and tumbled. Thrown out, knocked over all the while blissed out beyond words. With moments of fear.

She deserves respect.

“The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.” Ezekiel 25:17

The line I was going for when I looked that up was ‘you will know my name is the Lord’ spoken in Samuel L Jackson’s specific cadence.

Lake isn’t evil, she might be God, or the closest thing I have to it. I crave her when I am lost, think of her often, bring home rocks, set up little altars, palm them when I am stressed out. I hear her echoes in my ears when I am homesick. I love her on the days I am up to my ribs and it’s so clear I can see my toes and I revere her on the days that she rages and churns.

I think she is just trying to wash us clean. Like when 6 of us went in naked, played and fought waves, riptide and undertow and laughed with delight. We all made it out, but there were a few waves, ocean sized, that had me sucked under talking myself out of that panic that will kill you. Ass over teakettle into the dark oblivion, no air, no idea which way was up. Then finding my feet, standing in awe and humbled as I coughed, sputtered and spit water back where it came from.

I am grateful for the reminder that she can get in anywhere she pleases. That water is relentless, changes shape, form, and eventually washes everything away.

I am water, I am her daughter, I can do the same.

the poet

Harley and the Joker

September 5, 2016

I wrote this whole article and I was looking for a pic to go with it, found this.

Sucker punch of truth right to the throat.

He did this to me. And I did that thing that I do where I tried to understand it, tried to be a better girl for him.

I watched Suicide Squad and saw myself in there. Just a ‘lil bit. But even a little of that is too much.

Apparently in a parallel Marvel universe Joker and Harley fell in love before he was damaged.

But not in this one.

I don’t want a life that resembles movies or comic books. I don’t want to jump into vats of acid to prove my love for someone. I don’t want my brain shocked and rewired to fit someone else’s ideal of what a woman should be. I have been a woman for 42 years and seriously, I got this.

There are spoilers in here.

You have been warned.

My dad’s middle name is Harley. Always thought that was so cool.

My dad is awesome.

The bar should be sofa king high for the men I date. And it ain’t. Couldn’t tell you why that is, probably best to ask my therapist. See if we can work that out before I date again.

I shouldn’t stand here and say that none of the men I have dated have cleared the bar. A few of them have, raised it a bit, right before they left. So, does that even count?

I don’t know what counts anymore. 1+1 should equal 2 but somehow it keeps coming out to 3 or more or negative one. There are variables and percentages and none of them add up to much of anything all things considered.

I saw Suicide Squad 1.5 times.

The first time didn’t really count as we went to the drive-in, pulled up at the wrong screen waited way to long in line for popcorn that wasn’t there and missed the first 10 minutes, and the screen was way too dark. Went back again to a small theater with reclining seats and took kiddo 1 and 2 with me this time. Saw the whole thing.

I braced myself the second time around.

I worried myself with my reactions to the relationship between Joker and Harley Quinn. I was secretly rooting for them somewhere down in my damaged little heart, and I didn’t like it.

When he tried to pass her off to someone else, I felt ridiculously ill. It wasn’t the concession stand hot dog neither. It was flashbacks, I had someone claim to love me and still try to do that very thing. Didn’t set my mind at any kind of ease when Joker shot the guy after. It felt like he killed the other guy for refusing her. Nope, nuh-uh. Not okay.

I have, in the past, fairly recent actually, fooled myself into thinking that was an expression of love. I was shocked and damaged into believing it was the ultimate in trust and choosing one another. It ain’t. Honestly…I don’t even think the joker in question was buying what he was selling either. Add him to the list of those who left.

I have balked at the idea of monogamy and marriage for years. I was tortured, manipulated and brainwashed into thinking that wasn’t the way.

Been out of captivity for almost 4 years now and starting to get used to it, comfortable in all this space to move around in, explore, try this or that. Red pills, blue pills, drink me, eat me, see if I learn, grow or shrink.

Back in my mid-twenties, high school sweetheart was on the phone, and the subject of my ex-girlfriend came up. “So I know you like women” he said. During the long pause while he gathered his thoughts and balls I braced for impact, waiting for him to ask for a threesome.

Maybe it’s my period, or the memory or both, but I am tearing up at his 15-20 year old response.

“I don’t want to share you” he said. “Is that okay? Would you feel like you were missing something?”

That sigh of relief came straight from my soul.

It was more than okay.

My whole life up ‘til then and since then has always been guys finding out I had a girlfriend (or 6) and deciding I owed them a threesome.
Because? I slept with women once upon a time?

YA, UM…I DON’T DO THAT ANYMORE.

Bisexual never meant promiscuous regardless.

I love who I love. I want who I want, and if I want you, you don’t have to worry about who wants me. My body has ways of shutting that down, so does my mouth.

Once upon a time I had a Joker & Harley Quinn kinda love. A couple of times if I am being totally honest.

Intellectually I know better, but my heart gets so confused and easily swayed. Fucking movie love, has us believing, sadists, psychos and stalkers are capable of love.

When I took my son to see it we had a rousing conversation about how Harley had Stockholm Syndrome, had been driven mad by torture and captivity and it wasn’t love, it was madness and psychopathy. What good is being the Queen of anything if the King of the kingdom passes you around to his friends? That isn’t royalty, loyalty or love.

Then I saw something.

Joker’s right hand man comes into the room to tell Joker where his girl is. Joker is laying on the floor in a pattern of weapons, knives and roses. Top right there is a set of baby clothes.

In Harley’s ideal delusion, “he married me.” Heart sighed again. Stupid heart.
For a minute there I thought ‘maybe he did love her’, in his own twisted way. But that does not negate the fact that he first had to lock her away and drive her insane to force compatibility. I have been there, locked away for months at a time, drips of Chinese water torture wearing away at my self-esteem and my own morals until I was a bleached out crazy version of my former self.

“Will you live for me?” right before he had her swan dive into a vat of industrial chemical waste.

What I almost did. What I am writing a book about.

Logically I know this is not okay.

And yet I sat in the theater and cheered them on in spite of myself.

My eyes welled up with tears when she said “I lost my puddin’.”

I’ve lost my puddin’ a few times, lost my mind too…but that’s okay, I’m finding myself.

Something loving, mutual, sane and easy, hold the puddin’.

regular lust

Boys Lie

September 2, 2016

Not poetry exactly. But pillow talk.

My girls wanted vacation dick and vacation dick they got.

I was the facilitator, I was the adulty adult, I was the common thread.

I drove us all back to the cottage, while they squealed and squirmed and talked much too loud. I woke up after 3 hours of broken sleep to drive the boys back to their trucks before the sun was up during what counts as rush hour in that tiny little town.

I used to be the girl getting driven home at dawn to make it to work, a lifetime ago.

As they were getting laid I laid in bed, worried at first for a myriad of reasons.
Are they safe? When 2 of them didn’t come back right away from the vicious lake I could not sleep. Then I heard a soft giggle through the window and relaxed a little until it quickly morphed into ‘what will the neighbours think?’

I only care what the neighbors think in said tiny town where I am from because that worry is in my marrow like a cancer I can’t shake, or a bone long ago broken that never mended quite right.

Then the soft gasping and moaning of sex came from inside the cottage and I relaxed a little into sleep. Had strange dreams.

The girl beside me on the other side of the locked door said she was a bit envious. I wasn’t.

Back in the days that I lived there I had no such friends, or very few. No one that wasn’t viciously jealous or angry when I got the attention, some attention, any attention. My ‘best friend’ would make sure there were days of consequences for minutes of pleasure. It was good to be home with my girls from the present hanging out in my past. It was cathartic. I got to see a very clear line between what was and what is.

I forwent the vacation dick. Joking that I couldn’t possibly sleep with anyone because I probably knew their brother/wife/girlfriend/parents etc. it’s a really tiny town.

Case and point, one vacation dick was my sister’s best friends little brother, born 4 years before I left that place so I didn’t even know he existed. He didn’t know about me either. The lake isn’t the only dangerous water. I am careful where I swim.

I found it odd and almost lovely to be sitting in the same place I had sat 23 years ago, at a table with a different incarnation of ‘my girls’ in the exact geographic location we used to.
Once upon a time it was almost always my job to get the girls and the car home. Some things stay the same.

Truth be told, I didn’t want anyone anyways. I am in the middle of sorting something out with someone and vagina has taken a rather high road about it. We begin to covet what we see every day, and what I see are texts from Lumberjack. I covet.

Mind you, I had a twinge of jealousy on the ride home. The two who got laid were speaking of pillow talk and snuggles.

Fuck I miss my lumberjack.

My kingdom for some snuggles, my kingdom to hear his actual voice again. See how closely my mina bird brain has mimicked his tone and cadence in the inner dialog when I am reading aloud the written reiterations I get from him daily. I heard a boy outside of a pizza place last week and my head whipped around, the voices were close, out east and steeped in honesty.

Then I wasn’t jealous anymore.

One of the bearers of vacation dick was actually a dick.

I sat quietly in the back seat as my 3 girls waxed poetic and got excited about how this one guy was such a good fit, the things he had said, he’d talked about trips to Bali. She was pontificating about how things might be.

I said nothing. But my mind was screaming no.

Just like every character ever in Star wars I had a bad feeling about this.

It was confirmed when we got home, found him on Facebook under a slightly different name than he had given, both profile pic and cover photo of he and his girlfriend.

There had been no mention of a girlfriend. Why say Bali? Overkill?

“Way to say everything I wanted to hear, asshole.” Was her message to him.

Here is what hurts me. And I will tell her this when I find the words.

Yes, it sucks balls that he didn’t tell you about the girlfriend so you could have made an educated decision. But all the things he did in the moment were good. They had prolific, great sex, we all went skinny dipping in crazy high waves and lived. We had a good night on the patio with an amazing dinner, laughs drinks, good times.

And now her memory of a lovely 2 day girl’s vacation is sullied not by a cute boy per say, but where her mind took him after the fact. She is mourning and angry about the things she wanted to see coming, not by what was.

When I lived in that town there was no Facebook to fact check. And I did have random sex with random boys who probably had girlfriends back home. It’s a cottage town and a risk you take for a night of fun.

I am not justifying his actions. They were shit. I just hope one day when she looks back on this she can appreciate the good times that were had and not the future she wanted that didn’t materialize.

I walked away from the weekend feeling clean and good and so very content with mylife exactly the way it is now.

Yes, I dream of Lumberjack and snuggles. But I am trying really hard to live in the moment and not look too far ahead.

Whatever will be will be. And what is…is good.

Uncategorized

What if her Name is Actually Becky?

August 24, 2016

Mama Susan (My Queen Bee) said to me when I posted this meme…

“The day is coming when you’ll realize that your pussy is humble and you are magic.”

“Soon” she said.

I already have. He’ll probably see it too. Pray he don’t call me when he notices.

So what are you gonna say at my funeral, now that you’ve killed me? Here lies the body of the love ~~of my life~~, whose heart I broke without a gun to my head. Here lies the mother ~~of my children~~, both living and dead. Rest in peace, my ~~true~~ love, who I took for granted. Most bomb pussy who, because of me, sleep evaded. Her god listening. Her heaven will be a love without betrayal. Ashes to ashes, dust to side chicks…

I’ll drink to that eulogy.

Pray I don’t die here.

I’m not dead yet.

Once upon a time Sunshine said she was going to finish her water and get into the wine.

I said “baby please, drink that Ménage a Trois the Giant left here, get it out of my life.”

Rolled my eyes.

Middle fingers up.

She said she wasn’t going to get turnt, and I laughed, “How can you baby girl? It ain’t even a full bottle”.

She said ‘say goodbye to boys that don’t pick you & show up half-drunk with half-drunk bottles of wine’.

The biggest grin pulled up the corners of my mouth and I spit ‘tell him boy bye.’

Gift me liquor, tell me to keep drinking, then dismiss me for what you coaxed me to do?

no no HELL NAH

And I don’t feel bad about it
It’s exactly what you get
Stop interrupting my grinding
(You’re interrupting my grinding)

Middle fingers up.

Leave unfinished business in my house?

Tell him boy bye

Make me apologize?

Tell him boy bye

Text me while you’re with her?

Tell him boy bye

I ain’t sorry

I’d only heard snippets of Sorry by the Queen B. flipping through radio stations.

“… Her shroud is loneliness. Her god was listening. Her heaven will be a love without betrayal. Ashes to ashes, dust to side chicks.”

Heard it full through the other night and everything came rushing back. Broke my heart and filled it up simultaneously.

I love it when women get strong.

She was then I was the fucking side chick. I was ashes. The fire went out.

He poured ¾ of a bottle of wine on it after I doused it with 3oz of vodka in a wine cooler.

I ain’t sorry

Let’s have a toast to the good life

My therapist told me I am allowed to have more than one emotion at a time. I laughed so hard I cried.

I told Giant I had run the gambit of feels and landed on shame.

But there was more, there is always more…until there isn’t.

I am shocked anyone found my off switch as I am forever turned up and on.
I am pissed.
I carry with me the tiniest bit of uncharacteristic hope that he will wake up one day and he’ll realize what I am* and what he’s lost.
Beyond Most Bomb Pussy…

He always got them fucking excuses
I pray to the lord you reveal what his truth is.

Yes Queen B, she said it better than me. And those Beyoncelogues, damn woman. Preach.

Intuition, I knew this was coming.

Denial, I pretended it wasn’t.

Anger, I was venomous.

Apathy, now I don’t care.

Loss, his.

Emptiness, I found room to move in this space.

Accountability, I own what I did.

Reformation, I don’t want to be loved by halves, I’m whole on my own.

Forgiveness, I forgive, until I can’t anymore, and then I forgive myself.

Resurrection, I deserve better.

Hope, I am better.

and I can do better.

Redemption makes him look small.

He only want me when I’m not there

You better Becky with the good hair.

Sorry, I ain’t sorry

No no hell nah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxsmWxxouIM

http://www.bustle.com/articles/156559-transcript-of-beyonces-lemonade-because-the-words-are-just-as-important-as-the-music

unable to even

Pussy, Liquor and Boy Strippers

August 22, 2016

I bet you think strippers like you too. (Forgetting Sarah Marshall)

Last night was the night to pop my girls ‘never been to male strippers before’ cherry.

She’s just been through a break-up and is coming out the other side.
I had to be the one to take her.
Strippers do like me.
Way back in the day I may have dated one or two.

We were talking on the drive about working, clubs, stripper boys, she didn’t know what to expect and I wasn’t sure either.
I had a moment of Zen in NOLA in April with the sweetest stripper, we still check in from time to time. He is doing well and this pleases me. He is a good story. But the rules down there are different.
The boys I dated danced for men and I rarely went to see them at work and that was a decade ago or even longer.

Things change.

And they stay the same.

We were also talking about drinking. I’d stood in my dining room before we got in her truck and vowed to only have a drink or two.
“I don’t want to get drunk.” I said, and I meant it. I never want to get drunk. I like drunky better. Just that happy, bubbly, tipsy before you shed all reason and self-control. Half naked, half in the bag.

The best laid plans of mice and white girls.

I didn’t get white girl wasted.

In the sea of little black dresses on little white girls there were varying levels of ‘oh honey you shouldn’t be in public right now’.

I confessed to being a geographical alcoholic. I am.

I have 8 bottles of booze less than 8 feet away, half a bottle of wine in the fridge and a few beers brought home from work, untouched since Wednesday.

I’ll probably go another month or 3 and have a dozen drinks, maybe.

Unless I go back to a strip club.

I ended up getting drunk last night and am writing this with a righteous hangover. As I was saying ‘I don’t want to get drunk’ , I said “I can’t not drink at strip clubs”. I had a moment of clarity wherein my inner voice said ‘who do you think you’re fooling?’

Something about those places ignites my inner booze hound.

Every strip club I have ever worked at or walked into, I drank at. Sometimes to the point of blacking out.

Even when I was really just a waitress in said clubs I was adored by my co-workers for somehow being able to cajole multiple shots from customers for after work. 16-20 stacked shots waiting at 2:45 am wasn’t rare. Enough for me to get lit and share.
And even when I was really a waitress and drinking responsibly, there were a couple nights where I really should have been fired or videotaped or both.

The story of one night in particular came out.

Years ago I’d had beef with my bartender for a week. We were not playing nicely. It hadn’t come to blows but we were slamming things down on the bar and shit was ready to break. He brought a bottle of tequila and slammed that down on the bar after work one night, looked at me and said “we’re going to drink this and work it out.”

Half a bottle later I was on stage with 2 new strippers dancing away in my street clothes, doing the splits like I had never quit and making out with the tiny girl whose name I cannot recall. The bottle of really good tequila migrated over to the stage with us and the shots kept coming. It got a little heated and I ended up making her squirt on stage in front of half the staff and a few leftover dancers. There was more to the night but we’ll just leave it there.

The end of the story is I threw up outside my building, staggered up the stairs and collapsed, clothed, in bed next to my boyfriend at the time. I had ejaculate from my chin to my belly button and up to my elbow, I reeked of sex, puke and alcohol and I was a disheveled mess. He got out of bed an hour later, kissed my forehead and went off to work. Didn’t notice a thing or never mentioned it if he did.

Never underestimate the power of denial. (American Beauty)

Now before all y’all go thinking I am the worst girlfriend ever, there is a little more to the story. He had gotten black out drunk a few weeks prior and smashed me in the mouth for not fucking him.

I had mentally checked out of the relationship, my body had yet to follow.

I didn’t fuck her for revenge, but I got drunk to deal*.

I made it into work the next night and there were no consequences there either except a raging hangover and they had all placed bets on what time I would try to bail. I didn’t, I stayed. I am stubborn like that.

Took me a year and another beating to leave that boyfriend too.

Same club, different time, I got drunk with the man who would become my farm husband. He was on a date of sorts, with a large group of cool kids, they got me smashed and I kissed him as he walked out the door, I didn’t know one of the girls was his not quite girlfriend. She became the mistress, our sisterwife and is now his common-law wife.

That time there were consequences.

But whatevs.

*It’s never a good idea for me to get drunk when I have something to deal with.

I posted once to Facebook “For the next few hours all statuses will be brought to you by whiskey, lots and lots of whiskey”. 100 likes. Seriously guys? Someone switch off the Wi-Fi and hold my hair back.

We need to introduce breathalyzers for phones. Blow over and you can only call for pizza, cab or 911.

I almost died one night fairly early in my marriage when I was waitressing at a strip club, did a day shift on a Friday and proceeded to slam 6 Jack’s in 20 minutes before leaving work followed by half a mickey at home. I hadn’t eaten since Monday. I did however break into his Facebook account and I wish I was drunk enough to forget what I found there…but that would have meant alcohol poisoning and possible death.

I stayed in the marriage a year for every shot of Jack I took to erase that one fight we had.

Stubborn and drunk on what I thought was love.

unable to even

Fortunate Cookie

August 21, 2016

Everyone this is Sally.

Sally this is…everyone.

Angel came down from heaven yesterday, she stayed just long enough to rescue me.
Jimi Hendrix

Sally isn’t an angel, but she has wings, close e-fucking-nuff.

We used to ride through the hayfields on the tractor. The mantises would whir up out of the grass dancing in the motes from the hay we were cutting. The golden glory when the sun was going down made it look like fairies and heaven to me.

She came in from the less than heavenly porch and landed on my desk lamp the next morning.

My son anointed her with the name Sally and the working title “Guardian of the House.”

I moved her to the golden glorious morning glory porch, lest she starve, and there she stays. Guarding my house.

Thanks Sally.

The book I am writing starts out with a girl, much like me, who is a writer, much like me, sitting outside and a mantis lands on her startling her out of a daydream.

The pic in the background was a gift from the man that inspired the book.

Now, I am not saying it’s a sign from god, but it’s a sign from god.

A few things happened that keep pushing me back to the book that I don’t want to write because my muses are treating me like dirt and leaving me in the lion’s den then pointing and laughing when I got bit.

There was this fortunate fortune cookie.

And then Rob Breszny said things. A lot of things.

And then the moon was full and I was left unsupervised.

The theme of this full moon?
Leave your comfort zone and go explore the dark, your magic is in there.

I did that.

and this…

The theme of every full moon ever?

Let it fucking go.

“The mantis comes to us when we need peace, quiet and calm in our lives. Usually making an appearance when we’ve flooded our lives with so much chaos that we can no longer hear the still small voice within us because of the external din we’ve created.”

I have to return to therapy next Tuesday and she is invariably going to ask me if I worked on the book and I am out of excuses as to why I haven’t.

For a while there I didn’t know what to write.

I get it now.

I have to finish the thing.

I have plans and the book being done and sold is part of my future.

I have encouragement from other published writers that it is good and I should keep going.

So what of my fortunate cookie?

Double entendre.

My favorite.

I am writing my literal financial fortune.

I can finish this thing any way I want.

I got stuck on the book during the part where our dear heroine gets assaulted in a parking lot
Life imitated art and I was scorned by the hero and anti-hero because of it.

“Well what did you think was going to happen?”

Um, not that and definitely not this.

They left me to my own devices, laughed when I got hurt. Made me feel dumb and small. An insignificant speck floating around in a huge sea of blue.

“Enlightenment is when a wave realizes it is the ocean.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

I’ve always been able to write the story of my life.
I just forgot for a bit and handed my pen to others.

The ending has always been up to me.

Now I know what I don’t want.

I love the ocean, god knows I do. But that doesn’t mean I want to go ass over teakettle off the side of a boat in the middle of nowhere breathing canned air with no idea where the land is.

I am content playing in the surf near the shore. I can go under, get wet and stand up when I am feeling overwhelmed and catch my breath.

I just want to play in the waves, I am done drowning and choking.

Neil Gaiman said his favorite stories were the ones where women saved themselves.

I am swimming to shore.

So now I know what I want because I know who makes me cry when I look at my phone and I know who makes me smile.

It ends like this…I get loved as is. By someone who doesn’t make me feel like I am gasping for air, grasping at straws or unworthy.

He isn’t a poet, but neither am I.

He calls me a ‘dork’.
I know it means that I am adored.
It’s not everyone’s happy ending, but it works for me.
I’d rather that than be someone’s sexual soulmate and never hear a word.
Or someone else’s Lady of Stars, but we have to end this gracefully.

Fuck that fuck this fuck them.

I want peace and quiet. I want a relationship that doesn’t have me posting to this blog every 5 minutes trying to work shit out because I am not getting any help and I can’t breathe.

I am a good girl, I just needed a good man to see it.

I’ve done my PhD. in Fuckboi Languages, Variations and Interpretations, I have the Scorpio decoder ring, learning how to speak pragmatic lumberjack is going to be a cakewalk.

Or a cookie walk.

lost boys

No Funeral Required

August 20, 2016

The hardest thing in this world is to live in it.
Joss Whedon, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Sometimes that is the truth.
I have shit days, we all do.
The ones where we just want it to end, whatever mask ‘it’ is wearing that day.
Good news?
Masks don’t last, wounds heal and eventually things get better.

Hot Neighbor is always asking me if whatever is vexing me in that moment is going to bother me in a year. My answers vary from a ‘Probably not’ to a chuckling ‘nope’. Then he hugs me and I feel less busted than I did before I said the thing out loud. He is leveling up at lightning speed and keeps asking me to join him. With his gentle nudges and check-ins that all sound like “Sarah, evolve, its time now.”

I ask after his Russian nesting doll and he shows up when I need him.

So there is that then.

The hardest thing I ever had to do was forgive someone who wasn’t sorry.
Unknown

It’s actually not that bad. You should try it sometime.

Once you have done it, it gets really easy.

I’ve done it and I’ll do it again a few dozen times before my life ends.

Here’s how, in one easy step.

Realize that…

Everyone has their own perception and reality.
Matter changes when observed, so me being near you will alter your behavior to a degree, but the microcosm that is you, is still you. We have this immediate second that we live in and everything else is just stored data. As creatures with active imaginations and sometimes/often corrupt filing systems for memories, sometimes the data gets distorted and no amount of arguing or worry on my part is going to allow me to change your mind. Whatever you think happened is your hardwired reality. So be it.

So that isn’t it either.

I think the hardest part of the human condition is saying good bye to someone who is still alive.

I avoid it like the plague.

‘Cause when you’re done with this world
You know the next is up to you
John Mayer

shit.

It IS up to me, and for a long time I didn’t know what world I wanted to live in.

The fear of the great unknown keeping me tethered to the Walking Dead. Just like Michonne and her walkers on leashes, no arms to hold me, no teeth to bite me neither, but damn they smelled bad and held me back.

The severance becomes exponentially harder when there are invisible threads and entangled particles.

I went to a funeral once and a Buddhist monk came with a ball of string. I am not sure what the purpose was but when he cut it I felt a palpable release, like she was free.

I have been wrong this whole time, I don’t need an exorcism with an old priest and a young priest, I need a monk with scissors and a ball of string

I wrote a thing once and now it’s making me cringe. That happens a lot.

Something along the lines of ‘when given the choice between the devil you know and the devil you don’t stick with the familiar, he will probably hurt you like he has before, but at least you know how to tend to your wounds.’

That is a shitty philosophy. The girl who wrote that is dead to me now. I have no problem burying older outdated versions of me, I don’t even bother with flowers on their graves anymore, just smile wistfully now and again, thinking ‘you silly bitch, thanks for the lessons on what we ought not to do again ever.’

Catharsis is easier when there is a cataclysmic event to accompany it.

“Traitor child. I must despise you now”
Queen Bavmorda, Willow

But what happens when there is no blow out.

What if you just drift apart slowly?

What if you really like being near that person because your soul feels good but because of circumstances beyond your control (see above where their reality is different than yours) it ain’t working anymore.

What then?

That my friends, is the heaviest door to close.

There is no fanfare or funeral or closing ceremony.

It just is, becomes it just isn’t.

I think that’s why the easy way out is what everyone else seems to do which is flip the switch between I have you to I hate you.

I don’t hate anyone because a huge part of what I am is understanding. So it’s hard for me.

Damn near impossible.

Probably because I see walls where there are actually doors and vice versa. I have bloodied my knuckles knocking on doors that once were opened to me but have now been locked/bricked over.

Watching through my fingers, watching through my fingers
Caught off guard by your favorite song
Oh I’ll be dancing at a funeral, dancing at a funeral
Sleeping in the clothes you love
It’s such a shame we had to see them burn, shame we had to see them burn

What’s gonna be left of the world if you’re not in it?
What’s gonna be left of the world, oh

Every minute and every hour
I miss you, I miss you, I miss you more
Every stumble and each misfire
I miss you, I miss you, I miss you more
Bastille

What is going to be left of this world without them in it?

Me.

I am all I ever had anyways.

All the things they left behind, all the things I became when my particles met theirs and my atoms changed and transformed from being tangled up with them.

This I get to keep.

I’m gonna go ahead and do what Joseph Campbell suggested and cleanse my doors of perception and wander out into the infinite.

They can stay in that graveyard where I buried all the previous versions of me. Keeping each other company.

No funeral required.

…and if the moon walks out, the sky will understand
Sanober Khan

Uncategorized

I Love Lamp

August 14, 2016

Sunshine was in the shower and I scared the crap outta her by yelling very emphatically “I LOVE THIS FUCKING LAMP!”

I don’t love this lamp. It isn’t even a lamp really, it’s a retro, scrollwork chandelier hybrid thing with dangling sparkly bits. I wouldn’t have picked it. I love my chandeliers dripping crystals, diamond bright and throwing rainbows. But it’s cute and it matches what we’ve got going on in our living room.

I love that it is up and that when we flick the switch it comes on or turns off depending.

I have no words to describe the last 28 days of moving chaos and shit going right sideways.
This fucking chandelier was at the eye of the hurricane, the poster child for everything that was going wrong.

Put it back in the corner, put the tools back in the box and try again tomorrow.

Yesterday was the tomorrow that seemed like it would never come.

Out of the blue my dear friend Cory shows up, says, “looks like you have a light missing.” And voila. There was light and it was good.
Amen hallelujah and all that sparkling jazz.

It sat in various corners and spaces for 28 days. I held it over my head for about an hour all together until my shoulders burned and my forearms shook. Giant got it to light up once, but we needed a part that he had at home and we gave up because we wanted to look at each other and I was making funny little squeaks of protest awfully close to his crotch.

The wiring in this retro apartment we live in is…well fucked. The whole building is eccentric and adorable until it’s time to switch out a light fixture, then it becomes one of the 12 Herculean tasks and there are 5 wires all coated in white paint and no configuration of 3 to 5 makes the light turn on.

“We had to make a lamp that looked like an elephant and when you pulled the trunk the light was supposed to go on. My lamp didn’t go on.”

…

“Without lamps there would be no light.”

Breakfast Club.

Then God said, let there be light and there was light and it was good.

All of the mens that tried (4 for the record) balancing on chairs and then a step ladder, twice having sparks fly from the wires, many times having the light just not go on at all and then that one time where the safety wire snapped and it fell and Hot Neighbor caught it whilst balancing on a ladder…all channeled our inner Jane Says and decided to try again tomorrow.

Someone came waltzing out of my ancient history yesterday. And there was light. Well at first there was only light, it wouldn’t turn off…but he fixed it and leveled it and now we have light.

I feel lighter.

I haven’t seen him in 22 years.

He says he can’t read these stories because it gets his blood up. Reading what I go through and not being able to see that I’m okay. I told him I was alright and he believed me and there was more light and it was really good. Literally his face lit up.

It was hard when he left. He reminded me of all the good there was for me in my high school years. I tend to remember the shit, but there was so much good.

Kinda like the damned lamp.

It was nagging at me that it wasn’t up. It’s continued tenancy in the corner behind the door a constant reminder of the things that weren’t done yet. Ghostly marks of droplets of sweat on the living room floor from when Giant tried to get it working reminded me of the coldest night of the year when he fired up the charcoal barbecue to make me steak. He spent the hottest night of the year trying to get this fucking lamp up.

And I still have days where I question whether or not I am loved?

I focus on the bad and fail to see the good right in front of my eyes.

I live in this beautiful apartment with one of my best friends. I call her Sunshine because she lights up my life daily. And I let this lamp vex me?

The lesson here is twofold at least, quite possibly many folded, like an origami crane.

I am loved.

Things get done and get better. Eventually and always.

Not everything can be on my timeline, barely anything really, and the more time I spend worrying and focusing on what is not I miss out on the glory of what is.

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deja vu

…and if the moon walks out, the sky will understand Sanober Khan

…and if the moon walks out, the sky will understand
Sanober Khan